Madi had her 12 month checkup this morning. She is now 19 lbs. 11 oz.(27%) and 28.5 in (30%). She has only gained 2 lbs and .5 in in 3 months but the doctor said she is growing good, very healthy and developmentally she is at 15 months. She can now have whole milk. Which we tried at lunch and she isn't liking it so well, only took about 3 sips. We can't turn her carseat around yet, not until 20 lbs, almost there! She finally broke through with a tooth on the top this morning and the one next to it is almost there and the teeth on the other side of those are really close. She has been holding out and now she will have 4 teeth all at once. It has been a big day!!

Chris had to work Sunday morning and then we took off for the lake. Spent some more time with Jason and Tabatha. We were just lazy. Madi played on the deck and out in the yard. Walking everywhere and of course wanting to go in the road. We had a nice time. We were back by noon on Monday, Chris had to go back down to the shop and work for a couple of hours, getting ready for the week. They are doing a big demo and remodel out at the vo-tech school starting this week and had to make some carts to haul out all the old fixtures. Never a day off anymore.

I am slowly getting the house back to normal from this weekend. Got all of Madi's new toys out and hopefully this week I can go through all of her clothes and get some stuff boxed up and winter clothes put away. I can already tell the new house is going to have to have one big storage room just for baby stuff and clothes. I am running out of room in our storage room now.

Better get busy. It's a short week!!!

Love, Amy

Playing Peek-a-Boo

Blowing Kisses

Mowing PaPa's lawn

A few pics from Madi's birthday weekend! (More photos in my photo albums)

Birthday Party eating cake
Birthday-riding in her new wagon from Grandma and Grandpap
Birthday Party-riding her new tricycle from Uncle Jon
Birthday Party-most of the kids that came

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MADILYN!!!

Yesterday was Madi's 1st Birthday Party. What a wonderful day! Thank you to everyone for the gifts and sharing this special day. Special thank you to my mom who helped cook all day Friday and setting up. And Jason and Tabatha for helping clean up. And dad for running errands. And of course Chris for making it all possible. What a huge help.

One year ago we were waiting for Madilyn to be born. I can say that I was impatient for the arrival. (Being on complete bed rest and sick as a dog for a week will do that!) We were admitted to the hospital at 11:00 pm on the 24th in order to be induced at 4:00 am on the 25th. After my water was broke at 10:00 am and 4 hours of contractions getting stronger, I finally received my epidural. I was able to relax and get some rest! At 6:30 pm we sent everyone out of the room and at 7:56 pm Madilyn Marie Helm was born. 6lb. 9oz and 19 1/2 in long.

From that point on, life has been totally changed and I wouldn't change it for the world. Madi has changed in so many ways in the last year and it is all amazing (and has gone way to fast). It was quite a treat Thursday night, we went to the hospital and visited the newest cousin on the Taylor side of the family. He was only a couple ozs. and an inch smaller than Madi. I would have never dreamed that she had been that small only one year earlier. It is so easy to forget. It was really cool to hold him and get a perspective again of just how small Madi was. And now she is walking and has such a great personality.

Pictures are coming. They are taking awhile to download. Take care and have a wonderful holiday weekend.

Love, Amy, Chris and Madilyn

Just a quick note...I have been spending the week getting ready for the big birthday party on Saturday. Finally got everything bought yesterday, now it's just cooking and cleaning left to be done. I'm glad I got all my running done yesterday, I think it's supposed to rain the rest of the week and into the weekend.


Finally got everything settled with the land Monday. What a mess, we had to do things backwards and the banks and the title company were all confused. But it is done and ours!!!

Chris has been so busy and just getting busier. He has two new guys working with him and Ryan for the summer. They are all booked for the summer and still getting calls for new work. Chris is having a hard time turning anyone down so he is going to be working late evenings and probably weekends.

Must get busy. Hope to see you all on Saturday!!

Love, Amy

The land is almost ours!!! It's taking a little longer than we expected, but by Monday the land should be ours!!! I included some pics. It is an irregular shaped lot. It is almost split in half but parallel to the road. So everything in the back half of the field is ours including all the trees and the pond. It is so peaceful and quiet out there. Chris went riding four wheelers with his parents on Saturday out at the land. Hopefully next time he will plan better and I will get to go!

