Birthday Girl!

I had a great birthday this year! I spread the birthday joy out over the week by finding as many free things as possible, including lip gloss, bagels, ice cream, sub-sandwiches, and a meal at Noodles.

On Saturday I woke up to Ben and Paige bringing me a cinnamon roll in bed....the perfect surprise! Then Ben had to work on campus, so Paige and I had a lunch date together. She sat in a booster next to me and we had so much fun!

That night we left Paige with our friends and Ben and I had a fun date. First we got my free Red Robin birthday burger. As Ben was leaving the tip he handed me the folder that had a clue in it. That's when I realized we were going on a scavenger hunt!!! He had funny little clues hidden all around Durham.
Our first stop was the ghetto hotel we stayed in when we first visited NC.

Then Harris Teeter, where I do my best couponing.

Strange Chinese Restaurant

 Good old Taco Bell.

 Chick-fil-a!

 We ended up back at the house where he had a few surprises for me.

Ben did such an awesome job on my birthday! It was so cute how much effort he put into my scavenger hunt, (especially considering how super busy he is) I absolutely loved it!

Sunday (my actual birthday) I made the primary kids sing to me, and then we had some friends over (and a fun visit and amazing brownies from Bill & Laura) for games. My cute friend Lis made me delicious homemade cinnamon rolls that I enjoyed with a Diet Coke (perfect birthday meal).

Paige was struggling waiting for her cinnamon roll

Then that Tuesday I was really spoiled and Jen and Lis threw me and our friend, Becky, a girls night birthday party. We had some incredible treats, including the genius idea of "apple nachos" from Jen, and Lis' addictive homemade caramel corn.

These girls seriously spoiled me, don't know what I would do without them!

It was such a fun birthday week, thanks to my cute friends out her in NC, parents & in-laws for their sweet gifts, friends & family for cards, texts, and calls, and my awesome husband for making it so special!

Autumn time...brings toddlers

Here's what we were up to in September:

Paige at 14 months

 She loves Ben and says "daddy" all the time

We made our first visit to Duke Gardens to have a picnic with some friends. The gardens are absolutely beautiful; I'm sure we will be back often!

The boys playing Boce. (thanks Kelly for the pictures!)

We went to Paige's friend, Ben's, birthday party.

Paige had her first taste of corn on the cob.

We also experienced a lot of teething....poor baby girl

We made some cards for family:

Get well soon Grandpa May!

Bryce & Lindsay did awesome on their marathon!

I went to a girls night out with the fellow Fuqua wives to celebrate some friends upcoming babies

And Paige became a toddler! I don't know if it's just that her hair is now long enough for pigtails and ponys, or if it's her new love of the word "no", but she all of the sudden seems so much older.

Loves to show you where her tongue is

Meltdown

Very curious

Paige at about 15 months:
Height: 30.5 in....50th percentile
Weight: 26 lbs, 6 oz...85th percentile
Head: 49.2 cm......off the charts

Words: daddy, mamma (but I'm pretty sure most of the time she is calling me "Katie"), doggy, NO, oopsy, oh geez (don't know where she got that), yes, hi, go (after ready, set...), mickey, ow, binky, please, shoe

New tricks:
-can show you where her hair, tongue, nose, and belly-button are
-can climb onto the couch (very proud of herself)
-blows her nose (so funny)
-high fives, which she yells as she does, it's very exciting!
-loves to stand by the window when Ben leaves and wave to him and give kisses
-when I print coupons she recognizes the noise and goes and stands by the printer to wait for the paper
-claps when anyone goes to the bathroom and flushes the toilet (gotta love an audience)
-likes to throw things away in the garbage and claps for herself
-since we are trying to get her to not have a binky during the day, she searches for it under her crib, even lifting up the crib skirt, searching frantically for it

She is one funny, little toddler, but still our sweet baby girl!

End of Summer

Here's a mix of some fun things we did to finish off summer.

National Bowling Day! I found coupons for free bowling to celebrate the 'holiday', so we got together with some friends and headed to a ghetto part of town for a free game.

Love these little kiddos

Little miss thing has become very "motherly" and loves to snuggle and pat her dolls.

Paige at just over 13 months

A visit to the Life & Science Museum. This place is awesome! There is so much to do and a great toddler area (and it's free on Wednesdays!).

With her little buddies

One day the guys were off early after midterms, so we got to show the dads the museum. And luckily it's really close to Costco, so of course Costco pizza was in order for dinner :) (don't mind the giant gouge on Ben's forehead from a basketball game)

Butterfly house

The men were fascinated 

Thanks to a free $5 at Toys R Us (which was a fun group outing on its own), we scored a baby pool for the back porch. For over a week it was just in our living room as a toy collector and Paige loved it.

We finally used it for some swimming!

And a funny thing to note, this month Paige learned how to communicate that she wanted cookies. She would take us to the pantry, bang on the door until we opened it, put her hands up to be lifted, then grab the bag off the shelf. It was hilarious. So glad we got a video to document this milestone :)

It was one fun (and very hot!) summer!

Becoming Blue Devils

The first week of school at Duke was orientation. I'm pretty sure there is no learning involved, just crazy activities and a lot of free beer (which equals a lot of free soda for Ben).

They had section olympics, and Ben had to represent his section in the tug-a-war, so of course we went to watch!

The baby section. Notice how hot they look; the humidity was intense! Thankfully there were free food trucks with snow cones for us after...totally worth it! 

At night Ben headed to the clubs for themed Duke parties. Here's his nerd look.

 And his 80's look. (Not even sure this is 80's, there was limited options at Goodwill). Apparently Duke's 80's party is ranked in like the top 10 of all MBA themed parties. Who knew there even was such a ranking?! Glad our tuition money is being well spent ;)

By the end of the week I was worried Ben was joining a fraternity and not an MBA program, but he was even more excited to be at Duke and so were we.

Paige is concerned about her cousins' allegiance...;)

 

We're proud to be Blue Devils!