jude is two!

how fitting that we celebrated at saranac, our second home? with our crazy fall schedule - my sister emily gets married in early november plus the normal crazy fall Young Life schedule, we decided just to keep it simple and celebrate at camp since we were going to be there on Jude's actual birthday. our 30 leaders and leaders in training helped sing to Judah and I made oatmeal cookies and put mini reeses in them. i also made one of my fall favorites a pumpkin spice latte. 

we seem to have hit the terrible twos early, but jude seems to be turning a corner and is more and more fun and lovable every day. 

a few words about judah at two

+ loves to play with trucks, trains, anything that pushes

+ is saying more and more every day, but is still not a big talker

+ favorite word: no (this can be frustrating at times...) & truck

+ favorite book: oddly enough, a book that my parents had made about me when I was baby seems to be one of his faves

+ sleeps through the night 7ish pm - 6ish am, but we still wish he was a little later of a sleeper

+ loves thomas the train & anything on trucks

+ still loves the nursery or any opportunity to play with other kids & new toys

+ when we say i love you, he will come and give us a kiss 

here is a quick video from camp of the north shore leaders singing to jude (sorry the quality is being funny)

first birthday

one of the things that i was most sad about when considering moving to massachusetts last year was that we would have no one to celebrate jude's birthday with. i am so grateful that that was not true and we celebrated jude's first birthday with a group of family and new friends and even some old friends.

the decor was pretty simple. i like pinterest and i all, but i wasn't going to go nuts. plus we are on a tight budget.

i printed the invites on cardstock on our own printer. and used fun dowloaded fonts and washi tape to decorate them.

banner i purchased for a craft show.

lots of pictures everywhere

made the garland following this same idea // washi taped pictures on the picture frames

homemade smash cake // idea credit // washi tape flags

homemade pumpkin spice cupcakes with cream cheese frosting with washi flags

got in his stride...

 opening gifts.


bebe + pops!

happy birthday little j // love you so

philip's birthday

I had a previous blog that I have canceled so I wanted to re-post one of my favorite memories of my wonderful husband in honor of his birthday today....{it was from July this summer}

So here I am...in the lovely state of New York. My life is so strange sometimes. My husband and I work for Young Life. And we get the privilege of working at the beautiful camps Young Life owns during the summer. Some would not consider this a privilege, but we do. We have to uproot and move our lives for a month, live in a house with other families, share meals together... And I love it...well usually at least.

Philip loves it, too. I think he feels more free to be himself here. Perhaps too free. While out to dinner last night, with some of our friends, we noticed it was karaoke night at a small local American bar on the river. Philip loves karaoke, but I have never seen him do anything like this before...he requested the song, "Pour some sugar on me" and as he approaches the mic he just goes ahead and takes off his shirt. What?

There were about 40 people in the bar, maybe more. And he belted out the song...a few of the waitresses brought some handfuls of sugar and threw it on him. A local woman came up to him afterward and said,

"That was a treat. I haven't seen that much skin in quite some time."

I haven't laughed that hard in awhile.

happy birthday philip! 

i love you.