One Proud Momma

Yesterday, B did some incredible things that I just want to take a moment and brag on him. =)

First, we went to a birthday party for one of his buddies.  When we first walked in, we saw a super tall rock wall. B immediately said, "WHOA! I am NOT doing that!"...couple of hours later, here he was...

 

He quickly mastered the "easy" side, so I got him to attempt the "medium" difficulty...

 

 We were SOO proud of him and it was so precious to see how proud he was of himself too.

 

After we got home from the party, B was very anxious to try out his new "Rainbow Loom" kit that I got him the night before.  It is one of the newest fads going around our school, they are basically colorful, rubber band bracelets...and he has been OBSESSED with it all week! He opened the box and got out the directions...they were complicated to say the least!!! B tried and tried and just could not figure it out, but he didn't give up. =) He asked for my help and I could not even understand the directions myself!! I suggested he check out youtube for some instructional videos...so he sat at the kitchen table for hours and hours and HOURS watching youtube (pausing every few seconds so he could keep up with the video). I gave up and went to bed while J stayed downstairs with him.  I honestly have no idea how late he stayed up working on trying to figure out how to make these bracelets. J ended up falling asleep himself, so B basically got to stay up as late as he wanted. =)  To my surprise, when I woke up the next morning, B had made THREE bracelets all on his own. With determination, he figured out how to make them all on his own...not an easy task and I honestly don't think I would have been able to do it myself!  So proud of him!!  

 

Now he has a new obsession and is constantly wanting to make more and more bracelets. We already had to go back to Michaels today to buy more rubber bands. =)

Happy 6 Month Birthday Ava!

When the day September 11th is said, many Americans are reminded of the horrific tragedy that happened 12 years ago.

For us, we are also reminded of September 11, 2011...the day, J's sweet and loving grandma passed away and went to heaven.

Today, September 11, 2013 we are also reminded that it would be our Princess Ava's 6 month birthday. Happy 6 Month Birthday Ava!!! Instead of us showering her with gifts today, she gave us a gift that we would like to share with you guys...

Baby Abraham, our Rainbow Baby,

is  coming April 2014!!!

Summer 2013

I have been meaning to put an "end of summer" post together for the last few weeks and somehow with back to school activities, time and energy have just slipped away from me. I thought it would be great to have one post that has a few of our summer photos and memories, for us to look back on.

B started the summer off with a week long camping trip with my parents and sisters. He had a BLAST fishing, boating, riding the tube, swimming, grilling and making smores.

 

Jason and I spent our 1 year anniversary at the Gaylord Texan.

 

Thanks to some great friends, we also went out to eat at various fancy restaurants to celebrate our anniversary and my birthday.  We had a great time trying new places and definitely remembered each person that helped make our dinners possible. =)

 

My mom, one of my sisters and me took a day trip to Tishomingo, OK to visit the Pink Pistol...Miranda Lambert's store...of course we each had to get our picture taken with the life size Blake Shelton. =)

 

B spent a week at my parent's house to go to Vacation Bible School at their church...he came back completely EXHAUSTED!!

His version of "unpacking" his suitcase...he unzipped it, then conked out!

 

We attempted to take some pictures of the Blue Moon.

 

B played on an indoor soccer team for the first time ever and ABSOLUTELY LOVED it!! He loved the fast pace of indoor and J and I LOVED watching him. We definitely felt like we were constantly on the edge of our seats cheering him on. =)

 

Although I didn't get it captured on video, one of the games, he scored the winning goal in the last 4 seconds of the game! We were SOO proud of him!!

 After each of B's soccer games we visited our princess. =)

 

We spent lots of time going to the community pool...

