Sunday, February 14, 2010

Cutie Pie Krysten

As we patiently wait the arrival of the new baby boy (yes, still waiting) ... here are a few updates on what Krysten has been up to.

Last Sunday we got together with the family at Brad & Mary's house to watch the Super Bowl. Krysten managed to empty every single toy that Jeffrey has out of his toy box and then the two of the climbed in! Unfortunately, Krysten accidentally kicked Jeffrey in the head at one point and then he was done with this game.

One of Krysten's favorite things to do is to put on our shoes and walk around in them. It was particularly cute the night that she tried to accessorize her pajamas with Grandpa's work boots.
Last month Krysten enjoyed one of her first containers of chocolate pudding. Believe it or not, most of it did make it in to her mouth.

And, today was Valentine's day ... Krysten is very lucky that so many people love her.
Grandma & Grandpa gave her a brand new Ariel cup complete with a bendy straw ...


... and her very own bag of mini 3 Musketeer bars.

She also got an M&M's fan from Mommy & Daddy ...

... which she promptly used to cool herself off on this balmy February day in Chicago.

And, of course, no Valentine's Day is complete without a new Love Bug!

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

The holidays were a crazy busy time for the Ulmer family as Krysten enjoyed her second Christmas.

The festivities began on Christmas Eve when we went to early mass and then met our extended family at Maggiano's for dinner.

Krysten made friends with twin girls exactly her age at the table behind us while she was running around the room instead of eating her dinner. All the girls looked very pretty in their Christmas dresses.

Krysten and Mommy tried to take their own picture by one of the beautiful trees in the restaurant.

The next morning was the big day! Here is our tree (after Santa's visit) before Krysten got up for the day.

Once she woke up I wanted to capture her reaction to the presents on video ... here is what we got:

Krysten began taking toys inside her tent and playing right away and Santa really should have known better than to have Krysten's new tent all set-up for her because it was quite the challenge to get her interested in opening all her other gifts.

It was a long process, but eventually we got her to open all of her gifts, although she did have quite a bit of help from Mommy along the way.

One of Krysten's favorite gifts was her Tickle Me Elmo doll. Seeing as playing in a new tent and opening presents can be pretty exhausting, Krysten and Elmo relaxed on the couch and watched some TV before brunch.

Here is our little family all cleaned-up and ready to celebrate the day.


Later that morning, we were joined by Brad, Mary, Jeffrey and Brian for brunch. Jeffrey was looking quite cute in his reindeer sweater, although I couldn't get a smile out of him for the camera. Maybe it was because I was making everyone watch "A Christmas Story" on TV again.

After brunch it was over to Nana and Papa's house for the afternoon. This was our feeble attempt to get the kids to cooperate for a picture together in front of the tree.


And, of course, there were more presents to open.

Another of the day's highlights for Krysten was receiving her first Nemo doll (another favorite character).


Krysten had to check out Jeffrey's loot too (and stake her claim to half of Aunt Mary's lap of course).
This was just too cute to resist ... Jeffrey was playing with a Candy Cane that had been on one of his gifts and really didn't enjoy the feeling of the plastic wrapper in his mouth.

The day after Christmas it snowed all day, and the temperature was just right to bundle up and go out to play.

Although she does enjoy sledding, Krysten also insisted on playing on her slide.

On New Year's Eve we went to a party at our friends, Chad & Karyn's, house. Krysten and Sami tried on their party hats early in the evening just to be sure they would be ready at midnight.
Believe it or not, all of the kids made it to midnight. Here are Sami and Krysten having tons of fun with their noise makers around 11:58 p.m. ...

... and this literally was Krysten, down for the count, by 12:02 a.m.


On January 2nd, the Engfer's got together for our family Christmas celebration and Krysten hammed in up in front of the tree and the massive display of gifts (mostly for Krysten and Jeffrey) from Santa-Grandma.
Once again, she wasn't entirely interested in her gifts, but Krysten did take a moment to help Jeffrey with one of his.


Grandpa and his 2 favorite kids all got matching John Deere hats.

