Dear One Year Old

Dear Elliot, Elli, Elli Dew, Little Elli Belli,

You are one year old. You are my daughter. You are my third daughter. You are most likely my last daughter. You are my baby. You will always be my baby, no matter how old you are. You are my world. You are my hug. You are in my heart. You are in me. You are one.

You are one today. You are a reflection of your father. You are a daddy's girl. You are a mommy's girl. You are the lover of hair. You are my motivation to style my hair. You are a lover of momma's milk.  You are my check in the box. You are my high metabolism. You are 12 months old. You are one.

You are one today. You are my thumb sucker. You are my big eyed darling. You are my observer. You are my dog lover. You are quick to speak your mind. You are happy go lucky. You are happy being the little sis. You are the Orthner Caboose. You are one.

You are one. You are my captive audience for my nightly choral concert. You are my lover of music. You are the beat of my drum. You are the missing link to our band. You are my idol. You are amazingly awesome. You are one year old.

WAIT... YOU. ARE. ONE. YEAR. OLD. TODAY.

Go get em girl. Watch out world, Elli Dew is on her way. There is no looking back now!

Love,
Mom, but not just any mom...YOUR mom...thank you

I will close this note to you with the last words you here each and every night. Will you let me hold you and sing to you when you are 2? 5? 13? Always?

"Take me out to the ball game, take me out to the crowd. Buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks, I don't care if I ever get back for its root root root for the Giants. If they don't win its a shame. For its one, two, three strikes your out at the old ball game.

I love you ELLI DEW!"

School Art Show

Brady and Reese's school held an Art Show on Sunday. The girls were very excited to show off their masterpieces they have worked on since January. You can see the pride in their faces. I just had to share these beautiful smiles with you. The art is pretty darn good too. 

Funny Food Faces

I have realized I am sucker for a baby covered in food. I almost go to grab for the camera when one of my babies is a human napkin.

Here is my collection of Elli covered in all types of food...

Some Reesey Poo Food Faces...

Lastly, Brady Boo Food Faces...

Fly by

Only at base housing do you live directly under the low fly over flight pattern that rattles your dishes on a regular basis.















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Swing-N-Slide

For Brady's birthday, we ordered Brady a wooden play set. It said to give at least of month for delivery, well we got it in a week. So Brady got an early present.  To save a few hundred dollars we decided to build it ourselves, even though it was a huge undertaking, I think we quite enjoyed ourselves.

This is the BEFORE pictures... empty plot of yard and lots of piles of wood (that we had to measure and sort, there was no labeling)

We have awesome neighbors that volunteered to help. So we set up water fun for the kids, ordered pizza and made it a family fun night with neighbors. 

The first night: three men, four hours, three pizzas, 20 breadsticks...

And a little last minute help from the littles

...we have a deck and three swings. Phew... this thing is a lot of work!

At the end of day one, Brady told me it was the best day of her life. She had a "water slide party and a pizza party and she got a new swing set!"

DAY TWO: Reese and I sleep in. I wake up to Karl taking care of Brady and Elli while doing this!

Karl and I work together and take turns building throughout the day. 

The end of day two adds a second deck, slide, ladder, rockwall and window.

Day three is mother's day, so we take it easy on the building and add just the picnic table.

Karl even celebrated all the hard work... only monkey bars left.

Hopefully there are years of fun and memories ahead. But honestly, I think the experience of building it together as a couple and with neighbors really created its own set of fond memories.