Since San Fran



I am thinking that I need to change this blog title to "The Best Biannual News!" - sorry!

Well, I think that it is only fitting that my last post (oh so long ago) ended with a mention of the wonderful trip that Brett and I took out to San Francisco. As most of you may already know, not only do we have some wonderful photos to always remind us of our Valentine's trip to California, but we will also be expecting our third child in November (our little SF baby). Oops....let me clarify that though...it is a happy oops! We are all definitely excited! Emma, of course, it telling everyone, "Mommy has a baby in her belly. It is a girl!" Well, she may be a little surprised on July 2nd at the sono if it isn't a girl...not sure how we will break that to her since she is so dead set on this baby being a girl! :)

Other updates; we put our house on the market in March and have a sale pending on it currently, I officially have my own freelance graphic design business (Best Graphics) and have been keeping quite busy with that since January, Emma finished her first year of preschool at St. John's Lutheran.

In March we had a wonderful visit from aunt Jenny (all the way from Austalia - and she will be coming home again at Christmas! YAYYYYY!!!!) and Ryan, too. Brett and I took a weekend trip with them to St. Louis (while the kids stayed with Mimi and Poppa Rigg), visited the City Museum (which was very different and fun), had a fun night with a nice dinner and a little bit of gambling at the Lumiere finished off with dessert and martinis at Bailey's Chocolate Bar, and ended the weekend with a tour of the Budwieser plant before Jenn and Ryan headed out for a car tour of the southern U.S.

I can't believe it is already the start of summer! We had such a fun and relaxing Memorial Day weekend. We set the giant water slide up in the back yard, had some neighbor friends over and grilled out all weekend!

I do apologize, yet again, I have done a horrible job of taking pictures the past couple of months (must get better with yet another baby joining us soon), but have posted a few from Easter, park play dates, our first family Cardinal game for the season, dress-up, etc. just click on the header "Since San Fran" above to see the photos!

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A little behind!

As it always seems to go, I am a little behind again! I have lots of "catching everyone up-to-date" to do!

We ended January with a birthday party for Meme Best at LaFiesta. Emma and Nolan both enjoyed the ice cream cake that Aunt Traci bought.

I also finally got Brett to hang our latest picture from Sarah Petty Photography...I am so excited I just had to share a picture of it! ;)

The past few weeks have been fun packed with a Princess playdate at our house, a visit to the dentist (which Emma was not a fan of this time....amazing how 6 months makes a difference with a 3 yr old), playing outside in the show, a bounce house birthday party for a friend of Emma's, an ER visit for Nolan, Valentine's celebrations both at school and at home, a weekend trip to San Francisco for mommy and daddy (while Emma and Nolan enjoy having Meme, Poppa, Aunt Kristin and Uncle John stay with them), and a visit from Great Aunt Laurie and Great Uncle Tom. The kids also joined me this past week for my girl's night dinner with my high school girlfriends and Emma was our photographer...she did really well, I think we may have to get her a camera of her own soon!

The princess playdate was a ton of fun! Emma invited a group of friends over and they all came dressed in princess attire. Nolan and Ella's brother, Eli, were the princes. Mimi and Poppa Rigg sent a copy of the "Princess and the Frog" movie while they are in Texas, so the girls sat in the movie theatre in the basement and watched the movie while enjoying popcorn, juice and some candy! What a treat! We had a little lunch, some playtime and I even made and decorated frog shaped cookies for them to take home. (Trying to make my Aunt Letty proud!) ;)

Brett and I had a great time visiting Nikki in San Francisco for Valentine's weekend. We walked a ton and ate a ton. Unfortunately, I wasn't feeling the greatest with an upper respiratory infection and laryngitis, but made the most of our short time there anway...what a beautiful city!

NOTE: Don't forget to click on the header above to see more photos! Enjoy!

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New do's!

As you may notice I have peeled away the cobwebs, from the lack of not doing any Flash work in a long while, and have designed a small Flash banner above. "Christmas photos???", you may be thinking. Well, I have been feeling guilty since I never got around to getting a good enough picture for a Christmas card this year, so I took a year off...sorry! Hopefully I will get a good one next year! Thought maybe you would at least enjoy seeing that I attempted to capture a nice picture of the kids. ;)

We have had a fun week here at the Best household, haven't done anything too extraordinary, but had a great time anyway. On Thursday, Emma, Nolan and I each got our hair cut. It was Nolan's first, and he was not a fan to say the least! My mom got back into town after being with my Gram in Chicago for a week and a half. She had been up there going to doctor's appointments and being with my Gram while she got some more tests done to figure out what treatments she will need for beating the breast cancer she was recently diagnosed with. Hopefully Gram will find out more on Tuesday when she goes to the doctor and also gets the results back from her PET scan. So, Thursday night the kids and I had dinner at Darcy's Pint with my mom before she heading to Texas to meet up with my dad on Friday. It was great to see her, I know that my Gram really appreciated her being up there with her!

