Upcoming Events

Deeeeeear Lovely Readers,

There are some seriously exciting things happening over the next few weeks here on ye olde bloggy blog.

I just wanted to give everyone a sneak peek at the upcoming schedule:

Saturdday 1/21: My first ever book review! I'll reveal the book at that time :)

Thursday 2/2: I will be posting the LOOONG awaited recipe for my world-famous enchiladas! Prepare your mouth for copious amounts of watering.

Friday 2/3: Look out for an exciting announcement about this here mommy blog o'mine!

Monday 2/6: I'll be launching my campaign to reach 150 followers!

Date TBA: Whenever I reach that number is when I do my first ever giveaway!! (And it's gonna be awesome!)

Hope you all are ready for the upcoming amaaaazingness!! :)

In the meantime, I'll leave you with a pic or two of Gemma doing her new favorite thing: playing with flour. Rocky has started calling her "my little flour girl" :) So adorbs!

Thoroughly diggin it ;)

Christmas Pictures!

So we had some Christmas photos taken - not in a studio though because :
A. Not gonna pay money for pictures that
B. Nine times out of Ten look rigid and awkward and cheesy, especially since
C. We have friends who are awesome photographers who will do it for freeee :)

Aside from the two full-on hour-long photo sessions I personally did of Gemma, our amazing friend took a family photo shoot for us the other night as well. We got a lot of really cute shots! Don't worry, I'm actually not going to post a picture overload here! I really just want to share a picture from this year compared with a picture of us at Christmas time last year. It's so fun and crazy to see how we've changed, grown, shrunk, etc!

THIS YEAR - 2011:

LAST YEAR - 2010:

Gemma - 15 months old?!?!

I can't believe how time is flying! My baby girl is already 15 months old (tomorrow) and every day she amazes me with something new.

Here's a quick list of her latest favorite activities:
- "Cook" with Mama aka stir a wooden spoon around an empty pot in the kitchen while I make dinner
- Play with Mama's cell phone and send random nonsensical texts to all my contacts (this is especially funny when it's someone I haven't talked to in months!)
- Dance (must. post. video. it is so adorable!)
- Eat! (apples, animal crackers, cottage cheese, pretzels, bread, pasta, pita, bagels, melon, carrots, beans, etc. and the occasional bites of Mommy's cookies and/or ice cream)
- Sit in Mommy or Daddy's lap and read books
- Chase or be chased all around the house
- Give kisses to Mommy and Daddy
- Imitate animal noises (especially doggies and lions)
- Master new signs. The ones she has down are: More, Milk, Thank You, Cracker.
Still working on: Like, Mommy, Daddy, Outside
- Master new words: Mama, Daddy, Thank You, Doggie, Yummm, Uh-Oh!, Yayyy, Hi, Bye
- Take off her own diaper (nooooot fun for Mom and Dad! haha)
- Run around naked
- Still in love with Bathtime - has been since birth!
- Build block towers and crash them down
- Give hugs and kisses to her Snuggle Bear and Baby Doll
- Explore and run around outside
- Blow kisses
- Climb (up stairs, onto chairs, onto tables, out of her high chairs, out of the shopping carts, onto bookshelves, etc. Point is, we have a little gymnast on our hands!)
- Be silly
- Smile and laugh at everything
- Wave to every person she ever sees anywhere (she's very friendly)
- Be AMAZING!!!

I just love this little girl so much!
Warning - picture overload! Also, sorry for some of the blurry shots - had to get the block tower building in action! Oh, and for the record - she was gnawing on this apple with her one and only tooth! So cute :)

Happy 1st Birthday Gemma!!!

I've put this post off a little bit for 2 reasons. 1. We've been insanely busy the past few weeks! and 2. I'm still in denial that my sweet little baby is already a year old! 

Her official birthday was August 13th, and on that day, we were all stuck in the car, driving back from a wedding. Strapped into a carseat, facing backwards, is not the best way to spend your birthday. So, to make up for it, we threw her a super, amazing, fantastically awesome Safari Party this past weekend. 

Here's a few pictures of the preparations/decorations:

How cute are these napkins! Ordered from Celebration Express.

Yes, we made that sign! I did the letters, Rocky did the artwork :)

Check out the LOOT!! (In Safari print wrapping paper of course - Dollar Tree)

Alright, so, here's the thing. We had food. We had... lots. of. food. Unfortunately, I was so busy making/devouring it, that I forgot to take pictures of almost all of it. There were bbq brisket sandwiches, buffalo chicken dip, veggies, cheese&crackers, fruit kabobs, sausage dippers, shrimp rangoon cups (yea, they're friggin awesome... will post recipe soon), candy, sweet safari punch, chips&salsa... the list. goes. on. 

Oh, and some amazing cupcakes that I literally spent close to 4 hours baking/decorating! :)

This was all I managed to get pictures of:

The Cheese Lion. My brainchild, Rocky's handiwork!

