Auntie's Wedding and Grandma/pa's visit

We have had a fun and wonderful three weeks since the last post. My wonderful sister married her soul mate, my parents stayed with us and visited for over a week and I chopped a foot off of my hair! Axel absolutely loved having Grandma Sonia and Grandpa Bruce staying with us. He put them to work right away. They read lots of books, Grandma Sonia told the best stores about little Olie (?) and the three of them played until Axel's heart was content.

I believe Axel's favorite game during their stay was making sand castles and playing prince and princess with all of the little toys Grandma and Grandpa bought for Axel.

Axel was very charming at both my sister's rehearsal and her wedding.

Keith and I were extremely proud of Axel at Shannon's wedding. He took his job as ring bearer very seriously and he did a fabulous job. His smile ran from ear to ear and he walked nicely hand in hand with Lance, Ryan's nephew and the other ring bearer. Axel was a champ all weekend long despite his lack of sleep. He tore it up on the dance floor at the end of the evening. How wonderful it was being the parent of a happy, overtired 3 year old, rather than a cranky, crying 3 year old.

On Thursday, I went to a Salon for the first time in probably 3 years to get my hair cut. I was growing my hair for Shannon's wedding and couldn't wait to donate it. It was at the stage where it was more in the way than pretty. I was able to donate almost 12 inches of hair to Locks of Love. I have to send it in with Keith's hair that we cut off a couple of months ago.

On Friday we took Axel to Happy Hollow. We were able to see a few animals in the zoo part of the park. Our favorite were the stripped tailed Lemurs. They were very entertaining with their balancing act.

Axel had fun playing in the play structure. He pretended he was a doggy. These days he is either "Miss Cindy", the librarian who does story time, or a doggy.

Axel also had fun feeding the animals and looking at the big boy roller coaster. He acted like he wanted to go on. I brought him all he way up the ramp to the back of the line before he decided he really didn't want to go on it. Good thing, because he wasn't quite tall enough to go on it, even with assistance. He also did the same thing he always does on the rides. He starts off quite happy and then ended up crying, saying he wants to get off the ride the entire time the ride is moving.

Good thing is he still loves animals. He enjoyed feeding the goats as usual.

We were also able to catch our first puppet show. He appeared to love it and was completely engrossed in the show the entire time. We really enjoyed our visit with Grandma and Grandpa and were really sad they had to go. They safely flew home on Saturday and we can't wait until they can come back again.

Happy Easter!

Axel and I had fun coloring Easter eggs on Thursday evening.

On Saturday, Axel and I, along with Annika (his babysitter) and her sister Marlena went to the local Easter Parade.

We colored in the street and saw the Chicago, I mean, Campbell Bears :)

On Easter morning we woke up and Axel could hardly wait to find his Easter Basket.

After he found his basket and opened up the few little goodies it contained he wanted to start the Easter egg hunt. Luckily, daddy made delicious pumpkin scones and lattes that Axel couldn't resist either. After our quick breakfast Axel started scouting out the Easter eggs he had colored on Thursday.

He had a great time finding them, but needed a little assistance on a few of them that were out of his reach.


We invited Rishaan over for our little outdoor egg hunt in the front yard. The boys did a great job of sharing the 18 eggs that were hidden and helping each other find the eggs.


After Rishaan and Axel found all of the eggs in the front yard we took Louis for a walk in the park. Axel thought there were eggs hiding in the park for him so I quickly took 4 of his eggs and hid them.

All in all we had a great weekend. We enjoyed some quality family time

and the nice weather for a change. Too bad the rain starts again tonight!

Happy 3rd Birthday Axel!

Since our last post Axel and his best bud Rishaan both turned 3 and had fun birthday parties. Rishaan's birthday was on Sunday March 18th. His party was the first well organized kid party that we have attended thus far. His parents had a clown come for the first hour of the party. He did balloons while people were arriving and then did a funny juggling act and even had some of the kids help out. Here Axel and Rishaan are getting ready to help by wearing the funny wigs.

Once the kids were properly attired they were able to help out with one of the tricks. We were so impressed that Axel volunteered and wasn't afraid. Keith and I were super proud of him. He did a great job of keeping the plate on the stick. By the end of the trick his plate stopped spinning, but it still did not drop. All in all it was a great party and we had a great time.

Now if we fast forward almost two weeks to this past Friday. Axel had his 3 year check up. He is now back on the charts at a whopping 34.25 inches tall, which puts him at .83% and 25.5 pounds which puts him at 2%. Although he didn't grow as much as I thought he did since his allergy appointment two months ago, I was very excited he was back on the charts. He is definitely, eating more, so hopefully that will equate to a big growth spurt in the near future!

Yesterday, was Axel's big day! At 5:59pm, 3 years ago, we were blessed with the most beautiful gift from God....the birth of Axel. He brings so much joy to us and those who are around him, it was great to celebrate his birthday with a fun little party for him.

Axel had 7 friends (with their families) over, in addition to his babysitter Annika and her family. Auntie and Uncle Ryan and Tyler and Cynthia, who are like an Aunt and Uncle to Axel, also made it for the festivities. I did about an hour of research on different games that we could do out of home made materials. Keith thought they were all too old for the kids. When I went to pick up the balloons I found pin the tail on the Donkey and a hot potato game that I thought ought to be just about right for 3 year olds. Well, just an FYI for mom's of young children.....it is probably better to wait until they are 4 or 5 for game playing at birthday parties. It was too hard to get the kids organized and to get them all to participate. Oh, well, I had to try :)

For his birthday I asked Axel if he would like a car cake or a Thomas the train cake, and he quickly answered Thomas. I had already purchased the entire car theme birthday decorations the month previous at the dollar store, but decided it didn't matter if his cake didn't match the car theme decorations.

The cake turned out fairly well for our first all out cake decorating. I managed to do Thomas and quickly burnt out of ideas for the cargo cakes. Luckily, Keith did a great job of rescuing me by decorating the remaining cargo cakes and fixing the caboose to look somewhat presentable after I had maxed out on my creativity for the day.

Unfortunately, I don't have very many pictures of the day. The ones I do have are blurry and Auntie's camera ran out of juice. I did get an okay shot of Axel enjoying his birthday cake.

And here is a decent picture of Axel enjoying his new favorite mode of transportation thanks to Grandpa Brian. Yes, it is even consistent with the car party theme!

We are now gearing up for Easter fun next week. We hope everyone enjoys the celebration of our salvation from our amazing Lord and Savior, Jesus! God Bless!