Gracie month to month: 8 months

This summer seems like such a whirlwind. Even though it's now the middle of July, I'm taking us back to May when Gracie turned 8 months. 

Here is my big eight month old! 

She had a terrible cold when I took these pictures, but as you can see, she was as happy as can be!

I'm not sure if you can tell from these pictures, but Gracie has a rockin tan on her legs these days. But, only on her legs. :) We spend a lot of time outside in the mornings; the girls get a ride in the jogging stroller while I get a workout pushing it. We've done 187 miles since April 21 when I started keeping up with our distance and we all have major farmer tans because of it. The girls legs stick out from under the stroller sun shade and I have a wonderful tan from my tank tops, running shorts and tennis shoes. It's lovely. :)

Gracie made me one proud mamma this month. She started the army man crawl a few weeks ago back in April, but on May 25th, I walked into our living room and she was crawling around on her hands and knees. I couldn't believe it, she officially started crawling on MY BIRTHDAY, JUST LIKE HER BIG SISTER. I'm not kidding. Isn't that crazy??!??! The funny thing was, I forgot Ella Claire crawled for the first time on my birthday until I saw Gracie doing it. It was just a little bit special for me. 

Gracie pulled up right around 8 months, got her first tooth (bottom, front left), and learned to gives kisses(pure sweetness). Major milestones for this little girl. She also got to eat cheerio's, sweet peas, plain yogurt and cheese this month. This as you can imagine, made her very happy. It made me happy too. Eating and entertainment all wrapped up in one!

These days are flying by! Gracie is still not sleeping through the night, but she is so pleasant and such a sweet baby. All that sweetness is making up for her my lack of sleep! Love this baby and her sleepless self!

 Gracie at 7 months

busy bodies....

...that's what I've got on my hands these days; two little busy bodies. I think Gracie will be walking within the next month or so and then I'll really have two busy bodies! Right now, our days are as predictable as I can get them, but not as predictable as I would prefer. I can count on Ella Claire to sleep 3-4 hours every day. But, I never know if Gracie is going to take a 30 minute nap, a 15 minute nap or her favorite, no nap at all! How can a baby not nap? She is small for her age and I'm convinced it's because she doesn't sleep.  A full day with no naps leaves plenty of time to play though, and that we do! :)

I had to document Gracie's first time crawling into our kitchen to find me!

Ella Claire LOVES her toddler Bible.  Poor thing, we're going to have to buy her a new one because hers has fallen apart many times despite us taping it back together every other day. What's that saying...."A Bible that is falling apart usually belongs to a person that isn't." 

        

Sweetest birthday card I've ever received.

It's been a busy summer so far. We seem to go from one activity to the other. Life is full right now and we are soaking it up and enjoying each other! I'll be back soon though, with Grace's 8 and 9 month pictures.

July 2012 header

empty me

Jeremy and I have always been a fan of Jeremy Camp. But, over the last year, Jeremy has really been drawn to his anointed lyrics. We have recently declared the oldie but a goodie, "Empty Me" our family theme song. It simply states our hearts true desire for each member of our family, 

"Holy Fire burn away, my desire of anything that is not of you and is of me. I want more of you and less of me." 

I don't think those words need much explanation. Jeremy and I are praying that everyday, we will die to ourselves and be emptied. Emptied of pride, greed, selfishness, anything that is of ourselves, even complacency. We also pray that as our girls get older this will be their prayer too. It's easy for us to get caught up in our expectations and hopes for our children, but honestly when we think about it, all we want is for them to be filled with God. A shining light for Him, filled with His fruits: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.

If you have 3 1/2 minutes, listen to the words of this song. Think about the things in your life that might need to be burned away.

spring 2012 header

Gracie month to month: month 7

Trying to take a good picture of a wiggly 7 month old is not easy. Especially when that wiggly 7 month old is in a chair and sitting next to a chalk board that just so happened to take you 30 precious minutes to get looking decent. :) But, my oh my are 7 month olds fun?? I know Gracie sure is.

