Happy Birthday, Will!

Our nephew, Will, turns 1 this Sunday (May 31st). It's hard to believe that he was born a whole year ago! We had a wonderful time at Will's first birthday party last weekend. We got to see not only our side of the Yurasko clan, but also the DC side (Beth, Lee, Kelvin and Bryce - we're so excited to have them all living nearby now) and the Virginia Beach side (Frank, Mel, Frankie and Jake).

Here's the birthday boy - looking like a toddler, on the playground with his daddy.

Alexandra and I love playing with Will.

Here's the youngest generation of Yuraskos. From the left - Kelvin, Will, Frankie (holding Alexandra), Jake, and Bryce. Frankie was so sweet with Alexandra! We can tell that he's a very good big brother.

Erica did a fabulous job on Will's birthday cake. She also made some cupcakes with mini Elmo heads on them.

Here's Alexandra having her first cupcake. I didn't know what she would think of cake - but check out that expression - - -she LOVES it! I could barely wrestle the wrapper off in time (she ate part of it - oh, well!). As soon as she tasted the icing, she absolutely destroyed the cupcake.

I was going to get off the icing with food dye before she ate the cupcake, but I wasn't fast enough. This is a preview of what's in store for us at her birthday in three weeks :)

We love you, Will, and hope you have a great year as a one year-old!

Strawberries!

Before I talk about strawberries, I have to share this update - we are all now sleeping! Last Friday, Christopher had the brilliant revelation that Alexandra wasn't sleeping because it wasn't dark enough in her room. A $25 sun-blocking shade later (and encouragement for Mommy, who was biting her knuckles while Alexandra cried it out in the middle of the night the first night for 45 minutes), and our little girl is sleeping for like 11 hours at night! Allelujah!

Strangely enough, Christopher and I are still tired - we think our bodies are determined now to catch up on 11 months of sleep deprivation.

On to strawberries. . . .

The pick-your-own strawnerry patch we were going to visit was out of fruit (hmfp!), so we took a detour to Delaplane, VA, for the 16th Annual Delaplane Strawberry Festival. It was at the same place where we went for the Scottish Festival. http://yuraskodifference.blogspot.com/2008/09/scottish-games.html We had fun looking at animals in a petting zoo, listening to music, looking at local fare, and picking out strawberries.

We bought some additional strawberries at our local farmer's market, and made our first batch of home-made jam (using my new canner). It turned out reaaly well - beautiful bright red jam that tastes really good!

We have two little strawberry plants in our garden, and are looking at our first blooms. I hope to get enough strawberries to make more jam soon! Look at our cute littlle strawberry flowers in the photo below.

Grocery Store

Christopher and I have always liked going to the grocery store. We tend to make it a family outing on the weekend. Since she now gets a cookie and a balloon when she goes to the store with us, Alexandra likes it as well! Not only is the balloon free, it's a great toy that lasts almost a week for her. It's so fun to chase it around when it's on the ground, and she's had a lot of fun tormenting Toby and Socks with it this week.

Here's Alexandra posing with her balloon at home.

11 Months Old!

I can hardly believe that Alexandra is 11 months old today! She now has six teeth, crawls really fast, pulls up on everything, claps, waves, says "mama," "dadadada" (but we don't know if she knows that "dada" is Christopher) and other fun sounds, and lets me give her a high five.

In the photo above, she is sitting in her own adirondack chair. It was tons of fun until she did a face plant into the concrete patio. She has healed now and we have since sat in the chair without incident.

We starting to get ready for her birthday, and I can hardly believe that my little baby girl will soon be a toddler!!

Mother's Day with GG!

My mom came to visit us last weekend! Alexandra had a wonderful time with her GG. To celebrate Mother's Day, we took out both of Alexandra's grandmothers for lunch, which was a lot of fun. We had a lot of fun visiting with GG, and hope that she comes back soon!!

Alexandra loves going out for lunch!

My mom and I sometimes randomly match. Here, all three of us are "randomly" wearing pink shirts.

One more tooth!

As of yesterday, Alexandra has five teeth. I'm hoping this is why she only let us sleep for like 3 hours each last night and why she won't take a nap this morning. 15 more to go!