Happy Birthday Mike!

Happy birthday Mike! What could be better than having your birthday on 7-11?

Thanks to all of our awesome friends who came over to celebrate Mike's birthday.

To Mike from Erin: I love you darling so much. Thanks for being such a great fabulous and wonderful husband.

A short trip to KL

Here are some pics Mike took on his recent trip to Kuala Lumpur.

His meetings were at the Hilton KL. One of his daily activities after work was hitting up the water slide with a few of his coworkers.

Here is the view from his room.

On Saturday he went to the Batu Caves--a Hindu sacred place with lots of shrines. To get there you have to climb up 272 stairs.





Mike: "Goodbye KL, see you soon."

Visit to Baltimore

Here are some fun pics from Eric and Courtney's trip to Baltimore.


Andrew and Eric are buddies. There is no other way to explain it. Ever since he was a month old, he would stare at Eric's face for hours.

Andrew and Courtney also are buddies. Their relationship grew even stronger when she let him help bathe Maggie (which shows how patient Courtney really is).

This was our first time meeting Maggie. She is such an awesome dog--well behaved and so well trained (Good job Courtney! I would say good job to Eric too, except he has been working 100 hour weeks lately, so I figure Courtney must be doing most of the heavy lifting).

One afternoon we met Mike for lunch in Fell's Point. We went to BOP (Brick Oven Pizza)--interesting restaurant name since "bop" is also the word Andrew uses for grapes and kiss (and about five other words). Please note how Andrew is actually turning toward the camera in the photo which is pretty remarkable.

In the rest of the pictures Andrew was doing this (below).

Check out our handsome high-rollers below. I think the brain power represented in this picture could light the city of Baltimore for a month.

After BOP (not the grapes or kiss kind of bop) we made the pilgrimage to Pitango. Mike was so excited for me to try the Cardamom gelato, and was quite disappointed when I declared that the dark chocolate was still my favorite.

One of my favorite Fell's Point landmarks (although we've never eaten here):

When the weekend rolled around we headed to Mt. Vernon. We have a season pass (though this was only the second time we've gone).

We spent most of the time searching for the animals to show Andrew and we finally found them around the side by the gardens. We got to watch the sheep being sheared. I think we took more pics of Mt. Vernon but they must be on E&C's camera.

Thanks for visiting E&C!

Fun shower for Abby

We had a fun shower for Abby last month (I am just now finally posting the pictures). Abby actually is a month ahead of me preggers and as of last week she just had her baby. It is her second boy!

Abby's first shower when she was preggers with Jackson was such a bummer (we didn't know her then) so we got together to have a real baby shower for her with all the dumb and silly baby shower games (including the smell the candy bar smooshed in the diaper game--her request).

Congrats Abby!

More on Andrew & the Szmurlo's visit

So I was going to do a post on the Szmurlo's visit but I just checked their blog and Courtney has done the most wonderful job covering the visit on several (4 or 5) posts! She has all these pics and videos of Andrew and Maggie and it is pure heaven to read. It makes me feel like I should do posts in such great detail! Check it out http://theszmurlos.blogspot.com/

5K

This weekend I am proud to report that I did a 5k. I'm on the left in the pink. I was worried I wouldn't make it being 8 months pregnant but I did. I walked as fast as I could--which wasn't very fast--and at the very end I ran with Darcy to the finish line. Mike missed all the festivities since he was in Asia but he is back now and I will post pics soon.

KL

Mike is in KL this week. For those of you who have no idea what KL means (like me), KL is short for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

KL is where his company's Asia HQ is located. When we were skyping today I asked him what it was like, and he says the weather is a lot like Hawaii. He promised to take pictures.

Andrew at 18 months

Lucky for us, Eric and Courtney came out to visit! We were so darn excited because we not only have not seen our Chicago friends for almost a whole year, but also because we hadn't yet seen their new dog, Maggie. I will post more pictures of our adventures together once I get all the pics downloaded. In the mean time, here are some pics Eric and Courtney snagged of Andrew throughout the week.

Congratulations to Kate & Alex

Mike's adorable sister Kate got married this past weekend.

It took about ten people behind the camera to get Andrew to smile like that (above). The rest of the time he looked like this (below). I am pretty sure that was due to the jet lag and lack of proper nap.

Here are the Featherstone girls (minus Kate).

I let Emmie hold my red purse and she thought she was so grown up. She is so cute.

Here we are taking professional pictures before the reception.

Here are Kate and Alex cutting the cake and a few more snapshots from the reception.

As the reception wore on Emmie and Andrew (cousins) did their best to entertain themselves.

They were constantly trying to join the string quartet.

Andrew loved to run around the tables so someone constantly had to chase him. When he got tired of that game, Andrew found his own little fort under the table.

Here is a Featherstone (Mike's brother Scott) and a Smith (Alex's sister) gathering up all the gifts at the end of the night.

And last but not least, I loved how Emmie was so excited to hold the bouquet of flowers. It was a fun day. I wish I had more pics of Kate and Alex so I can't wait to see the professional pictures!