Cole's first birthday

It's hard to believe that a year has passed since we welcomed Cole into the world. What a difference a year makes! He has grown and changed and learned so much and has turned into such a wonderful little boy. We feel so lucky to call him our son.

We celebrated his birthday with friends and family at our community center. Such a fun afternoon! I'm including just a few of the photos below. To see the full collection (there are over 100!).

One year ago.

The birthday boy arrives, a bit unsure what to think about everything. Sticking close to Grandpa.

The kids made party hats.


The birthday boy in his hat.

Dog!

Opening gifts.

He's warmed up now! This is a classic Cole expression.

Signing "eat" -- bring on the cupcakes!

Why is everyone looking at me and singing?

A little help from Mom to blow out the candle.

Very serious about his cake.

mmmm ... this is pretty good (still pretty serious about it, though)

Yay for birthdays and cupcakes!

Testing out his new Rody horse. Thanks Rob, Keli and Macadam!

A truck full of fun. Thanks, everyone, for the great gifts!

At home, playing with his toys.

Being very gentle with his buddy Macadam.

first art project

First of all, hello! I'm back. I took a little blog hiatus, but that's not to say that there hasn't been anything blog-worthy going on. Life has been very busy, Cole has been up to all sorts of new things, and the big first birthday is right around the corner. I've got a lot posts to catch up on. Tonight I just wanted to share with everyone Cole's first art project. A couple of weeks ago he spent an afternoon with Krista and the kids and they had art time. I love, love, love kid art! This one went immediately into one of the frames in his room. Next one is going on my office wall.

game day fun

Saturday was the first Beaver home game of the season. Fun times! We started the day off bright and early at the Beaver Game Day Scramble, an annual golf tournament organized by the Sahnows. Cole and I didn't golf, but we made it out there to visit with the golfers. It was early, even for my little early bird.


Around noon we headed down to the stadium for some pre-game fesitivites. This is our first year without season tickets, which was a little bit weird, but kind of nice in a way. We went to the Alumni Center to watch the game on the big screen and Cole got to play with Rory and crawl all over the place meeting new people. I think it was a lot more fun for him than having to sit in the stadium. Plus it was HOT yesterday, so he probably would have gotten too much sun since our old seats were in the direct sun.

Cole and Brittney.

Rory = adorable

Cory and Rory "playing"

On the way out we stopped by to see Megan and John.

And then ended our night with dinner and drinks at the Sathers house. A long, but fun, day of football and friends. Gotta love it.

cole likes pickles

No story, I just love this photo. I think pickles feel good on his gums. He is getting 4 teeth in right now! The two top middle ones and the ones on either side. He's starting to look like such a little boy ....

the twins turn one

Today we went to Gavin and Brody Todorovich's first birthday party at Walnut Park. It was a beautiful afternoon and the kids had a lot of fun playing and crawling around in the barn.



Cole even let us put a party hat on him. And he kept it on!


The boys getting ready to blow out their candles.

Welcome, Macadam!

Yesterday we spent the day in Seattle visiting with Keli, Rob and 2-day old Macadam. What a precious and sweet little baby! I can't believe that Cole was ever that small. Keli and Rob are doing really well, such natural parents. Here are a couple photos of the happy family.

the start of football season

The Beavers played their first game versus Stanford last night. Unfortunately, they lost. But we had a great time hanging out with everyone nonetheless! And we look forward to better games in the season ahead.


Mia, Alex, and Cole with larger-than-life Benny.