Grandy's 80th

Serious fun. That is all I have to say about Grandy's 80th surprise party. Serious fun.
We don't get together as often as we should! Chris and I had a great time laughing it up all night long! Thank you all for a wonderful night- hope you enjoy the pictures and I hope that we see you soon!

Aren't my nieces gorgeous?

Kudos to Russ! He did a perfect job on his poem to Grandy!

Abbi's First Communion...

This was a crazy weekend...by crazy, I mean crazy fun. We had so many things going on and we got to see so many people, it was just awesome.

One event this weekend was Abbi's First Communion. Abbi is the daughter of my cousin and favorite gym buddy, Robin and she asked us to take a few pictures of Abbi before the service. We had family birthday party for Chris's grandfather that night at the same time, so we didn't get to stay for the service. We did swing by beforehand though to snap a few pictures.

I am not going to lie...anyone could take pictures of this little cutie and they would all turn out beautifully. She is just gorgeous. Here are some of my favorites.

Thanks, Robin for making our job easy! :) Hope you like the pictures and I will make a CD for you with all of them!

What I have been up to...

I know that it doesn't look like a lot, but Eli's year scrapbook has taken me FOREVER!
Don't get me wrong I love working in Photoshop and creating scrapbook pages, but I have seriously been working on this since the end of December. I am sure that my hubby will be thrilled that it is so close to completion. Really the only time I have to work on it is after Eli is in bed for the night, so I am sure he will love having my attention again!

Front cover...

Hospital...

1 month...

2 months...

3 months...

4 months

5 months...

4th of July...

6 months...

Rodeo...there is another page that goes with this, but we are having technical difficulties apparently...

7 months...

8 months...

9 months...

10 months...

11 months...

12 months, again there is another page that goes with this month...technical difficulties.

1 year party...

Back cover...

Did you see the quote from God on the back cover? Chris came up with that. I think it is hilarious!

We are going to write letters to Eli to include in the book and then it is finished! Hooray!

I thought that it was going to be a piece of cake since I had about a fourth of the pages done because I have done a page every month since he was 6 months. Apparently, I wasn't using the right measurements and had to re-do them. I don't care though...I would spend another month on this if I had to. I am really glad that I don't though.

Can't wait to get it printed!

I want to say a quick thanks to Chris. He is so wonderful about taking pictures for me when I say "jump". I am not a very easy mom to work with either. I know what I want in a picture and I am not afraid to tell him about it. It is funny though because many times what he does turns out better than anything that I could have come up with. Thank you, Chris for using your talent to capture our son's first year and for putting up with the demands of his mamma. I know that Eli will be thankful to you when he is older. Love you!

Party like a rockstar!

Thank you to everyone who was able to celebrate our little monkey's birthday with us. Eli is so blessed to have so many people in his life that love and care about him...Thank you!

Here are a few pictures from our one-year-old's big day!
These are the party favors that I made. They are bags of Monkey Munch (or Puppy Chow) with pictures of Eli attached.


Here are the cupcakes I made...the big one in the middle was for Eli. They were super easy and I loved the way they turned out. The mouths of the cupcakes are Vanilla Wafers and the ears are Sandies minis. On Eli's cake the mouth is made of a sugar cookie and the ears are Vanilla Wafers. I used gel icing for the eyes, nose and mouth.


The picture on the left was for everyone to sign. We played a game with the bottle of Cheerios to see who could guess the number of Cheerios...the winner got the picture of Eli on the right.

We used bananas to tie the balloons to the mantel and on the tables. I made the banner out of card stock and scrapbook paper. Then we framed pictures of Eli and put them on the mantel.

Here is his highchair and birthday hat!

I was in charge of the cake, other desserts and the decorating, but Chris was in charge of the important stuff...the food! Here are Grandy and Steve giving Chris some grilling advice.

Aunt Alison took pictures of Eli opening presents! Thanks!

Eli was more into his gifts than he was at Christmas. It made it a lot of fun!

Aunt Stef won the Cheerio guessing game!

Grandpaw opened up Eli's savings account and made his first deposit for his college fund!

We were so excited that Nanny and Papaw were able to come down. Eli LOVES Papaw's walker!

Here are Mamaw, Nanny, Stef, Lynda and Papaw. The banner in the window is a picture of Eli every month for 12 months.

We served pulled pork sandwiches, chips, potato salad and veggie skewers.

oh, and Polish sausage...you can't have a Britten get-together without it!

One more shot of the cupcakes...we also had banana pudding.

Cake time!

This was a pretty big thing for our little guy who really hasn't had any butter, flour or sugar except for his puffs and recently Cheerios. He still eats homemade baby food and is gradually eating more of what Chris and I have for dinner...but it is very limited and very healthy.


Of course, he loved the cake and all of the attention!

We were so messy we decided to take a quick bath!

Here is Chris's family that came to celebrate with us! I completely forgot to get a picture of my family until my grandparents and aunt had already left!

It really was a perfect party to celebrate Eli! We are so thankful for our little boy and what a blessing he has been in our lives! Thank you again to those that shared it with us!

We have a toddler!

Eli is one. Eli is ONE.


We will be having a small party this weekend with our family. We thought about inviting our friends too, but we decided to keep it small for this year.


Here is the invite that I made for our little monkey. (On a side note, 3 people have asked me to design invites for them and I am so excited! I love to do it!)



Holy Moly! Where did this year go? If you couldn't tell, we are proud as peaches of our adorable, bright, amazing, talented, (etc.) 12 month old.


This month Eli, you got your second haircut. You rock a fauxhawk.


You are walking, practically running everywhere.

You still have 6 teeth and your vocab is about the same as last month.

You are transitioning from having your milk from your bottle to your sippy cup. You are using your pacifier less and less. Next week you will "lose" your pacifier forever. Can't wait for that fun.

You still take 2 naps a day about 1-2 hours each. You go to bed at 8 and wake up around 6 or 7. No more middle-of-the-night bottles! Hooray!

You know where your hat goes (on your head), and how to put your toys back in their box...you are also every good at getting them back out again.

You LOVE to play chase with mommy and daddy. You laugh so loud when we chase you, then we turn around and you chase us!

You have just started to really wear shoes since you are walking so well. You had your second big fall into the door facing because you were practicing to walk in your big boy shoes (you can still see the bruise on his forehead).

You started to give your sisters (our puppies) big hugs and laying your head on them.

You know what I mean when I ask "Is your daddy home?". You drop everything and run to the back door to meet him.

You have also started really pointing and saying "that" for things you want and being very vocal about what you don't want! :)

Here is Eli's 11 month scrapbook page...(Look at that super cute sweater vest he has on! Thanks, aunt Stef & aunt Kaci!)