In the 6 1/2 years that I have had a blog I never once missed one month of posting... until last month! I don't even know what happened (but I know a lot happened) and I still feel like it still should be May. I feel like I lost an entire month! It was an extremely busy month, starting with my birthday and graduation from the Bachelor's in Nursing program at MSU. My parents came for the weekend to support me and we had a blast!
The morning after they arrived, my parents took me birthday shopping while we waited for Jared to be home from school. My sweet dad pushed Shad around in the stroller while my mom and I searched for a dress to wear for my graduation.
We ate lunch at McAlister's Deli
Then we drove up north to Mackinaw City and stayed in a beautiful hotel on the beach, but unfortunately it was still in the 30's outside and ice was still floating in the lake. Still beautiful nonetheless.
The next morning we took the ferry over to Mackinac (also pronounced Mackinaw-something about the French pronouncing it that way but the English writing it the way it sounded....) Island. It was totally deserted, probably because the high for the day was 39 degrees! Most of the shops were closed, but we did go up and walk in the Grand Hotel.
It was super cold, and Shad wasn't too happy about it
Shad really loves his grandma and grandpa, and I love these pice of them!
The next day was my birthday and graduation. I could hear Shad in the audience the whole time saying, "Cars! Weeoo weeoo!" I love his sweet little voice!
My mom snapped this one of me and Shad walking down the stairs and him holding my "diploma"
My awesome supportive parents. Love them!
The two loves of my life
After graduation my parents took us to a local sushi place. I cannot get enough sushi rolls!
Then that night we had pizzas on the Traeger and cake and ice cream to finish up the celebrations. I was so spoiled and felt so loved all day!
This is the end of part 1... I don't have the energy to post anymore tonight!
Our sweet little Shad turned 1 at the first of this month. I can't believe he is already 1!
The day of his birthday we took him to Uncle John's Cider Mill. Here he is driving the bus:
Both of their faces really crack me up! Priceless!
Running around (he's getting harder to catch these days!)
It was really fun, but he got tired pretty quickly and was ready for his afternoon nap before we got a good family picture. We attempted a few nonetheless.
That night we had his birthday party. I really wanted to do something exciting and had a couple really cute ideas for his birthday party, but I have been a little burned out with school and work lately so I just decided to go low-key and easy with a Halloween theme. I'm sure he won't remember anyway...
I had everyone start singing "Happy Birthday" to him, and then my camera on my phone stopped working and I couldn't get it to work again until half-way through the song. Dang technology!
(Notice how Jared almost burns our son with his first birthday candle... Oops!)
Here is the result of us letting him do whatever he wanted with his cake:
Don't worry, everyone else got to eat pumpkin cupcakes.
Here are some of the new toys he got:
Here are some fun facts about this sweet one year old:
-He can now walk like a champ (although he mostly RUNS these days- usually away from me when I am trying to get him ready for bed!)
-His vocabulary now consists of "Da-da" (the word he uses for almost everything) "Ma-ma" (usually only when he is upset) "Uh-oh" (his new favorite word) and a TON of gibberish that sounds like a combination on German, Chinese, and who knows what else
-He is the BIGGEST flirt and knows people think he is cute!
-His favorite food is cheese, any kind really
-He finally gained weight above the single digits for percentile! At his one year appointment he was in the 17th percentile for weight, and 50th for height and head circumference. Yeah!
-He just has such a pleasant demeanor about him and is so much fun to be around
We are so amazingly blessed to be his parents. We really lucked out with him being so happy the majority of the time.
Shad took his first airplane ride and we flew to Utah last week. It was so nice to be able to see family, but definitely too short as always. Shad did relatively well on all four flights, considering our first two were during the time he is normally asleep for the night. (Note to self: no more scheduling flights during the night time, they don't sleep nearly as much as you would think/hope, even after drugging them with Benadryl).
Our first two flights (Detroit to Denver and then Denver to SLC) were both delayed by an hour and a half, so we ended up getting in the Utah around 12:30 am (it should have come in just after 10 pm). Here is Jared and Shad waiting in Denver for our next flight:
(Jared had to miss an important hockey game and Shad was trying desperately to sleep)
Here is Shad on his very first plane ride:
(He looks a little annoyed to be awake when he should be sleeping- sorry dude!)
The first full day we were there, we spend most of the day in Salt Lake with my parents. They took Shad for a walk around temple square later that day while Jared took a nap and I finished my last two papers for school.
Me and Shad at Grandma and Grandpa's house (I'm pretty sure he had just woken up. He looks a little drunk)
That night we hung out at my sister Holly's house in the backyard and had a BBQ and cake to celebrate my birthday
Daddy and Shad
Holly made an amazing Banana Poke Cake (soooo good!)
Shad was so adorable in his Tiger's jacket and backwards hat. He looks way too old {and cute} for his own good!