This has been a big month for Gracie. She started out this month rolling all over the place then moved on to scooting backwards. Now she can get into a sitting position from laying down and do the army man crawl to get to any of her big sisters toys.  Her newest trick is rocking on all 4's and trying to lunge forward. ha! You know what all this new activity means, right? It means my precious, mommy loving girl is gaining a little independence and deciding it's perfectly okay to spend some time out of momma'a arms and on the floor. :) We still get plenty of snuggles in, though.

***a little photography trick I learned this week...black and white makes an over exposed picture look not so over exposed. ;)***

Gracie made her daddy one proud Papa this month by saying "da da"! Now she's just a babbling all day long, calling her "ma ma" and her "da da" and saying something like "nah nah nah" and "bah bah bah". As you can imagine, we can't get enough.

Gracie was not very interested in looking at my camera....

Thanks to her big sister, Ella Claire, I got a few glances my way. And, even a few smiles, because Gracie thinks big sister is the funniest thing in town! (and sometimes she is!)

Whew, what a month! It's busy, busy at our house with a crawler and a toddler, but so much fun! I'd be telling a story if I said I wasn't absolutely pooped by the end of the day (actually, it hits me about 6:50 every morning since I'm still up 2-3 times a night), but I wouldn't trade these days for anything. I love being mom to our sweet girls and I'm so thankful for them!

Gracie at 6 months
Gracie at 5 months
Gracie at 4 months
Gracie at 3 months
Gracie at 2 months
Gracie at 1 month

Steph's pink and gold lingerie shower

Back in March, I helped host Stephanie's lingerie shower with Kim, Jess and Steph's new sis in law, Laurie. It turned out so pretty and fun! The shower was at a neighborhood clubhouse.  A few weeks before the shower, we designed these invitations and cut them out with my silhouette. Have I ever told you how much I love that machine?

Inside the invitations. 

We also printed up some instructions for a game we've played at all of our lingerie showers, and cut them into lingerie shapes.

At the very last minute, Jess and I had had the idea of putting veils on each of the food place cards. For dinner we served...

Pork tenderloin, aka saucy tenderloins

bubbly blackberries which was a blackberry sauce for the pork

twice baked potatoes or pucker up potatoes

honey buns. Ah! This was yummy! Yeast rolls with heart shaped honey butter.

To drink we had...

 strawberry tea, "sweetly tea-sed with strawberries, please"

water or "a skinny sip"

We also had strawberry salad with raspberry vinaigrette, which I am drawing a blank on what we named this and I have no photo to jog my memory. Anyone else remember? We had "peas to please", which were fresh green beans (not technically peas) wrapped in bacon, dixie stampede's creamy veggie soup that I also can not remember what we named and a yummy coffee and ice cream punch that we called "perky punch".

You can barely see my beans wrapped in bacon in the picture above. Not sure why I decided to cram my salad on my plate instead of using my salad plate. :) But if you look close, the beans are between the roll and salad.

The Little Cake Shop in Spanish Fort never disappoints!

The pastry shop really did a great job on these petit fours and hooked us up because they were 3 layers tall! I've never seen petit fours that tall. Beautiful gold "m" with pale pink icing.

A few pictures of the table before we put out the flowers.

Each guest found their place at the table by the monogram doilies that we placed between the charger and dinner plate.

It just wouldn't be a dean lingerie shower without our lingerie shaped sugar cookies. 

"A sassy, pink treat for being so sweet!"

good times!

Our fun hostess gift!

Stephers, you are so very special and loved. I hope you enjoyed your pink and gold shower as much as we enjoyed planning it for you! Love you, sister!

**UPDATED ON 06.06.12**

I purchased and downloaded the corset invitation from this website. As far as I could tell, it was meant to be cut out with scissors and wasn't necessarily intended for specific use with a cutting machine. That being said, I imported it into my silhouette library and somehow figured out how to make certain lines perforated while making the outline and inner cutouts normal cut lines. Make sense? It was a challenge, but it can be done. Wish I remembered exactly what I did so I could be a bit more specific, but I'm certain that if I figured it out, you can too! :)