Nineteen Months Old!

Yesterday Cassandra turned 19 months old!

Little girl is still wearing mostly 12 month clothes. I did pull out the 18 month stuff and she can wear some of it-mostly shirts and onesies and PJs. The shorts are too big in the waist and I'm sure the pants will be super long on her! She's still sporting size 3 diapers during the day.

Cassandra is still sleeping well-she very rarely wakes up overnight and if she does, she puts herself back to sleep. She's still napping roughly 2hrs in the afternoon and is super easy to put down for both nap and bedtime. Compared to Avery, she's a piece of cake!

Her eating is still all over the place. Some days she eats so much I wonder if she has a hollow leg. Other days she barely touches food. I'd say overall she likes to eat though and most days she puts the food away pretty well. She of course loves her fruit, yogurt, pasta, and cheese. The only thing new she tried this month that I can think of is a lollipop...and of course she loved it!

Cassandra is talking like crazy. I swear she comes out with new things everyday. It's hard to keep up with her!  Some new words this month: "outside", "inside", "teeth", "burp", "fruitfly", "Avery cry", "excuse me", "big boy", "uh oh spaghetti O's", "toot", "clock", "museum", "working", "mommy's car", "peek-a-yoo, I see you!" Another thing you do now is that if I tell you "No", you ask "why?" and if I say, "because I said so", you say, "said so." It's pretty funny!

You have also figured out how to raise/lower your eyebrows....but you also nod your head at the same time-it has to be one of the funniest things I've ever seen! We try to get you to do it a lot!  You also have FINALLY started putting your head down on our shoulders when we rock you at bedtime. Most of the time you want to face out and sit in our lap, but just in the past week or so, you started putting your head down. I LOVE it....little baby snuggles!

Here are your photos for the month:

Saying "cheese!"

My faves:

I told you to smile!

And here's a flashback to Miss Avery at 19 months!

Sea Breeze!

We had thought Avery was going to choose to go to Sea Breeze again this year on her birthday. When she chose the Buffalo Zoo instead, we knew we had to try to plan a Sea Breeze day sometime in the summer. My Mom also wanted to come with us and with all of our work schedules, it was hard to pick a day! Avery's daycare was closed all this week and my Mom took some days off to watch the kids for us while we worked. So...we decided to take a vacation day and do Sea Breeze while she was already out here!  And it was great that my Father-in-Law, Sister-in-Law, niece and nephew could all come along too!

We got there right when they opened at 11am....the kids were all chomping at the bit at 9am!  The first ride they chose? The sailboats!  I was anxious to see how Cassandra would do since she's about 6months younger than Avery was on her first kiddie rides. I had a feeling she was going to have a ball and I was right....sister was in her glory all day!

Cassandra, Avery and Bianca

After the boats, it was on to the airplanes....Cass rode this one alone and did really well! (You can see Avery and Bianca in the other white plane in the background)

Then it was off to the cars:

Is this them in about 12years?! Yikes!

 Love this

After the cars, we went on the carousel:

After going on a bunch of things, we did hit the water park. It was short lived though, despite how hot it was outside. Avery wasn't "feeling it" at all. We kept Cass in there for maybe an hour and then she was shivering and tired so we called it quits and headed back to dry land.

This time the sisters rode the cars together:

Avery was tall enough to do quite a bit more rides this year. Some of them I was shocked that she was tall enough to go on (like the Sea Dragon pictured below). I think the only "new" thing she went on this year was the Bob Sleds-which is a roller coaster. I was very proud that she went on, but she cried through most of it and didn't like it. She didn't try any of the other rides that I thought she might (tilt-a-whirl, spring, etc) and was just content to ride the kiddie rides-which was totally fine with me. And this was the first year that our nephew could ride on anything in the park, so that was cool! We all took turns going on the bigger stuff with him so that was fun! My Mom was the volunteer for the Sea Dragon:

Owen and Mom (green shirt)

We had a really great day! We stayed until around 7:30 (which of course wasn't late enough for Avery) and were all pretty wiped by the time we left. It was another successful Sea Breeze trip for us!

Happy Birthday Owen!

Saturday was our nephew's birthday-he's NINE years old! Totally crazy as I remember going to see him in the hospital when he was just born. Was it really nine years ago?! Wow!

Last night we went over their house for a little family party/swim time.

Singing "Happy Birthday"

Everyone helped blow out the candles

Look at this beaut!

