Our lil family getaway

Last Friday morning Luke, Will and I piled ourselves and all of our crap endless amount of baby supplies in the car. It is amazing how much stuff you need for a 4 1/2 hour car ride and one and a half days away! I hadn't been to my grandparents in Kankee Illinois since Will's been born and since my grandma passed. It was a hard trip to make, hard to see their house without her, hard to not hear her in the kitchen cooking, hard to see all the beautiful flowers she had planted, hard BUT good to see her pictures everywhere, hard to see plants from her services I could not make it to, and hard to see the extreme amount of hurt in my sweet grandfathers eyes. They were soul mates, whether or not you believe in that sort of thing, that is what they were. They never spent a day apart, nope not in their 60 years of marriage. They made each other laugh and loved each other the amazing way a couple should. Ive learned so much from them, and now I am learning how to grieve and keep calm and carry.on... a lesson that is taking me a while to get used to.

Will did great on his first road trip, he slept a little then I climbed in the back and we read books and made each other laugh for the remainder of the trip, till we got lost then we got restless, those country roads with no street names can be hard to navigate! We got in and settled and then met most of the family out at a local pizza place in town, we have went back and forth on the idea of going to see where grandma ad is. Since we missed her services and things like that I have had a very hard time accepting that she is gone, and just realizing it in general. Her not being at home was a good realization for me and seeing the emptiness in grandpas eyes but I still needed that closure. Crystal was not sure if she wanted to go. After talking with one of our cousins she told us that grandpa goes there all the time to see her, so we decided after dinner to go with him. I thought I would be a wreck, commercials get me choked up... but it was calm. It was peaceful. And it needed to be done. I am not going to go into detail about our visit there because it was very personal, but putting one foot in front of the other when we got out of the car, was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. But I left there knowing something I didn't before...

Grandma Ad is happy now, she is safe, and she is watching down on all of us.

Afterwards we went back to grandpas house to play a game of dominos, something we all always love to do together! So the kids went to bed and we stayed up laughing and playing.

The next day my grandpa had everyone over to visit, there was a TON of food and fun. I loved seeing all the kids play together, the way I used to when we would go visit in the summers. That morning we even went and picked our own corn for our cookout. It couldn't of been a more perfect weekend, and I vow to do that every year, no matter who is there...we will be there visiting I felt Grandma Ad smiling at me that weekend and there is just no better feeling.

Some pictures of our weekend:

 

Grandpa Bill picking flowers with Bennett and Kate

Will

Next year he will be running away from me!

Corn.Corn.Corn as far as the eye can see!

Riverdale Farm

Will's first ride on a john deere!

my big boy driving

Bennett picking "popcorn" he ate it right off the cob, 2 ears!

some slip and slide fun

Pierce

All the Nottke Great Grandkids

Drew, Kate, Kira, Pierce, Bennett, Addison, and William

William and cousin Chad

Lovin from Kate and Leslie

Tired boy tuckered out after a super fun weekend with an awesome family!

My William is 10 months old

10 months.... seriously, where did the last 10 months go? As I order the invites for your first birthday and reflect on the past year you turn 10 months old right under my nose... I love this age, he is the biggest mamas boy right now and I would be lying if I said I didn't like it a little! ;) I miss him like crazy, so we are hitting the road this morning to go visit my grandpa and family out of town, looking forward to spending the next three whole days with this boy. Your personality mirrors mine Will, we are truly one in the same. Love you bugger, happy 10 months baby boy Will!

 still obsessed with the sticker

 Friends

 such a happy sweet boy

 need to make the scrunchie elmo for the camera I saw on pintrest, he would love that!

 THIS looks like a great seat..... sorry lamb

And lastly, Will's "i didnt do it!" face

Tidbit Tuesday

Hi Friends, I think I have a little catching up to do! I feel like Mr. William does something new each and every day, when people tell you that it gets better each day you don't believe them but seeing light bulbs go off and new words spoken is pure bliss for me lately!
We are making the most of our summer and filling up our days and nights, I have been busy at work and Luke just got back from a week long business trip to DC! I hope I never have to experience being a single mommy again. Will and I got in some great quality time but being a one man show is a lot of work! We took out first trip to the library which he LOVED! There is a train set there that I think he would of played with all day if I let him and we found out about some kids programs unfortunately I have to work during all of them but maybe Gigi can take him. We have a relative from Luxembourg (where my grandmother is from) in town visiting she is here for just over two weeks and we are gearing up for a very busy August, September, and October.

Will waves at anything he can get attention from. Yesterday we all went on a walk early in the morning before it got TOO hot out and as Boomer and Will were "walking" next to each other Will just kept waving at him, too cute! Moments like these just make me melt.

Will has 7-8 teeth now and we only had a couple bad days, he is such a tough little guy!

We decided to start with a few of the sign language words to help him communicate and I am happy to report that Will now signs: hi/bye, all done, and more. The only one we do he doesn't is drink, guess its time for momma to learn some more!

I am almost done reading Sippy cups are not for Chardonnay and I LOVED it! I highly recommend it to any and every momma out there, it had me laughing out loud and reading blurbs to Luke, good read.

Those that have read my blog for a while know about the trachealmalesia that we have dealt with and I am happy to report that the cough, cough, cough that ruled my life for months has shown MUCH improvement, praise the Lord! It is not completely gone and we are supposed to go back and meet with his specialist in August. But for now I (dr.mommy ha!) changed his reflux meds from twice a day to once. Once in the morning, then we are still supposed to take the bethanochol four times a day which sometimes we only take twice. The paragraph I just typed makes me more happy that words can say after months of typing blog posts about how I hoped I would look back on that time. :-)

Ok onto some pics of my cutie patotie for you!

