Cindy Lou Who

Okay. I didn't mean to sound so Grinchy yesterday! I really do love the Christmas season. I love thinking of the perfect gift to get someone, making cookies, looking at the Christmas lights, and I really can't wait until Gemma is older and I can see her face light up at all of those things, too.  I guess I was feeling a little like Cindy Lou Who yesterday.  I just want to find and remember the true meaning of Christmas, and I suppose I've just had to try a little harder to find the Christmas cheer this year.

I'm just finishing up sending out the last of our Christmas cards and I am in love with how they turned out. (I was feeling a little guilty that you can't see the babe's face very well, but I've since come to terms with it.) We took the photos ourselves. Took the legs off of the couch in our basement (it was my grandma's), carried into our backyard, set up the tripod, and proceeded to take about 300 photos.  We learned pretty quickly that its difficult to get a dog and a baby to look at the camera, especially when there's no one behind it!  We ordered this card from Pear Tree Greetings, and I think the whole thing came together beautifully.

Here are a few fun outtakes from our little backyard session:

Can you spot Harper? 

Squirrel! Squirrel! Squirrel! (I also forgot to take Gemma's nuk out of her mouth.)

Wow! Jeff is REALLY happy.  Harper looks like a pouting teenager.

And now for one of my favorites of Gemma.  I was really tempted to make this our Christmas card, but we put it on an ornament for the grandparents instead.  The hat was given to G by her auntie, Sophie.

This is the raw image. Jeff did a bit of editing before we ordered it. :)

Halloween 2011

Gemma's first Halloween was pretty uneventful.  I knew we would just stay home and hand out candy since she is too young to eat candy and it would most likely be to cold to take her around the neighborhood anyway.

Even though we weren't planning to go out trick or treating, I wanted Gemma be in costume when we answered the door for our trick or treaters.  I originally had intended to make her costume out of a long-sleeved onesie I had dyed. (I was going for mustard yellow, but it turned out bright yellow instead.) I was going to hand stitch some black fabric of some sort into stripes, put some black leggings on her, add some wings we had on hand, and call her a bumble bee.

Enter my sister and her ebay shopping. She sent me a link to the cutest baby Halloween costume. A koi fish.  My father-in-law loves koi ponds, so I couldn't resist. (He and Jeff even bought about 100 gold fish a few summers ago and put them in the pond behind our house to see if they would survive. We saw some pretty big buggers out there this fall!!)  I decided to put in the minimum bid on the outfit and figured if I won, great, and if I didn't, we would have a bumblebee! (Might I add that Jeff was "disgusted" to find that I had bid completely wrong because I didn't wait until the last minute.)  Well, I won the auction. Guess I showed him!

We don't get many trick or treaters since we live in a newish, small development, but we had a great time anyway.  Our new neighbors and friends, Sarah and Adelyn, came trick or treating and Gemma and I decided to walk around to a few houses with them, too. Next year, we'll probably go around the entire neighborhood with them!

It was a pretty nice day! Harper was a pumpkin for about 10 minutes. Her costume from 2 years ago doesn't quite fit anymore!

Handing out candy put this baby right to sleep!

Catching Up

My, oh my! Has it really been a month since I last posted? I can't believe how quickly time is going!  Summer always seems to fly though, while winter drags on, doesn't it?

We've been having a great summer and are loving being parents. Here are a few things we've been up to the last month or so.

-Gemma got her first sunburn. It was horrible on me, but she took it like a champ!  I swear she was covered up and kept in the shade while at Jeff's volleyball tournament, but apparently there were a few minutes she managed to burn. :(

-Gemma turned 1 month old.

Gemma is 21" long and weighs 8 pounds 2 oz.

-We visited our friends, Matt and Katie, who had a little boy, Gavin, a month and a day after Gemma was born.

Katie, Gemma, Gavin, and I

-We had a birthday celebration for my dad and my nephew, Thomas, on the 4th of July. 

Thomas LOVES reptiles.  Here's his latest catch.

-My niece, Kaitlin, came and stayed with us for about a week. We were on the go pretty much the entire time she was here. Shopping, a college tour (!), coffee, volleyball, and a couple of walks were the things that kept us busy. Oh, and of course we made pot stickers! Our favorite. We even managed to save a few so that she could bring some home.

I can't believe how pretty she is! And growing up way too fast!

It's hard to see here, but she's visiting my alma mater, Bethany Lutheran College! Thanks to Sarah for the tour!

-I started back on my organ rotation.  Church starts a half hour earlier in the summer.  Man, is it hard to get going that early in the morning and get a baby ready to go, too.  Gemma loves it,though!

-Grandma Lorraine and Grandma Linna both babysat for a few hours. (On different occasions.)

-Harper learned a new trick.  She stands up and won't sit back down until you tell her she can.  It's pretty amazing how long she can hold her pose!

Ugh. She looks pretty mangy.  She got a nice summer buzz shortly after this photo was taken.

I'm making it a goal of mine to get a little bit better at blogging.  Jeff is moving all of our pictures to a shared drive in the house, so I don't have to wait until he is off of his computer to access all of our photos.  Here's to good intentions! :)

Happy Birthday to MEEEEE!

