Our super sweet, engergetic, loving, goofy little girl was 14 months old on August 20.

In this picture she was sitting in a booster seat – a first! -  at Illegal Pete’s burrito joint in Boulder.

Ryan has coined a term to describe the high-level energy that Linden has – a happy handful. She is a little girl that has to constantly be on the go, exploring new things, running everywhere and investigating how things operate. She loves to wave to every person she sees and tell them “hi!”

Some of her new words include: “bye-bye,” “me do,” ”see,” and “done.” In the past month 2 more teeth have come in, bringing her grand total to 6 – 3 on top and 3 on the bottom. I can see about 3 more that are working their way in on the bottom and have a feeling we will see those soon…

Some of Linden’s favorite snacks include rasins, graham crackers and Kashi Honey Sunshine cereal.

Her most favorite past-time is sitting in an adult’s lap while they read her a book.

 This month she has been to 3 National Parks to go hiking and “climbed” her 1st Fourteener, Mt. Evans. She was dedicated at church this month (post to come) and enjoyed a visit from Kevin & Brittany from Florida…let’s be honest, they came to see her

We can’t wait to see what next month will hold!

On July 23 Ryan and I celebrated our 4 year wedding anniversary! It is really hard to believe that 4 years has already passed since our wedding day, although when I think about all that we have experienced together since that day, it seems hard to believe that we have some how packed living in 3 states, 4 jobs for me, 3 for Ryan, purchasing 3 new cars, 1 house and having 1 precious baby girl, among other things!

Before Linden was born, we would generally take a long weekend trip some where, but this has been a little more difficult the last 2 years since Linden was 1 month old last year at our anniversary and this year she was 13 months old. So again this year we passed on a getaway trip and celebrated at home with a wonderfully delicious steak dinner that Ryan made for us – how lucky am I to have such a culinary genius for a hubby?! It was a lovely evening on reflecting on the many blessings that God has given us in each other and how He has grown our relationship over the last 4+ years.

The Lord has truly blessed our marriage and we are both excited to many more years ahead!

Linden loves peaches.

This picture was taken by Mary Ann, my MIL, who has something like 100 pounds of peaches at her house these days. Linden loves to eat (and put in her hair!) peaches at Grandma’s House.

About a week ago Ryan and I embarked on toning our muscles by doing Trainer Bob Harper’s Biggest Loser Weight Loss Yoga DVD. It has been fun, and very hard! Seriously y’all, we break a sweat every time! I have done yoga on and off for the last 5 years and Trainer Bob is not lying when he says “…this is not regular yoga, this is weight loss yoga!”

 

In addition to workin’ it with Trainer Bob, Ryan and I kicked off Saturday morning hikes with Linden that we are going to do until the weather gets too cold. We hit up Roxborough State Park and enjoyed their gorgeous 3 mile intermediate trail early in the morning before the heat set in. Ryan was the real hiker, since he strapped Linden to himself with the baby/toddler carrier. All 3 of us had a blast…Linden kept babbling and saying “OOoooooh” and pointing to all of the vegetation around us, and would also start clapping when she got really excited – she is such a fun and sweet little girl!

Both yoga and our hike were a little more difficult for me than they should have been…I foolishly stopped running after my 10K race at the end of May, but I am slowly starting to get back in to my workout routine. I am leaning towards signing up for a local 5K race just to have something on the calendar to work towards…a little incentive

It is so hard to believe that August is almost over and that fall will be here soon! The fall is really my most favorite time of the year – beautiful trees, cooler weather, college football, cute jackets…

We are so excited that our friends from Florida, Kevin & Brittany, are flying to Denver over Labor Day weekend to hang out with us – it will be a blast to get to see them and take in some of that beautiful fall Colorado weather and activities that I enjoyed last year.

Ohh…in other news, Ryan and I are going to take our first vacation without Linden in mid-October. We are headed to Washington D.C. -whoo-hoo! We are flying my mom to Denver from Kansas to stay with Linden for 5 days while we are gone, so they will have some sweet Grandma (spoiling) time together. I know we will miss her a lot, but we are also looking forward to vacation just the 2 of us. Our little nephew should be entering the world about this time, too, making us Uncle Ryan and Aunt Kim – we can’t wait!

