Letters

Maggie is getting really good at recognizing the letter at the beginning of words. She has been saying things like "M for Maggie" "D for Daddy" "B for Blakie" "E for Ethan" and even "K for Kangaroo".

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Summer is over

I can say we've had a pretty busy summer, as you can see by the previous blog pots. We've just been hanging around at the house, enjoying the last hot days of the year.

Maggie has been having a great time going to gymnastics every Tuesday, playing with Ethan almost everyday, and playing with her cousins and other friends. We are looking forward to many more days of playing with Blake, Emma, Ella, Mckenna, and Gavin, just to name a few.

We already are planning on going to the zoo, library, and starting swimming lessons again with Ms Maryanne over the next few weeks. Pretty soon, we will be starting a different class for Maggie, but who knows what?!

Fairs

We went to three different fairs this year. Maggie is really starting to enjoy the rides. Unfortunately, she is too short to ride most of them by herself, so an adult has to ride with her and Mommy and Daddy hate rides that spin! Luckily, at the Fairbury fair, Aunts Tonee and Dani were there to ride with her! At the state fair, they have an entire area that has rides Maggie could ride by herself, so Mommy only had to ride one and Daddy had to ride one. Maggie just loves the duck game. The first picture is of Maggie at last year's Fairbury fair. Look how much she has grown!

I rode one at the Fairbury fair with the kids called the "Crazy Bus" and when we went to the state fair with Aunt Emily and Uncle Tyler, Maggie was still talking about it. She rode several rides, then we ate, played some games, and walked around the rest of the fair. When we walked by the bus ride, Maggie yelled out "There it is! We found it!" as if we had been looking for it the whole time. So, Chris bought some more tickets and I got to ride on the bus one more time!

Potty Please

We have been working on going on the potty for so long it seems. I feel like I have tried every trick in the book. Maggie even got a neat Strawberry Shortcake lunchbox for going on the potty for almost 2 weeks in a row. The only problem is that she was going all day on the potty, just in the morning. And now she doesn't care about going again! We'll keep working on it, she'll get there soon!

Another use for an Easter basket

This year, I had decided to get Maggie a super cute personalized Easter Bucket (not a basket) from Learning Express. Now, we store all of the little animals and people that she and Ethan have. But, recently, Maggie has decided it has another use...

Lake Geneva

Chris's family has been taking a trip to Lake Geneva ever August for the past several years. This is already Maggie's 3rd trip. We only had one day after Myrtle Beach to get ourselves packed on ready for our next trip. We were in Lake Geneva Sunday, July 31st through Wednesday August 3rd.

Each year, we have a pizza dinner and bowling on Sunday. Maggie still didn't get to bowl this year, since we thought it would still be a little too hard for her. Maybe next year! I won high female game, which I've been hoping to do for some time now!

On Monday, the guys go golfing. Chris was gone all day, so Maggie and I hung out by the pool and took a nice 3 hour nap.

On Tuesday, the ladies do a spa day. Since I was gone all day, Maggie did basically the exact same thing, but with her daddy! We also had the awards dinner at the Village Supper Club, where Chris and his team won the award for golf! We cleaned up!

Myrtle Beach

Maggie took her 3rd plane trip to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We went from Monday, July 25th through Friday, July 29th. We were planning on taking a road trip there, but after thinking about all of the details about getting there and back in time for Lake Geneva, we decided it would be a better idea (less stressful) to fly.

We stayed at a beautiful resort right on the beach. There were at least 4 pools, a lazy river, and a splash pad right on the resort. There were a few restaurants to eat at or we drove just a few minutes away to eat. We just loved it here! We are hoping that we can get a group with little kids to take a vacation there with us again in the near future.

We went to Tony and Deanna's wedding on Thursday night, which was just beautiful! We were so glad to have been included in such a special day. Maggie danced the night away and everybody loved her (surprise, surprise!)

Cousin Emily's graduation party!

It seems like just yesterday that Emily was born and now she's starting high school! We're so glad that Maggie has an awesome older cousin to look up to! Maggie really loves Emily a lot. We went to her graduation party on July 21st. Maggie spent a lot of the time in the pool at grandma Peggy's house with the other cousins and she had a blast!

Springfield Trip

While Natalie was here, we decided to take a trip to visit Emily and Tyler. Everyone went except for Chris. We finally got to see their house for the first time! The kids had a lot of fun playing at Emily and Tyler's house and I don't think they broke anything! (Although Blake got a bloody nose and Emma scratched her leg.) We decided to go to Chili's for dinner and on the way out, Maggie fell face first on the sidewalk, but thankfully she didn't get hurt! Toddlers are so fun :)

Cousin Picture Time!

After going through all of my pictures from this summer, I started looking at the pictures of Maggie last summer too. She has changed so much! Everytime Maggie, Ethan, Blake, and Emma are together, we try to get a picture of all of them. Hopefully someday, I can put them all together to compare each time and see how much they all have grown and changed.

I'm not sure where Emma was when we were taking this picture though!

Trip downtown

During Natalie's last weekend in Chicago, we decided to go downtown. Maggie had never been to any of these places, so it was neat to see her exploring her city!

First, we went to the Crown Fountain, which was very crowded because it was such a hot day. Maggie and Ethan just ran around splashing in their clothes and having a great time.

After that, we decided to have a picnic in Millenium Park and listen to the Orchestra play. It is a beautiful area, great for Maggie to run around and have a fun. We shopped for a little bit, ate some desserts, and came home. Maggie was asleep in the stroller until we got home. She was wiped out!

