Post that I wrote almost two months ago and am finally posting...

Ok ok, I know that we suck. I'm not going to try to catch up because that would be insane. I have been putting this off for SOO long, but Darren brought up a good point the other night. He said we haven't even posted about Cade walking. Which happened FOREVER ago! And so I feel terrible! He is so cute and fun to be with and I probably should be documenting all the adorable things that he does, but I don't. I will, however, mention a few things and post a few pictures of what has been going on in our lives.

I am obviously still in school. Yes, even right now during the Summer. I go Monday through Thursday so that keeps me fairly busy. And when I get home I either have a headache (from my photoshop class) or I can't move my arms (from my furniture design and construction class) so all I want to do is relax. I try to spend my free time (once Cade is asleep) watching a movie, reading, or doing nothing. I'm just doing it while I can before real school starts again in September :)

Now that you have read about my really exciting life, I will inform you all about or cute little boy! He took a while to start walking, but made up for it in the language area. He says lots of words and has been for a very long time. Here is a list of things to make reading this long post a little easier:

Things Cade does:
Walks
Runs
Spins around in circles
Plays with rocks and dirt
Blows bubbles (with a little help from me)
TICKLES - probably his favorite thing to do. He even started tickling Darren the other night while he was half asleep and with his eyes closed :)
Plays T-ball and our pop-a-shot
Climbs and goes down our little plastic slide with no help from us
Waits at the top of the stairs to hold our hand
Sniffs flowers
Grabs and looks at books on the couch by himself

There are tons more but I think I'll spare you :)

Words he says:
Ball (I'm fairly sure this was his first real word and his absolute favorite thing in the world - any kind of ball. Seriously, he spots them from a mile away and points them out to us)
Balloon
Bubbles
Doggie
Crackers
Hot dog
Apple
Up and down
All done
Hi
Bye
Peek-a-boo (which he pronounces picky-boo)
Basketball (When asked "What's your favorite sport?" he replies with this)
Chicken
Milk
So these are some of the words he says on his own. He will also repeat (or try to) almost any word we say. Cade also makes animal noises. The ones he can do currently are moo, neigh, baa, meow, rar, ooo-ahh ooo-ahh (which is his version of a monkey), woof-woof, tweet-tweet, and my two favorites are fishy (popping his lips) and bunny (scrunching his nose and sniffing in and out).

So now that you know more about my child than you probably wanted to, here are some pictures. Hopefully we'll be at least a LITTLE better about posting... fat chance :)

Fourth of July - Kids fireworks :)

Cade loves flowers and loves his Aunt Amelia

Birthday Dinner... yeah... this was June... I said we were behind!

Cade falls and hits his head a lot. This particular incident was with the corner of a wall

Cade and his cousin Brooklyn love to play together

Oh I just love this little boy!

Get Your GroupON!

You have probably already heard of it since it's been on the news but just thought I'd let you know about Groupon. Sorry if I already sent you an email!

Basically there is a suggested coupon in your city once a day, and if enough people including yourself want it, the company agrees to the coupon. You can just check the site whenever you want or have an email sent to you once a day. I just had it sent to a dummy account that I use for anything I sign up for online. I bet a lot of them will be irrelevant but you never know.

Just go here to check it out: http://www.groupon.com/r/uu1609200. And yes, this is a link specific to me because if you sign up w/in 72 hours of clicking the link, I get Groupon credit once you get your first coupon. You can do the same if you feel so inclined. If not, just spread THIS link around and I will get the credit :)

Enjoy!

Happy 1st Birthday Cade! - My How They Grow!

It is still hard to believe that we are parents, and even harder to believe that we now have a 1 year-old! It has been so fun to watch him grow and develop into a little (more like large) child. He is just over 30" and about 24lbs.

He jabbers non-stop, started squealing like a little girl again when he wants something, is everywhere and into everything, off the formula and eating everything under the sun, doing double back flips on the trampoline, and slam dunking on a 10' basketball hoop. Ok, the last 2 might just be dad's dreams. So far he has had fun with jaundice, fevers, colds, the croup, Swine Flu, rashes, viruses, etc. The best was when he got the swine flu, the croup, and started teething all at the same time. But we consider ourselves very lucky because he has been sleeping through the night since the day he turned 6 weeks old.

Overall, he has probably been the easiest baby, and thank goodness with mom's school schedule. Hopefully our next one will be the same...we can hope can't we?

Well here is an idea we had a few weeks after he was born. As you can tell, the older he got, the harder it was to keep him still for a picture. I can't believe how much he changed in 1 year!

1 Month

2 Months
3 Months

4 Months

5 Months

6 Months

7 Months

8 Months

9 Months

10 Months

11 Months

1 Year Old!!!

WARNING: 6 New Posts Below (Our Quarterly Blogging Session)

Disclaimer: I (Darren) am a bonehead. Made the slide shows too big and they cropped off parts of the pictures. I am too lazy to fix them. I'll do better next time.

Faces of Cade

Much to the disapproval of my beautiful wife, I am going to post some faces Cade has made that I think are really funny. Just to appease Brandi, I have included some pictures of Cade how he normally looks so she can sleep at night, not worrying that everyone thinks our child always looks goofy!

The Knights Cabin

The Knights, our friends from church, invited our family and another couple from the church (the Knights - no immediate relation) to their cabin/house on Lake Wenatchee. We had a blast trying to put together impossible puzzles, some more possible puzzles, playing games (Mexican Train Dominos and Quarters), snowmobiling, and just hanging out. The latter was probably the best part, much needed.

Thank you so much Dick and Karen!

Brooklyn at her best!

Classic "What, what did I do?" look!

New Years Football, a Family Tradition

Our family (Litchfield) has been playing football every Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years Day since my dad (Ryan) was about 17 yrs old. A few years ago we added 4th of July. Always a blast

Christmas 2009

Just a few pictures from Christmas this year.

Trip to Dallas

As many of you know, Brandi's sister Brooke was pregnant with twins and on bed rest in the hospital starting around 20 weeks. So we went down for a week to help out with her 2.5 and 5 year old daughters while Brent was at work. We had a blast; here are some of the highlights!

As many of you also know, unfortunately the day after we left, one of the twins, Nathan, past away. A few weeks later at 25 weeks, Spencer was born, weighing in at 1lb 13 oz. He is doing better and better every day. Thanks for the continued prayers!