Lucy's Birthday Preparations

Wow - I am sorry for my blogging hiatus! I will do do my best to catch up over the next couple of days. Work has been crazy -  I just finished my 4th trip in the past 3 weeks. Yikes! I am happy to report that I am off the road for a while now.:) In the middle of my work trips, our sweet Lucy turned one! Good thing that mama had a day off of work to prepare for party and thank goodness that Lucy's Grandmas were in town to help! Last Friday I was very thankful for a recovery day and extra time to spend with Lucy and get ready for the party.

 

Lucy's 1st birthday theme was Rainbows. I had grand visions of making a 6 tiered multi-colored birthday cake but I was talked out of it by some awesome nurses at the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin go-live. They advised me to go with rainbow cupcakes instead. Sold!

I bought a box of 8 rainbow colors of food coloring off of Amazon and picked up some standard boxes of standard white cake mix from the grocery store.

 

I prepared my first box and separated the batter into 6 bowls. Enough colors for ROY G BIV without the Indigo. :)

 

 

Here is the mix after I added the food coloring. Doesn't it look fun? As a next step, I put the batter in ziplock bags and threw them in the refrigerator for an hour or so - that way when I put the batter in the muffin tins, the colors would not run together.

 

 

Lucy played and supervised during the baking adventures.

 

My first batch ended up being a fail due to user error. I guess that it really is important to actually read the instructions on the box. Whoops. I assumed that a cake mix made 12 cupcakes but, in fact, 1 box of cake mix = 24 cupcakes. Who knew? When I told my mom about the mishap over the phone she informed me that cake mix instructions were written at a 5th grade level. Yep. Lesson learned.

 

Long story short - my cupcakes ended up looking like giant volcanoes that spewed rainbow lava. So - I made rainbow cupcakes Part II. I made 24 the second time around. :)

 

Here is my batter ready to go!

It was a fair amount of work to make these cupcakes but I loved the final product. They were super colorful and delicious!

Happy 1st Birthday Lucy!!

What a year! Last November 8 we were blessed with our sweet baby daughter Lucille Lorraine. It seems like it was just yesterday that we welcomed our little Lucy into the world. She is the joy of our lives! We love our little peanut so much! We are so very thankful to have such a happy and healthy girl.

Lucy's first cries

 

 

 

Our big 1 year old

You are the best, Lucy Goose! We are so lucky to be your parents! We love watching you grow.

One Year Ago

One year ago today I started having contractions - our sweet baby Lucy was about to be born! I was about a week overdue so when I started having cramps in the night so I was in disbelief that I could actually be going into labor. :) I slept on and off that night and Daniel and I had breakfast together. The contractions were pretty few and far between at that point so we went about our days. I took Scout on a walk - it was a beautiful November morning. I went to work to finish up a few things before being out of the office on maternity leave. Throughout the day my cramps started to get more intense and closer together. At 4:00, I called Dan and told him to come home! :)
We spent the rest of the evening at home - timing contractions, sitting on the birth ball, doing breathing exercised, and getting our things together to go to the hospital! We were so excited!

I am so thankful for my awesome husband! He was the best birthing/labor partner and he is such an amazing Dad to Lucy. He is my best friend in the world.

Fast forward to today - Our little Lucy is not quite walking but she is getting closer every day! Here is a video of Lucy with her new walking toy, a birthday gift from Grandpa Ken and Grandma Nola. She is so cute pushing around her little stroller. You might wonder, why is the stroller empty? This kid does not give any free rides!! :) When we put a dolly or a stuffed animal in the stroller, Lucy promptly throws it out.

