Hello Summer! - Wordless Wednesday

It's about 95 degrees outside today...with a heat index of 100-105.  Welcome to the first day of summer!  Holy hot outside!  We're staying indoors in the blessed air conditioning today.

Happy Father's Day!

Father's Day was extra special this year because it was Justin's first Father's Day!  Annaliese, my brother Alex, Justin and I all packed in our car and headed up to New Jersey for the weekend to celebrate a few birthdays and Father's Day together.  June 14th was my dad's birthday, June 16th was my brother's birthday, June 17th was my step mom's birthday and also Father's Day.  Yeah...needless to say we're broke for the month of June, but it's always worth it! :)


We arrived to my dad's house on Friday evening, around 9pm.  It was Annaliese's first long road trip since she was 2 months old so we were a little nervous about how she would be in the car, but she slept the first hour, woke up to eat, and we played for the remainder of the trip (a total of 4 hours including a pit stop) and did really well over all.  Mommy and daddy were proud of her!  We unloaded the car and had some yummy pizza and winded down for the evening.

At the gas station- 10 minutes into the trip

Playing so well by herself

Saturday we woke up fairly early and began getting ready for the day ahead.  Two of my best friends from high school and their 3 kids had planned a going away party/1st birthday party(for their youngest kid) and since they are about an hour from my dad's house, we were able to see them before they leave New Jersey and head to Texas where they'll be for 4 years.  We all headed over to their house and spent a few hours with them and they were finally able to meet Annaliese!

Levi was very pleased to meet Annaliese

They hit it off right away!

Annaliese didn't know what to do with so many toys!

Getting to know each other

My good friend, Jason with Logan and Gabbie

Alex helped out by giving Annaliese her sweet potato puffs

2 cakes- One for birthday boy, Levi and one for Jason who turns 30 in Sept.

Jason with Levi and Gabbie

Annaliese was having fun with daddy and watching everyone

Levi chowing down on some yummy icing and big sister, Gabbie enjoying some cake too!

My best friend since 10th grade and my daughter :)

Logan- such a ham!  Also enjoying some birthday cake!

After we said our goodbyes and held back the tears, we met up at TGI Friday's to celebrate Alex's birthday!  Unfortunately Justin stayed behind because he had a bad migraine.  But we still had a nice time.  Annaliese was enjoying her time with Nana and Papou and had a blast playing with the menu!

Annaliese with Nana and Papou

Annaliese trying to decide on a cocktail.  Haha!

Sunday we woke up and gave out Father's Day gifts!  Annaliese got Justin a photo book made via Shutterfly and I bought him a "New Dad" Willow Tree Figurine for our family collection.  We also bought my dad the "Grandpa" Willow Tree figurine for his Father's Day gift.  And since it was also Jackie's birthday, we celebrated her too and also had some yummy ice cream birthday cake!


Click on the link below to view the photo book from Annaliese.


http://share.shutterfly.com/share/received/welcome.sfly?fid=b6ddb562a905597c6d9889752d9a603c&sid=0YaMWLly2ZuWA

We left to head back home on Monday.  It's always hard to part ways from my dad, but we know we will see them again in a few weeks.  He and Jackie plan to move to PA so we can be closer to them and see them more often and we are so excited for when that day comes!  

Although we had a wonderful weekend with my dad, we didn't keep Justin's dad far from our thoughts.  This was our first Father's Day without him.  He is missed everyday and we so wish that he could be here to share in the joy of smiles and laughter of our Annaliese.   We know he's in Heaven looking down on us and is very proud of all of us.  We're lucky to have him as our guardian angel and there's no doubt that Annaliese will know her Papaw and what a wonderful man he was from the day he was born till the day he passed away. We love you, dad!  Happy Father's Day in Heaven.  You are forever missed. 

Ron and I on Father's Day 2009

Justin, Ron and Ashley - Father's Day 2009

  


Linking up with Mama Wants This! and These Little Waves for Memories Captured June!

8 Months Update

Born in New Jersey- 1983

Moved to California- 1986

Moved to Pennsylvania- 1994

Graduated High School- 2001

Met My Best Friend- 2006

Married My Best Friend- 2010

Became A Mommy- 2011

Have an 8 Month Old- Today

This is my life summary in the blink of an eye.  I'm sure it took you all of 10 seconds to read.  10 seconds is about how fast I feel like it's all gone by, at least since graduating high school.  Becoming a parent has made time fly by even faster!  Ludicrous speed! (For all you "Spaceballs" fans out there).  I know I have so many posts about how shocked I am that I have a daughter, and that she is growing so fast and that time is flying by so fast....but it's TRUE!  It's almost a daily thought in my head.


