Happy 4th Birthday, Eleanor!

Our beautiful, sweet Eleanor is 4 today! We celebrated her birthday on Saturday at the Canticle Park shelter at Assisi Heights. It was a perfect day - a bit cool, but sunny and warm when you sat in the sun. Obviously, the theme she wanted this year (and by theme I just mean what type of cake!) was Hello Kitty. She was so proud of her cake which had a little purse and compact mirror on the top to be removed and played with later.

We had a special surprise for Eleanor. Her little friend Olivia came to her party! Eleanor met Olivia this summer when she spent three days with Mari Lee in St. Cloud. Mari Lee's friend Alice is Olivia's grandmother. Alice was kind enough to bring Olivia down to Rochester for the party. They came to the house first and the girls immediately started playing and pretty soon were dressed up as princesses!

Miriam wasn't too sure how she felt about all this birthday stuff....

The girls also put a little dance "show" on for us which I got on video. I'll post that later.

Miriam (in her fall coat!) up at the shelter. It was absolutely gorgeous up at Assisi Heights and it was great because we were able to let the kids just run. Wide open spaces + small children = happy adults. :)

Besides Olivia, Theodore & Lucy came to the party (with Jon). This was kind of the first "friend party" for Eleanor. I love how Theodore has his hands in his pocket in this picture. Theodore & Eleanor (aka The Roosevelts) will be in preschool together this fall. Aunt Sue, Matt & Melissa, Mari Lee & Alice were also at the party. Eleanor got a lot of cute gifts (I had no idea there was so much Hello Kitty merchandise!) and fall clothes including a purple plaid pea coat and flare jeans w/rhinestone details from Matt & Melissa. And, an adorable polka dot Hello Kitty dress with a bubble skirt from Mari Lee. Truly, clothes for a big girl!

Eleanor got a double treat having Olivia come to Rochester. Mari Lee & Alice got a hotel room with a pool and the girls spent the night with their grandmothers. After the party, Michael and I joined them at the hotel to watch the girls swim. Eleanor was really tired the next day because they didn't get to sleep until after 10 o'clock. Eleanor told me the next day (after she had a good nap) "I didn't have trouble going to sleep because I just sucked my fingers, but Olivia had trouble." She also told me she had Fruit Loops & a pancake at the continental breakfast in the morning. Every 4-year-old's dream birthday breakfast!

The kids got so silly when I was telling them they had to wait to have cake. They wanted to tear into that frosting so bad!

This is the only picture I could get with the candles lit. It was hard to keep them lit with the breeze at the park.

"Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you..." With all of us musicians, this was sung beautifully (perfectly in tune w/harmony) as you can imagine! :)

Proud Mom & Dad with the birthday girl.

We truly can't believe that she's 4 already - sniff, sniff. She's already becoming quite the little lady.

Eleanor - we love you so much and are so proud of the mature, smart, kind little girl you've become. You are so precious to us! Happy Birthday!

A special Happy Birthday to Uncle Jordan who also has a birthday today. He's 29!!

Mari Lee's 60th Birthday

The weekend of August 20 - 22 we headed to St. Cloud for Mari Lee's 60th birthday celebration! We had dinner with the whole Culloton/Mohs clans at a restaurant called Jack & Jim's. It's kind of a family tradition to meet there for the milestone birthdays. It was fun to see some of the relatives we haven't seen since Christmas.

On the Friday evening we arrived, we met up with some old family friends - the Hills. Marni & Courtney Hill have been friends with Matt & Mike since high school. Marni now lives in Texas but was in town with her family visiting her parents. It was great to reconnect with them and see their kids! Marni also has an Eleanor and her son is Miles. Courtney has Elin. All the kids had fun playing together - especially on the trampoline.

The 2 Eleanors!

Once again, trying to get one decent shot of the girls is next to impossible. But, this is a cute one. This is before we went out to dinner in Mari Lee's front yard.

Eleanor got the idea in her head that she should put her hands by her face to pose for the picture. It's cute though!

We hope you had a great birthday, Mari Lee. We love you and thanks for all you do for our family.

Dinnertime Fun

Silly, Silly, Silly - Miriam 15 mo. from Brynn Culloton on Vimeo.

