just a couple pictures...

Pauly just loved Great Papa's cane...

Big girl in her Easter Dress
Cool dude
Easter Egg Hunt...

happy easter

we hope that each and every one of you had a very blessed easter. we spent our easter at my grandparents house in henning. we had a nice time. and yesterday afternoon we were able to build snowmen or I should say snowbunnies. the kids had a lot of fun playing in the snow yesterday.

Amelia's first play...

Amelia attended her very first play on Sunday...we saw "The Mitten" at Stages Theatre Company in Hopkins. Amelia and I went with some of the girls from work and their kids. It was about 45 minutes long and very cute! Just the right length. Amelia sat really well during the whole thing! She either sat on my lap, on her own seat or stood next to my co-worker Julie. There were 5 adults and 7 kids. She's a very lucky girl, I don't think I went to my first "real" play, until I was a senior in high school. It's so much fun doing things with her that I never got to do as a kid!

happy valentine's day!

Just another lazy day...

Time for a new picture...

It's been a lazy week at the Taaffe's. I've worked a whopping three hours this week! It all started last Friday afternoon, Paul developed a fever while at daycare. At one point it reached 103.9 and I can't remember now if that was Friday night or Saturday night. The days have all mushed together for me! I keep forgetting that today is Thursday. He still had his fever on Sunday and wasn't able to go to daycare until he was fever free for 24 hours, which normally wouldn't be a problem, because I'm home on Monday's. Well, I was suppose to work on Monday for someone else. Who took the last two weeks off to help her husband get their new meat market up and running in New Prague. They just opened Monday, so if you're ever in NP, stop by Skluzacek Quality Meats and try them out! Anyway, I had to call one of the other assistants on Sunday night and let her know that I wouldn't be in on Monday, which she completely understood as she had a sick kid the week before.

Well, by late afternoon Monday, Amelia had developed a fever as well. So there went Tuesday, Kev and I were scrambling to figure out what we were going to do and I called work as well. Tuesday is one of our busier days, as it's filled with kids that have braces. Luckily when I called work Tuesday morning wasn't very busy, but Tuesday afternoon was. So Kev went into work at 5:15 Tuesday morning so that he could come home for the afternoon, so I could go to work...there is where my three hours of work come into play. Tuesday morning she woke up at 6:30 or so with a 103.8 temp. Gave her some Tylenol and by 9:00 it was down to 99.8 degrees. All day Tuesday the kids both seemed fine all day. By dinner time Amelia was running a low-grade fever, and we thought, "Oh, she'll be okay, hopefully she can go to daycare tomorrow".

Wednesday morning comes around and she woke up at about 5:30, with a 102.3 temp. Well there goes any hope of sending her to daycare. I had to call another assistant and let her know I wouldn't be in yesterday as well. Again, thankfully they understood. Yesterday afternoon, I called work to say "I'll be in tomorrow morning for sure." Quarter to five the phone rings, it's Shelly, one of my co-workers and fellow assistant, she says "Don't even worry about tomorrow, if you need to stay home, no big deal, I have nothing going on (Thursday is her day off), and they'd only need me in the afternoon." I said "Thanks, but I should be okay, the kids are doing fine, I'll plan on being there tomorrow." I shouldn't speak so quick. Because at 6:00 our phone rang and it was Kim, our daycare provider. Her Anna started throwing up, she's four. And one of Amelia's best friends at Kimmy's. So, she couldn't do daycare today. So I took Shelly up on her offer (called her about 9:00 last night after Kev and I tried to figure out what we were going to do) and she said she'd go in for the afternoon.

Today our kids are perfectly fine. They've been playing up a storm and helped me pick up the disaster they created in their playroom!

I figured it was time to update some pictures on here, that's why there is a new one at the top of the page!

Overall the kids are doing well. Amelia is really sprouting up! She outgrew size 2T in a month, at the beginning of December they fit fine and now all her jeans look like she's waiting for a flood and her shirts look like belly shirts! She now is into a size 3T. Crazy how that almost happened over night! Paul is crazy as ever! Still isn't saying much other than Mama and Dada, and the occasional Ahhhh when I'm brushing their teeth and tell them to say Ahhh for me! It's really cute!

I hope this finds everyone doing well! Can you believe how cold it is these days?! Have a good rest of the week! :)

Exciting things at the Taaffe's!

