Family of FIVE!

Amaia and Haddon are pleased to announce that they have a brand new baby sister or brother of the way!!  Actually, Haddon has no idea what is going on at this point, but the rest of us are very excited!  Amaia is hoping for a sister, mostly based on her love of Frozen I think and she thinks we should name her future sister "Block", which is definitely not happening :)

I am 13 weeks along now and my official due date is January 13th! I have been feeling VERY tired and somewhat sick for a couple of months now, but I can tell that I am starting to have a lot more good days than bad days.  Oh how I love the second trimester!

We were able to have an ultrasound a couple of weeks ago to date the pregnancy and just make sure everything was going well.  Amaia and Haddon came with and it really seemed to click with Amaia after that what was going on.  She asks all the time now if she can see the pictures of the baby and when we get to find out if the baby is a boy or girl.  I love ultrasounds anyways, but I loved even more how it made her understand so much more what is going on with her mommy.

We are so excited to have another little baby in our family and I'm also so excited to give these two precious kiddos another sibling to play with and be crazy with for the rest of their lives!

Okoboji!

Last week my parents graciously took us on a mini-vacation to Lake Okoboji.  Sleeping with two kiddos in a hotel room is always....interesting :)  But all in all it was a truly wonderful trip!  

First off, I would just like to say that every time we visit a smaller town in Iowa I am always so impressed!  We stayed in Spencer because all the places in Okoboji were booked and it was such a lovely town!  They had an awesome fro-yo shop, awesome coffee shop and a nice shopping street and that is really all you need right?! That is all I need to have a wonderful vacation.

On our first day we rented a boat and Amaia had the time of her life.  She had already been asking me to ride on a boat a couple of weeks before our trip...little did she know it was already in the plans!  As you can see here, she had the time of her life.  She even got to "drive" the boat for a little bit, with daddy very close by of course.

Our boat ride was a lot of fun but it was a chilly day.  Haddon was my lil' trooper.  He barely protested one bit about the chill in the air or in the life jacket that was quite snug around his cheeks.  He is such a wonderful guy.

Here is at the beginning of our trip.

And here he is towards the end of the trip...starting to get a bit annoyed perhaps?? :)

The weather was so much nicer on our second day.  It was perfect out! Amaia greatly enjoyed the sand and water and destroying the sand castles her grandparents were trying to teach her to build :)

She is such a beauty.

The other thing that we did a lot of on our trip was eat!  Ha. Going out to eat has the potential to be a bit stressful with the kiddos, but that were both superb restaurant-goers.  Amaia learned the ropes and began immediately asked the waiter "I need chocolate milk please" first thing :)

It was a wonderful first trip with my family of 4!  It just reinforced my sentiment that these three and simply the greatest!

Mother's Day 2013

My Mother's day 2013 in pictures.

I started the day off with my very first gift from Amaia, facilitated by Adam of course :)  It promptly went on the fridge.  I love it!!

I am trying to start a Mother's day tradition of having a picnic and playing at a park.  This one was quite chilly, so we didn't last long, but it was still a beautiful sunny day.

We look cold because we were!

After our cold park adventures we came home and every member of the family had a glorious nap.  Haddon was up earlier than Amaia and Adam was the grocery store so we had some nice one on one time and he was just as sweet as can be....as he is pretty much every day of his life.  My sweet guy, I love him so, so much.

The rest of the day included resting and fabulous grilled dinner by Adam and his sister Ashley.  So yummy! It was really a sweet, relaxing day with my family which is exactly what this mommy wanted.

San Fran

Last week we traveled to San Francisco with my family to visit my sissy and vacation.  We did a lot and ate A LOT!  In fact, we ate way too much, but that is how we do vacation.  The weather was so refreshing, we got our first pumpkin spice lattes of the season and all in all had a great time!  Amaia and I are used to a pretty consistent routine, but she was so flexible and just generally great.  I love her.  She also really seemed to blossom over the course of our trip.  She learned several new words and even her first two syllable word - apple!

We did so much, that I don't even know where to start, so I am going to let pictures tell the story.

I may have been a wee bit stressed/nervous about flying with Amaia, but she did really, really great for the most part.  We even received compliments on how good she was on 3 out of 4 flights.  However,  Adam and I agreed that we don't ever want to fly with a little one again.  Hard work I tell you!  I was Amaia's jungle gym and I have the scratches all over my body to prove it :)

Our first flight was delayed, but I had lots of help chasing her around and we had Elmo on video!