An Jeffrey showed off his fine motor skills when unwrapping a new toy

All-in-all our family had a wonderful holiday season. We hope you did too and send best wishes for the new year!

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Baby Boy Ulmer

I had my 20-week ultrasound last week and Dave and I decided that we wanted to know the gender of the new baby and ... It's a Boy! Here's a sneak peak at our little man.

The proof is in the pudding in this picture (some day I'm sure he will not be happy with me for putting a picture of his winkie on the Internet).

This one is a nice profile of the little guy.


Here's a foot.


And a close-up of his face.


Everything checked out really well overall and all indications are that we are still on target for mid-February. I am feeling pretty good, despite a seasonal cold right now, and the boy has been very active recently.
In other news, Krysten and I went to the Morton Arboretum last weekend with our friends Karyn, Taylor and Sami.

Krysten found a bridge that she loved running across. I think we were there for at least 15 minutes with her just going back-and-forth across this bridge. She did really well holding on to the chains for support and even enjoyed it when bigger kids came by and and bounced on the bridge.

Karyn was the photographer for the day and tried really hard to get decent pictures of the girls, unfortunately she wound up with Krysten's "cheese" face most of the time.

The Arboretum was actually a lot of fun and had a lot of interesting things for the kids to explore, like this set of jingle bells coming out of a giant flower.


And there was plenty of climbing and running in the wooden fort.


Sami and Krysten had fun exploring this dog house at the entrance to the Children's area (other people kept calling it a bird house, but I think it looks like a dog house).


The arboretum was decorated very festively for fall. We (well, actually Karen) were able to get a good picture of the 3 girls together by this particular display of pumpkins, mums and hay.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Summer Wrap-up

We are certainly bummed that summer is now officially over, but we did have a few occasions to really have some fun this summer ...



In early August we took what has become our annual trip to Batavia to see the Kane County Cougars play. We found out that Krysten does not like crowds that make a lot of noise. She became very agitated and cranky soon after the game began and would cry every time the crowd cheered. She did find some solace in eating nachos though.





And when the game was over, the night ended with a fireworks display ... she didn't like that either.




The next weekend was the Roge family reunion on my Dad's side. The reunion was held on a very nice private camp ground that one of my Dad's cousins belongs to about an hour south of where we live.


Krysten and Jeffrey enjoyed some time on the swings before we ate lunch.


Then after lunch it was time to go swimming in the lake. Of course, Krysten had a blast in the water with her Daddy ...


... and Jeffrey even took the opportunity to cool off.



Sometime in August, Krysten went on her first date with the little boy that lives next to Brian and Liz, his name is George. George had gotten a battery operated car for his birthday and Krysten was more than happy to sit in the passenger while they tooled around the neighborhood. There were lots of jokes from Daddy and Krysten's uncles to make sure George kept his hands where we could see them :-)



Then, towards the end of the month, my cousin Becky and her family (husband, Harv, and kids Marla, Adam and Tyler) came to Illinois for a visit. Becky's boys are only 2 days younger than Krysten and this was our first time meeting them. We drove down to my Uncle Dave's place near Peoria and spent some time with them.


Krysten and Marla became fast friends ... hanging out in Uncle Dave's re-build Camaro ...




... enjoying lunch together ...




... and playing on the tractor.




Krysten and Dave had fun on the 4-wheeler ...



... and we found out that Krysten loves to play inside tents.



Uncle Brad even brought a surprise for Krysten and gave her her very first Jeep Wrangler (just like Daddy's). It's taken a while, but she is getting much better at "driving" it. At first, she would sit back, no hands on the steering wheel, and push the pedal to the floor. Now she holds on to the wheel, but really hasn't grasped the concept steering yet.




My other cousin, Betsy, was also in the Midwest from North Carolina visiting her family in Indiana with her new son, Cayden, so they came over to Uncle Dave's too so the whole family could be together. I think this is the first time in quite a few years that we had all been together for an occasion other than a wedding or a funeral.


There are now 6 kids in the great-grandchild generation on my Dad's side of the family ... we did our best to get a decent picture of all of them with their respective Mommies.