Happy Birthday!

Birthday Boy!

 Today was Owen's first birthday!! It's crazy how fast this year went. All day I was thinking about the day he was born, and how much different my life is now than it was before he arrived. The only thing I would change about my life if I could, would be to have the grandparents closer!!!! :)

Someone asked me if the fact that he is a year made me happy or sad, and I told her it made me feel both. I keep thinking that I want him to stay the way he is right now, but then he keeps growing and learning and I keep changing my mind, that he keeps getting better with age!

Tree hunting

It's been awhile since I have posted, and we have been very busy since then. We went to my brother and sister-in-laws on Thanksgiving and had awesome food. I love Thanksgiving food! Then my birthday was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and we went to Ryan's mom's to celebrate our niece's birthday (the same day as mine!) and we went to a tree farm to get some Christmas trees for Ryan's mom and uncles. It was a lot of fun, and Owen cracked me up. It was one of the first times that Owen wore his winter coat, and he could barely move his arms in it, which made it hard for him to walk. A couple of times he fell down and instead of trying to get back up, he gave up and just laid on the ground. He wasn't upset about it ever, just laid there, all calm.

Great-Grandma's birthday

The next weekend was my grandma's 80th birthday party. Owen got to meet a lot of new people at the party and was dressed to impress ;) We are very lucky to have generous friends and family members that give us hand-me-downs for Owen, and we always get some really cute stuff. I really liked his party outfit -- very handsome! My grandma was nice enough to share a few of her balloons with Owen, so he was very occupied at the party, and we took a few home that he played with for days. He LOVED them!


Last weekend we decided to go back to Elkader, just for the heck of it, but we had to leave pretty early on Saturday because a blizzard was coming. We made it back ok, but it's been very white around here since then. Luckily, the weather is looking good for this weekend, because we are celebrating the Big 01 for Owen in Dubuque with the grandparents, some aunts, uncles and cousins. It's too bad that his birthday is so close to Christmas, because we want to keep his birthday seperate from all the Christmas stuff, but it's hard for some of my family to get back this way two weekend in a row. So we will have to do some more birthday celebrating at Christmas, too. Oh well, I'm sure Owen won't mind!

HAPPY 1st BIRTHDAY, OWEN! WE LOVE YOU SO MUCH!

Re-read about the day Owen was born here.