Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Here is a sneak peek of some pictures my friend took of isabella for her birthday invitation. I love how she captured her joyful spirit!








"I'm having a party! YAY!"

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Saturday Snapshots


Headed out for a run


Isabella had her yogurt with Daddy while I was gone


Then it was coffee and donuts for the grown ups in the house


Michael headed out to a meeting. While I was in the bathroom I heard Isabella in the laundry room...I found her like this. Surrounded by cupcake papers and eating one. She looked so cute and busted when I found her, I tried to not laugh too hard.


Afternoon "swim" time!




My MIL called and asked if I wanted to go out for a pedicure. Yes, Please! And Thank you!!


My family met up for dinner in El Reno at our fav onion burger place. Saturday would have been my grandad Hartman's 85th birthday. Hartman's have been eating at Johnnies for 5 generations now.

Our evening ended with the Roberts calling on us with cupcakes from cuppies and joe! (any time they come to visit in the evening they ask if they can come callin' or we call them and say "come callin' on us!").

That wasn't everything we did...just a few snapshots. There were naps, a mini photo shoot for Iz, laundry folded, and so on. It was a good day!

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Thankful Thursday

My girl was extra cuddly this morning and wanted to just be held and rocked, rather than play. (This was prior to our hour nap battle). She is not always cuddly for long periods of time these days so I was happy to soak in a 20 minute rocking. She wasn't going to sleep or wild with play, she was just happy to be held by me.

During this I was reminded of the many times I sat in her rocker before she was born. I would go in there during the night when I couldn't sleep, in the wee hours of the morning when my body was too uncomfortable to lay anymore, and when I got home from work...it was a frequent ritual. I would sit in there, my favorite place in the house, and "ponder things in my heart". I would stare at the crib graciously purchased for our baby by Michael's parents. I would stare at the bedding lovingly made by my Mom. I would dream of holding my baby and her sleeping in this room marked with love and gifts by so many people who already loved her before she was born. My heart felt so full and I was thankful for so many things.

A year later, looking around her room, while rocking the gift I prayed for, I still feel that fullness in my heart and even more.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

11 months

My baby girl is 11 months today!
I snapped these at breakfast this morning. The many faces of Isabella in about a minutes time!

Sweet girl


"Eating" bananas. Still working on those fine motor skills.






AND now I'm sleepy.


Lately she has been "reading" books while she plays.


And eating them.

And now what has become the ever impossible zebra/chair picture. I need to take these when Michael is home to help me.

Right before she dove out of the chair.


This one is actually the best one of the group.


Drama drama. :)

Can't believe there is only one month left until my baby is ONE! She seems to change so much each week now, picking up new skills all the time. I am trying to soak it all in!

Monday, August 22, 2011

Pack mule mondays

I posted about our ridiculous amount of bags for our vacation in May.
A few Mondays ago I took this picture of the ridiculous amount of bags we have on Mondays. I work on Monday and this is what comes out the door with us. No wonder it takes me 1/2 of morning nap time to get the bags ready!


Back row: Red bag- My work bag with files, computer, etc. Black bag- breast pump
Middle row: Isabella's nap bag- blanket, lovey, travel sleep sheep & Diaper bag
Front: My purse, My lunch/Dinner bag, Isabella's snack/milk bag

Sure, I could not carry a purse, and put everything in my work bag. The nap bag isn't 100% necessary, but provides some consistency. The pump will go away some day...
I have always liked fun bags, but have never carried this many at one time!

Saturday, August 20, 2011

I've been quiet this week and not up for blogging. It has been a week of ups and downs. I suppose that is typical life, though. Nothing particularly bad happened this week.


My baby girl has been in pain and not feeling good. She is cutting 5 teeth and has been congested. We've had some cranky, tough days, and some long, tearful nights. And after several days of not getting good sleep it takes a toll.
She has been a Mama's girl this week and I've done lots of rocking, holding, and shushing. I was thrown up on twice. I'm not talking about a little spit up...I mean a bowl full of puke that involved both of us changing our clothes. Lovely. I've been tired and worn out. Her naps were shorter. Which meant my time to be productive was shorter. And I was so tired I napped several times too.

This week we also had fun with friends at the splash park, a fun lunch date, a random Thursday morning browsing of target with friends and Starbucks in hand, dinner with family, a dinner date while daddy was out of town, lots of cuddles, and some laughs. There were many rays of sunshine during our cloudy week.

Tonight was date night for us. Iz was off to play with her buddy Milo and we were off to dinner.

She enjoyed herself...and we did too. Yummy dinner at Cafe 501 and a trip to walmart sans baby. Yep, we live it up! :) On our way home it looked like the sunset was going to be gorgeous so we detoured from home to the lake, in spite of looming bed time.


Isabella enjoyed her first ride on a swing...








And we were right about the sunset being worth the detour. One of my favorite things about Oklahoma!

And while the week was not the easiest or best we've had, I've been grateful many times throughout the week. Grateful for our home, and countless daily blessings. A "rough" week in our life did not include starvation, wondering how to provide for our child, or lack of safety. I know several people who would gladly trade places with our rough times for what they are having to walk through right now.

I'm praying those teeth break all the way through any day now, and our sleep increases. Until then, if you see us and we are looking weary or wild-you'll know why!

