Happy 1st Birthday Analise!

On Saturday, October 24, our sweet little niece, Analise, turned a year old! It's hard to believe it's already been a year since she was born!! She's such a sweetheart and we love her very much! No one ever told me how much you can love a niece or nephew. I think it makes a difference if you have a close relationship with that sibling as well. Jody and I didn't always get along the best while we were growing up, but since then we've become really close. I think we got even closer once Analise was born and we had motherhood as a common interest as well. It also helps to be pregnant together and have kids that are about the same age. It's been cute to watch Analise and Collin begin to play together and notice each other more. This time next year they'll probably be great little buddies! Although, Analise would prefer to follow Emma around instead of playing with Collin! :) Here are some pictures from the big party!! The first one is actually Emma....just for comparrison.

Emma at her first birthday party. She didn't have quite as much hair as Analise, but they're pretty much the same size. Analise wore Emma's first birthday princess dress for her party too. I wonder what they make for boys?? Surely it's not as cute and there isn't nearly as much selection!

This little stinker has had the ability to walk for quite a while now, but just decided to actually start doing it about a week before her birthday. She figured she needed to be able to keep up with her cousin, Emma, a little better I guess. Now Collin wants to follow along. Unfortunately, in his head he can walk, but his little legs don't know that yet!

Emma brought Analise some punching balloons for her birthday. She loved watching them! Notice the beautiful line on her cheek?? Grandma put a birthday hat on her and SNAP! Poor little cheek! Grandma felt very bad and the mark was gone by the time Analise had her cake!

Collin had a great time playing with all of Analise's old toys! Especially since he got his great-grandma to hold him while he did it!! It won't be long until his birthday! They sure grow fast!

Analise LOVES the ball like this in the church nursery! It's a little deflated though, so she likes how well she can grip onto it. Great-Grandpa remembered that and got her her own! He even took some air out so it would be nice and squishy!!

She loved her new vacuum!! She doesn't like the real one, so maybe this little one will help her get over her vacuum-phobia!

Emma got some green chapstick in her goody bag from Analise! She loves to wear it! Although, I think she needs some lessons in how to wear it. She goes through them like crazy! See the green around her mouth??

Grandma got Analise a bunch of Fisher Price Little People toys. She loved her Noah's Ark, but did NOT want that flag in the top of it! Whenever her daddy would put it in, she'd be right there to take it out.....no matter where she was or what she was doing!

Jody and Analise practiced blowing out her candle. She was very eager to get to that cupcake though!!! She hasn't had very many sweets in her life, so this was an extra special treat!

The famous pointer finger!!! I can't even remember when it started, but Analise uses her little pointer finger for EVERYTHING!!!! It's so cute! No matter what she's touching, that little finger is the first one to touch it! She liked sticking it in the hole that the candle made. She started eating the cupcake by digging cake from that hole with her little pointer finger!

My camera battery died before she really got into the cake. It was a bummer because she made a pretty good mess of things! It was so cute! We're so thankful for a year of having our sweet Analise! She's been a huge blessing to our family and we love her a lot!! It's been neat to see Jody and Aaron as new parents over the last year. They're great as it!!

My little pumpkin

I wanted to get this post in tonight because I don't know if I'll have time tomorrow. Collin will be 8 months old tomorrow! It's crazy how fast it's gone! In some ways it seems like just yesterday he was born, but also seems like he's always been here. He's been such a blessing to our family and I just can't get enough of those cute little cheeks!