Lots of exciting things are happening at the Taaffe's! I can't believe it's already they 22nd of October, where did this month go? We've had a busy October thus far.

The weekend of the 5-7th, the kids went to Gran and Papa's for the weekend, so we could work on the playroom. A couple weeks prior, Kevin removed the fireplace and sheetrocked the hole. So we spent our entire weekend working on the playroom. Removing the carpet, painting and new flooring.  We weren't going to do the flooring yet, as we figured the new carpet would cost us about $1000 for the playroom and we just don't have an extra grand to spend right now on carpeting. But when we got the fireplace out we decided the carpet looked horrible that we decided to just do the floor as long as we had to move everything. We opted against the carpet and got laminate flooring at Sam's club and it was very reasonable, our whole project, paint, flooring, etc. was less than $500. We still had money stuck away for our Vegas trip that we decided to put towards the playroom. We're very happy with our "investment" and the kids love playing in here now. See the pictures below...

the start of my stenciling

The next exciting thing...

We have a walker! Or I should say...Runner! Just in the last couple weeks he's really started cruising, he's practically running. And he's not stop from the time he gets up until he goes down for a nap and then all over again. I can hardly believe he will be ONE in less than two weeks. Crazy!!

I just have to share this picture...nothing special. Amelia decided to "dress" herself. The shirt she had on, she still had her pants off after her nap time diaper change and wouldn't let me put them back on and then she found the socks in my bedroom, they have penguins on them. Then her cowboy boots. And to top it all off, she had been eating M&M's so she as a pretty face!

Our last exciting thing...

Amelia is now sleeping in a "big" girl bed. We took her crib out last night after dinner and put my old daybed into her room as a bed for her until we get her bunk beds. We let her pick out her own bedding at Target and I think that helped the process along a little. She slept great in her new bed last night. Very little fussing when it was bedtime. Didn't even try to get out, at least not that I know of. She woke up earlier than usual, but I think that was to be expected. She woke up at 5:45 and she usually sleeps to at least 6:30. I think after a week, she'll be in a routine and we shouldn't have a problem. Now if we could just get the potty training thing down. She does great for a couple weeks and then regresses...maybe she's just not ready? She knows everything, just forgets to tell us when she has to go and when we ask her she'll usually go, but not always. Oh well, baby steps!

She made each of us lay
in her new bed with her...

happy fall

As you can all tell...I'm a little behind in blogging! So I thought I'd take this moment to update everyone a bit on the life and times of the Taaffe Family! We're keeping busy...very busy...almost too busy if you ask me!!!

I started taking ECFE classes with the kids. (Early Childhood Family Education...for those of you who don't know what it stands for!) They are offered through the school district and so far I'm really enjoying it! I take Paul on Monday mornings from 8:30-9:30 and then Amelia on Tuesday nights from 6:15-7:45. They both seem to enjoy it as well. There are 2 other boys in Paul's class and one little girl. And in Amelia's class, she is the only girl and there are 3 boys! It's been nice meeting new parents/moms. We have a couple dads that attend the Tuesday night session. Which is neat.

We're both keeping busy with work. Which is a good thing. Our office is starting to slow down a little bit...I'm starting to think the economy is having a lot to do with it.

Last weekend we were at my Mom's for the weekend. One of my best girlfriends is getting married October 27th and last weekend was her Bridal Shower and Bachelorette party. I went to her shower, but opted out of the Bachelorette party to spend time with my mom. We took the kids to a local farm, and the kids really enjoyed that. They had lots of animals for you to see and some you could pet. Amelia liked all of it and especially liked the "Baby Moos". That's all she could talk about! When my mom said we were going there and we'd see baby animals she said "I see baby maminals" It was so dang cute!

On our way up Friday night, we hit a Coyote on the freeway.... Look and see what it did to my bumper. Thankfully, it didn't take out my A/C compressor or something like that...something with the A/C anyway! So that's going to be a nice $350 minimum repair!

Us at the farm on the hayride...

Amelia in the "straw bale maze"
Pauly picking out his prize pumpkin!

Amelia and Paul sitting nice on the straw bale....

...and her laughing her fool head off after pushing Paul off the bale of straw! (Which didn't seem to bother him!)

Paul now has 5 teeth and is walking! He is still crawling a bit, but mostly walking! I can't believe we have less than a month until Paul's birthday, crazy how fast a year goes by!