More birthday...

Okay...I am sure you have all gotten enough of our birthday celebration pictures. HOWEVER, sweet Bonnie gave us the honor of attending our to-do and taking pictures. Here are some of the high lights.

.

. Once again, here he is, gingerly digging (not digging) into his cake....

Here is sweet Jack, helping Oliver into the house:

Here is Oliver, Jack, Zoey and Beckett with their beloved Great-Grandma's: Beth and Bernice

And sweet, Beckett: Come on...too cute. So serious We love him so much:


Here is Oliver, giving me "kisses". He only knows how to open mouth kiss right now (ummm...yuck). I love the kisses and have to ignore the slobber. I can say, I am grateful that he has just learned to blow kisses. Mommy does much better without the slobber.

We love you, little man.

Happy Birthday Oliver Cash....

Oliver is 1 today. Here is our little man.

.

We cannot believe how time flies....

.

We had a little "to-do" on Sunday for Oliver's 1st.

.

I made Oliver this fabulous (sugar-free) cake for him to dive in on ALL BY HIMSELF. A tradition we have adopted from Adam and Jenny and clan.

Well....it was less than dramatic. He totally did not get it. (adam blames this on the lack of sugar).

Nevertheless...we had a great celebration of life.

Here is Grandma-Diane with sweet Oliver Cash:

Cousin Zoey Rose and Oliver:

Me and Beckett:

I love this shot of Jackson, Zoey and Oliver:

Here is Oliver and exhibiting the excitement with with he had for his first chance to dive into a cake! It was totally anti-climatic.
Here is the most he ever did with the cake:

Oliver giving me kisses....my most favorite thing on the planet:

.

Here is Oliver, Jack, Zoey and their two Great-Grandma's (on the Milne/Ballard side): Grandma Beth and Grandma Bernice. Thank you so much for coming!

Robyn, Ryan, Jack, Zoey and Beckett gave Oliver "Oh, The Places You'll Go" for his birthday. It was perfect. I love this book. Here is Jack, Zoey and Oliver in our non-filled pool:
Princess Zoey Rose:
We had a few friends join us later. Oliver got to play with a ton of fabulous children. Here is our friend Amy and Rheada's son, Miles, being his crazy-self:


Here is Ashlee and her daughter Princess Kate:

Addy and Sophie in the famous water-less pool. It was a total hit with or without water.

Princess Kate and Sawyer:

Here is Oliver, getting hosed off after all of the cake fun. He loves a good outside bath:
I love his face here. Hilarious.
All in all, we've had an amazing celebration this year. We celebrated Oliver's birthday on Sunday. Today (Oliver's actual day of birth) we visited the hospitals and doctors that made this day possible. In case you don't remember, we had a bit of a traumatic beginning last year. :) We were able to thank the doctors and nurses that made this all possible.

This year has absolutely flown by. What can we say. Nothing can express how much we love this little man or how much our lives have changed (and continue to change).

oliver cash: you continue to enchant us.

Goings on....

So, it has been a while since I have blogged. We have been busy....

Here are some pictures from one of our many 7Peaks visits. Please notice the shark following Oliver. So cute... Oliver and Bryce at the kids pool---about to take Oliver down a slide.

Here is Oliver and I at the end of that slide. He is warming up to the whole slide thing....
Here is Oliver. We have been trying to get him to jump off of the side of the pool into our arms. You can see how he is still a little nervous...

Here is Oliver at home. He had pushed this ottoman from his room into our room and up to a drawer. He cannot get into this drawer on his own....and he had devised this method. I am amazed, daily, by his inventiveness.

Just too cute...we still have no idea where the blue eyes come from.

We also went to Boise recently and got to meet up with Rebecca and Crit.

More importantly: WE got to meet Ezra (Reeb's son) for the first time.

It was magical....

Rebecca and Ezra.

Oliver. Climbing the stroller.

Oliver and Ezra getting to know each other.

Critti and Ezra:
We were lucky enough to be treated to dinner at Crit's grandma's home. She is amazing. We gave her about 30 minutes notice that we were all coming for dinner. So--what did we show up to find? An amazing spread of baked chicken, huge cobb salad, home-made dressing and fresh fruit. She is amazing. She is almost 8o and she is a powerhouse. She called herself an "associate goddess"---stating that Crit, Reebs and I are original goddesses. We were quick to correct her that she was the ORIGINAL goddess and that goddesses begat goddesses. She was tickled with her new title.

Lovely woman.

Here we are, BFF's and babes. We missed you, MARY!!! SO MUCH.....

I should note that we we also got to see Budge, Ty and Andrea....it was wonderful to see them. Thank you, Budge for your hospitality. We love you!

Fun around the house...

So...quite a few momentous steps have been taken since my last posting.

Namely: Oliver took his first official STEPS!!! He took them last Sunday (July 6th)...and he has been toying with the idea of walking more boldly every day.

We were filled with equal parts of excitement and dread with these steps. Walking introduces a whole new world of Independence and exploration.....yep....exploration.

Ugh.

Here is our little man playing with the sprinkler in the yard.

He loves being outside.
One of the other "big occasions" around here is that we went ahead and put Oliver in his new front facing car seat. Technically, we were exactly one month early on this step....but we (cumulatively) could not take it another day longer. Not only did Oliver hate the rear facing seat, but he was WAY too big for it. So, we figured, 11 months was close enough.

Now I am not sure what I was expecting here. I guess I thought that the heavens would open and angels would descend singing praises on his behalf as we strapped him into his new FRONT FACING seat. However, this is all we got:

Utter apathy.

One thing I am wondering, if any of you parents out there have the solution for:

What do you do about the bobble-head effect when your baby falls asleep in the aforementioned straight up and down car seat?

Any tips?

North Carolina....PART ONE...

So, we are back from North Carolina....

I will start by saying that we are still catching up on our sleep.

The trip was amazing and exhausting. We did so many FUN things...all from home and we did a whole lotta NOTHING....

I should mention that we took most of the pictures all week on my Dad's camera...and I did not sucessfully copy them onto a disc to bring them home...so there will be more (priceless) pictures to come. But here are a few:

We tried to fill the week with TONS of surprises for the kids (of which, there were 10). One of the surprises was that the adults planned a sneak (water) attack on the kids. We gathered them all together at the back side of the house and I lead them on a "hike" around the house to the front yard where the adults were all hiding in the hedges with buckets of water....ATTACK!!! The kids then grabbed buckets and got us all back. Here are Kobe and Ryan: Matthew doing a sneak-attack on Ryan...he was totally unfair.
Adam took all of the kids fishing at our pond. The ONLY one to catch ANYTHING was Mackenzie...and it was a really big bass. je RAN all the way up from the pond to show it to us:

We had one sad loss over the course of the week. We had to cut down a pear tree that had been in our yard FOREVER...I can remember making myself sick from eating pears from this tree as a kid. Here is Bryce and Oliver watching the tree start to come down (from the safety of the nearby hammock):

Oliver and Brycee-boy, taking each other in:
Oliver and Brycee-boy watching the chainsaw in action:
Same picture, from the front side. They were totally enchanted:
Adam, doing the dirty work:
There will be more pictures to come....I promise.

All in all it was an amazing trip. I felt like we were constantly making food and then cleaning up after a meal...that's what you get when you have so many people under one roof, right? However, we had many priceless memories.