Welcome Spring!

Spring is here which means we have begun our weekend trips out to the lake house. Yay!! It only took us a few minutes to realize that this years lake activities will be much different than last year. Last year, our little one wasn't mobile and adventurous. This year, she is! She loved every minute of it and wore us all out!

Here she is last year on the Gator and then this year she's taken over the driver's seat. She climbs up there all by herself and bounces up and down to signal that she's ready to go. She'll ride for hours all over the property with her daddy Don and Bibby.

  I know her hat makes her look like a boy, but its better than putting SPF on every hour.

This is the view down the driveway-I love it! 

Always on the go!

Sharing snacks with her favorite two people...ok, favorite mammals.

That's why I love him!

Yesterday, I worked both jobs in one day. First I taught nursing students on an adult med-surg floor from 6-2pm. Then I came home, napped, showered and headed to the Children's Hospital to work from 5pm-1:30am. It was exhausting and I don't recommend it. But it allowed me to have all last weekend off so that we could go to the lake so it was worth it. Despite the double shifts, we had made plans to go to the zoo today while Korey is off on spring break. So while I was at work I called Ko to ask him to get everything ready. Because he's slightly ADD, he asked me to email him a list. So I did. Here's it is: (side note-as moms we do this every single day, everywhere we go and don't think twice about it, right?)

-Find a soft cooler bag that will fit in the bottom of the stroller.
-Make you and I a turkey(or whatever you want) sandwich.
-Make Ruby a PBJ-like half the PB and J that you put on last time.
-Put some chips in a zip lock for you and me
-Cookies in a bag for you, me and MJ
-2 cokes for you and me
-Plenty of goldfish in her little cup
-A fruit cup
-Yogurt
-Any other snacks that we have that she likes
-And a cup that won’t leak with milk in it-the thermos is probably best
-No straws, no glass-Zoo rules!
-Also can you take the tray off the stroller? I think she’ll ride better if she can see. Or we can take the   umbrella, except that the cooler won’t fit. But there may be lockers. Whatever you think.
-Also-we can probably consolidate her diaper bag into her little owl back pack. Diapers, wipes, pacis, boogie wipes. Either pink hat or braves hat.
-Maybe a water cup. Change of clothes.
-And we’ll need the camera. Man, her stuff weighs more than her chucky bootie!


This is his reply which made me laugh at loud:

How bout instead of all of these instructions we eat a hot dog at the zoo. Ok great. See you in the morning!!


I will commend him and say that when I got up this morning after just 4 hours of sleep, I was expecting to fork over an hours worth of pay on hot dogs at the zoo. But to my surprise, the cooler was packed, the diaper bag was consolidated and and the stroller was ready. Yay! Go Daddy!

By the way-I think its weird that they serve hot dogs and hamburgers at the zoo anyway. Seems like a vegetarian menu would be more appropriate but no one asked me.

 Ruby loved the petting zoo. Despite the fact that it was only goats and sheep, she would walk up to each one and say "mooooo". I'm pretty sure she would have stayed there all day. Zoe and Grammie joined us on our adventure. Sweet cousins-too bad they wouldn't look at me while playing with their goat brushes!

Because of spring break, it was REALLY crowded! So we enjoyed our perfectly packed lunches on the ground. I can't wait to go back on a school day!

Moving On

Nope, not moving yet. Still in the parents basement. But we are moving from one gold shoe to the next. Sunday morning after I got Ruby dressed, I put on her gold shoes that she had worn just days ago. And either she had a major growth spurt overnight or I'm a really terrible mother for cramming her foot into itty bitty shoes. The new ones are a little big still, but aren't they awesome? How could I pass up an infant, gold, gladiator sandal that was on sale and said couture on the box? I couldn't.

Finally

Please excuse the 3 month blog hiatus. I don't have my own laptop anymore and I have a 13 month old that doesn't care if her mama updates the blog. She's a busy busy girl! She's walking, and usually running, and getting into everything. She's sweet as can be though! The 1st birthday party was a hit, and exhausting, and I'll get back to that soon.

    For now, I'm posting pictures of girls night. Last night six of us got together for a much needed and much enjoyed girls night. These are 5 friends that I've known for most of my life and even though we don't see each other often, when we do, we have so much fun catching up!

We picked a dish off of Pioneer Woman's website and split up the ingredients for everyone to bring and then made dinner together. It was so much fun! The recipe had a long list of ingredients with lots of prep work so it was a great dish to make together.
And it made so much food! Thanks girls for a great evening! Lets do it again soon!

And here's one picture of my precious Ruby and one of her new favorite activities. The warm weather provides hours of entertainment on the deck. She loves it! Now I just need to figure out a way to keep a hat on her little red head!

Who doesn't love pink trees?

Because we're living at my parents right now, our Christmas decorations are going to be sparse. Pretty much all of them ended up in storage but I made sure not to pack Ruby's pink tree. She got it as a present last year and I've been waiting all year to put it up.
Yesterday, the Rubster and I took a trip to Ikea to get all the trimmings. On a side note, every store should be more like Ikea. They have parking reserved for mothers with strollers, a family bathroom with complimentary diapers and a diaper genie, and bottle warmers in the restaurant. It doesn't matter that the parking spots were all full and my cloth diaper wasn't going in the genie and I've never used a bottle warmer, but all are really good ideas that make me want to go back. Or it could have been the huge cinnamon roll that we got for a dollar and ate all the way home that makes me want to go back!

The tree turned out perfect and Ruby loves it! Next year we'll put it in Ruby's room just for her, but this year its the perfect accessory for our compact basement home.

Q & A

Question of the day, everyday: Where does she get that red hair from?

Answer:

Korey's cousins Olivia and Betsey.

Shutterfly Cards

Its that time again! Time to send out Christmas cards from our family to yours. (If you're sending one to us, don't forget we moved!) This year, thanks to a friend, I'll be getting my photo cards for free from Shutterfly. They are giving free cards to bloggers. Yay!!

We recently had our family pictures taken by our friend Justin and I can't wait to get them back. I've gone back and forth on which approach to take to the Christmas card this year. My absolute favorite Christmas cards to receive are those of screaming children in Santa's lap. They are hilarious!! I know it sounds cruel, but how great is it when you open an envelope thinking you're about to see a sweet, well-groomed, perfectly placed family and instead you see a hysterical toddler trying to get out of Santa's lap as fast as he can. A few years ago, we got one of my nephew Luke and it was perfect. I kept it on the fridge all year. I think I've decided to go with a family photo card this year (maybe this one). However, I still stroll Ruby past Santa at the mall and tell her he's scary. We'll see if it works in a few days when we go see him.

If you still need to make holiday cards or gifts, go to Shutterfly. You can make cards, gifts, invitations and more. I've done all with Shutterfly and have always been pleased.