We had two graduations on Sunday. We didn't make it to the ceremonies, well we tried but there was only standing room left at the Cathedral and with little ones it wasn't going to work. But we made it to both parties. It was nice to see family again and it was fun hanging out with Andrea, Ella and Phyllis all afternoon.

Last night Chris and I went out for a couple of hours while my mom watched Madi. Chris has been involved with a Leadership of Salina class through the Chamber of Commerce this last year. They had their graduation ceremony last night at the Country Club. They fed us a nice dinner and had a speaker and then everyone received an award. It was very nice and a nice evening out.

I think we can officially say Madi is walking. She wants to walk everywhere all the time. She also stood up on her own last night without holding on to anything. We spend most of the day walking around the house together. Even though she can do it on her own, she still wants me to walk with her. She will come find me and grab my finger and off we go. One more week and she will be one...(sob!!) It has gone so fast. I have spent the last week working on birthday party and invitations and all that fun stuff. I am kind of glad it's on a holiday weekend, I still have Sunday and Monday to recoup (hopefully at the lake!!)

Better get busy!! Have a great weekend and hope to see you all on the 26th!!

Love, Amy

I said last week that I liked the rain, this week we have had way to much. Yesterday morning I found more water damage in our livingroom. The chimney is leaking and we knew this, we have been waiting 2 months on the roofer to get our roof done. With all the heavy rain this weekend it really leaked and then followed a board to the middle of the livingroom ceiling. It created a crack in between two pieces of wallboard and leaked onto the floor. Not a lot of water but enough to get us concerned. Chris climbed into the attic yesterday morning and found the leak and then sealed around the fireplace. Hopefully it will help, at least until the roofer can get here (whenever that may be).

We went out driving around the west and north parts of town Sunday night taking pics of all the water damage. St. John's Military School had a lot of problems in the basements of their buildings. Thomas Park was completely under water and by yesterday they had 9th St. closed from about the Military School to the Interstate. And the exit ramps off I-70 to 9th St. were closed. Hopefully it is better today. We didn't get much rain yesterday, I hope that helped.

Madi is walking really well now. She has no fear of letting go. She gets to the end of the couch and just keeps on going. She has been trying to stand up in the middle of the floor with nothing to hold onto but not quite there yet. She should be walking really well by her birthday. Still waiting on getting some new teeth. She just has the two in front on the bottom. Which means we haven't been able to do a lot of table foods yet. I am just too afraid of her choking without any teeth to help her break the food up. So it's still baby food for her. She should do really well though with her birthday cake, don't need teeth to make that mess!!

We have a busy Sunday coming up. Mother's Day, two graduations and two parties!!! Both of my cousins Neil and Kirsten are graduating high school, Congratulations!!! We might try to go to one graduation ceremony but I don't know how well Madi will be wanting to sit. We barely get through the hour at church, we will have to see.

I think I can safely announce the exciting news without jinxing us anymore. Tomorrow we close on some land we are buying Northwest of town!!! We are so excited. We have been wanting to move out to the country for the last four years and we finally found what we have been looking for at an awesome price. I don't have any pictures yet but hopefully this week we will be going back out and I will pass them along. It is 24 acres and has a pond and a nice established tree row in the back of the property. We have already seen turkeys and have heard there are deer that come out in the evening. It is on Burma Road off of Stimmel Road and is only one mile from Ell-Saline Elementary School. Which is just off of I-70 on Halstead Road. It will be really easy to find and really easy to get into town. We will have neighbors close by, we are sharing the 40 acre section with. Very nice people that we have started to become friends with, Chris has known them for awhile and has done some work at their house. We have already started looking at house plans and designing our new house!!! Hopefully we will start building by next summer, if Chris can hold out that long (he is pretty excited). We will officially have possession on the 15th of this month, can't wait!!

I better get busy, I wasn't able to get anything done yesterday. Take care and have a great week. I am looking forward to seeing my dad's family this weekend.

Love, Amy

About a mile south of Bosselman's off of 9th St.
Just past Bosselman's.
Across 9th St. from Bosselman's.