Miriam was just in a silly mood after her dinner tonight. She was trying to pull her bib off and started making faces. You can see in this video that her bib got off of one shoulder and her hair is all messy from trying to get the bib off. Michael was then able to get her to act silly. Try not to smile watching this! :)

Trip to ND

We headed out to North Dakota on August 11th. Michael had to take his diagnostic tests for the starting of his doctoral program at NDSU (yes, he's finally starting the long process to completing his DMA in choral conducting!). We got as far as Fargo and stayed in a hotel. Eleanor now loves to stay in hotels and thinks the continental breakfast is so cool! On August 12th, Michael had about 4 hours of testing plus meeting with his advisor (and getting his student ID card!) so I had to occupy the girls for quite a while. We stayed in the hotel that morning and tried to swim, but it was a dinky-sized pool and it was cold. We then headed out to West Acres Mall which is a great mall to kill some time in. Michael finally called at about 3 pm and we headed to my parents' place in Bismarck & arrived just in time for dinner.

This is the view at the end of my parents' road. Gorgeous views! ND was absolutely beautiful because they've had a lot of rain and the weather was in the 70s.

The weather was pretty cool for swimming, but Eleanor wanted to try it anyway. My Mom has a little kiddie pool for them.

We let Miriam just swim naked because she had a diaper rash and we thought some good air time would be good for that. Plus, it was just too cute!

We celebrated Eleanor & Michael's September birthdays while we were there. A cake from DQ and presents! Eleanor thought that was pretty cool because she basically now gets 2 parties.

This is outside my Mom & Dad's front door.

Going for an evening walk to enjoy those glorious ND views!

A cute picture of Eleanor & Michael on the trail. This rock was in a neighbor's yard, but she had fun playing on it. Hope they didn't mind!

Another great view at the edge of the road.

The girls with Uncle Joe. Unfortunately, he had to work most of the time we were there. But, he had dinner with us the first night and stopped by before we left. Joe is a nurse and works at Medcenter One Hospital in Bismarck. He just passed his nursing boards this summer and we're very proud of him! He works the night shift from 6 pm to 6 am and so it was fairly easy for him to stop by and see us before we left. We had to leave at 8 am because we had to do the complete drive back in one day. It's a total of 9 hours.

A family shot the night before we left.

Thanks again for everything, Mom & Dad! We love you and so enjoy our time in Bismarck every time we come.

(I'll have a post soon about our trip to the Dakota Zoo!)

Annual Nesheim Dinner

Whenever we go out to Bismarck we try and get together with Paul & Martha Nesheim for dinner. Paul was one of our choral directors at Concordia and we've stayed friends all these years. They have two children, Lute (6) & Linnea (5). I didn't get any pictures of the adults, but some of the kiddos.

Lute & Eleanor in the sandbox. The kids played together really well and Miriam just tried to keep up! You may notice in this picture Eleanor's cut lip. She had an accident at their place where she had a run in with a coffee table!

We hope it's not another year before we see them again, but we're glad that we get to catch up when we get the chance!

Walking - 15 months

These were some of her first real steps alone. She's gotten much faster even in the last week. In this video Eleanor had fallen asleep on the floor and Miriam got a kick out of waking her up!Miriam's Walking (finally)! from Brynn Culloton on Vimeo.

What's Miriam been up to?

OK, folks. I haven't blogged in awhile, so get ready for the posts to come fast & furious! It's been a crazy summer. Trips to NYC, Bismarck, & St. Cloud and in the meantime I got a raging sinus infection that took 2 rounds of antibiotics to clear up - so needless to say blogging was last on my list. But, I have many updates!! First, I have to start with Miriam because she's changing so much these days and I haven't done a post on her in awhile.

The following are just some random pictures that were taken this summer. The big news here is that Miriam is finally walking!! It's been her summer project. She's been crawling, walking along furniture, and standing for quite some time, but she just seemed very hesitant to take the plunge. She finally just a few days ago got the hang of it. I'll post a video later of some of her first solo walking.

Both girls love to take the couch cushions off and play & make forts. Miriam loves it because she can easily crawl on and off the couch with the cushions off.

Silly girl. She's hard to get a picture of lately because she's busy, busy, busy. But, also because she likes to reach for the camera.

When I try and get pictures of both girls Eleanor has a tendency to want grab Miriam. Miriam doesn't like that and then this is what I usually end up getting for a shot.

Spaghetti night!

Miriam's little personality is developing more and more every day. She still doesn't talk much (or at least say much we can understand) but she says Mama, Dada, and likes to point to things and say "this." She also can identify some body parts (her belly button is her favorite) by pointing or blinking (for her eyes). She understands a lot of what we say to her or commands we give. Eleanor was a very early talker and I can't compare because Miriam just has a totally different personality. Plus, Eleanor does all the talking, so why bother!? :)

Miriam's a sweetie-pie and we love her so!