Collin is not growing quite as quickly as Emma did. He's been struggling with lots of congestion issues over the past 4 weeks, so he's not sleeping hardly at all. I took him into the doctor last week to get his chest checked out and he weighed in at just over 18 pounds. Emma was 18 lb. 2 oz. at 6 months, so he's a couple months behind her in weight. Not that he feels very light though! If you ever see him eat, you'll wonder how he's not 30 pounds by now!! Apparently he takes after his daddy in this area and can eat and eat and eat! He's great about eating solid food, but WILL NOT take a bottle or even a sippy cup of milk! He will sometimes drink juice from a bottle, but that's about it. He's eating 4-5 jars of baby food a day along with cereal, so he's definitely not going hungry!! I'm not sure where he puts it all either. He may look chubby in the face, but other than 2 little rolls on his thighs, he's pretty thin....very solid though. Not even a big belly on him! Hopefully he'll be able to keep that metabolism like his daddy has.

Last week I walked into Collin's room in the morning and found him standing in his crib. So, now he thinks he needs to pull up and stand by everything. It's funny to watch him because once he's up, he can't move his feet forward, so he leans toward what he's holding on to while his little legs shake. So cute! He hasn't quite mastered getting up on his hands and knees to crawl, but gets pretty much everywhere he wants by army crawling. He's able to put himself into a sitting postion from laying down now and will get up on his hands and knees and rock, but no moving that way yet! THANK GOODNESS!!! I'm very thankful that he won't be walking in a few weeks like his sister was! It's nice to have a baby who actually follows the "average" baby scale instead of trying to beat it in everything!

I've been wondering when Collin would start to babble. Emma did it much earlier than the age Collin is at now, but maybe it's just the girl/boy difference. Today when I was changing his diaper and getting him dressed for the day he started saying "babababa" and "mamamama" though! So cute! He was so proud of himself when I got excited. So, that's what we've been hearing all day now! At least he's doing the mama before the dada!! :)

I'll leave you with some pictures of our little pumpkin in the pumpkin patch. Isn't he adorable??? :)

Emma and the Barrel Trains

When I was doing my last post I put up a picture of Emma on the barrel train at Post Family Farm this year. It made me want to pull up the last 2 years of pictures of her on it. Wow, she sure has changed!


Emma at Post Family Farm this past Saturday, October 10, 2009. She's 3 1/2 years old in this picture. Look at all her hair! She's sure growing up!


Last year we didn't make it to Post Family farm, but at the Growing Kids God's Way hayride they had the same kind of barrel train. This one was better though because her ride was much longer and even through the woods!

This last picture is from 2007 at Post Family Farm. She looks like such a baby still at almost 2 years old! It's amazing how little hair she had then! I'm glad it's finally grown in and I don't have to answer the "boy or girl" question anymore! Geesh!

Catching up

When I started this blog, I had every intention of keeping it updated at least weekly, if not more. Well, that hasn't happened. I barely have time to get pictures downloaded, let alone write a whole post for this blog!! It seems like there just aren't enough minutes in the day. Our life has gotten a lot more busy now that Emma has started school and Awana started up again at church! I suppose it is more important that I spend time with my kids instead of just writing about them. We have been up to quite a lot of new things since I last posted though. Be prepared for LOTS of pictures! I wonder how many one post can hold??? Hopefully I won't ever have to find that out! I don't plan to go this long again without getting some new ones on here. So, enjoy the pictures of our life over the last 2 months! These are a little out of order, but oh well!







This past Saturday Ryan went out of town for a conference with Jody and Aaron, so my parents and I took Collin, Emma and cousin Analise to Post Family Farm for the afternoon. It was pretty chilly, but the kids all had a good time! Poor little Collin just can't seem to get past this yucky cold he has, so he didn't like it quite as much as the girls. I had to break out his halloween costume because his winter coat is a 12 months and WAY too big for him. So the pumpkin kept him nice and warm......and obviously SO CUTE! Collin sure loves his papa and made sure he held him for most of the time at the farm!

Emma loves riding the pumpkin barrels! I should post pictures of her in them for the last few years. What a change!! I was just looking at some pictures of her from this time last year and she looks like so much more of a baby! I think that this year (3 yrs-4 yrs) has been almost as big of a change in her as her first year was! She's definitely growing into a little girl and absolutely NOT a baby anymore. She'll be the first one to tell you that! She actually won't even refer to herself as a "little" girl, only a big girl!