 

 We also had several (maybe too many) lazy days of watching movies and playing video games. =)

Lilly sure enjoyed having us home each day. =)

 

One thing I did not get to take a picture of is our visit to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Fort Worth. We took a tour of the money factory where they make millions of dollars each day! It was VERY cool!! I highly recommend it, if you are ever in the area.  We just happened to go the last week of July which is one of three "craft demonstration weeks" that they have each year. It made our visit even more special because we got to actually talk to people that work in the factory and they were able to demonstrate up close how money has been made over the years. We were also able to see the new 100 dollar bill that will not be in circulation until October. This is a great field trip even for adults!

 

B and I had a last minute mommy/son getaway with our good friends. We headed down south to Galveston the week before school started for me.  B had soo much fun playing in the ocean waves! We hope to go again next year!

B was AMAZED by the palm trees. =) 

Attempting to surf on his boogie board.

 

Special thanks to J for letting us go as he stayed home, going to work each day, and taking care of our 4 legged princess, Lilly.

 

 As I went back to school, B spent his last week of summer camping again with my parents and oldest sister.  He had a great time learning to play various card games, swimming in the lake and fishing. Here is a pic of him "fishing" (more napping) with my dad. =)

 

B and I had a great, relaxing summer! Unfortunately J had to work ALL summer and didn't get to do a lot of the things with us, but we did get to go and meet him for lunch a few times. =)  Hopefully, next summer he will get to take a few days off.  =)

 

Indepedence Day 2013

The three of us celebrated 4th of July together and had a wonderful time, but it was also a hard day for J and I.  It was another "first" holiday without our sweet princess. All day long, we kept thinking we should have had our lil princess with us, in our arms, enjoying the day, in her cute 4th of July dress. . .

Instead of loving on her, the day before, we decorated her marker with patriotic flowers, an America flag and a couple of pinwheels.

We had already purchased her dress back in November on clearance.  I still remember how excited I was to finally have the opportunity to buy lil girl dresses.  As soon as I showed it to J, we immediately thought it would be the perfect 4th of July dress for Ava. . .never knowing, she would never get to wear it. =(

On Fourth of July morning, J surprised me by installing the hardware for our new flag. He let B have the honors of hanging the flag for the first time.

 

I LOVE the extra, patriotic touch it adds to our house. =)

 

Afterwards we headed off to the parade in downtown, but as usual we were running a lil behind. Once we got closer, we realized how bad traffic was leading up to it, so we all made the decision to just skip it this year and we could try again next year. Instead we ran a few errands, then went to visit our princess to take our family holiday photos.

 

Afterwards, we went home, watched a movie, and J grilled some yummy turkey burgers while I made a potato salad.  We decided to have an inside picnic. . .away from the heat and bugs. =)  For dessert, I made 4th of July "cupcakes in a cone" topped with star sprinkles and Pop Rocks. 

B thought they were YUMMY!

J's parents visited us last weekend and his mom brought us the precious angel laying down. I LOVE it!

We got some family swim time in too. =)

 

Then we went back to see our princess and do some "celebration poppers" with her.

This picture shows the anticipation on their faces of their grand finale.  Unfortunately it turned out to be a dud and did nothing! =)

 

 We also got to capture a BEAUTIFUL sunset.

 

Then we headed off to get our spot for the fireworks.

Waiting patiently for the firework show to begin. =)

 

As we were watching the fireworks, I happened to look up in the sky at one point. I showed the boys, what seemed to be the brightest star in the sky, just happened to be right above us. It was our sense of peace.  Our lil angel was right there with us, watching the fireworks, only she had the best seat in the world. =)

Hope everyone had a wonderful 4th!

 

Thanks for following along with us, 

Ava's Room Part 2

Continuing around Ava's room, right where we left off...
If you missed out on the other two parts, click The Preparation and Part 1 to check those out. . .

We changed out the light switch plate to a pink one. =) Above that is a picture frame with the mat painted the same "summer sunshine" as her walls. We have purposely left this frame empty.  I do not want to put any picture of Ava up that would need to eventually be taken down (from possibly a new sibling), so for now this frame will stay empty.

