Weekend Update

We're off a full but rather satisfying weekend.  We've been so go, go, go lately that it was nice to have time to catch up on some things we've both been needing to do and wanting to do.
Friday night Nate had to work a bit from home sadly, but it was mostly stuff he could start running off of his computer and then leave running, so he was able to enjoy a walk with Ollie and me before we put Ollie to bed.  Ollie and I kept our tradition of a Friday evening mom/son selfie.

Looking at this picture you'd never guess that Ollie was actually a little under the weather.  He ended up not sleeping super great Friday night, he was not only cutting his upper molars but he had a little runny/stuffy nose.  Poor kid.  Even though he had woke up a bunch and was a little on the cranky side on Saturday morning, we moved forward with plans we had made for the day.  First we dropped off Nate's car to get some tires put on it.  Then we stopped off at Caribou Coffee to fuel up for the day. After that we headed to the mall to do some walking and then stopped at Stride Rite to get Ollie some new shoes.  It's hard to believe, but the nice pair I bought him right after Christmas already no longer fit!  I'm pretty excited about the new shoes we bought - they have Kermit the Frog on them.  I didn't force him to choose these shoes, but the minute we put them on his feet, Ollie started running all over the store rather confidently, so we knew these were a good choice!

We brought Ollie home after that so he could get a nap.  Nate picked up his car and then helped his sister with some stuff for awhile and I worked on tagging items for the Just Between Friends consignment sale I'm hoping to sell some of Ollie's old stuff at this coming weekend.  After Nate got back and Ollie got up, we decided to get out of the house again and get some fresh air since Saturday was a gorgeous day.  We took Ollie to a park for a little bit and then out to an Italian restaurant we enjoy and haven't been to in quite some time called Donatelli's (they've been on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives before).  We had a nice family dinner, Ollie loved their food!
After dinner we headed home and Ollie totally crashed, it was a good thing since he had slept so poorly on Friday night.  Nate and I just opted for a couple of TV shows instead of a movie, we were both tired from Friday as well and Nate wanted to get up early on Sunday to start smoking meats in his meat smoker so we made it a pretty early evening.
While Nate smoked his meats on Sunday morning, I took Oliver to a friend's house for a play date with one of his little buddies.  My friend's youngest son is just four months older than Ollie and we've tried to get them together a few times, especially now that they are older.  Ollie had a blast playing with him and his older siblings too.  We stayed for lunch and then went back home for Ollie's nap. Nate's dad was hanging out with him while he smoked his meat and I kept working on stuff for the sale.  Later in the afternoon Nate's mom and sister also came over so they could enjoy all the smoked meat with us.  We had a nice visit with them and a very delicious dinner!  This was one of Nate's best attempts at meat smoking to date.  Lots of leftovers too, can't beat that!
After his family left and we got Oliver off to bed we crashed with another couple of TV shows and then hit the sack ourselves.  Very full, somewhat productive weekend, but a pretty good one in spite of Ollie being a little owly at times!  I'm looking forward to a pretty quiet week this week and probably a slightly quieter weekend next weekend though!  How was your weekend?

Merry Christmas to All

Merry Christmas to all of you from my little family of three!  I wanted to share our holiday card here.  I hope you all have a great holiday over the next few days.  I will likely not be blogging the rest of the week so I can take it all in with my family!  Thank you for all the love and support you show me in this little blog of mine, I appreciate it more than I can say.  I'll catch up with you all soon!

Oliver's Birthday Party

As promised, here is a post all about Oliver's 1st birthday party from this past Sunday!  The picture quality isn't great, the indoor lighting and my old as the dinosaurs iPhone didn't play together super well, but you'll get the general idea.  We sort of had a Dr. Seuss theme to match his nursery, but beyond that it was just a nice afternoon spent with family and friends.