Grandma with Emma and cousin Analise (with the kitty face...she sat "purrfectly" still the whole time she got her face painted!). Both of these girls are Grandma's girls and tend to even choose Grandma over mom! Do I detect a little bit of spoiling on Grandma's part? I THINK SO!!!

Emma loves hayrides and was so excited to get to go out to the pumpkin patch and get a pumpkin! This coming weekend we have two hayrides coming up, so she's looking forward to that! I think this picture is adorable of her and makes her look so grown up!

We had to get a picture of Collin on a pumpkin since he was dressed so appropriately! He wasn't too sure of what we were doing with him or what all of those big orange things were, but he's pretty laid back and just goes with the flow (unless you take away something he wants or try to get him to go to sleep). :)

Since Collin had his picture taken on a pumpkin, Emma thought she needed one too. She's holding one of the little pumpkins that she picked out for Collin and Analise.

After much anticipation, Emma finally started school in the beginning of September! She's been wanting to go for SO long! Now she's looking forward to when she's old enough to ride the bus to school. I'm very pleased with the preschool we chose for her and she seems to be thoroughly enjoying it and learning a lot. She always comes out singing the songs that they sang that day. If you know Emma very well, you wouldn't be surprised by that. She LOVES to sing and dance and is actually pretty good at it! The other day when I picked her up her teacher said, "Boy, that Emma.....she's right on with all the songs! She dances and sings like crazy!" That's my Emma!! I'm not at all surprised by that!

Emma loves the new backpack that she picked out! They need to have one for all of their papers to go home in, so she was so excited to get to go to the store and get this backpack for school. I was excited too......Meijer had them on sale and then when you bought $10 in Kelloggs products (that we need anyway), you got $10 off, so I paid $2 for it!!! I love a deal!

Emma posing for a picture outside the door to her school before she went in for the first time!

After I picked her up, we went out and took a picture by the school sign. I love this picture! She's sure growing up fast! Can't believe she'll be 4 in 2 short months!

We went to the Ringling Brothers circus a few weeks ago and Emma's showing off her clown nose. We love Ringling! We've taken Emma for the last 3 years and she looks forward to it every year! The first year we even took her twice!

We had a Boger family reunion this year with my grandpa's side of the family and Collin got this balloon hat. He did prefer to chew on it over wearing it, but we didn't let him do that!

We took the kids to their first Whitecaps baseball game this year. They both loved it! Collin seems to already have a love for baseball! He was pretty much smiling like this the whole time! It made his daddy and papa proud!

Emma loved the game too, but more for the entertainment and people than for the sport. She was in a crazy mood that night, but loved the fireworks at the end. She slept through the 4th of July ones, so these were a special treat!

I just had to throw in this sweet picture of Collin snoozing on his daddy! It's so cute! He's really turned into a daddy's boy lately and he gets SO excited when he sees him! A lot of times he'll even pick Daddy over me!

Emma was able to go to three amusement parks this summer (Six Flags, Cedar Point & Michigan's Adventure)! She loves them! She's a little daredevil and goes on all the rides she

can! This picture was at Michigan's Adventure. She loves the motorcycles!

Collin loved his first carousel ride! He was so excited on that horse!

Riding with Daddy on the train. This picture was taken before the operator of the train told us that there is no photography permitted on any ride at Michigan's Adventure. Even on a train going maybe 10 mph???? Come on!!

Collin just relaxing in the stroller after playing in the water at the waterpark.

Emma loved the waterslides! She wasn't tall enough for any of the big ones, but they have some decent ones in the kiddie area. I can't even count how many times she went down that slide! We had a great time there, but these pictures do remind me of our 20 minutes of horror when Emma went missing in the waterpark amoung thousands of people.....so scary! Praise the Lord He helped us find her and kept her safe! See my previous post if you want more info on that day.

