Happy Birthday Little Man!

My dear bubba Ian -


I cannot believe it's been a year since you made your way into this world! It seems like it was just yesterday we were preparing for your arrival... I can close my eyes and be back in the hospital room and picture everything just moments before you were born. After you arrived and I heard your first cry I sat there in shock as the doctor handed you to me with your bright big eyes. From the moment I looked at your precious face and looked into your eyes my life was changed forever. You were perfect. Since my first day with you I've said that you're an old soul -when you look at me it's as though you've always known what is going on - you're wise beyond your years my little man and I love that about you.

The past 12 months have been wonderful and I've cherished every second with you.  Each day gets more and more fun as I watch you grow and expirence life. This past year has been full of a lot of first... your first smile, first giggle, first time you rolled over, first time you sat up on your own.... And in 12 short months you have developed into this perfect little person with 21lbs of giggles, 6 teeth, a love for dogs, a "crazy crawl", a yell only someone in this family could have, and an obession for blueberries. You bring happiness beyond words to our family. Often times at night when I'm rocking you to sleep I hold you and rock long after you're asleep because I know this time where I am able to rock you in my arms is short lived and I want to enjoy it just as long as I can.

You have taught me many things about myself and you're not even able to hold a real converstaion yet (not to discredit your ability to say "bye-bye" & "dog"). You've taught me I can run on very little sleep...I can multi-task like a pro...and it's ok to wear your pj's all day. But you've also taught me much more important things like...my ability to love is beyond what I could have dreamed,  I'm stronger that I ever knew,  and you've made me realize that the best life to live is one where you put the needs of others before your own.

In the not so distant future you will be taking your first steps... the first steps in this journey of life. As you learn to walk on your own please remember that I'm always here for you. I'm your mama, and I'm always here to rock with you if you need it. But when you're walking on your own, don't forget to stop your steps every so often and soak in the world around you.  And know that I'm going to do the best darn job I know how to, to show you how to always walk with integrety and pride while challeging the expected and living life to the fullest.

I love you baby! Happy Birthday!

Love,
Mama

Looking back, a year ago today....

Raise the roof

I hope to have 5 minutes to post a quick recap of our holidays, but until then... I thought I'd share some progress on the house. Last time we drove by we pretty much just had a hole in the ground and a poured foundation. So we were shocked when we drove by on New Year's Day how much progress had been made...

WOW! The whole first floor is framed up!

Of course I went running inside to check it out.  I love seeing it all come together. 

looking towards the corner of the living room

Standing towards the back of the house looking to the front

Panoramic of the street view (it's a little "fish-eye"). Unreal how quickly it's coming together.

Then we went back yesterday on the 5th, and we are almost under roof! In just a week span. These guys are rocking and rolling. In fact they were all on-site working on Saturday so I resisted the urge to go inside and check it out.

Raise the roof baby! 

A street view of the progress. (Note: the house to the right of ours wasn't framed earlier in the week and now the 2nd story is almost up). 

Dad does bath time

He texted me this pic when I was out to dinner with some girlfriends and he said..."Guess what he is playing with, and it's not plastic." Oh boys.

Check out my hole

Lookie, lookie we have a hole!! Pervs get your minds out of the gutter... I'm talking about the hole that they just dug for the foundation of our new house! That's right we broke ground!! David Weekly (the builder) promised us that it would be in the month of November, and they just squeaked in on the 30th, but kept up their word nonetheless. John asked if he could drive the backhoe for the groundbreaking; and unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) was not allowed.  So, Our David Weekly sales coordinator, Liz, of course took this as an opportunity to tease John a bit and instead bought him a bright-yellow toy backhoe...Ian will enjoy it!

So without further ado, take a peek at our fresh hole...

Ain't she a beaut!

A view down the street 

And soon enough, we will have this....

Well, not exactly this (this is the builder rendering of our model),
but our paint, brick, etc aren't the same colors. 

In the meantime we've picked out all of our finishes, which was quite a feat. It only took us 3 meetings at their design center instead of the standard 1 (maybe 2). Thankfully our coordinator, Shelly, at the Design Center turned out to be a friend of a friend so she was super patient, and even got John a beer mid-way thru our first meeting when he about choked over the cabinet numbers.  It's funny, I could pick out finishes all day for my clients without thinking twice, but for myself it is so stressful. I find myself analyzing every decision. When push came to shove there were very few things that we went with the "builder" options, and somehow we did it within our max budget that John determined.  Come to think of it I think the only places we went with the builder finishes are Ian's bathroom (he doesn't care, right?), and the laundry room. I'm thrilled though because that means that our place will be unique. When we met with our superintendent, Scott, for our final builder pre-construction meeting and he was going through the list of things for our place he must have said "huh, never done that before" at least 10 times. 