I pulled out a couple books on our first flight and she feel asleep fast - SO thankful!!!

Amaia loved Golden Gate Park!  She swang and slid up a storm.  I even let her go down the slide unassisted for the first time.  Yes, I am possibly over protective :)

Carousel at Golden Gate Park!  She was a slightly skeptical until another little girl came and sat right next us and was loving it.

Golden Gate Bridge with my sis.   Gorgeous day.

 Picnic lunch at a winery in Napa.  Yummy!

Exploring the winery grounds.

A chilly day at the beach.  We let the waves splash over our feet and the water was COLD, but Amaia surprisingly loved it.  She also learned the world "wawa" for water on our trip and she had lots of opportunities to use it!

Amaia was a little bit confused by her new surroundings on our trip and she took a long time to wake up in the morning, probably partly due to not getting as much sleep as she is used to.  One day after she woke up I brought her into bed with us and she cuddled with me for at least 30 minutes before wanting to get up.  This has NEVER happened before!  And it was amazingly wonderful!

We went to Muir Woods to see the redwoods and it was beautiful.  Amaia did not actually like riding on Adam's shoulders, but I thought the picture was sure cute.

Amaia and Aunt Jessica.  Jessica really won her over by the end of the week.

On our last day my parents offered to watch Amaia for the day while Adam and I went into the city on our own.  Some good friends that have great taste had high recommendations of La Boulange, a french bakery and it did not disappoint.  I so appreciate a good coffee.  And we had the most amazing chocolate hazelnut croissant.  Need I say more?

After breakfast and a walk we spent the afternoon cheering on the Hawkeyes!  I admit I had kind of lost hope in our Hawks towards the end of the game, but they pulled it out in the end and it was a really exciting end to the game.  We spent about 5 to 6 hours watching football at this place that day, so Adam was a sweet husband and also suggested we download words with friends on our phones and play together.  He is so sweet to me :)

An early morning at the airport on our way home.  Baby girl was tired and entranced with people watching.

All in all a great trip and lots of memories made :)

Mid-Summer Mish Mash

Wow!  I cannot believe that is already mid-June and I cannot believe that my baby girl is almost 17 months old!!  She is a crazy and sweet little lady and I love her so much!! My girl is very courageous, an explorer, LOVES her dolly and doggies, gives hugs and kisses and is a busy girl all day long.  I have been very bad at remembering to take pictures and blog lately.  My excuse is that it is not easy to take pictures of miss Amaia as she always on the move, but I guess that is just an excuse so I better just get better :)

However, I have entered the land of smart phones (yea!), which means I have random pictures from my phone!

Celebrating the 4th!  We had a great day which included a parade, surf and turf lunch with Aunt Ashley, naps, our church's talent show and fireworks.  The parade was crazy town and was 100+ degrees!  Amaia seemed like she could take it or leave it, so we decided next year maybe we should check out a small town parade.

A few weeks ago I noticed that Amaia was very close to growing out of her infant car seat, so it was time for a big girl car seat.  She does not look nearly as small in it as I thought she would :)  I love, love, love bring able to turn around to grab her little toes and see her.

Amaia had corn on the cob for the first time this week and I was so impressed with her skills.  The girl barely has eight teeth and can eat corn on the cob just as easily as me.

I could not get a very good picture, but we got new curtains!!  I LOVE them! We had some panels up in front of our patio doors before, but they were almost exactly the same color as our walls and I have wanted to change them basically since we put them up - ha!  My friend Julie and I have great husbands who sent us on a weekend shopping trip with no kiddos a few weeks ago.  I should write an entire post about our weekend, but it was wonderful!  Amaia didn't miss a beat without me and it was great to just be a girl and friend for a few days :)  But I digress....we visited IKEA and I took that opportunity to get some quite affordable new curtains.

Just a little glimpse of our summer so far.  More to come!

Mother's Day

I had an absolutely wonderful second Mother's day as a mom.  We slept in a bit and then headed out to the enjoy the perfect weather: sunny with a high of 75!

Adam prepared a picnic lunch for us, complete with (in true Adam style) the biggest sandwich I have EVER eaten.  Seriously, look at these!

I could barely fit the entire thing in my mouth, but the funny thing is that I finished mine and Adam did not :)

Me and the pretty girl that made me a momma.  I wish she would smile for the camera, but she doesn't like to be confined these days.