Annaliese is developing and growing beautifully.  She is such a happy baby and a joy to be around.  So much that our friends and family are convincing us that our next child will be a heathen!  Oh we pray that doesn't happen!  But we won't find that out in another year or so.  Since the weather has been so nice lately, we try to take her out of the house as much as possible.  It's nice to spend family time together and capture pictures of our big girl!


Justin and I have also decided that we aren't going to keep calling our daughter "Anna" for short much anymore.  We gave her a beautiful name for a reason, ya know?  Why shorten it?


So since turning 8 months old, Annaliese has finally had her first experience in a swimming pool!  And she loved it!  She was a little apprehensive at first (we believe because the pool was a tad chilly) but once she got used to it, she quickly became part fish, like her mommy and daddy :)  We look forward to taking her on many swimming trips this summer!

Also here's a few pictures I thought you would enjoy :)

Passed out playing on the floor

Looking pretty for Jessie and Jeff's wedding rehearsal

Hanging out with mommy

Smiling big!

My Mother's Day gift in honor of Annaliese (and future children)

Here's a little video I made (experimenting with a video app on my iphone, of course).  ADDICTED!

Playing with our blocks

Smiling so hard, her eyes went squinty!

So serious....

Smiles for daddy!

Sleepy baby beauty

Our new hang out spot!  Haha!

And lastly, here's a few pictures that I edited using different apps from, again, my lovely iphone. :)

This weekend we are traveling up to New Jersey to visit Papou and Nana for their birthday's, Uncle Alex's birthday, and daddy's first Father's Day!  It will be a very exciting weekend and there will be lots of pics to share with you all later.  :)

My Kind of 4am

So this morning I awoke to an unsettled, teething and hungry little one, at the glorious hour of 4:00 am.  If you can't sense the sarcasm there, I can try to kick it up a notch. Anywho... Sometimes Annaliese gets a little off schedule and naps real early in the morning to where she stays up all day and gets tired around 6:00pm which is way too early for her to go to bed for the night.  This happened yesterday.  She fell asleep around 7:00pm and there was no keeping her awake at that point.  So we laid her in her crib and pretty much placed bets on when she would be getting up next.  Around 9:30pm I had finished watching Mr. Popper's Penguins - great Jim Carrey movie by the way,  and headed to bed thinking "Maybe she will still sleep through the night".  Well I was wrong.  She woke up about 10:30pm hungry and because she fell asleep too early the two nights prior, we decided to give her a calming bath and make her bedtime bottle and try to put her back to sleep.  Well this actually worked.  It took her until about 11:30 to go back to sleep, but she did.  She woke up again around 1:30am with some gas, so I burped her and rocked her back to sleep.  Here's the 4:00am part.  The sleep stopped there.  Now I can't complain.  I mean really she got a lot of sleep between the hours of 7:00pm and 4:00am, however...mommy didn't. 


I said all that to lead me to this.  I made her a bottle, got myself a cup of coffee and was barely ready to start my morning.  As I was feeding her in the living room on the couch, I was browsing the TV guide.  Yeah.  Not a whole lot to choose from on TV at 4:00am.  Pretty much a bunch of infomercials and stuff that I wouldn't even let my cat watch, but after I browsed all 9,000 channels, I finally came across one of my ALL TIME FAVORITE movies, "The Newsies".  This movie /show/play is just one of those movies that can uplift me at any state.  I have seen it at least a bizillion times and wouldn't mind seeing it a bizillion more.  I jam out to the soundtrack on my iphone in my car, in the shower, while I cook...anywhere!  "The Newsies" has a way of taking me back to my childhood.  When I didn't really have a care in the world and wanted to sing and dance all day.  The days when I came home from school, played some video games with my brother, and had a family bicycle ride around the neighborhood.  Sometimes we would even head to the beach.  (I lived 5 blocked from the Pacific Ocean in California- yes I miss it).  Watching that movie just makes me want to "Open the gates and sieze the day" (one of the songs in the soundtrack).  It also makes me want to break out my old posters of Christian Bale too, but that's besides the point.  It's just my favorite movie.  It's my feel good movie.  I think I can honestly say I love "The Newsies" better than "Grease", which is almost insane to even think about, because for years I was obsessed with that movie and it's soundtrack also. 


And there I was...watching my favorite movie, with my favorite little human drinking my (new-as of me becoming a parent) favorite beverage.  It made getting up at 4:00am much more bearable.  I sat and thought of a post that my fellow blogger friend, Alison had recently written called "Notes To Self: The 3am Edition" and what she says is true.  Waking up with your baby (in her case, a newborn) in the middle of the night isn't a sacrifice, it's a privilege.  They aren't going to need you forever, so soak it up now.  It's very easy to get lost in life and forget the little things that we take for granted each day. 