The sun kind of washed this picture out, but I just had to put it in here. All summer long at other parks Emma just could never figure out how to get one of these airplanes in the air and keep it there. She finally got it and was so proud of herself!!!

Emma LOVES the frog hopper ride! The one at Michigan's Adventure is the best beacause it's the most bouncy of them all. She screams, laughs and smiles the whole time!

Collin & Papa at the end of the day while we waited for Ryan, Emma and Jody to ride Zach's Zoomer roller coaster.

You can't see them very well, but this is Ryan, Emma & Jody on Zach's Zoomer. Emma and Ryan rode in the front car! Emma had her hands up the whole time! Is she really MY daughter??? When she got off she said it was so much fun, but just a little scary! The coaster camera took a really cute picture of them that we just had to buy!

Collin loves Emma's hula hoop! It's his favorite toy to bang on the ground! It looks funny when he does it because it's so much bigger than him!!

Emma loves to hold Collin! You can see how thrilled he is about that. :) Aren't they a cute brother & sister?? At least she loves him and wants to be by him. We'll see how long that lasts!

Sitting on the John Ball statue ay the zoo. Can't go there without one of these! This was Collin's first trip to John Ball Zoo. Emma has her purse (one of many) of course!

Emma and Collin at the zoo.

Emma loved playing in the train at the zoo and stuck her head out to pose for a picture.

Collin loved the goats! They tried to nibble on his little toes a few times, but he still loved the anyway!

Emma was so excited to go into the birdhouse and feed the birds. She wasn't quite so sure though when one one of them got up close!

After a couple seconds she was ok though. After that she LOVED the birdhouse! My parents and her actually spent quite a lot of time in there! Ryan, Collin and I only stayed in for a few minutes....I'm not that excited about birds flying all around me. My dad never seems to learn his lesson about being around too many birds. He was pooped on once again! At least this time it was just on his shirt instead of by a seagull on the head in Florida!

Although I think this is one of the worst exhibits at John Ball Zoo, Collin's favorite part was the penguins. It seems like every winter they work on improving some part of the zoo to debut in the spring....maybe soon it will be the penguins! Usually they're one of the best exhibits in a zoo, so that's why it's so disappointing here. I think he just liked how close he could get to them. If he could have, I think he would have dove in there with them!

Emma wanted to go on a camel ride. We didn't want to pay for one of the adults to ride with her though, so she ended up going all by herself. The workers tried to get some other kids to go with her, but they were all in too big of parties. Didn't bother Emma in the least though. She got right on that camel and rode with a big smile!

Doesn't she look so incredibly cute on that huge camel??!! It was so adorable to watch her. I was so proud of how brave she was. It shouldn't be a surprise though. She's not usually scared of the things I would have been scared of at her age!

We went camping for the last time of the season over Labor Day weekend. Since we were close to home this time, we brought bikes and the bike trailer. This was Collin's first ride in it since he wasn't able to sit up most of the summer. He loved it! It's supposed to be a 2-seater, but it did look a little snug in there for the two of them.

We put Emma and Collin together to swing in the baby swing. Emma looked funny in there with her legs dangling so much farther than Collins! They loved it though!

Collin spent a lot of time in the swing. He loves to swing! Fortunately his baby swing has a bigger seat than most and can hold up to 30 pounds because he still spends time in it every day at home! He just LOVES swings in any shape or form!

Emma and Collin swinging together at the campground.

Around this time was when Collin really started to raise his arms in the air to say "so big!" He loves to do it and it's so cute to watch him. He raises those arms as far as he can and squishes his little face in the process! Aunt Angela brought her nice camera out to the campground to take pictures of all 3 grandkids. They turned out really cute! I'll have to get some posted on here soon!

Well, I guess that about sums up the pictures from the last couple months for us. I do have many more, but this is just a good sampling of them! Hopefully I can get on here again this week to do an update on Collin. He's turning 8 months tomorrow! Where did the time go???