Election Day

Election Day is finally here! The Storm household rocked the vote this morning. Since I was a government major, this day is near and dear to my heart! Plus, I am so tired of all of the ads!! Between the commercials and the junk mail, I am very ready for it all to be over. For the past few months we have been living in what Jon Stewart calls Swing State Hell. :)

I was listening to NPR and they said that the Tammy Baldwin v. Tommy Thompson Senate race in Wisconsin was the most negative race in the entire country with 99% negative commercials, literature, etc. Ugh! We started out the day by telling Lucy about how important voting is and we reminded her that she was born on election day last year. :) During breakfast we all read Duck for president, which is a great book! I definitely recommend it for kids. Here is Lucy reading at the dining room table. How could you not want to vote for this little sweetie's future?

 

 

I hope that you all were able to vote today! It is a privilege for which we should all be grateful! Speaking of being thankful, I saw on another blog that I follow that the author was doing 30 days of thankfulness as a countdown to Thanksgiving. It really resonated with me because over the past few weeks I have been frustrated with my job, I have been obsessed with Lucy's eating issues, stressed out, etc and I do have so much to be grateful for! So, I missed the boat on the 30 days but I will do a post on something that I am thankful for the next 16 days until Thanksgiving. Today, I am thankful that we live in a democracy and that we are able to vote for our leaders.

Spooktacular!

We had a great Halloween at the Storm Household! I started off the day in Illinois - away on a work trip. The hospital I was working at had an awesome pumpkin decorating contest - here is a picture of one of my favorites:

 

I am not sure if it is supposed to be a porcupine or a hedgehog but it was pretty cute. :)

 

Daddy was holding down the fort in Madison and he got Lucy off to daycare on Halloween morning wearing her little skeleton pajamas (thanks for letting us borrow your pj's, Abigail!). They even glow in the dark.  Here is the sweetest skeleton emptying out her diaper bag (a favorite activity of Lucy's these days).

 

 

 

When we got home, Mama changed Lucy into her bee costume, we Facetimed with some family and friends and made sure that our Halloween decorations were glowing!

 

Remember this picture from Halloween time last year? Here is yours truly at almost 40 weeks, thinking that the baby would come any second! haha!

 

 

And here is Miss Lucy celebrating her first Halloween! She loved this glowing ghostie.

 


We did not get many Trick or Treaters this year - I am pretty sure that just 10 or 12 kids stopped by the house. Oh well! We did have a good time dressing up, we watched It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown special, and we had friends over for scary movies! Hope everyone had a great Halloween!

Halloween Weekend

We had a wonderful pre-Halloween weekend! We took family pictures and had Lucy's 1 year old photos on Saturday morning. We had high hopes of taking great outdoor shots but it was a little bit chilly for Lucy Bear so most of the session ended up being indoors. Oh well! We brought our Sophie the giraffe toy so that our photographer would have a squeaky toy to get Lucy's attention but our little peanut would not let go! haha. We are pretty sure that Sophie will make it into the Storm family Christmas cards this year. I can't wait to see the proofs!

 

After our photo session, Lucy donned her bumblebee costume and we headed to Happy Bambino for a Halloween party.

What a sweet little bee!

 

Lucy loved the balloons!! Here she is with her papa and her new favorite toy. :)

We met Lucy's friend Charlotte at the party. Charlotte was dressed up as a very cute little cow. I just love this picture of our girls!

 

After lunch at Crema we went downtown for one more activity - the Kids in the Rotunda series Percussion event!! The girls loved the drums. They got to play little percussion instruments along with the drummers. Here is Lucy playing with a tambourine that was half her size!

 

 

Charlotte and Lucy on top of their Daddy's shoulders playing with instruments. Good times!!

Thanks for the fun afternoon Erinn, Andy, and Charlotte! We can't wait to spend more Saturdays out and about with the girls.

Playdate @ Nolan's

Last Friday afternoon we spent some time at Lucy's friend Nolan's house. It was so fun to catch up and see Lucy's baby friends. Nolan turned 1 last week - it is crazy how fast these kids are growing. The babies dressed up in their Halloween costumes during play time. So cute!
Here is a picture of Eagan (tiger), Mackenzie (ladybug), and Nolan (pumpkin).
We had a great time - it is always good to spend the afternoon with these babies and their mamas. Thanks for hosting, Julie!