The one thing that I learned in this process is that I am not the only one in this family who wants to be a designer. John, was VERY into picking everything and absolutely had an opinion on just about everything. He kept pushing me to pick colors.... I'm a typical designer...we live in shades of grey,  but I won, and we won't have blue counters much to John's dismay.  We are going for classically modern and sophisticated. 

John getting busy picking tile

I'll upload pictures of the finishes and selections we made in another post very soon. It's exciting to see it all come together! 

Thankful & Holy

For Thanksgiving we traveled to Omaha... we opted to fly versus do 7+ hours in the car. The flight out there could have been better; we were off to a good start and then about 20 minutes into the hour flight all hell broke loose and Ian decided he wanted down/off the plane immediately and he was going to let everyone know it. He squirmed, he yelled, he slammed his arms. Refusing to be those parents who just sit there holding their screaming baby without really doing anything to help the situation, we were jumping through hoops... pulling out anything we could find to entertain him in addition to walking up and down the aisle. I was particularly surprised because on our previous flights with Ian he has been an angel, but I should have know better because he's a busy man now and doesn't want to be confined. Well, we made it... and John gave Ian an F- for his performance on the plane....threatening that if the return flight wasn't better that he wouldn't be allow on any future vacations.

My parents hosted the feast, and my Aunt Barb and Uncle Paul also stayed at my parents. My cousins Linda and Paul and their families also attended the festivities. I love when we can get a big group of the family together...seems like the older I get the more I cherish these types of things. It was a great day of family time and overeating. Yum Yum!

The Turkey! 

My little turkey

The"Adult Table"

Auntie B, Mom, and Sister

Ian and BFF "dog" 

A little feast complete with toys

The Saturday following turkey day we had Ian baptized at my parents church. Being honest...we don't belong to a parish here in Denver. And in order to have our child baptized they would require us to join the church, belong for 3+ months, attend some baptism classes, etc. After a combined (between John and I) 20+ years of Catholic schooling, in addition to us both being baptized, having our first communions, confirmations, and being married in the church (also requiring catholic pre-cana classes), it seems beyond ridiculous that they would require us to continue to jump through hoops to baptize our child. You think they would be thrilled that we are looking to bring more people into their church. Don't get me started. However, since my parents are pretty active in their parish the priest there said he'd do it without us having to do a thing other than showing up. Done deal...let's make this easy. We know that having Ian baptized was important to our families, but with us all in different cities it was going to require someone to travel no matter where we had it if our parents wanted to be there. In this case, John's mom came to the big O on Saturday morning for the baptism. She also brought our niece, Eva, along too. We were thrilled Eva could come; especially since this was the first time Eva met Ian.

"Dad, what are they doing?"

"Um... excused me what are you putting on my head?"

"What in the hell?" - Ian 

Nana and her grand babies

g'mom

Great Aunt B, Uncle Paul and Baby I

Pops, Dede, and Holy Ian

Ian was actually a total hoot through the whole baptism... he would hit his head and give questionable looks at the priest throughout...it was actually pretty comical...even Father Val was laughing. I'm telling you, this child is an old soul.  After the baptism we had some time to hang out with our mom's, my dad, sister, Todd, and Eva, which was a nice little bonus to the holiday weekend. On Saturday night my mom, sister, and I had Debbie teach us how to crochet... Debbie made Ian 2 beautiful afghan's that we use all the time, so we thought it would be fun to learn how to make them. Especially since my grandma (my mom's mom) Sadie was always knitting or crocheting and unfortunately never taught any of us before she passed away. The type of crocheting that Debbie taught us is called hairpin lace - while it was bang your head against the wall frustrating at first, once I got the hang of it I became a grandma-like crocheting psychopath and I haven't stopped since. I suppose I take after my namesake, grandma Sadie. John says it is because I have an obsessive compulsive personality, which is probably also true... I'm an all or nothing type of girl...and therefore I will have my first afghan complete before Christmas (and I'm hoping to have more than one by then). And, my mom and sister have not touched it since that Saturday night, yeah, I might have a problem. 