I sure love all of this wonderful rain!!! It makes everything clean again and the grass green, it's beautiful. I also like seeing the lake with water in it again. Mom and dad took some vacation this week. Chris, Madi and I went out Sunday and spent the day and then Madi and I went back out on Tuesday. Dad got the boat out of storage for the first time in two years. We got it all cleaned up, it needs some work with the engine before they can put it in the water, because of being stored that long.

Madi loves being outside and she was able to play almost all day out on the deck. She also got to play in the boat. It will be interesting to see what she thinks about being on the water. Not sure how that's going to go over. We also invited Jack over to play for awhile. His parents run the Marina. He is almost 18 months and he spends most of the day in the store. So I am sure it was a treat for him also to be outside and playing. Jack and Madi are so cute together. I didn't bring my camera but Jack's mom took some pics and hopefully I can share those soon.

Not much changing with Madi lately. Still waiting on more teeth to come in and she is getting bravier all the time with walking. She takes about 3-4 steps on her own every once in awhile, especially if she has something in her hands and she isn't paying attention to what she is doing. She is now 11 months, yesterday. It has gone so fast and sure doesn't seem like it's been almost a year!

It looks like we are finally going to have a dry weekend. We are hoping to get our front steps poured this weekend and get that all done. We had Total Turfcare come up with a plan for plants in the front yard. They should be here sometime in May to get it finished. It will be so nice to get that done. Next step is to replace the roof, paint the house, finish rocking around the shed and do some work on the deck. Then the outside will be done. Wow, when you write it down like that, that's alot of work!!! Oh well, it has to be done if we want to sell this house someday. Then on to the inside!!

Need to get some work done. Have a great weekend, it's almost here!!

Love, Amy

I have been watching the coverage of the shootings that took place on Monday at VT. What a very sad time for all of those involved. Does it make anyone else nervous that someone can enter into a public place and start shooting people for no reason? Of course part of the coverage is also on gun control. A professor in Missouri said that if this had happend anywhere else in the country, not on a college campus, that this man would not have been able to kill as many people as he did. His reason, because with concealed carry laws, there would be people pulling there own guns and defending themselves. Okay, now that makes me even more nervous. I could be shopping at the local Wal-Mart, some mad man could walk in and start shooting everyone and then somebody else starts shooting (who isn't trained like a police officer in these situations) and what happens to the people standing between these two people? They also get shot. I know a lot of people are for the concealed gun carry, including my husband, but I am on the fence on this one. That's a lot of guns walking around the world.



On a lighter note, Madi has started playing pat-a-cake and blowing kisses when we say goodbye. She is so sweet. If everyone could stop a moment and see these happy things around them, the world would be a better place. I know I am a much happier person just being around Madi. You have a bad day or situation and then she looks at you and gives you that big toothy grin and the bad thoughts are gone and everything is good again. It's a great feeling!!!



I hope and pray that everyone is happy, healthy and loved. Have a wonderful weekend.



Love, Amy

We had a wonderful Easter. Service at church was nice and then we headed to Chris' parents for lunch. We then went to my mom and dad's while Jason and Tabatha were still in town. Madi looked so cute in her new dress. Not much else going on. It is cold and rainy today. I am ready to have the nice spring weather back. Enjoy the pics!!

Love, Amy

What a week!!!

I watched a 5 year old and almost 2 year old boys this past week and man they were a handful. They are brothers and they just pick at each other and feed off of each other getting into all sorts of trouble. And non stop movement. Madi liked to sit and watch them but she was awful clingy this week. She ended up getting bumped and toys taken away if she was on the floor, so she stayed in my lap or right beside me. Poor thing, she isn't used to all the commotion or movement (neither was Oliver, our dog).

Wednesday night I started a four week class at our church called Conscious Discipline. This is very interesting. It is discipline that is positive and talking to children to produce what you want and not focusing or pointing out the negatives in what children do. It really is a life-style change in the way you think and speak to your children. It is so natural, I think to most people, to automatically say don't or no to a child. But for self esteem and building a child's personality and the way they see themselves they need to be taught what to do instead of being told what they aren't supposed to do. Check out the website, they have some really good ideas on talking to children and even the use of time out. http://www.beckybailey.com/

Madi is up from her nap!! Have a great Easter.

Love, Amy