Catching up - May

Now that I finally have a little bit of time on my hands I thought I would catch up on the blog. I sat down and made a list of all of the stuff we have been doing over the past few weeks. We've been BUSY! May is a very busy month for us...

First, we rounded out the month of April with the March of Dimes walk. We met up with Mindy and Palin and had a great time walking.

Hanging out in his stroller. Getting ready to for the walk to start.
Mindy & Palin before the walk started.

We hit the ground running in May. I was counting down to the end of the school year and Blake was getting ready to turn one. We welcomed two new girlfriends to the mix the month, Kate welcomed baby Jane on May 3rd (Erin's Birthday!) and Kim, baby Piper on May 13th. We are so excited to add a couple more girls to our brood of boys. (No pics of these sweet girls yet, but stay tuned!)

The first weekend in May we met up with our old friends at our annual Tea Party at Mrs. Koester's. We had a wonderful time catching up with sweet friends and letting our kiddos play a bit. I have know these girls since high school (and Beki since we were toddlers ourselves) and it's so neat to get together now with our own babies.

Trying to get a picture of the kids. Taylor (Beki's) and Blake are on the table. Reagan (Beki's) and Taylor (Katie's) sitting. Katie's other daughter, Zoey, was sleeping. - My camera battery died before I could get a picture of the mommas.

The second weekend in May we helped host a wedding shower for Lance's sister, Katelyn and her fiance, Tom. They will be getting married this summer (July 9) in Nebraska and Blake is the ring bearer. :) We really enjoyed getting to be with all of the Roth family to celebrate Katelyn & Tom.

All the 'kids'. Kevin & Crystal, Lance & I, Tom & Katelyn, Luke and Sarah.

Sarah, Crystal, Lance, Carol, Katelyn, Randy & Luke

Blake got an early birthday present from Aunt Crystal & Uncle Kevin. He LOVES his dump truck!

Katelyn & Tom practicing cutting the cake :)

Blake & Aunt Katelyn

Blake turned ONE on May 19th and I took the day off to hang out with him and get some errands run to get ready for his party. The third weekend in May we had Blake's 1st Birthday Party!!! Thank you to all of the grandparents for all of your help. We couldn't have done it without you! We had such a great time. We did a "1st birthday" theme with balls and balloons. He loved them! We tried to get ahead of the game by blowing up the balloons the night before. The next morning we woke up to deflated balloons, so Lance headed out to Walmart to buy more helium tanks. (P.S. Those helium tanks are one-time use. I thought you could refill them. Before it was over, I think we bought 4 tanks!) Blake loved having his friends and family over and played hard all day. He wasn't really into the cake this year. He immediately took the candle off and played with it, but other than that he was over it. He would rather be running around and splashing in the water.

"Hey Dad, you eat this cake."

This is what Leslie and I spent our time doing while our kids were working on their final exam reviews :) We made signs for Blake & Owen's birthday parties.

This was the closest I could get to a "I'm one" picture. I never had a camera at the right time.

I stole this idea from a friends blog. I took a picture from each month of Blake's life and made a banner. It was really neat to see how much he has changed over the last year. One of my favorite things from his party.

The week after Blake's birthday he came down with a (not so) fun virus :( It's symptoms included a fever and terrible rash. Poor guy had a rash all over his body! The day the rash started was the first day we had tried whole milk (Blake has a milk protein allergy). I thought the rash was a reaction to the milk until the fever hit. We weren't able to do his 12 month checkup and get his shots, so we'll be doing that later this summer. We will also be trying milk again before long. (Fingers crossed!) The virus lasted almost a week, so he missed out on our last May celebration.

Blake loves to wear his Pa's hat! :) It's so cute. You can see just a little bit of the nasty rash my poor baby had. I felt so sorry for him.

The last weekend in May we celebrated Lance's Grandma & Grandpa Hileman's 50th wedding anniversary. We enjoyed getting to see Lance's cousin, Betzy and her sweet baby boy, Randy, who were in town from Colorado. I was instructed to be on picture patrol, so I made sure to do my job (as assigned by Grandma!) and then we headed out to get back to our sick boy. (My mom and dad kept him at our house so we could go to the party).

Us with Grandma & Grandpa Hileman.