Last Friday I took a 1/2 day off work and me, Michelle, Meghan, Leslie and all the kids went up to the pool. Michelle belongs to a country club and their pool had all these water sprout things shooting, of course my kid loved to go stick his face/head in these, over.and.over again. He is SUCH a little fish and I love it!
Time to stop wearing my kate spade perscription sunglasses?
Notice the duck in my boys mouth... thinking about re'doing his bathroom "will style"

Things are still going GREAT with Michelle watching Will, I mean things really couldn't be any better! Here is his "thumbkin" picture he made. We now have a special spot in his room for all his beautiful artwork he makes with Aunt Michelle. She said he signed "more" last week and she taught him twinkle twinkle his favorite song.

My sweet boy {in his new adorable jammies Gigi got him} picking out some bedtime stories, loves to read and turn pages.

crazy hair, crazy kid

catching a snooze while he can during a busy weekend

new favorite: cars and trucks! He loves them so much and cousin Bennett gave him some great ones he was done playing with! Will scoots and rolls them all over the house. We definitely have a boy, boy on our hands!

Cousin love.

After we went swimming with Bennett the cousins needed a bath so in they went, then it was naked time on mommies bed! They were "boys being boys" exactly that, Crazy, rambucous, lil monsters. Will had SO much fun and I don't know if I've heard him laugh that much or that hard before! Stole these pictures from Crystals blog. Does anyone else think baby Will looks like a gangster in this pic? just me?
my boy loves his pillows, if people ask me what to get him for his birthday I have one and one only idea, pillows.

Look at Bennett's little scared face! Baby Will holds his ground well playing with a big kid!

also loves books!

they only look innocent

TA DA! Our finished basement

Well friends our completely finished basement is d.o.n.e... ok ok it was a BIG project so it is 97% done! After much basement clean out, plans, construction and dust dust everywhere and what I thought was promised was a 4-5 month project turned into a 9 month project it is finally done!
Luke and I saved up and moved in our house the summer we got married, this is where we conceived our first child and we brought him home from the hospital to this house. I look forward to many more great years in our wonderful house we have made our home. We knew we would love it and it could grow with us, and while it is nice there were still little projects we had in mind when we bought it. The basement gives us so much extra living space (while taking away so much storage space!) it is a great playroom for Will, good place for extra toys and being carpeted is nice since our whole main floor is hardwood. But we also finished the basement for re-sell purposes, no we are not thinking of moving anytime soon, though we do like to look at our dream homes/locations with the market we will not sell for a while, and this will hopefully be the home we bring both of our children home to!

If I could do it over I am not sure we would start construction on the basement when Will was only weeks old. And tip for anyone doing work with a dog, doggie day camp at kennelwood is awesome, Boomer could not handle some of the noises the tools made of course when they were almost done with this is when I learned of doggie day camp, money well spent! There were definite mommy tears shed over this, noise, men in and out while bfeeding, dust with baby etc... but it is done and we love it! Enjoy the pics and if you live here you better come over for a drink soon! :-) Before
Before: Beginning of framing in

before: poles, furnace, water heater

Finished!!!!

Stairs, room to the left is current work out room, to the right is the bathroom

Coming down the stairs looking into bathroom

bathroom - still need to do baseboards in this room, had to wait for toilet and vanity to get installed and now need a special saw.

the only room that is completely done being decorated!

Bar area!

Still deciding what to do with these three little shelves and the shelving behind the bar, prewired for a small tv but were not there yet ;)

view from the bar to the tv area/play area/siting room

view of the bar, and my cork "W" that I made from an idea on pintrest

Under the shelf is a built in area that goes into the storage area for our mini fridge and wine fridge and under the bar there are cabinets for storage.

tv/toy area

And that's it!!! :)

SO what do you think?

Would love to get one of these for toy and book storage down there, and maybe one of these but for now were happy!!!

9 months and a note for William

William- I carried you for nine months and now you are nine months old, funny how the past 18 months of my life have went by in the blink of an eye! You are a little firecracker these days, you know what you like and what you don't and your little personality get stronger each day. Your favorite words and mama and dada, favoring dada. You love to eat and now that you feed yourself meal time has become so much fun. You love to splash in the bath and lately you think getting dried off is just about the most hilarious thing ever, its these moments after working all day that makes coming home to you the best thing ever.

Your friends are popping up all over, with new babies and baby news coming each week!
William with his new friend Mason, Jenny's son.

Your getting so much hair and its still very blonde, just like mommy and daddys were when they were younger. You did great at your 9 month check up (no shots!) and everything is right on track. We will continue to work with you on your fine motor skills and mommy has noticed some temper spurts we are trying to work through. You love people and are obsessed with kids, I know you are going to be quite the social butterfly just like mommy was/is. You still LOVE dogs and cats, they literally light up your day. Our life has always been full, busy, and fast paced and still is but since you have came into my life these past nine months there are now so many moments I don't care if our house is dirty, I don't care if we are late, and I take deep breaths and squeeze you tight. I try to soak it all in as much as I can, I never knew I could love someone this much, William my dear you are literally the sunshine of my life.

At his 9 month check up William weighed 21.5 pounds, 68% and was 28 1.2 inches long, 63%

So mr. nine months did NOT want to do a photo shoot this month... at.all.
This is him making his "noise" he makes it with his mouth and his hand going back and forth

lamb... ahhh we meet again

ribbon...looking everywhere BUT the camera

And TAGS!!!! {obsessed} I don't get it, what is this fascination?

Playing with Benny, my childhood bear.