Family, Birthday Presents, and 3 Weeks of School

Whew... have I mentioned school has started back? If not, school has started back and things have been busy. Therefore, my great plans to get pictures posted from Madigan's birthday weekend have been a bit delayed. And since then, we've had some funny pictures of Madigan with her new presents and a visit from Aunt Kate that needs to be shared. I don't know where the time goes. Oh well, I'm here now and I am dedicated to getting this blog updated...unless I get distracted by something else like grocery shopping, laundry or sleep.

I'll start with pictures from when my family came to visit (for Madigan's party). Here's a cute one of Aunt Susie and Madi...

Madigan was so excited her cool older cousins got to come to her party. Aren't they beautiful? Just a swingin' (with Pa!)

I'm going to have to do a better job of taking pictures of Madigan and GeeGee, but I promise she was here too! Thanks so much to all of you for coming to help celebrate her birthday. It meant a lot to all of us.

Madigan received quite a few presents from GeeGee and Pa. One was an entire bag full of adorable "bug stuff" - an umbrella, raincoat, sunglasses, hat, backpack, shovel, broom, magnifying glass, and some other things I can't think of right now. Here's a picture in some of her gear :)
Where is Madigan? Oh wait, that's her umbrella (which has actually come in handy today thanks to Hurricane Gustav).Mom also got her a really cute outfit, so we captured a few pictures while she was wearing that.
Yep, there's the sunglasses again...
Since our best buddy Jenna was around, we captured a few pictures of them together.
One of Ted's coworkers gave Madigan this bear. It's the softest thing I've ever felt and as you can see, Madigan is quite fond of it. I think I'm finally caught up to last weekend when Aunt Kate came to visit. Madigan was so excited to see her and got to stay home with her on Friday while Mommy and Daddy went to work. She kept telling us bye before we were ready to go. No tears here - we've got things to do!Here's a picture of them dressed up as princesses. (Just disregard all of the food left on Madigan's face from lunch.)On Saturday, we spent some time outside playing in Madigan's "new" ($1 garage sale find) shark pool (although she insisted that it was a whale). She also got to play in the cool Backyardigan's sprinkler that Aunt Kate gave her. She liked it right up until the point when it sprayed her. :)Unfortunately, I was a bad mom and didn't take many pictures of her with Aunt Kate this time. Sorry about that Kate! But, thanks for coming to visit us. When I asked Madigan if she had a good time with Aunt Kate, she nodded yes and said, "she payed with me". She was quite sad to see her go!

Last but not least, I wanted to post some pictures of Madigan's new hairdo. I think it's cute, but it also makes her look older, so I'm not sure I like it!Woo hoo - I'm caught up! Now hopefully I can post shorter entries more frequently. Hope you all have a great rest of the week!