Splash Pad

When Aunt Natalie was here for a visit in July, we went to the plash pad in Lyons. Which was recommended to me through Facebook after I asked for suggestions on what to do! Aunt Dani, Blake, Emma, and Ethan were also with us. This was a great place to take toddlers because there are 3 different areas for the kids to go.

Maggie had been going to swimming lesson for a few months already and was really enjoying her time in the water. She 's not ready to go down the water slide, even with someone, but she loves the rest of it!

Grayson visits us!

Grayson came over for a visit for a couple hours at the beginning of July. We were all so excited to see him! We're looking forward to watch him grow up and spend more and more time with him. Maggie wanted to help feed him a bottle, then she wanted Daddy to feed her drink to her while she laid on his lap (do I hear a little jealousy?!) Aunt Natalie finally got to meet Grayson too, which was exciting for her.

Oops!!

As I was looking through all of the pictures we have taken in the past couple of months, I realized I never talked about Maggie's Papa Steinmetz's retirement. On March 6th, we all went to visit Papa at his firehouse (which is on the FAR north side of the city). Maggie's daddy and Uncle Erik surprised Papa by working his last day with him. There were so many people visiting throughout the day, it just shows what a great person, firefighter, and captain Papa is!!

Happy 4th of July!

Usually, the Murphy family has a party on July 4th, but there was nothing planned this year. We decided to have a few people over on the 3rd and have a small cookout. Maggie was excited that there were other kids over. Even though we didn't attend an actual 4th of July show, there were plenty of fireworks in the neighborhood to keep Maggie excited.

On the 4th, we went over to Grandma and Papa's for pizza and many more neighbor firework shows!

There was also a parade during the week to celebrate independence day. We watched the parade and got a lot of candy! Maggie had her 1st (and 2nd) sucker during the parade.

It rained a little, but Maggie, Tonia, Ethan and I were troopers and stayed the whole time. Daddy hid on under someone's awning (since he had the good camera), but he eventually came out too! We tried to go watch the movie in the park afterwards, but because there were several storms coming in, it was canceled. This has been a very rainy summer!

Maggie's new cousin

Maggie's new cousin, Grayson Quinn Steinmetz was born on June 20! She was so excited to finally meet him on June 25th! She just loves him and loves seeing him whenever she can :)

Father's day pic

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Happy Father's Day 2011

Father's day weekend was very busy this year.

On Saturday, we went to Grandpa Rich's house with the whole family (minus Jerriah and Brandy). We had a cookout, played kickball, and took a lot of great pictures. We tried to get all of the grand kids to smile, but we all ended up yelling, which was pretty hilarious. The only person that wasn't amused was poor Ryland.

On Sunday, we went to breakfast with Papa Steinmetz. Then we went to Wicker park to shop with Aunt Tonee, had lunch, then came home.

Maggie and I "bought" daddy new sunglasses for Father's day. (Chris went into the Sunglass store while Maggie slept in the car & I read in the car :)

It was a great weekend!

June 2011

We had a busy June. We had the Run/walk for Matthew, Piper's birthday party, Father's day and lots of fun!

Maggie's daddy is in a photography class, so he's been taking a lot of pictures (more than usual, which is a lot!!) Here is a picture he took of Maggie's crazy hair:

So, I guess I can start texting stuff to my blog. Maybe this will keep me more up to date!

It's Hot!!

Today, we went outside and played in Maggie's new sprinkler that she got for her birthday. She really enjoyed it! Every time she went through it, it shocked her, but she kept doing it. I love that kids never think the water is as cold as adults do.

We also got a nice surprise when a butterfly landed in our yard. Maggie reached out her hand (with Chris's help) and the butterfly crawled on her. She just loved it! Unfortunately, I think the butterfly was injured, so we placed it on one of our flowers to give it some time to hopefully recoup.

Allergies already

In the middle of May, Maggie started itching her right eye a lot one day. The next day, we noticed a bump on her right eye and that she was starting to rub her left eye too. We called her doctor, who prescribed some eye drops for Maggie in case it was pink eye. We were going to the doctor that week on Friday anyway. A few days after we started giving Maggie the eye drops, she woke up with both eyes swollen shut and fluid around her right eye. I was panicked, but luckily Maggie was super calm. We had been giving her Benadryl already, which was definitely helping her. Chris and I took her to the ER, where we discovered that she is allergic to Sulfa, which was in the eye drops that we were giving her. I felt so bad! I am so happy that she was so calm throughout the whole thing. But, I'm afraid she's going to visit the ER one a year at the rate we are going!!

Aunt Natalie's May visit

Aunt Natalie came to visit everyone during Memorial day weekend. It is always so nice to see her. Maggie just loves her and can't stop talking about her when she leaves. It was somewhat of a short trip, so we didn't do much, but we had fun.

I drove Maggie & Ethan to pick Natalie up at Mary's house in Davenport. Unfortunately, Maggie had another allergic reaction while we were there. Her right eye (& eyeball) was swollen again. We had to run and get her some Benadryl, which did seem to help right away. We're not sure what the reaction was to, but I hope it wasn't the dog!

On Friday - Sunday, we basically stayed around my house because the weather was not very nice. Then we drove down to Danielle's to drop Natalie off there. On Monday, we went to Justin's Grandma's house to celebrate Memorial Day. Maggie went on the paddle boat with Justin, his cousin, Natalie, and Blake. She played in the sand and the lake a lot. She even fell in a couple times, but laughed about it. We also took a ride on the pontoon boat and Maggie helped Justin drive.

We had to leave Natalie then so we could head home, but we are really looking forward to seeing her in July!



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