Friday, August 12, 2011

Happy Friday!









Isabella and I have welcomed the beginning of the weekend with fun friday with friends! Now we are just waiting on Daddy to get home and join us for the weekend. My favorite line from a blog I read this week was this: "Looking for the next best, and biggest thing in life is a waste of your days. You're constantly waiting for your next big trip and adventure, and in reality, you miss the small ones we travel on every day."

Don't waste these fleeting days and enjoy the small travels this weekend!

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Thankful Thursday

This week I have been thankful for:

*Saturday Chick-fil-a family breakfast time
*God's grace
*air conditioning
*the answered prayer for RAIN
*waking up to thunder storms
*morning walks with Isabella
*Isabella's laugh
*our needs and wants being provided for in ABUNDANCE
*friends that took our frozen food in a power outage
*family to stay with in the power outage
*a date night
*family lunch on Sunday

Sadly, at times, it can be easy to loose sight of how richly blessed I am. I have not done great at writing down my gratitude list daily over the past weeks, and I'm going to get back to that today. Have a great Thursday! Be Thankful!

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Lately

A few recent pics:

I had some cooking to do the other day, so to entertain Isabella I gave her some cooked noodles to play with. She loved playing with them and was content whipping them around while I got my work done. On another note, how is it that my baby girl looks like she is 5 in this picture! She's changing so fast!


My happy girl


I have been loving her wild post-nap hair. This picture doesn't do the wildness justice!


Her first tractor ride.


Nutella brownies? Yes Please!


Isabella has 4 teeth coming in. (I know, awesome.) So she has been loving chomping on frozen bananas.


RARR!!


She has become even more brave with her mobility skills and I looked up to see this the other morning. YIKES! Watch out world!

Saturday, August 06, 2011

9 Years!

August 3rd was our 9 year anniversary!!

I woke up to breakfast in bed. Michael put a spin on our traditional birthday pancakes, with "anniversary year" pancakes. Served with peach compote and my favorite morning drink. Way to go Michael!


We decided we want to have a tradition of a family anniversary celebration in addition to our couple celebration. We want to impress upon our kids that marriage takes work is worth celebrating. For our family celebration Michael came home from work a little early and we loaded up to go swimming. But as we were driving to the pool, it began raining. Bummer. So we came home and let Iz play in her pool in the backyard for a little bit before we had to get ready for church. After church we had a family fro-yo date. Isabella loved the fro-yo!


For our anniversary date night we went out to Shoguns. YUM!
We enjoyed a delicious meal and were able to talk without one of us feeding or entertaining our sweet baby. :)


The classic onion-fire-tower.


Then we went to see the last HP movie. Here we are with our 3-D glasses.
I loved the 3-D and had to refrain from reaching out and grabbing at the characters/objects that looked like they were right in front of my face. :)
Over dinner we were able to reflect on the past 9 years...things we have gone through, fun things we have done. We decided that in many ways our life was easier before having a child in our family, but life is definitely better with her in our life. Things have changed over 9 years, but I am glad I can honestly say I love my husband even more today than on August 3rd, 2002. Happy 9 years!

Thursday, August 04, 2011

Funding our adventure

I am always inspired by the "We paid cash" series on the money saving mom blog, where people make sacrifices or save creatively for cars, education, trips, etc. So I challenged us to see how much money we could creatively come up with for our vacation to Florida. Here's how we did:

Books sold on amazon: $107.88
Selling an old iPhone that was broken: $58
Clothes consigned: $30
Garage sale: $130
Michael guest preaching: $100
Change from our change jar: $53.47

Total: $479.35

This covered our portion of our 6 night stay at our beach cabin and there was a little left over to go toward food costs. We really value traveling and want to give Isabella more experiences than "things". I love that we were able to trade in things we weren't using anymore to gain an experience and memories that are more valuable to us.

*We are planning a trip in October to NYC to celebrate our 30th birthdays. Michael scored us two free plane tickets so we just need to come up with money for lodging. If you want to come over and shop at my house...everything has a price! :)

Wednesday, August 03, 2011

I want to win!

My friend Shannon posted a giveaway on her blog this week. AND the giveaway happens to be a really cute hat that I had previously pinned on my pinterest to order for Isabella for the winter. I would love to wear one too. Check out Shannon's blog here: the Urban Owl Knittery.
Shannon is very talented and makes so many great things!

Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Sunrise at the ocean

Apparently I should have got up to see the sunrise while we were in Padre earlier this summer, because where we were in FL the sun does not rise OVER the ocean. #20 on the list is watch the sun rise over the ocean. Which is why this post is sunrise AT the ocean. I am still counting it toward the list because it was magnificent AND I got up at 5:30 to go see it! Beth braved the early morning with me.


The sun just starting to burst through the sky.




The reflection of the sun on the clouds and ocean made red and orange colors.


Huge storm clouds at sea.


Hard to see, but a rainbow started appearing in the clouds over the ocean.


Daylight breaking.




The rainbow kept getting bigger!




GOOD MORNING!




After the sunrise we did our morning run on the beach. By this time the rainbow was stretching out over the land. It was gorgeous! After about a 1/2 mile it began pouring down rain. So we ran back and sipped coffee on the back porch of the cabin, listened to rain, and watched a deer run by. It was a great morning!