 Our sweet baby turned 13 months old on July 20 (I know, almost a month ago already…I am behind in the posting!) Here was the picture I took of her on that day. What a sweetie pie. She is wearing one of my shirts from when I was her age…I snagged it from my Mom’s stash of my clothes while we were visiting Kansas for 4th of July (another back-post to come!)

In month 13 Linden has really solidified her running skills and her verbal skills are taking off! some of her new/favorite words include: bye-bye, kitty cat, go, and shoes. Speaking of shoes. Linden is a girl after my own heart and loves shoes! She likes to put hers on and look at them, take people their shoes, show me which shoes I should wear (she always brings me a beaded pair of heels that I wore in a wedding once) and take Daddy his shoes after he changes his clothes after work so that they can go get the mail together.

She is eating all table foods with us and we are slowly but surely becoming done with bottles and only drinking whole milk, eventually only from her cup.

She has gotten very good at sharing toys with her friends when they play together and she loves to be taken swimming! I think she has 4 bathing suites right now and she gets very excited and starts clapping when we ask her if she wants to go swimming.

Her other favorite thing this month has been books. She will bring Ryan and I books constantly when we are at home and just wants to sit next to us on the couch, or on our laps on the floor, while we read books to her. It is very sweet and I know Ryan has especially enjoyed their special reading time together.

Here are some special pictures I took of Linden this month. They are special because….at one of my baby showers I recieved a particular onesie in 2 different sizes – newborn and 12-18 months, from 2 different ladies, that also had a matching headband. I had taken pictures of Linden in this onsie and headband when she was 1 month old and then I did the same this month. Here is the difference a year makes!

Oh, but the sitting still did not last long at 13 months…

I’ve got places to go Mom…

Ok, I’ll sit for you one more time. This is my model pose where I am showing off the wonderfully long legs that I did NOT get from my Mommy.

I am going to be putting up a few posts that highlight what we have been up to since early June!

June 18th was my sweet hubby’s 28th birthday and we celebrated at his parents house with Grandma E., who had flown in from Nebraska, and his sister, Erin, who flew in from California! It was very nice of his parents to have us over for his birthday celebration, because I had been quite busy with preperations for Linden’s 1st birthday (aka, our 2nd wedding, haha, just kidding!)  just two days later.

Ryan with his Dad, Dave, and sister, Erin

 

Ryan’s yummy birthday cake (carrot cake) that his Mom, Mary Ann, made

Linden practicing blowing out candles with Daddy (she actually, very swiftly, put one out with her mouth…A+ parenting)

4 Generations…Dave, Grandma E. (G.G.), Ryan and Linden

Linden with Grandma & Aunt Erin

And I just realized, while posting these, that Ryan and I didn’t take any pictures together. We are really trying to be better at this, but I guess we forgot on his birthday…

 Dear Diet Coke,

You and I have spent a lot of time together over the last 5 years. My now husband first introduced me to you, and convinced me that you were not gross, and in fact, a great calorie free beverage that made drinking ‘pop’ (coke/soda) guilt-free. Only, I am starting to not feel so guilt-free about our relationship.

Let’s be honest. I am addicted to you. You a cheaper than my other beverage addiction that starts with an S and end with ‘bucks. But your chemicals are bad for me, really bad… and well….as hard as this is for me to admit, I just can’t do this any more.

Please know this break-up will not be easy for me. I am sure there will be many temptations. But I can’t live with just a little of you, so we must be completely over.

Sincerely,

Kim

Our family has been on the go or having guests in town for the past 3 weeks and, phew….it was all very wonderful, but I am ready to slow down a little bit.

Some how I have (pretty much) managed to keep the house in order, so there isn’t too much that needs to be done on the cleaning front.  Although there is always that pesky laundry that is never ending. If I were to ever hire someone to help around the house, I would really just hire someone to fluff and fold the laundry…I really, really, really dislike it. I digress…

I  have this feeling that the summer is already half way over and I still have so many things I would like to do to soak it up a little more! For example, I am ready for a tan and being outside to get the said tan…

One of the marvelous things about living in Colorado is that it never gets TOO awfully hot and there is no humidity (something I do NOT miss about Florida or Texas!), so you can actually enjoy being outside during the summer months. Uncle Steve & Aunt Erin got Linden a really fun pool for her birthday, so you can probably find us in our backyard playing as we enjoy some time at home…in the sun

I have found a new favorite site that has super caa-ute jewlery, PamperingBeki.