Saturday night we were getting a bit of cabin fever, so Brett suggested getting a bite to eat and heading to the mall for the kids to run around a bit (of course we were both thinking that the mall and the play area, wouldn't be that crowded, I mean it is Springfield and all, but boy were we wrong!) After we grabbed some dinner at Chipotle, we headed to the mall. We didn't last long in the play area since there were a couple kids coughing with really snotty noses (YUCK!) and there were some bigger kids that were a bit, hummmm how should I say this, routy. I did finally manager to catch Nolan, on video, walking.



Emma was happy to leave the play area once we told her we could ride on the carousel and get a cookie at the Cookie Factory. We had a nice family outing and it was great to get out of the house!

As always, Emma has entertained us this week! One day this week while I was laying Nolan down for his nap, I could hear the water in the bathroom running. When I went to go check on Miss E, she turned to me and said "I have a beard!" SO I decided to capture it on camera in between laughing! Hey, at least I know she can entertain herself! Then, on Friday I had a doctor appointment, so as we were getting ready to leave the house Emma ran back to her room to grab her shoes and bumped her neck on the handle of her door. She came running out to me crying and said (in a very whiney 3 yr old voice), "I hurt my neck on my door." I gave her a hug, made sure she was okay and then finished getting ready to leave. She was still whining about it a bit so I asked her, "Are you going to be okay? Or are we going to have to cut your neck off?" To which she replied, ever so cutely, "No I fine. We can't my neck. We only cut bread. We don't cut Emma's."

We ended our weekend at the Coker's house, last minute on Sunday night, to celebrate Campbell's (Coco's) six and a half year birthday and for some yummy cupcakes! Ashley makes her own chocolate frosting and it is to die for, seriously if I lived at their house I would probably weigh 500 pounds! All the kids (well except baby Nolan) got to have birthday candles, which you will notice in the video. Unfortunately, I didn't have my video camera with me, so I had to capture the video on my regular camera and right before Coco made her wish, my memory card filled up and ended the video....I am sure it was a good wish though!



When my parents went to visit my sister in Australia back in December, my sister had sent home a couple items/gifts for the kids. One of the items was a pair of adorable Koala bear slippers for Emma to open on her birthday, but got put aside after unpacking by my mom (and then repacking for Chicago and then packing again for Texas, I mean, who can blame her...that is a lot of packing and unpacking)! So, she got the slippers today when I stopped by to check on my parents house and here is a pic, mostly for my sister since she lives so far away ;(, of the cute Koala slippers she sent.



Another video I have added is just a silly one that I captured of the kids after finishing dinner one night this week. Nolan really loves to dance and does this silly head shake...Emma of course likes to encourage it too! ;)



NOTE: Don't forget, you can view more images, by clicking on the title of the article above. Enjoy!

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A New Year, A New Blog


I hope that the New Year is finding everyone in good health! With a new year ahead of us, we decided to go with the times and start a blog this year instead of continuing with babysites.com. I am going to do my best to post a new blog weekly, so keep coming back for the latest and greatest on the Best family.

NOTE: You can view more images, by clicking on the title of the article above. I will have this option with each new post, but hopefully won't have as many photos as I do now, I am just a little behind on updating everyone with photos. Enjoy!

Emma and Nolan both celebrated their birthdays a couple weeks ago. Emma is now 3 and Nolan had his 1st birthday. As goes with most kids who have birthdays 4 days apart from one another (something I always said I would never do to my children, of course until I learned you just don't get to choose those things in life), a joint birthday party was had. It was a great time, but I have to say, I can't wait till next year when we have a "small" party (all done with the big parties....we decided to only have those for "big" birthdays)! We rented space at The Pizza Machine, a fun, new-ish restaurant here in Springfield, and ordered several 40" pizzas, which were delivered to us with a crane. All the kids seemed to have a great time running, playing in the video arcade and going down the slide. Emma and Nolan were all hopped up on sugar by the time we left and we thought for sure they would both fall asleep on the way home (especially since Nolan was 2 seconds from falling asleep on Aunt Kristin), but quite the opposite happened! Emma wanted to open ALL of her wonderful presents when we got home and Nolan wanted to play with the paper, so at 9:30 they were both finally in bed. I wish I could say I got to rest after that, but I had some freelance work to do. I did get to sleep finally at 3:30am. Don't feel sorry for me....I do it to myself!



We had the Fleck family over for lunch this past weekend and the kids had a great time together. Little Jori couldn't look more like her father if she tried! (She is in the picture with Emma in her new "big" girl bed.)

Other big news....

Nolan is walking, well, part of the time. He has still decided that he enjoys the "knee walking" every now and then and even some crawling still, but is really getting the hang of walking. He walked the whole length of our hallway this evening...yeah Nolan!!!!

Emma is officially in a big girl bed and loving it (well for the most part...tonight she told me she wanted her "tent" back on her bed)! We are struggling a bit to get her to lay down at night (as I am positive that is a typical 3 year old struggle) but once she lays down and falls asleep, she stays in her own bed until about 7:30am. Thank goodness that I do not have the 5am wakers (is that a word?).... not sure I could handle that since I normally don't go to bed till after midnight.

We had our first parent/ teacher conference for Emma's preschool. She is doing wonderfully, which I have to say I might be a little biased, but I am not surprised!

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