Happy Birthday Charlotte!

On Saturday, May 29, Charlotte Van Pelt turned ONE and had a great birthday party! Gavin, Vivian, and I went to celebrate, eat, and of course play with all of Charlotte's toys!

Happy Birthday Charlotte!

#99: make rosier rundown blog book

I finally finished making our blog book on Blurb.com! And it arrived on Thursday! It's 438 pages and absolutely AMAZING!

#99, check!

Click HERE to see the rest of my 101 in 1001 list.

i heart kelly allen

I heart Kelly Allen!

Kelly Allen is a Lafayette photographer who took some GREAT pics of us earlier this week. She's professional, creative, inexpensive (!), and accommodating. In fact, our kids didn't last very long on Tuesday night, so she offered to do another mini session with us next week. She's great! Here are a few of our favorites from our first session with Kelly...

Stay tuned for photos from our second session!

Peaches

This is a picture of me and my fellow Peaches. All you need to know about the name is that it's a long story that involves an end-of-semester paper, alcohol, a song from the 70s, a practical joke that the target never understood, and five friends. We all started our Ph.D. program at Purdue together and we'll all be finishing around the same time (a 1 year gap counts as "around the same time", right?). During our four years together at Purdue, six of our children have been born (Sydney, Noah, Gavin, Vivian, Charlotte, & Evelyn), we've thrown 5 bridal or baby showers for one another (and probably another 5 for other people), ate countless meals together, celebrated numerous accomplishments (like PRF grants, teaching awards, and finished defenses), exchanged hundreds of emails (about everything from party invitations to article solicitations to baby announcements), and talked for what has probably amounted to several hundred hours (seriously). The photo above was taken last week at lunch, which was the last gathering where we all could be together (minus a few of our little Peaches) as Purdue students. These ladies, Rebecca, Brenda, Elizabeth, & Kristi, mean the world to me and I can't wait to see them again soon!

Evelyn Audrey Munz

On Monday, May 24, 2010 at 11:41am, our friends Elizabeth and Joshua Munz welcomed their second daughter into the world.

Evelyn Audrey Munz

weighed a whopping 9 lbs 10 ounces and was 21 1/4 inches long. Unfortunately, I have not been able to sneak away from our two kids to visit them yet. But, after reading their blog, I can tell that Joshua is incredibly proud, Sydney (their two-year-old daughter) is quite curious, and Elizabeth is absolutely glowing. We have been very lucky to have friends like the Munzs while we've lived in Lafayette. We're so excited for you all!

#42: go to the zoo

Click HERE to read my full 101 in 1001 list.

The Dry vs. The Wet

No, this is not another post about pee.

Yesterday, we took the kids to Lafayette's little zoo. It's adorable. Anytime anyone comes to visit us in Indiana, we go (as long as it's open). Right when you walk in, there are a few little fountains and kids are always playing in them. In fact, many people bring their kids already in their bathing suits and let them play in the fountains for hours. Anywho, we took Gavin and Vivian to the zoo for their birthday in the beginning of the month, but it was too cold to play in the water. Yesterday, it was 90 degrees. Perfect. The only problem was that both kids were really apprehensive about diving in. They wanted to be held the whole time and were not interested in touching the water at all. Vivian even cried a little.

But after we looked at all of the animals at the zoo (post to come), we returned to the water on our way out. This time, Gavin wasn't messing around. He saw the other kids having fun and decided that it was high time for him to get wet.

He walked straight into the fountain several times (pulling Wes in with him) and got completely SOAKED.

Vivi, on the other hand, was still a bit anxious (see how she's clenching onto Wes' clothes in the second photo- she was less-than-happy about the situation).

For some reason, Gavin looks upset in this photo below, which is hilarious to us because he was desperately pulling Wes to go in the water. I guess he was also a little scared.

In the end, Viv got to ride home in dry clothes while Gav had to ride home in wet clothes. But he didn't seem to mind.