We stayed in town until Monday, and had planned to go to the Omaha Children's Museum with Eva and Ian (don't worry I was able to pry myself away from the crocheting). Unfortunately when we got there it was closed. Fail. So we ended up checking out the Zoo instead (which we had originally ruled out as an option because it was freakin' freezing). However, we were able to hit up a handful of indoor exhibits and made the visit worth-wild. The highlight was the aquarium; both Eva and Ian loved it.

 From there it was onward to the airport. We were stocked with lots of reinforcements to hopefully keep little man from getting another F-. I'm proud to say that he was quiet and super well behaved on the way home....our little secret was blueberries. That's right, blueberries. Ian love, love, LOVES blueberries so we brought a carton with us on the plane and doled them out one by one...it was a huge time suck and kept him happy. So happy, that  he ate the entire carton (imagine that diaper! Oh yea, blueberry blowout the next day). He was on target to get an A- post landing (the minus was due to some slight fussing when the blueberries weren't coming fast enough), but John dropped him down to a B+ when he started to fuss during the taxing in (and the berries were gone). Quite an improvement though! And he will be allow to vacation again, whew, because with Christmas around the corner he is due for more travels.

Happy B'day Dad

Last Saturday was John’s 32^nd birthday. According to him he now has 3 “good years” left, because it’s all downhill after 35. Wa wa. Anyway, we’re not huge birthday people… I mean we’re over 30, so I don’t think it is necessary to have a whole week dedicated to yourself, parties upon parties complete with bedazzled head wear. But we did find an excuse to have a little “Beer Tasting Extravaganza” to celebrate the occasion. John has been hording a collection of craft beers to crack open on a special occasion, so I suggested we have a beer tasting party on his b’day and crack them open. Well, while John loved this idea, it backfired a bit… he decided that instead of opening the beers he has been holding onto he would instead just buy more "specials ones" for the party (I sort of knew this would happen….any excuse to get more, right?!).

Ian loved getting all the beers for the party. It took John like an hour at the store to pick them out, but thankfully Ian was having a blast in the cart. It was his first time sitting like a big boy in the cart and he loved it...he was scream out & shrieking in excitement.

We decided to take the beer tasting theme to the max. I prepared dinner for the event and every recipe included beer in it….(ie: slow cooked pork in an IPA, or beer glazed black beans). Oh, I also forgot to mention that I had the challenge of finding beer recipes that incorporated tacos (John’s favorite food). Well, we made it happen! I also modified this recipe and made some chocolate stout cupcakes made with Chocolate Oak Aged Yeti from Great Divide... While getting ready for the party I didn't have time for breakfast and lunch so instead I just sampled my cupcakes. What is wrong with a cupcake for b'fast? Nothing. It was so delish I had another for lunch. We've all done this sort of thing before, right? 

Per Krystal's suggestion, Baby Ian worn his special "my daddy is
an arrogant bastard" onsie... seemed very appropriate for dad's b'day :)
Oh, and Arrogant Bastard is a beer for
those who don't know.

The beer tasting was a huge hit! As you can see we sampled more than a few. We really enjoyed doing the tasting and have had people asking when the next one is going to be ... I can promise we're doing it again for sure, and it will be before John turns 33. 

Yes, his cowboy hat was worn all night

Happy Halloween!

Ian celebrated his first Halloween in style as a Monkey! 

I failed as a mom when I brought Ian to daycare costume-less that morning. What was I thinking?! Of course everyone would be dressed up. A little boy (Mason) in his daycare came running up when I walked in the door with Ian that morning and looked up at me with big puppy dog eyes and asked "Um, where is Ian's costume." When I explained that he would wear it later that night...Mason told me to go home and get it right now. So, I did....and as you'll see in the video, the kids loved the lil monkey, but when I shared this with John he told me that Ian was obviously terrified by the kids waving in his face. Ha.

Aren't they all so cute! 

That evening we went over to Krystal and Gretchen's to hand out candy, because we don't get any trick-or-treaters at our house. Literally, we haven't had one in the past 5 years. Though that is about to change... Click here to see a time lapse video of one house in Stapleton on Halloween. They had 1200+ trick-or-treaters, and gave out 28 lbs of candy. Holy crap...that's a lot of kids.  Yeah. Guess we better start saving for Halloween candy now.  John is already working on planning the McG Family Annual Halloween Party.

Monk'ing around with Auntie Em

Auntie K and Baby I

The McG's

Awe! My Babe