Timmy's Birthday Party!

We celebrated Timmy's first birthday this past Saturday. He had a train themed party with lots of friends and family. Thank you to all of the guests who came to celebrate with us! I also want to thank a few friends, April and Myra, who helped with some of the birthday preperations.

Here is the entryway to our home. We had cardboard and duct tape train tracks as well as a few signs.

Here is the adorable sign on the front door. April made this.

These cookies were individually wrapped and given out as favors at the end of the party. April gave me a lesson in working with royal icing as we made them together.

The birthday cake! This monster took 3 full cakes worth of batter and about 6 cups of buttercream, not to mention an incredible amount of time.

Here's another shot of the cake. I was pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Cute little train made from juice boxes.

We also had caramel apple favors.

Here is the birthday boy having fun!

Kristen had a great time too!

Here we are opening presents. He was more interested in playing with the wrapping paper than opening the gifts, but he sure is having fun playing with them now.

Timmy loved getting to take his clothes off and going in his high chair. He knew that meant food was coming!

Here he is tentatively trying his birthday cupcake.

Then he got a bit more into the spirit.

Here is Kristen trying on Timmy's train conductor hat and bandana.

The kids also got to decorate their own cookies. Kristen created a marshmallow covered masterpiece.

Timothy's First Year

Timmy's birthday is in a few days and we celebrated it today with huge birthday bash. The pictures from the party will be coming soon, but for now you will have to settle for the video montage we made of his first year. Enjoy!

Wedding and Birthday

I posted about my brother's wedding shortly after coming home from Vegas, but since then we received the professional photos. My original post also neglected to show any pictures of the beautiful bride and happy groom, so I thought I would remedy that. Welcome to the family Susan!

Kristen looked so lovely as a flower girl.
Timmy was quite the charmer as well.

This past Sunday was our niece Mary's 3rd birthday. Mary and Kristen are very close and love to play together. Here are some pictures from the fun party at McDonald's.

I love how Kristen and Timmy are sitting, both with their arms on the table.

Kristen and the birthday girl!

Timmy playing in the special toddler zone playland.

My youngest niece Bridget being as cute as can be.

Grandma with Susan and most of her grandchildren. Bridget was busy playing elsewhere.

The gang's all here! The entire Tobin family.

I'm back posting, I promise!

I'm so sorry about the long break between posts. We have been very busy and I am guilty of neglecting the blog. After our trip to Las Vegas we were busy packing for our move, then moving from Tolleson to Chandler, then unpacking, then waging war against an army of scorpions that decided to move into the Chandler house with us. We are finally settled in and getting used to life on the east side of town. During our move we managed to lose our camera battery charger so we were without a camera for a large portion of the last 2 months. Fortunately, that has been remedied.

The kids have hit a few major milestones recently. Kristen is working very hard on the potty training. She's now in pull-ups and uses the potty regularly throughout the day. I think we might be able to retire the pull-ups soon!

Timmy is now walking! He took his first steps just after we moved, but he was nowhere close to actually walking until more recently. He still crawls often, but he is starting to walk more and more. He can now make it all the way across a room. We just captured video of him walking today. So while I'm not going to leave you with any pictures on this post, you will be treated to some adorable footage of a new walker. Yay Timmy!

Congratulations Stephen and Susan!

My brother Stephen and his fiance Susan were married on July 11 in Las Vegas! We had a great trip and were happy to celebrate with them. I have very few pictures of the wedding because it wasn't permitted to take photos during the ceremony. Stephen and Susan have a bunch from their photographer so hopefully I will be able to add some of those to my blog soon. For now I'll just post what I do have. Michael had the camera and as you can tell by the pictures he had eyes for only one girl that day, our little flower girl Kristen.

Here is Timmy just before we left. We got new dog beds and he made himself comfortable within 10 minutes of us putting them on the floor.

Here is my dad, brother Peter, and Uncle Bob
The groomsmen and the groom hanging out in the front of the chapel before the ceremony.

My beautiful Kristen. She did a great job as flower girl. She also got very excited about being a princess and loved being called Princess Kristen all day.

She loved the wedding cake too!

9 Months Old

My little Timothy James is 9 months old! He had his 9 month appointment on Friday. He is doing very well on all development and milestones. His only concern from the appointment is that his blood test showed he is anemic. I don't understand how a child who eats 30 ounces of iron fortified formula and 2 large servings of iron fortified baby cereals a day can be anemic, but he is. So for the next 3 months Timmy gets to take a very foul smelling vitamin with iron drop to bring those levels up. Hopefully that will do the trick!

I know I say this all the time, but I will say it again. He is a BIG boy. He weighed 26 pounds 11 ounces and was 31.1 inches tall. He is way off the charts on both measures. But he is proportionately large so the doctor wasn't concerned, he is just a big boy.

As many of you know our family will be moving to Chandler, AZ soon. While visiting a friend who lives near our soon to be home I discovered a McDonald's with a toddler playzone. This is so much nicer than those play areas with the big tubes and slides. It is perfect for my kids right now. Plus, it is inside and air conditioned, unlike all of our parks. Timmy and Kristen had a blast playing here. I have a feeling we will be making regular trips to this McDonald's at least until the weather cools off and we can start going to parks again.

Kristen kept stepping on to this stump, counting to 5, 10 whatever number she felt like, and jumping off, she had a great time.
Timmy loved crawling back and forth through this log, over and over and over again.

Riding the Rocking Horse

Kristen got this adorable rocking horse as a 1st birthday present from her Grandma Robin and Grandpa Dave. She was very tentative about riding it and didn't really get into it until she was 13 months. Maybe it's due to his big size or the fact that he is an adventurous boy, but Timmy has already mastered riding the horse! He needs help getting on and off but he can do the rest himself and he sure has fun. This video was taken about 1 1/2 weeks ago.