Ava's diaper bag that we didn't get to use. . .I was SO proud of this too! It's a  Ju-Ju-Be Be All Diaper Bag that normally cost $120 but I got it for FREE from Amazon. Of course, it matches her carseat perfectly. =)

A peak inside her closet...thanks to grandmas and my good friend passing down a ton of clothes and shoes to us, she was already set with a TON of SUPER CUTE clothes and shoes!

 A customized memory board that my dad made for us. It originally came white from Hobby Lobby and my dad gave it a "tea stain" to add some brown to it along with some leftover pink minky fabric from her bedding as the background.  They are hard to see, but I made customized push pins. I also used the fabric from her bedding so it would all coordinate together.

 

A candle leftover from our wedding.  We had used it in the ladies bathroom.  It just so happened to match her things perfectly so I thought it would be great to deodorize those future stinky diapers when needed. =)

 A basket of toys. . .some of the toys are hand-me-downs from B along with a few new "pink" toys. =)

 Customized burp cloths that my mom sewed.  One side is the original burp cloth (made out of cloth baby diapers) and the other side has the girly patterns.  In the picture below, my friend's mom did make the two on the right to go along with my baby shower gift. =)

My mom sewed the two yellow pillows and my friend's mom sewed the pink one to help tie the colors into the guest bed. The pink pillow was great for nursing and holding Ava, one of the other few things she got to actually use.

This painting was done by my grandma who Ava was named after. . .you can see that she signed her name as Lee King (what she went by), rather than Ava Lee King, her full name. Although you can't quite tell very good from the picture, it just so happened to match the color combination that we used for Ava's room PERFECTLY!

Ava's swing that J's parents got us. . .normally it would have gone downstairs in our living room but for obvious reasons we moved it up to Ava's room.  Jason had fun assembling it. =) We were really looking forward to watching Ava swing in it and also to see Lilly's reaction to her swinging. The lap blanket is a customized gift from the doctor's office.

 

As you can see, Ava's room isn't that big so we really didn't have room for a rocker/glider. Originally we weren't going to get one, but then I came up with the idea we could just put one in our room.  I decided to splurge on this is one from Target.  Remember from this post, I got SUCH a steal on her crib?!? I thought I would make up for it with this glider. =) It not only glides, it also reclines and swivels too! Don't worry, I got a great deal on it as well. It was orignally on sale 15% off, plus I was able to use J's (employee discount at the time) and my Redcard discount to get another 15% off.  Along with a few baby shower giftcards I was able to save a little over $300 out of pocket.  J also wants me to mention how he almost broke his back when him and my mom tried to carry it up the stairs into our room. I think he is exaggerating just a lil bit, but it was a HUGE undertaking getting it from our garage to our upstairs bedroom!  I just wish we could have been able to rock her in it!

Her pack and play was another item that we had set up in our room, this was a gift from my parents.  We had planned on her sleeping in our room in this for a few weeks before we switched her to her crib. We now store this in her closet and I think we will come up with an alternative sleeping arrangement for the first few weeks, months, year if we are blessed with another baby.

Her carseat. . .my mom customized a lap blanket to match the carseat handle holder I got for FREE from Amazon.  So cute! Unfortunately, it never even made it out of my car, up to our hospital room.

And this is the box that we were sent home from the hospital with. . .instead of our sweet princess in my lap as I was wheeled down to the car, I had this memory box from the hospital.

 

One of the things you will notice, we had A LOT of pink! We were SO excited to be having a girl, instead of getting gender neutral items, I wanted all the pink we could get! Originally, we figured we wouldn't be having another child until another 4 to 5 years down the road.  By that time, if we were to have a boy, we would want/need new things anyways, at least that was my logic.  Now, who knows. We do plan on trying to have another baby as soon as we can and as much as I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE for it to be a girl, I know we will be blessed with whichever gender we will be given. For now, Ava's room will stay as is.  My hope is that Ava will be a big sister to a lil sister very soon.  I have already teased B, that if we get pregnant with a boy, he just might be getting a new roommate so Ava's room can stay pink and girly and always be her room. =)