bon voyage

We're off to the beach...

funny face

I know it may seem lame to the outside observer, but Jamie and I do spend an embarrassingly large amount of our day trying to make Audrie smile and laugh. I can't lie- it's tons of fun. But the new thing is these crazy faces she's been making lately. Makes us laugh so hard! I took these pictures all in just a few seconds today. In some of them it looks like she is crying, but she's not! Just making funny faces and cracking me up. Maybe she's practicing for all the mood swings of being a girl...! :)


We also managed to capture just a few seconds the other day on video...

"Babies are more trouble than you thought - and more wonderful than you imagine."
-- Charles Osgood

food glorious food

We've been feeding Audrie rice cereal for a couple weeks now and she still seems to love it (I've tasted it... it's nasty). But last night we ran out (ok, it was my fault, I admit). And it was time for her to eat and she was hungry and I didn't want to only give her milk when she was used to eating rice cereal for dinner. But we had a fresh squash from Donna's garden... so Jamie steamed it and pureed it in the blender and Audrie had her first "real" meal last night. Home grown squash. She made a few faces but she ate it! We have also been slowly giving her formula in a bottle once or twice day to try and gradually wean her to formula. (It's sad for me to give up nursing but I have to prepare for going back to work in a few weeks.) She threw what my mom would call "a Lowery fit" the first couple times I tried to give her formula, but now she drinks it just fine so I think the weaning process is going to go better than I hoped. Audrie also LOVES to drink apple juice (well, half water and half apple juice), but to her it's candy. She slurps that down with a big smile. Anyways, not sure if you care about the nutritional intake of our baby girl. But that's the big news around our house these days! :)

blog envy

ok, I'm really not sure who got me hooked on blogging. It may have been my sister-in-law, Kim, or I think it might have actually been my friend, Dan. Either way, I definitely have done my share of spreading the addiction to others. (I have to humbly say that I've had a few people tell me that they have started a blog because of how much they enjoy ours.) Of course, there are many Dateline specials that can watch about the dangers of blogs. People stalking you, etc. But if you're scared of that you can make your blog protected by password login and only people you approve can read your site. I have several friends whose blog I have to log into and I've thought about doing that for ours soon, too. So, the latest victim of blog envy is my cutey pie of a niece, Emily. (I don't know if you noticed that I added her name to our links a few days ago.) But she is cracking me up with her blog. When I was 12 I was definitely not as tech savvy as she is! I'm not sure if her mom is going to let her keep her blog open access (I told her that it would probably be best if she made hers a login protected blog), but you have to check it out sometime. way too cute.

audrie's dedication

Here are a few photos from Audrie's Baby Dedication on Sunday. (We attend Temple Baptist Church in Springdale.) Audrie did really well in front of the congregation- especially considering she was very sleepy.
Pastor put together a few photos from our blog to show during the ceremony. I thought it was so sweet of him to do that! We really love our pastor so much.
It's going to be really fun to watch Audrie grow up in this church. Going off to church camp, mission trips, maybe playing some saxophone solos...?!
Thank you to everyone who came Sunday for Audrie's special day! We really loved having you there.

weekend update

Audrie, Jamie and I had a jam packed weekend that was super fun and super exhausting. And surprisingly enough... I don't have a single photo to share of everything we did this weekend. But a picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words... so here are my thousand words instead.

Friday night Jamie and I had a "real" night out with some friends (and no babies) and I got to wear heels- whoo hoo! We went to Bonefish Grill for a crazy tasty dinner and then to Eddie Haskell's to hang out and listen to a live band- we had way too much fun! Then Saturday we did the usual running around doing errands, but then I went and helped Kim do photography for an amazing wedding in Greenwood. (I feel so super cool that Kim lets me be her second photographer for bigger weddings!) And I have to say that in 7 hours and over 800 photos I did manage to capture some pretty sweet photos. Kim spent most of the pre-wedding hours with the bride and bridesmaid and left me to capture candid moments of the groom and his 5 totally good looking groomsmen... poor me. :) Really, the wedding was stunning and I can't wait for Kim to post some photos in a few weeks! Then today was a big day. We had Audrie's Baby Dedication ceremony at our church. It was very touching and a special time for us to thank God for blessing us with our baby girl and we dedicated ourselves to raise her knowing God's love. I sang a special song for the occasion "God Will Take Care of You" by Plumb. (Gloria took photos on her camera so I'll post some when she gets those to me.) We invited all our family to come to church and then had a big cookout at our house afterwards. It was probably the most people we've ever had in our house at one time, but it was a blast. So, this evening after the last of our guests left... we needed to just do nothing for a bit so we took Audrie over to swing in our neighbors backyard. She LOVES their baby swing and I did get a few photos of those last few moments of our weekend.


Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." Matthew 19:14

sno cones

I've been trying to keep Caleb's mind off the misery of his busted up arm. Yesterday we were running errands around Fayetteville and Emily treated us to sno cones (she is truly a connoisseur!). It was her way of repaying me for babysitting Ben, but he was such an angel the whole time that it was a joy. It was the first sno cone that I have had in a couple years and it was amazingly tasty. Almost as good as the box of 200 Pop Ice that Caleb and I have been eating all week.

