what a weekend!

 Whoa!  What a weekend in the Sietstra household!  We packed the weekend filled with activities/events/celebrations...and we're EXHAUSTED.

First, we celebrated the sixth anniversary of this special day:

Was it romantic, you ask?  Well, our 5:45AM morning-breath kiss was pretty romantic...I guess ;)  Why 5:45AM?  A football fundraiser required Keith's presence all day on Saturday, and he needed to be out at the golf course at 6:00AM.  We do plan to have an anniversary date sometime in the very near future...maybe even to a grown-up restaurant!

Our second celebration was the 2nd birthday of our sweet, sweet baby big boy.  We had some family and special friends over for a farm themed birthday bash.

It was so great to be surrounded by so many people who have invested so much love and time into Kase's life!

I came up with the idea for this cake sans Pintrest.  It is possible to be creative without Pintrest! ;)

Our final celebration was one I think surprised many, many people.

 Many of you know of our battle with infertility.  We struggled with it for 2 years before we found out we were pregnant with Kase.  This time was no different, yet very different all at the same time!  It was no different because we were not able to get pregnant without medicine.  However, I think it was different because of the attitude that I personally had.  With Kase, my attitude was "I NEED to be pregnant NOW."  This time, I adopted a more relaxed, laid back attitude.  We had an "in God's time" attitude, not a "my time" attitude.  And...Praise the Lord...we are expecting!!!  Lord willing, we will welcome a baby to our family somewhere around January 14 (right in the middle of basketball season...yikes!)

Happy Anniversary!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Baby!

naptime

I stopped at home during my work errand break today.  It was close to nap time, but I needed to drop something off for Keith.  I walked in and just saw Molly so I knew it was pre-nap relaxing time (one of my favorite times of the day with Kase).  Slowly I walked to Kase's door and noticed that his CD was WELL into his sleeptime CD.  Hmm...what's going on here???  Take a look:

Both of my boys...snoozing...shirtless.  Too cute :)

Firefighter Kase

  This past Halloween I bought some costumes in the after-Halloween sale (70% off is a great way to find some dress-up clothes for those kiddos!).  One of the costumes I bought was a fireman.  Up until now, Kase has only really been interested in the hat.  But tonight, I brought out the coat!

After he got over the excitement of how cool he looked, we ran around the house with his little fire truck (bottom picture) looking for the "smoke."  We ran to different rooms, Kase would say "Where's the smoke?"  Don't worry, Firefighter Kase was on site to spray the smoke with his pretend fire hose!

It's been so fun to watch Kase's imagination develop!

messy yet fun

I have way too many terra cotta pots.  WAY too many.

So, I had the idea to have Kase help me hand paint a few of them!  Call me crazy, but yes, I did hand my not-yet-2-year-old a paint brush! :)  I wasn't quite sure how he's respond.  Mommy's ideas can either be a hit or a bust.  I was anxious to see how this one turned out...and...

IT WAS A HIT!!!

Kase had so much fun painting.  He loved using multiple brushes, multiple paint colors (I cut him off at 6 colors), and didn't want to stop!

"Yook (Look) Mommy, messy hands!"

Then we went to our local greenhouse to pick out some flowers for our newly painted flower pots.

Like any little boy, he was more interested in digging in my bag of potting soil than helping with the flowers!

(Yes, that is dirt covering my child's face.)

Who taught my child to smile like this?!?! :)

He's pretty proud of his project! And so is Mama! I think they're the cutest little pots and love that it adds some personal touches to our barren weed-filled landscaping.

"I paint the flowers Mama"

wordless wednesday

i'm a big boy!!!

update

My apologizes blog readers.  I've been in a bit of a blog/uncreative funk.  I can't seem to get my creative juices going long enough to make an entertaining post.  But then I realized, all you really want to see is pictures of my buddy.  So...here some are.  Here's an update on what we've been doing:

We ate some really big french fries

Over Memorial Day weekend we headed up North for some FFF-forced family fun ;)

On Sunday after church we checked out Boyden's Splash Pad.

Keith said the water was freezing, and Kase wasn't a huge fan of it, but he enjoyed watching Keith and Chris run through the water!

  

A few things got smiles out of Kase:

He thought it was pretty fun to shoot the water guns at Uncle Chris

 And he thought it was pretty funny when Daddy & Chris both had buckets of water dumped on them!

 Most of the time, however, he just ran around the outside of the Splash Pad...

 ...and sat in the grass and watched. 

 Then on Memorial Day we attended the world's shortest parade. (I'm not joking. It's a veteran wagon, the high school band, horses, the boy scouts, and kids riding their decorated bikes...that.is.it.)  However, the events after the parade are more Memorial Day inspirational.  My hometown has a really great program at the cemetery where they honor the past and present veterans.  The program is NOT an appropriate place for a 2-year old rambunctious toddler, so we attended the parade and headed back to Nana & Papa's.

 He had fun waving a flag that Grandma Donna brought to the parade.

 Here we are anxiously awaiting!

Oh we are getting excited!!!

LOVE this boy :)