So for the last  nearly 8 months, among many other lessons I've learned being a mother, I'm reassured every day that time is oh so precious and flies by oh so fast.  That's the bittersweet truth.  And when waking for a 4am feeding, 3am feeding, midnight feeding... take it all in and enjoy every single sleepless moment.

 


What's your favorite movie of all time?  What does it make you think and feel when you watch it?

Wonderful Long and Busy Weekend~

Well my weekend pretty much started out on Thursday, May 31. My dad and step mom came in town for my brother's graduation from the Police Academy. It was a great ceremony. Although Justin couldn't be there because he was away for work, BOTH of my parents were there and I know that meant a lot to my brother. I didn't really have a chance to get some good pictures because I was trying to help entertain Annaliese, but she did so well. She is really starting to get used to being around a big crowd and allow other people to hold her. 


Anyway, seeing my brother walk across that stage and receive his certification as Cadet Columbis made us all so very proud. He is going to make a great police officer! 


Then Friday night we had a little graduation party for my brother, Alex. My dad and step mom, Jackie, usually always kick us out of the kitchen when they come to visit (and no we don't stop them) and I'm ok with that! They are far better in the kitchen than Justin or I, so I will never stop them as long as they want to cook. There were cold cuts subs, tuna subs, pasta salad, potato salad, fruit tray, chips and dips and a few cases of choice alcoholic beverages. My mom brought her famous "New York style" cheesecake which everyone devoured. Alex had a few friends come over to help celebrate and that was nice. Annaliese allowed us all to have some "adult time" and napped for a few hours in the evening and still slept through the night when everyone left to go home. How nice of her :) Friday was also my mother-in-law's birthday. She came to celebrate with us all over Alex's graduation and we surprised her with a few gifts and cards and made it a partial joint graduation and birthday party.

Saturday came and my dad, Jackie and I took Annaliese and went over to a Tastefully Simple party at SIL Jenn and BIL Ashley's house that Jenn was hosting for a mutual friend, Sierra who just became a consultant. There was so much food and a good many people there to help Sierra and Jenn out. Annaliese had fun too! After we left there, we came home to change and headed with my brother and Justin out to meet Justin's Aunt Karen and Uncle Mike and his mom, Elaine for dinner. My mom stayed at our house to watch Annaliese. We all went to the Shippensburg University Luhrs Center to see the oldies groups The Platters, The Coasters, and The Drifters perform. It was a great show! So very different from what music is today. My husband and I have so many common interests but music is definitely a huge one. We love oldies, classics, jazz and pretty much anything that's not modern. I'm not saying that I don't own a few Lady Gaga songs but my preference is still classic rock, what I grew up to. Anyway we had a great time, and this was part of our gift to Elaine, Alex, my dad and Jackie, since their birthdays are all in June.

My dad, Jackie, Elaine, and Alex

On Sunday, Annaliese and I had a scheduled photo shoot with Yarnell Photography which is a local photographer in our area. They had put a status on Facebook that if you "liked" their status they would randomly choose a winner of a free "Mommy and Me" shoot for the month of May for Mother's Day. Lucky me! I won! I was so happy to have won this shoot because Justin and I have wanted to get Annaliese's pictures done for a long time. We intended to have her newborn pictures done by Yarnell Photography, but due to the loss of my Yiayia and soon after that, the loss of Justin's father, we had lost the momentum to get her pictures taken professionally. Then time flew by and she is 6 days from being 8 months old already! Anyway, here are a few of the pictures that were taken and edited by Yarnell Photography. They are really amazing and do great work!

My dad and Jackie left to go back home to NJ after we got back from getting our pictures taken. It's always sad to see them drive away and I'm usually down and depressed for the rest of the day. Which I was. But knowing that we will be in NJ to visit them for Father's Day weekend is a little better than not knowing when I'll see them next. 

It was a perfect weekend with friends and family for nothing but good reasons and good fun. What more can you ask for? Oh and I forgot to mention that Monday, Justin had off work. We had planned to take Annaliese swimming for the first time, but the weather hasn't been that great and it only got up to about 70°, so that wasn't really a good temperature to go swimming in. So we stayed home. Annaliese took a long mid day nap so we were actually able to relax and watch a movie together! I know, shocking right? Mommy and Daddy time during the day? On a weekday? That's almost unheard of! But we enjoyed our relax time and watched The Muppets, yes it was my choice, but we both enjoyed the movie, regardless of what Justin says. Hehe! 

And that concludes our long and busy weekend. I'm actually amazed that I was able to blog today! I hope to blog again soon! Hopefully sooner than later! Well off to feed the little one! 

What did you do last weekend?