So cute!! Worth the effort :)

Of course, no birthday post would be complete without sharing some pictures of Gemma destroying eating her 1st cupcake.

It all started so nicely...

 Then, the destruction began.

 She was lovin it!

Daddy gave her a little ice cream to wet her whistle :)

She was taking this whole cupcake thing very seriously... this is as close to a smile as I got out of her!

Note the placement of her chocolate-covered right hand!

All in all, we had such a fun party! First birthday parties can be silly, I know, since technically "they'll never remember it" but really, it's for the parents to celebrate an amazing year of life with their child! I am so, so, so grateful for my little girl. She is truly a blessing in our lives, and I feel thankful to God that I get to be her Mommy. I love you Gemmaroo!! 

Things. Have. Happened!

Helllllllloooo!! (Mrs. Doubtfire voice). 

I dunno... I just felt like saying that.

Anyway, it is so totally update time. I'm going to make this fast though because honestly, details can be boring and my attention span is short. So, first of all, my surgery went as smoothly as we could have hoped for, and I am recovering really well. So in a few weeks, this will all be a distant memory! Thank you all so, so, so, so, so much for your prayers and support during that time. I am so grateful to God for seeing me through that.

Secondly, it's official. I am now a resident of Virginia!! The move went off without a hitch. Well, actually, we did need a hitch to tow our car. But other than that one necessary hitch, it was an otherwise totally hitchless event. Our new home is absolutely gorgeous, and every morning, when I look outside, I have to remind myself that I actually LIVE here. I keep thinking I'm just visiting or on vacation or something. We live right on the river, and yes, it's time for pictures. Pardon the mess... we just moved, people! ;)

Hubby and Gem outside the house. Back of the house.

Fam room area

Dining room area. Hubs working on his brand new computer. Kitchen in the background.

Okay, so now that you can see a little sneak-peak of the kitchen back there, let me just talk about that for a minute. I am .OBSESSED. with my new kitchen. Seriously. Sometimes I just go in there to hang out. Stare at the inside of my oven. Wash my hands. Caress the counter-top. Just kidding about that last part. ...not really. But anyway, it's a brand new kitchen. Fresh new tile. All new energy-efficient appliances. New cupboards. Granite counter-tops. Gigantic stainless steel sink. Seriously, you could probably give a baby elephant a bath in there. Possibly even an adolescent elephant. 

Yes, it's raining outside, but no one can rain on my parade of kitchen joy. It's just beautiful.

And it is a really huge room... I may add an island in here at some point. Right now, I just have some extra shelving and random stuff going on over there, but hey. At least there are sombreros.

I also really need to get curtains in this kitchen asap because it's so creepy at night when you can't see out and have a ridiculous imagination like I do. I'm pretty sure I've already envisioned roughly 17 different stalker/axe murderer/lunatic clown scenarios while standing in the kitchen at night.

Okay, so I've been holding out on you. As gorgeous as the kitchen is, it doesn't even come close to the beauty that is our backyard. Our backyard is a river. The Lafayette River to be exact. This is the view from the back door of our house. (Which is the kitchen door, which means I get to look out to the river a million times a day as I hang out in my awesome kitchen.)

:

Sunset. Picnic table compliments of my FIL.

The dock! And seriously, I'm not exaggerating... this picture was taken from the threshold of our back door. 

So it's almost impossible for me to stop taking pictures out here. Especially at sunset!! What's really cool about this is that the water is brackish which makes for extremely fertile breeding ground for all different types of fishes. We hear the fishing and crabbing off this dock is top notch. So operation buy a fishing pole will very soon commence. 

Lots of geese, ducks, and cranes out on this river.

Here comes a goose to say hi to my family!

I don't even have to edit these pictures, it's just that gorgeous out here.

Me and my little Gem. She's waving hi to all of you, beautiful readers!

So the other really cool thing about where we live on the river is that directly across from us is the zoo! Which is cool for a few different reasons:

1. No one will ever build a house over there so our view will always just be all those trees, which makes it look so awesome and naturey all the time.

2. Sometimes you can hear random animal noises and you get to play the game of guess which animal made that noise!

3. Maybe they will let me babysit an adolescent elephant some time so I can really see just how big my kitchen sink really is. Ya think?

Hope you all had a fantastic holiday weekend! I know Gemma enjoyed herself. Rocky and I were making s'mores, turned our backs on her for 5 seconds to roast our mallows, and I turned around to this glorious sight:

Of course I had to get a picture of her mischief before we hosed her sticky self off.

It was also 97 degrees out, so we justified this activity as serving a dual-purpose.

And Gemma loved every minute of it.

Once again, thank you all for your love and prayers for my family during this transition period. Praise God for bring us to this beautiful new home! We are so looking forward to our new life and ministry here.