Caleb ponders the sno cone menu of over 20 flavors.
Emily needs to admit she has an addiction!
Caleb is getting better at using his other hand for eating...
And he practiced writing his alphabet the other day with his other hand, but it took him like 20 minutes to get through all the letters! I know I shouldn't make fun of him, but this morning it was pretty hilarious seeing him try to put his socks on with one hand. I helped him out. That's what sisters do.

isn't she lovely

I love blogs. I really do. I love keeping up with all the details of my friends and family that I don't get to see as much as I'd like. It's fun reading everyone's posts and seeing their photos. I'm definitely an unashamed "blog stalker". But I also love sharing our stories and pictures with our loved ones, too. From my grandpa in Michigan (Hi, Grandpa!) to Jamie's family in Texas (Hi, Barb!) and our friends from high school and college... it's so fun to get little suprise emails now and then from random people who say "hey, loved the latest pics" when I wasn't even aware that they checked our blog. So I got an email yesterday from someone I didn't realize they looked at our site who said that I needed to put "Isn't She Lovely" to the blog music that I just added. So here ya go.... (and a few more pics of Audrie to go with the song). I saw this hat at Target and just HAD to have it for her. Even if she looks like she's going to whip up a souffle, I thought it was too adorable!

our lil' stinker

I took some fun photos of Audrie yesterday....
She is starting to sit up on her own now!

And just when I start to think she's a perfect little baby- here's what she does... totally disgusting! (I'm still confused about how this even happens...)I think she's figured out that if she poops all over herself then she immediately gets to take a bath- which she loves!
Only 5 months old and has us completely wrapped around her finger!

poor caleb

I'm trying to be a good nurse for the paitent lying on our couch. My 18 year old brother Caleb had a massive bike wreck today. Not on a motorcyle. (He's not that cool.) On a real bicycle. He has been riding to his summer classes on campus and today he wiped out on Gregg Street. He's gonna live but he bashed up his elbow pretty bad and has to have surgery on it in the morning to screw it back together. My mom and dad are out of town for the week so Caleb is under our care for awhile. I tried to scan his xray so you could see how cool it is, but it didn't really turn out...

Here is a normal elbow xray...

Here is Caleb's xray (you can see where the bone is split on the curve of his elbow...
He's trying to put on a brave face. But I'm sure it's not going to be fun having a cast on his arm in the heat of July!

movin' on up

Big day. We finally got Audrie a highchair. She looks so "grown up" in it, too. :)


Since Jamie and I got new toys this weekend (I have to wait a bit for mine), we didn't want Audrie to feel left out. :) So after church Sunday we went and picked out a highchair for her. We tried to find the smallest one we could so that it wouldn't take over our kitchen (it's crazy how many bells and whistles come on high chairs now!). Seriously, you can get high chairs that have play centers attached to the tray to "entertain the baby before and after meals", storage compartments under the tray to store bibs, pop out trays to put the baby food jars on while you're feeding them, and on and on...! Some of those high chairs are so huge with all the accessories they look like transformers! It was a little intimidating. So we just went with a very simple high chair that folds up for easy storage. Maybe later I'll wish we had a Go Go Gadget high chair but for now this one is great! Plus, Audrie likes it so that's all that matters...

bad mommy?

Ok, I'm sure this is not going to get me nominated for Mother-of-the-Year... but yesterday I set Audrie up her own little movie theater. Jamie was gone to his friend Trent's house and I needed to finish sanding and staining our new rocking chair before it rained. Audrie was starting to get a little sleepy but not quite ready for a nap. So I set up her little bean bag chair that Gayla got us and we have an old laptop that I drug out. I put on a Baby Einstein video that a friend gave me. Audrie loved it! I wasn't really sure if she would actually watch it, but she did! The video she was watching was basically just sock puppets set to Mozart, but she was captivated long enough for me to finish my work. Of course I had to snap a few photos- she looked pretty cute snuggled up with her stuffed hippo. All she needed was some popcorn!

fun in the sun

Audrie got to spend some time in the pool again yesterday. So fun! Our friends, Jim and Emily, invited some friends over to swim in their neighborhood pool. Audrie loved it and was a little fish the whole time.

(I love Ben's hat over his eyes in that photo...)

My brother, Caleb, needed to work out his farmer's tan so he came by for a little while and played with Audrie.I'm so glad she loves the water!

We have a cool little baby floaty raft for Audrie but it has a slow leak so we just played with her in the water the whole time.

It was fun but tiring.

When we got back to the Burrow house I took the best nap of my life in the hammock with Audrie. Pure contentment! This right here is why going back to work in a month will be painful...Jamie had to work (apparently he's a big deal and can't just take off on Friday afternoon...) ha! But he and Gloria came over later in time for dinner and a movie. It was a wonderful day of sun and friends. Thanks, Burrow's!