wonderful weekend

This weekend was just one of those great weekends that you never want to end! Jamie's mom, Donna, spent a few days with us and it's so nice when she comes to stay. Audrie and I both get spoiled by her.


Also my adorable 12 yr old niece, Emily, came this weekend to stay with us. I took Emily to Sephora where we had a blast trying on tons of makeup and painting our nails (of course we didn't buy anything- just played dress up and left... they didn't seem to mind). Saturday night Donna babysat while Jamie took me on a date. I had been craving some vino and tiramisu, so we went where every good american goes... Olive Garden. :) And then we saw the movie, "21"- it was really good! Sunday after church we took Donna to experience the restaurant, Monte Ne Inn, and we still smell like fried chicken, but it was so yummy. Sunday evening, Jamie's tennis tournament was cancelled, so he spent some quality time with Audrie and took her for a walk in his Baby Bjorn (while I went with the praise team to sing at another church). Audrie loves hanging out with her daddy and always smiles so much when he puts her in it.



Jamie probably doesn't wanting me confessing this for all to read, but the other day he told me "if I had known having a baby was this awesome, we would have started a long time ago".

baby fitness

Our little girl is just about two months old now and changing every day. She is growing so fast and getting stronger. I lay with her in the floor a few times throughout the day to make sure she's getting enough of the recommended tummy time (which I call her "daily baby workouts"). She does little head raises and mini push ups and sometimes she will push her feet against my hands and squirm herself forward a few inches. I've started to notice when I go in to pick her up from her crib in the morning that she has moved herself around a little bit in the night. She's building some strong baby muscles.

But all that hard work wears her out...

She's the perfect little cuddler for afternoon naps.

all about audrie

Last week when I had posted some updates about various things going on with Jamie and I, a few different people told me that they were glad life was going so well but really all they wanted to see were pictures of Audrie..! (just as bad as Audrie's grandmas who don't even pretend anymore that when they visit that they are there to see jamie or me... it's all about the baby now.)

So here ya go. Tons of recent Audrie pictures.

I tried hard to get her to smile for the camera this morning. Her happiest times are right after she eats (who isn't??), but every time I would talk to her to get her smiling she would stop when I put the camera up to my face. But finally I managed to snap some photos that I thought I better post on here so that Audrie's fan base won't boycott our blog. :)

I keep telling myself she's starting to look a little more like me...

But then again I think this picture reminds me more of her daddy...

aunt barb

(I'm a little behind on some of my blogging...) but Jamie's Aunt Barbara came from Texas and visited us a few weekends ago and suprisingly enough she held the baby the entire time! Barb's two teenage boys, Michael and Ryan, had some fun playing non-stop video games with Jamie. They did stop long enough to create a new extreme version of hill surfing. (We have a really steep hill in our backyard.) And the boys would run and jump as high as they could and land feet first on the sled and try to surf down the hill til they wiped out. It was pretty hilarious. We had a great weekend with them and can't wait to take Audrie down to Texas to visit.

my little helper

I'm not a strict follower of attached parenting or baby-wearing, but I am a big fan of multi-tasking. There have been a few times that Audrie has been happy and cooing and I want to spend time with her but I also wanted to get some housework done, so I put her in a sling and talk to her while I do dishes or laundry. (I didn't take the time to set the self-timer so I just snapped this pic in the bathroom mirror.) My sister actually informed me that I was wearing Audrie too low in the sling, but the baby was happy snuggled in there so I guess that's all that matters.

Happy Easter!

We spent Easter Sunday with Jamie's family and it was filled with tons of food and family. As I was getting Audrie dressed in her Easter outfit, I explained to her that, even though she had cute little bunnies on her shoes, Easter was really all about Jesus. She seemed to understand. I said "if you understand me, spit up once..." and she did.

Audrie has been smiling so much the past couple weeks and it's hard to capture on camera but I managed to get a few little smirks yesterday.

This next picture of Audrie smiling totally cracks me up because it looks like she is saying "Heyyy... how you doin'?".

Here are just a FEW more photos from our Easter day... ( i tend to get a little camera happy).

I did make an Easter basket for Audrie and I hid it for Jamie to help her find (an old tradition in my family... or maybe it was just another one of my mom's clever schemes to keep us kids busy for a few hours...).

It was a little too cold for Audrie to hunt eggs, but the other "kids" played some kind of pop-the-bubble game that I'm sure Brandon and Jamie were a little too big to be playing...

Jamie's cousin, Tiffanie, has a little boy, Dylan, who turned one year old this weekend, too. So we helped him celebrate with an adorable cake and presents.

My camera settings were a little off and so this picture of Dylan blurred, but then I kind of liked how the "mistake" effect looked.

And here is a picture of Dylan's little brother... coming this June!

Audrie's big yawn here is how I felt when we finally got home late last night...

Hope you all had a wonderful Easter, too!

I miss my mommy!

My mom left last Tuesday for Europe- on a spring break trip with her school (she teaches English at a private high school). They are spending 12 days traveling all over Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany... and a bunch of other fun places. But I miss her SO much. I'm used to talking to my mom at least once or twice a day. She's like my 1-800-MOM hotline for all my life questions! Especially the past few weeks with the new baby- I've had a ton more questions every day. The joke is that no matter what I ask her about- she pretty much always has the same response... "you're normal and everything is going to be fine". (I told her that should be the title of her parenting book she needs to write.) So today I had to actually break down and call my OB doctor's office to ask a question I would normally just ask my mom... and it was really funny (I had to keep myself from laughing out loud) because the nurse basically told me I was normal and everything was going to be fine.

"that's what friends are for..."

One of my dearest friends, Melanie, has been going through some tough stuff lately, so to help get her mind off things for awhile we decided to get a little extreme makeover on our hair. Neither one of us have ever had our hair dyed (and never have been brave enough). So we decided that this week of spring break we'd do our own "girls gone wild" and get our hair dyed! Here are a few pics from our girly adventure...

The stylist had to brush my hair before she could apply the dye... brushing naturally curly hair is always pretty funny...!

Melanie got some very subtle dark blond highlights that look really awesome, but don't show up in this picture... you have to see her in person to see how cute it is!


I, however, got some very NOT so subtle blond and light brown highlights...

It was all really fun! And plus "it's just hair". So even though I have a crazy looking hair do- at least I can cross this off my list.