Yesterday was my birthday, and man, do I love celebrating on St. Patrick's Day.  I am gifted with 4 weeks of vacation at my current job, so I have been taking my birthday off of work for the past few years.  My day usually consists of sleeping in, getting a pedicure and a massage, and eating dinner out with my hubby.  Just a nice, relaxed day.

This year was different, though. I decided to work because I'm saving all of my vacation for a 12-week maternity leave. I woke up, put on my green, packed up my cupcakes, treated myself to Caribou, and headed to work.  It was a pretty uneventful work day and it went by quickly.

My parents, brother and three of his kids brought over dinner to help me celebrate.  It's always a little chaotic when you have two four year-olds and a three year-old joining you for dinner. Jeff and I have a lot of learning to do when it comes to letting things go. (Grubby hands on our upholstered dining chairs, forks on our hardwood table, etc.)  We sure do love our nephews and niece, though! My mom was super cute and brought me cupcakes frosted together to make the most adorable owl  "cake."  I'll have to post a photo of it later.

The older I get, the more awkward I feel about celebrating my birthday.  I'm torn between loving to celebrate and feeling like I'm too old to celebrate.  The lovely RA recently described it much better than I ever could.  Either way, I had a nice day, and am looking forward to continuing the celebration when my in-laws come to visit on Sunday. :)

Margarita cupcakes that I brought to work. Recipe courtesy of RA.

Sorry for the blurry phone photo. Proof for my 100% Irish mama that I wore my green! (She would be highly disappointed if I didnt!)

hehe. This actually has nothing to do with this post.  Just wanted to share that I'm trying out a sling on my little furbaby! :)

Yes, I Have Turned Into One of THOSE Dog People

I figured I should devote a little post to the favorite little lady in my house--my doggie, Harper.  I'm beginning to become a little wracked with guilt thinking about the possible neglect and jealousy she may feel in the upcoming months.  My hope is that we can help her adjust to a new baby in the house and be able to give her the attention she needs.

She is  pretty spoiled and we can only blame ourselves for that.  She is just so much like a little human to us, though!  She and I have our morning routine and I quite like it.  I get her out of her kennel. I let her out to pee. I feed her. I let her out to poop. Then, I cradle her in my arms, grab my quilt and lay her on the bathroom floor while I take a shower.  She either goes back to sleep, grooms herself or snoops around the bathroom.

She does so many cute things and has so many cute expressions, I can't help but love her more and more every day. She'll sneak off and snooze in our bed. She crawls under the blankets and licks Jeff's legs. When we turn on our fireplace, she sleeps right in front of it until she gets too hot.  Then, she gets up and lays somewhere to cool off before going right back for more. She lays on the bottom of our console table in the front entryway because that's where the sunlight hits from our front door sidelights.  She gets really sad and tries to skulk away when you ask her if she wants to take a bath.

I've become really amazed at the things she can do and the words/phrases she knows.

Tricks Harper can do:

Roll over

Go to sleep

Shake hands

Sit

Lay down

Get the newspaper

Jump

Words/Phrases Harper knows:

Are you hungry?

Do you want to eat?

Want a treat?

Where’s daddy/mommy?

Do you want to take a bath?

Bad dog

Naughty girl

Squirrel

Bunny

Puppy

Lexi (my friend Katie’s dog)

Rocky (Harper’s brother)

Get your bone!/Where’s your bone?

Want to go for a walk?

Get in your kennel/bed.

Grandma

Okay, okay. Now that I've officially become one of those crazy dog people, I should probably end this ridiculously long post about my dog....but not before I share a photo of her! :)

Merry Christmas!

I'm still getting over my terrible cold, and I'm way behind on blogging. (Already!)  We never got around to sending out a Christmas card this year (boo).  I'm hoping next year when we have a pudgy, new baby to show off, we'll have a little more motivation.  We hope you enjoy this Christmas video from Harper instead!  Jeff just actually pieced this together using this program for the first time, so it doesn't really make sense.  But, I think its quite cute--and I'm not biased at all. :)

Our FurBaby, Harper

Harper is the baby of our house for now. We know we're pretty ridiculous when it comes to our dog, but we love her so much! She's pretty smart and understands a lot of things we say to her. "Are you hungry?" drives her wild. We have had to change it to "Are you starving?" when we talk to each other so Harper doesn't go crazy and keep running back and forth from us to her dish.

Her grandparents love her, too. My mom loves to spoil Harper when she comes over. Jeff's parents are much more obsessed with her, though. We've let them have her for a week or so on a few occasions because they enjoy having her around so much. (They are very protective, too. We found out just how much, when she came home with a doggie carseat!) Linna gets most of the credit for the majority of tricks that Harper knows. Shaking hands, rolling over, and her most recent, jumping through a hoop. (To our credit, we taught her how to get the newspaper recently! We're still working on the drop it part...she brings it in the house and wants us to chase her while she carries it in her mouth.)

Here's a video of Harper showing off her mad hops. (We don't have a hula hoop at our house, so we used an old bat pillow that Jeff made in home economics. ((I didn't even take that! Guess we know who the seamstress will be in our house!)) )