Shad had a lot of cousin time this past week, and we loved it!
Shad and baby cousin Brigham
(Brigham's face cracks me up in this one-it looks like Shad is torturing him!)
Shad and cute cousin Lily
Shad with the Mason boys (Brigham, James and Logan)
Logan (3) wanted to hold Shad too
(After I took the picture Logan said, "Ok, I'm done with him. Take him away." Haha I just love this kid's personality!)
Cute cousins waiting to go shopping and eat at the food court in Salt Lake
Shad is ready in his new outfit Grandma Grose bought him (What a little stud!)
Shad got to see his "brousin" (brother/cousin) Bentley. They hugged, it was so cute!
Shad with his adorable birth mom Sasha (He definitely got her gorgeous eyes!)
Shad and Brigham with Grandma and Grandpa Grose
(Sorry Mom, I didn't realize your eyes were squinty until after I got it on the computer from my phone. Still a cute pic though!)
We went to lunch at Zupa's one of the days with a lot of my mom's side of the family (I stole this collage from her blog)
Jared and I also went to lunch at Golden Corral with my Grandpa Grose one of the days and I am kicking myself for not taking a picture of him with Shad!
I also don't know why I don't really have any pictures of Jared's side of the family (Sorry Cathy!)
It wasn't on purpose, I think my family just takes more pictures and someone (usually my mom or dad) is usually just asking to take pictures whenever we are hanging out. Most of these pictures were taken by my mom and I stole them from her blog.
I did get a picture of the ice cream cake Cathy got for George and me when we celebrated our birthdays on Friday- it was delicious!
When we got home it was 8:30 pm on Saturday night, which is usually past Shad's bedtime. He was acting so tired, but when I tried putting him to bed he became super wired and didn't want to sleep. So I brought him downstairs where Jared was watching the Red Wings game and put him in the jumper until he wore himself out. Here is a silly video of him:
Seriously, he was so wired like this until about 10:30 when he finally crashed. Then he slept until10:30 the next morning. I hope he can get back on his regular schedule soon!
The only thing I don't like about having a birthday at the first of May is that finals week is almost always during the same week. Jared's finals fell on my birthday this year, so I decided I might as well work because I didn't want to make him feel like he had to take his time away from studying. I also knew my mom was coming the next day so I would get the rest of the week off anyway. The day actually wasn't terrible. When I clocked in to work that day, the automated lady that tells you the time when you clock in told me Happy Birthday. One of the techs that I work with also knew it was my birthday, so she wrote it on the whiteboard and told me Happy Birthday every time I saw her. When I got home from work that day, there were flowers and a card sitting on the table from Jared, and there were two packages for me. One was from my friend Sierra, and the other was from my sister Ash. Sierra gave me a cute purple top (and a bunch of candy and a back massager), and Ash made me the cutest necklace ever. The two actually went perfectly together:
That night my friends Jess and Doug brought me over a little cake and sang to me. I ate almost the whole thing while I waited for my food to arrive that I ordered online (which ended up never coming because the idiot who was supposed to check their fax machine for online orders didn't get it for over an hour, so then I told them to forget about it and drove to McDonald's and got a Big Mac and a strawberry shake.) I also got on facebook and had a lot of very nice birthday wishes from my friends and family. I felt very loved. My friends Britani and James also brought me cupcakes the next day (which is the day I picked up my mom from the airport- see previous post).
The day after my mom left I had to go back to work. When I got home, I was greeted by Jared with a cake and his Iphone with my parents singing to me on speaker phone. Jared had to take a picture to send to my parents. Warning, it's kind of gross- but I did just work 12 1/2 hours so get off my back.
(The flowers in the picture are the ones Jared gave me on my birthday.)
Overall, it was a great birthday/week and I felt very loved. Thank you everyone for making me feel so special on my birthday!
I turned 21 on Saturday, and for my birthday Jared took me to Wendover. We rode the "fun bus" with a lot of very interesting people. It was really fun, and pretty cheap too. It's $15 a person, and that includes the bus ride roundtrip, $5 back in cash to gamble with, a few free drinks at Starbucks and any other bar (we got "cherry" cokes, and the lady just put a cherry in each of our drinks; she was really pretty snotty). It also included a free buffet which wasn't bad either and I had a huge piece of cheesecake for dessert, YUM! So then we were bad and each spent our 5 dollars on gambling, playing the nickel machines. Our total winnings were.... $17! Yeah, I know, we're pretty much the richest people I know now, so feel free to ask us for loans anytime. HA! So here are a couple pictures of us at the casino, we asked the lady to give it to us all in ones so we could fan it out and take a picture.
This one is kind of fuzzy, I don't know if it's because we have a crappy camera or if the lady that took it was just drunk. Maybe it's a combination of both. :)
So here are a couple pictures of us at the casino, we asked the lady to give it to us all in ones so we could fan it out and take a picture. 
