our little odd pod

It's kind of hard to make a nick name out of "Audrie", but occasionally we find ourselves calling her "odd pod". And of course it's just out of love that we call her that- because she is the joy of our life. HOWEVER I will tell you why she is a little more than ODD... because she begs to go to bed. That's right. I hesitate to tell you because of the karma of the little one growing inside of me and if I tell you how crazy EASY it is to put our daughter to bed we're only destined to have a hellion next, right?? So the usual routine is we tell her it's time for bed and she is more than happy to give us kisses night-night and we lay her in bed (now recently in her toddler bed) and sing her a song or two, give her a pacifier, tell her we love her and walk out of the room. And she stays in bed and goes to sleep. But on several occasions, like tonight, it was about 20 minutes until her usual bedtime but she started saying night-night over and over and trying to drag us into her room to put her to sleep. We tried to tell her it wasn't time for bed yet, but she really wanted to go to bed! And she does this for naps sometimes, too. So weird! What kind of toddler WANTS to go to bed? And she always wakes up happy and ready to play again. Anyways, who knows what the future holds for us but for now we are just amazed by our little odd sleeper!

Here are some photos I took of her today. We sure do love this little girl!

choo choo

For some reason I have a lot of fond memories as a child of when my mom would mop the kitchen floor- she would line up all the chairs in the living room... and I thought it was the BEST thing ever (I guess that's what happens when you grow up without tv...!?). Anyways, the other day I was mopping the floor and just couldn't help myself from lining up the chairs. And to my delight- Audrie thought it was pretty great too! She played for a long time in those chairs... kitty even joined the fun...

All aboard! :)

the ballet

Friday night I took my mom to The Nutcracker at the WAC and it was just amazing. (Made me want to put on some toe shoes & a tutu and leap around the house!) It was a fun night with my mom and definitely put me in the holiday mood!

lucky stripes

I guess my piano/entry room is becoming my new canvas. Because I painted that room. Again! (This is what happens when you give me a week off from work!) So if you remember that the room was originally saturated in red. And we kept it that way for a few years.Then we painted it a light turquoise color a few months ago. And that was fun while it lasted, but I just couldn't help myself from redoing it.

So on Tuesday I painted it with some soft taupe stripes. It was tough (painting stripes in a room is not for the faint of heart), but I really like how it turned out. (For now, right??) ha!

And also I ordered a three foot enlargement from Kim of one her photos she recently did for us (the one I have on the blog header now). My snapshot here doesn't do it justice, but it looks really awesome on the wall.
Anyways, I have been LOVING my week off from work! And am excited about ALL the food and family for Thanksgiving today. I'm going to put "eating for two" to the test!! :) Hope you all have a WONDERFUL and blessed and safe and happy Thanksgiving Day.

gina's family

My wonderful neighbor friend, Gina, asked me to snap a couple family photos for them in their front yard a couple weeks ago. A 20 minute photo shoot on a beautiful fall day with a cute family... nothing better! :) Here are some of my favorite shots...

a big day

Today was a pretty jam packed day in Cornett-ville. We started it off with a 5K Race (I ran and Jamie and Audrie cheered). It was really fun! I wasn't too worried about my little unborn because he/she was a great running partner in the last race I ran- when I was a few weeks pregnant but didn't know it yet. And since I've still be keeping up (sort of) with my regular exercise- I knew this little baby was up for a 5k this morning. This was the first race that Audrie got to be a cheerleader for me and it was SO neat to come around the corner to the finish line and see her up on Jamie's shoulders... she saw me running and waved and smiled all happy to see mommy... so fun!
And they had lots of bouncy jumpy things for the kids to play on so Audrie had a blast while I was running. Jamie took a picture of her here bouncing away.

After lunch Jamie went to play tennis and I took Audrie to a birthday party we'd been invited to at The Little Gym in Rogers (this place is super cool for kids of any age and I really think we might have her next bday party there). Anyways, Audrie had the time of her life... running and jumping and being all gymnastic like. And this was during her normal nap time so I was pretty impressed with her energy.

Audrie also got to learn a valuable lesson today. Waiting her turn in line. Pretty tough lesson for a 22 month old. She tried to throw a few fits and cut in front of everyone, but after a few times of me dragging her back in line and making her wait- she actually figured out pretty quick that the only way she was going to get what she wanted was to wait her turn. Nice!

BUT THEN... tonight was the BIGGIE. We converted her crib to a toddler bed! Jamie and I were a little excited and nervous how this was going to go down, but we thought it was time to give it a try. (And hoped it wasn't like the "ditch the pacifier" drama this summer- when we gave in after about 48 hours.)

But we made a big deal about it and talked it up excitedly about her being in a Big Girl Bed now and we let her help take it apart.

And she seemed to like her new set up... still jumps just as good! :)

She climbed in and out of it for quite a while. Checking it all out.

After such a busy day we were hoping she would just crash and go right to sleep! (A quick lap around the house with daddy before bedtime here...)

Then we put her in bed, gave her a pacifier and said Good Night. AND SHE WENT TO SLEEP! I honestly kept waiting for her to walk out into the living room... thought maybe she was just patiently plotting until we went to bed. But she just zonked like normal.

Not really sure what's she going to do when she wakes up in the morning. Hopefully make me some breakfast in bed and start some laundry. :)

the wonderful amazing kimberly

The world renowned photographer (and my sister-in-law) Kim has blessed us with her amazing photography skills once again. She took our family photos for us and as always I am blown away with her mad skills! Here are just a few of my favorites... so hard to narrow it down (if you want to see them all you can visit her website http://www.kimlowery.com/ - click proofing at the bottom and our password is cornett09). THANKS KIM!!
This last one is so precious to me because this is actually Audrie's "kissy face"... so it's like she's saying "Hey, where's MY kiss?!" :)

baby fever

Just in case any of you were on the fence about having a baby... let me help you out with that baby fever. Here are some of my new favorite websites that I browse at work while I'm supposed to be doing lesson plans:

www.landofnod.com/baby You know how everyone says "wish they had that when I was having kids"... well Audrie isn't even two and I already see all this cool baby stuff that they didn't have two years ago. So fun!

www.cadenlane.com/ This Caden Lane site has some AWESOME bedding that I'm going to have to take out a loan for... don't tell Jamie. :)http://www.tinyprints.com/ I can't afford anything on this photo site but it gets my creative juices flowing anyways.

http://www.ingridandisabel.com And BRING ON the new maternity clothes... whoo hoo!
http://www.isabellaoliver.com/maternity-clothes Pretty sure this is going to be my new Christmas dress....! ha!

Anyways, just wanted to share some of my excitement about pregnancy number two! I'm really excited about working on another nursery and preparing our home for this new little baby.