She is happiest when we let her freely explore the world.

Then we explored everything the park had to offer. 

Truly, I got exactly that I wanted for Mother's day - time outside in beautiful weather, quality family time, great food and new nail polish!!  However, as I write this recap I feel so blessed that I don't at all only feel appreciated as a mom on this day.  I can honestly say that I hear and see and feel this from my sweet husband pretty much every single day of the year.  

The end :)

Sunday at the Park

I recently discovered that a park very close to where I grew up has received a complete and total makeover in recent years.  I have been talking in up big time to Adam and Sunday we had quite possibly the most wonderful weather of all time, so off to the park we went.  

Amaia got to break in her shoes.  This was her official walking experience outdoors.  She is a fearless little gal.  She seems to have no fear of falling (although she still does fall somewhat frequently), she just wants to go places. 

We tried to use the self timer to take a family picture and this is now it went...

We will have to try again another day :)

But Adam did a mini photo shoot of Amaia and I and I think we got a couple of good ones.

I love this girl so!

Celebrating Amaia's First Year

My heart is full.  We celebrated Amaia's very first birthday today with a breakfast party full of family and friends.  I am beyond thankful for this little girl and for the so, so many people that love her just as much as I do.  

I know that Amaia does not actually care about having a fancy birthday party at this point in her life, so I wanted to make sure that we did something that was truly for her.  I saw an idea online of making a time capsule and loved it!  She will get to open this mystery box on her 16th birthday.

I made a little photo timeline of our year together.

Amaia and her second cousin Evan.  Is his expression not the cutest?!

Birthday girl and her birthday muffin!

Amaia still refuses to feed herself, but she thoroughly enjoyed the muffin and lots of other yummy breakfast foods!

We love you Amaia Ruth!

And I think it's pretty safe to say that you love us too! 

LOVE: Family Style

Happy Valentine's day to you and yours from me and mine!!!

We are really, really enjoying the start to our first Valentine's day with our little sweetie.  Amaia and I brought daddy a mint condition coffee drink at work this morning!

Daddy loves Amaia.

We also tried to do a little photo shoot.  Amaia is not currently a fan of photo shoots.  In her opinion there are far more interesting things to do.  She is probably right :)

But she is just so darn photogenic.  

Amaia doesn't know it yet, but she is going to have strawberries and her first taste of nutella this afternoon for her Valentine's day treat.  Yum!!

Goodbye Sissy

My sister (sissy to me) and her hubby visited this weekend for the last time before they move to San Francisco. It is so weird and really rather sad that she is going to be so far away, but I agree with my dad that I don't think I will mind going to visit her there :)

On Friday afternoon, they came over to hang out with Amaia and I and witness Amaia's new standing skills.  Amaia was very happy to see her as you can see!

On Saturday morning we went to brunch to celebrate "my birthday", which is not actually for another couple of weeks.  In reality, I think it was just an excuse to spend some more time together before they leave.  We even got an entire family picture, which doesn't happen often.

And on a completely unrelated note Mondays are usually cleaning, picking up and laundry days at our house.  Sundays are our family day and I try to not to any cleaning or housework related tasks, so that I can purely focus on enjoying my wonderful family.

Well today Amaia was helping me fold the laundry and by "helping" I mean ruining all of my neat piles in her quest to get herself to the laundry basket :)  I decided I would just give her what she wanted and I put her in the laundry basket.

She looks cute in anything.

Baby girl has been insistent upon standing almost all of the time for a little while now, but this past week we have had some big time developmental leaps!

Lil' miss is pulling up on more and more things to stand up on her own AND...

She is now standing unassisted for 5-10 seconds at a time.  That is right she is standing on her own.  And apparently she thinks it is pretty great, because she laughs almost every time she does it.

She is growing up so fast!!  She even has taken a step by herself, not holding onto anything!!  She promptly falls down right after one step, but still!!  Major progress going on in this household!!

If she keeps going at her current rate, I do believe we are going to have a walking baby girl in the near future.  Exciting and scary all at the same time.

I did not help her stand up in the laundry basket at all.  The only thing I did was hold it so it didn't topple over with my precious girl inside.

She is getting so old and so silly and she is such a joy.  She makes me laugh easier than anyone else I know.  Sorry Adam!  But it is true. 

I do not think it is going to be a boring winter around here.