After we had dinner and cupcakes, a few people went in the pool. It's been really chilly around here at night so the pool temps aren't that warm. Not to mention we haven't had any real heat waves during the day either. So, the water was a tad chilly and I'm shocked the kids went in and stayed in awhile! You'll see in the pics that we didn't even put Cassandra in a bathing suit because we literally thought the kids would be in and out in like 2mins. But they surprised us and stayed in probably for close to an hour! Gabe and Mark were the brave souls to go in with the kiddos too! Lucky ducks!

Happy 9th Birthday Owen!!

Zoo!

Today was Gabe's company picnic. And this year they hosted it at the zoo!

We had all day admission and the zoo closed to the public at 5pm, but was open just for us until 9:30pm. They also served us a buffet dinner there as well.

We didn't get there until just before 5pm. Today was also my nephew's birthday, so we had his kid party this morning and then Cassandra took a later than usual nap and didn't wake up until around 4:15. It was a little bit later than we planned on arriving, but honestly, we still got to see everything we wanted to. And it was the perfect day-not too hot and nice and sunny!

First on the list? Rhinos! They were both inside eating when we got there.

I'm really bummed about these next photos. The orangutan there had a baby and of course was in the worst position for me to get a picture of the cute little thing. And the fences don't help either. In this first one, the baby's head is right near the Mom's nose-she's giving it sort of a bear hug.

And in this one, right under the Mom's nose you can see light pink-that's the baby's mouth area-it's head is tipped back looking up at the ceiling.

As we were passing the tiger, one of the zookeepers came out and started feeding it some fish. It was really cool to be so close. She had it stand up a few times and it was neat to see that up close and see how big they really are.

The sea lions also have a little baby-I'm guessing this is the Mom and Dad, with baby lying between them (his head is in the middle there)

Avery and Bianca

Avery and Bianca with Owen peeking above!

Bianca, Avery and Cassandra

When we got to the lions, we also saw something pretty cool....the lioness was right on the other side of the glass-about 2 inches from you! That was pretty amazing! (and I have no idea why these photos turned on me). It was neat how she was so close, yet had no reaction to the people.

Avery and the lion

Cassandra and Avery

Cass, Avery and Bianca

And finally at the elephants...a family photo!

We stayed until around 8:30 or so and I think we were one of the last ones to leave the zoo! But we had a great time-the kids loved it!

Pizza Bites

This is another recipe that keeps showing up on my facebook news feed. They looked really good so I decided to give them a shot. I think they're meant to be appetizers (and they would be great for a party!) but I thought I'd make them for us for dinner, along with some veggies.

Pizza Bites

2 cans Pillsbury pizza crust
8oz mozzarella cheese, cut into 48 cubes
3oz pepperoni (48 slices)
1/4 cup oil
1 1/2 tsp Italian seasoning
2 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
1 jar pizza sauce, heated

1. Preheat oven to 400. Grease a 9x13" pan

2. Roll out each can of dough to roughly a 8x12" rectangle (mine was way bigger than that and all I did was open the can). Cut each dough into 24 pieces.

3. Put a cube of cheese and a slice of pepperoni onto each square.

 4. Fold dough around toppings and press firmly to seal shut. Place pieces seam side down onto pan.

5. In a bowl, combine oil and seasoning. Brush onto dough. Sprinkle with parmesan.

 6. Bake for 16-22min or until lightly golden. Serve with pizza sauce for dipping!

(Notes: I only made a half recipe since I didn't think the 4 of us needed to eat 48 of these things! And even with 24 of them, we still had leftovers for the next night. I used shredded cheese out of convenience, but definitely would cut cubes next time. It was really hard to wrap the dough around the shreds of cheese. I also used diced pepperoni which I thought worked out fine. I read online to use the thin pizza crust instead of regular. I guess the regular is too much dough for the toppings....so I did use the thin crust and they seemed fine. I think I baked mine for 16min and you can see they were just a tad overdone. I checked them at 12min, but left them in longer than I wanted to!)

This recipe was a hit-well, the kids really didn't eat them (shock!) but Gabe and I really liked them! I'm sure we'll be making these again!

PGA Day

If you didn't know, the PGA golf tour was in our town over the past week or so. I really have no desire since watching golf is like watching paint dry....but, it's been a big deal in these parts.

Anyways, my friend Megan came out from Buffalo for a visit yesterday because her husband and parents went to the PGA for the day. So, she brought her kiddos and we spent the afternoon together, which was very nice! And as an added bonus, my Mom came out in the late afternoon and spent the night! Let's just say the kids were in their glory!

We got in lots of play time...

Cassandra and Leigha

Noah

The kids always want to climb this ramp....

Megan stayed until around dinner time. Then my Mom cooked us a nice meal and we just hung out the rest of the night. This morning she loved up her little girls before she had to head home!