Nearly a Year Old

My wonderful Gloria,

It's been nearly a year since you were born.  And I can't believe that.  You're my baby.  You're our baby!  Our tiny little girl that now ... isn't so tiny. ; ) 

I love seeing who you are.  I love seeing how much you're like your sister and how much you're not like your sister.  You guys are similar in the sense that you both are verbal little stinkers (at 11 months you're saying words that I just can't get over ... you can say your name, backpack, Good Morning (NOT JOKING ... you say good morning!), bye bye, hola, hi, hellow, hermana, sissy, Daddy, Mommy).  You're also incredibly sweet.  You and your sister have never had a disagreement of any sort.  You both adore each other. 

Now your differences -- you're quieter.  You love your independence. You're more content just being.  You don't "move" around all the time.  You love to just sit.  You can crawl or pull up on anything, but you're perfectly content just playing with a toy forever.  You eat EVERYTHING -- grass, rocks, leaves, lint ... you get it.  It's tough to keep track of you! 

You're in size 4 diapers already and still wearing your 12 month clothing.  No idea how much you weigh, but I know it's more than 22 pounds b/c that's what you weighed over a month ago, HA!

I know your birthday is soon.  I know you'll be turning one on July 4th.  What a special day for such a special girl.  We can't wait to watch you go to town with your cake.

Love you my sweet girl. 

Mommy

The Hot Tub

Something about using our hot tub in the backyard makes the husband and I have amazing conversations.  I think it's the fact that NOTHING else can distract you.  No phone.  No kids. No TV. Nothing.  Just us (and sometimes a glass of wine).  This weekend, we pretty much had an entire weekend of "hot tub" conversations.  No distractions.  Just us.

This last weekend, we had a treat.  Yes we often get to watch a movie or a basketball game after putting the girls to sleep, but this weekend was special b/c Gloria had her first sleep over (she rocked it by the way ... slept 13 hours for them, that's my gal!). 

We dropped off the kids at Evan's aunt around 2 o'clock on Saturday (our anniversary was on Sunday so we were celebrating a day early).  After dropping them off we ... wait for it ... went to a coffee shop! haha!  We wanted to do the things you CAN'T do with kids.  So we had our books, Evan got a coffee (I hate coffee b/c it tastes and smells disgusting) and read for an hour.  It was glorious.  No interruptions.  Just lots of holding hands, kissing, and reading.  After the coffee shop we went to a movie.  We tried to see Great Gatsby, but the theatre didn't have power so we drove to another one quickly and watched "Now you see me."

Dude ... SUPER entertaining movie!  If you walk in to it realizing "this is going to be a wee bit over the top" you'll really enjoy it.  Yes, the magic isn't possbile, but who cares!

After the movie we went to eat an italian dinner.  I bought a group on for a nice restaurant here and we both got drinks (mine was INCREDIBLY strong!  DELICIOUS! HA!), soups, meals and dessert and the ticket came out to $6.18!  THANK you groupon!

After dinner we came back home and it was pouring rain so we rented ANOTHER movie! haha.  This one was called Promise Land ... also very good.

All in all, it was an INCREDIBLE day together.  The theme of the entire weekend was just being together. LOVE.  Rejoicing in this incredible marriage.

On Sunday we made chocolate peanut butter waffles with the girls.  While they napped we worked (boo, I know) but then spent time together in the evening and sat in the hot tub for a good hour.  Just chatting.  Chatting about life.   Chatting about us.  About family. Kissing tons.  Sitting on his lap, feeling so blessed.

 And we both concluded, life is pretty damn great.

The Livingroom (FINALLY!)

It's been a long journey redoing our livingroom. I mean, a really long journey.  We started with some pretty nasty sights ...

Notice the UGLY colored walls (we didn't do that! that was the mud color the previous owners used, yuck).  We were pretty clueless as to what to do.

SO ... we made a few changes:

And we really improved things on that first one.  We lightened the walls a lot, we put the curtains up, and brouhgt in a chair.  We liked the changes.  But we still knew we hadn't found the "it" factor.

So over the last few months we've made changes.  BIG changes.  And we are IN. LOVE.  I mean, I love our livingroom.  And while it's not TOTALLY done (when are rooms totally done?) we are 95% done.  For now, I am so happy with that.  It is by far my favorite room in the house.  BY FAR...

TA DA!

 See? Told you ... big changes!  We bought new chairs at Kirklands, the stool at Pier 1, the rug at TJMaxx, the cushions at TJMaxx, the lamps at Target, the tables (aside from the coffee table) at Target, the coffee table at Overstock, the throw & gray vases on the mantel at West Elm, the frames on the wall at Target and Michaels, the TV console we already had and just painted blue, the mirror from TJMaxx, and the chevron ottoman at Walmart (I know, who would have thought?)  As you can see, we went to a ton of places to find our new livingroom.  We did it with time, with coupons, and with a lot of smiles.  We REALLY enjoyed redoing it.  Our favorite thing, by far, is our new coffee table.  It's so comfy to put your legs up on it.  It's just a comfortable, modern, totally us room.

We debated whether to do a gallery wall or just 5 frames around the TV but finally decided on the gallery wall, and while it was probably pricier, I'm so glad we did it.  I designed some of the prints and then printed out great pictures of all of us for the rest.  Whenever we're watching TV, I look at the wall and just smile.

so what's left?  We want to lower the curtains and get some other ones, we want new decor for the ottoman and some baskets in the TV stand.  That. is. it!

YAY!!!  So what's next? Finishing our master bedroom.  But we'll have to wait until our budget allows for it and that's gonna be a while (damn you taxes).  In the mean time, I'll keep sitting in our livingroom grinning constantly.