I got him a "One" shirt from Old Navy and I figure, hey, he'll be one all year long so he can wear it until he outgrows it!  I was a little worried about how he was going to do as he was fighting naps all day on Sunday, but he managed to get a good afternoon nap in before everyone showed up, so he was in pretty good spirits.

He wasn't too sure about being the center of attention with all these people surrounding him, this is the most people we've had in our house since Oktoberfest and for Oktoberfest we could be downstairs and outside, for his birthday party we all kind of crammed into the living room and dining room, but it worked out ok.

I made two different kinds of cupcakes - chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting and an Oreo which I called my "Cat in the Hat" cupcakes.  We also made spice cake with cream cheese frosting because Ollie hasn't had many sweets and we thought the spice cake would be gentler on his tummy.

We made a roast beef baguette type appetizer to represent "Roast Beast" from How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  Nate seasoned some cream cheese and spread it on the baguette with a piece of roast beef on top - SO yummy.

And here we have "Hop on Popcorn" and "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Goldfish" crackers.  Yep, I'm a giant nerd.  We also had a roasted red pepper artichoke dip and barbecue meatballs, but I couldn't figure out how to tie those into the theme, but I will say they were yummy as well.

Of course we had to have balloons.  Oliver's sweet auntie Ali bought a ton of red, white and blue balloons and a giant silver "1".  Ollie LOVES balloons, we'll be enjoying them for awhile!

He loved his cake.  He wasn't too sure at first but then we smashed it up for him a bit and he was all over it.  He ate the whole cupcake!  After a while though he started whining for other food, we realized he needed some protein to balance all that sugar!

He got tons of fun presents, many new toys that we've been enjoying already, puzzles, clothes and lots and lots of new books.  I think mom might be more excited about the new books than Ollie - we have been needing some new material in our rotation, I have the Going to Bed Book memorized, so yeah, new books are good!

It was so sweet to see him play with his little friends who are just a little bit older than him.  I've mentioned our friend Benny on the blog before.  Benny is 15 months old so not too much older than Ollie.  They shared Ollie's Tupperware together, it was pretty cute.

And of course Ollie's little girlfriend Eloise came too, she even dressed up with a necklace for the occasion.  For a time Ollie was more interested in Eloise's big sister Gertie, but you know, she's blond and Ollie has a thing for blondes!  He still played nice with Miss Eloise too though!  
Overall it was a great day and everything I hoped for in his first birthday party.  I know he will never remember it, but it was still special for Nate and I and someday we'll tell him all about the family and friends who love him so much and wanted to celebrate his special day with him!
I'm relieved the party is over now, I need to step up Christmas prep in high gear!  Lots of online shopping to come and possibly some shopping in stores this weekend.  It will all get done, it is much easier this year than last year anyway!

TIGF - Family

Hosted by Ashley, Nay and Laura

Since we're heading into Thanksgiving week here I felt it would be appropriate today to celebrate my family since I did a post dedicated to my friends last week.  I am so grateful to have a wonderful and supportive family - both my own and Nate's.

I mentioned in an earlier post this week that I am an only child.  I think that led me to have a very unique relationship with my parents - they are not just my parents, they are also my friends.  We enjoy spending time together.  I am beyond blessed that my mom is able to take care of Oliver for me every day, it gives me such peace of mind that he's with someone who loves him as much as we do and I love that I work so close that I can spend lunch hours at their house - I did that before Ollie too, it is nice being able to see my parents every day.  On days I'm not over there I still call and talk to my mom because I like being able to talk to her every day.  My dad is amazingly helpful to us too, he is a master builder and has helped us in countless ways at our house fixing up things or building things. He helped Nate build his basement bar, he has helped us replace doors, windows, electrical things, the list goes on and on.  My family may be small in number, but it's large in love.