Love these…

You can put a special date on the 2nd one…what a cute gift idea for a bride-to-be, or a mommy! Love it!

Our sweet little girl turned 1 year old on June 20. Man, did this year every go by so quickly?!

After about 10.5 hours of non-progressing labor, Linden Paige entered in to the world via C-Section on a Friday night at 6:54 p.m. at St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Florida…weighing 8 pounds 1 oz. and measuring 21 in. long. Our labor and delivery nurses were excellent and my OB was the attending that night at the hospital, so Dr. S delivered Linden. It was most certinaly love at first sight. Hearing her cry for the first time was one of the best sounds I had ever heard in my life!

My first time holding Linden in the OR/OB recovery room

Linden wearing the “Jesus Loves Me” braclet from Grandma & Grandpa E.

Linden just home from the hospital

Since her birthday fell on a Saturday this year, we celebrated with a Ladybug themed birthday bash at the park on her actual birthday. Many family members traveled from out of state to help make our sweet girl’s day even more special! Uncle Daniel, Grandma Nagel & Grandpa John, Oma, Great-Great Uncle Eddie, Aunt Erin, GG, Pop-Paw & Grandma Shell! Nonnie and Pop-Pop also drove over from Boulder for the festivities. What a blessed little girl to have so many people that love her and were able to travel!

The weather was a little sketchy most of the day, mostly wind, so many of my cute little decorations had to stay in the bag, oh well! I was just so relieved that the rain held off and everyone was able to have fun eating and playing in the park.

Linden was so excited to see so many familiar faces and she walked around telling people “hi” and waving. She def. had a great time swinging, running around, going down the slide, riding the ladybug and getting to demolish her cupcake!

After the party was over we went back to the house to open presents – everyone was so generous and we have a little stash of toys put away to pull out throughout the year.

Dear Linden,

Happy 1st Birthday! Your Daddy and I love you so much and have been so blessed to have you in our family this past year – our hearts are truly full from the love and joy that you have brought to us.

I pray for you every night when I put you to bed. The themes that I pray over you daily include:

• That you would come to know Jesus as your Savior at a young age
• That you would be faithful and obedient to walk with the Lord throughout all of your days
• For your worth and image to be found in Jesus alone
• For your purity
• For you to see and love others as Jesus does
• For God to be preparing a loving and godly husband for you

It has been a joy to watch your personality and character develop already. You started saying “hi” to people and waving when you were about eight months old – your friendliness has put smiles on many peoples faces and has blessed them.

Your disposition this first year has been very easy going, joyful and playful. I think we have been spoiled by having such an easy baby for our first (maybe only!) child. You began sleeping through the night consistnetly when you were just 3 weeks old and you have been a good eater from the start.

You have consistently been in the 90-95th percentile for your height in 50-60th percentile for your weight. At your 1 year appointment you were 23 pounds, 2 ounces (85th percentile), were 30.25 inches tall (90th percentile) and your head size is in the 40th percentile. Dr. D. noted that your verbal and fine motor skills are that of an 18 mo. old and encouraged Mommy & Daddy to start discipling you, because you understand more than what we think you do! You are certinaly not naughty (yet!), but you have begun to push a few limits with your mobility and reach. You started walking at 10 months and were running by 11 months!

You love books! Your favorite book, by far, is 10 Little Ladybugs. We read it almost daily…it was the inspiration for your 1st Birthday party

Your favorite activity is swimming! We first took you when you were almost 3 months old and we have been going every Saturday to our rec center since you were 6 months old. You have already outgrown 3 swimsuits – phew! You like to splash, kick and flirt with the life guards. You also always make a friend when we are at the pool, who is usually about 6-9 years old. I pray that you continue to make friends easily and minister to the people God brings along your path.

To date you say momma, da-da, me, duck, hi, baby. You also like to put together jibberish phrases. Daddy and I enjoy making up what we think you are saying, because you always sound very passionate when you do this!

We can’t wait to see what this next year holds and I will always hide our precious memories from your first year in my heart.

Much love,

Mommy & Daddy