I am also blessed to be a part of Nate's family.  From the moment we started dating, they were warm, welcoming and friendly.  I never felt like I didn't belong or out of place.  I know so many people who end up not liking or getting along with their in-laws.  I'm so thankful I'm not one of those people.  We have a lot of fun with them and are lucky to live close to them as well.  My mother-in-law still works so isn't able to help with Oliver much during the week as much as she'd love to so we offer them all our weekend opportunities for babysitting and they are always more than willing to help out.  They've even re-arranged plans for us before which is so kind of them.  And hey, they raised a wonderful man who has been the most amazing husband in the world, so I am pretty grateful to them for that!

I've mentioned on the blog before too that I am blessed to call Nate's sister a friend.  There was definitely weirdness early on in my relationship with Nate, when we were still in high school, because I was really friends with his sister before him.  We eventually got past it and I'm just so thankful to have her in my life, especially given the fact that I don't have siblings, I feel like thanks to being a part of Nate's family for pretty much the last 16 years that she's pretty much become my sister too.  She's a great auntie to Ollie.  And we just have a lot of fun together, we are both pretty crazy and we definitely laugh a lot!

Both Nate and I have very large extended families and sadly do not get to see a lot of them as often as we'd like, but I am thankful for all of them as well.  Nate is lucky enough to still have two living grandmothers.  I have a couple of aunts I am very close with, one of whom is the backup babysitter for Ollie if my mom has an appointment or anything and I'm grateful to have them in my life as well. We each have cousins we're close with and even if we don't see them often, we keep in touch on Facebook or things like that.  Overall I think we are just so blessed to have pretty awesome families and I never take that for granted even for a second!

Apple Picking Adventure

I said in my post yesterday I'd talk more about our apple picking adventure this last weekend.  Nate was originally going to brew beer on Sunday, but while we had some family time on Saturday it was a bit scattered and he really wanted to do something with just the three of us, so he decided not to brew and that we should instead go find an apple orchard to wander around.  I had grown up going to an orchard in White Bear Lake, MN called Pine Tree, but decided against going there because we wanted to be able to walk around outside with Oliver and there isn't much of that at Pine Tree.  There are some other fun sounding orchards west of Minneapolis that I think will be fun when Oliver is older.  After some debate we finally settled on an orchard near Stillwater, MN called Aamodt's Apple Farm.  They have pick your own apples, lots of space to walk around and be outside and a little winery/vineyard for adults.  Sounded perfect to us!

We got there right when they opened for the day.  We had tried to time it so Oliver would nap in the car on the way out there, but that didn't quite happen.  That was ok though, we set him up in his stroller and proceeded to explore.  We decided to do a pick your own apples bag since I had never done that before. They were letting people pick Haralson apples that day.  It was neat, there were tons of trees to pick apples off of!

Oliver wasn't real sure about what we were doing, he wanted to be moving.  He sat patiently and took it all in though!

I was surprised by how short some of the apple trees were.  I'm not sure if all apple trees are this short or if they do something to keep them low to the ground, but they were very easy to walk up to and grab apples from!

As we walked back to the barn we passed some trees that had a lot of apples on the ground.  We're not sure if this area is where people were picking on another day, or if these trees are already done with their growing season or not.  Lots of wasted apples on the ground though!

We decided to do a wine tasting too, but Oliver was getting unhappy in his stroller, so Nate put him in the Ergo carrier and Ollie finally fell asleep!  We covered his head and protected him and Nate just carried him around for awhile.  I joked with him that now he has a sense of what it was like to be pregnant!

We were hungry then, so we bought ourselves an apple brat with slaw for lunch and sat outside and enjoyed it.  Ollie woke up and was hungry.  We offered him small bits of apple, but he was more interested in the tomato puree we brought him instead!

It was such a fun day and now I feel like I can cross something off my fall bucket list.  I love going to the apple orchard every year and I was so excited to share this experience with my little guy!  I can't wait until he's a little bigger and can enjoy some of the fun activities they had for kids - they had an area with riding toys and also a little apple barrel train ride that I think he'd adore when he's a little bigger!  And now I have tons of apples to bake with and make goodies - I'd better get on that!

What's on your fall bucket list?