Aikido! Airplanes! And Ellie!

Yay! Papa is home again! Mike was out for a few days this week (again!) but this time for work. I really missed listening to Autumn and Mike chatter while I cook. Mike showed her pictures from his trip.


He came back all tanned and sunburned.
+

While we spent most of the week like this.


Last week Autumn did some serious flying in her cardboard airplane.


For a few days. Ha!


And, omg, this is so awesome. I recorded Autumn doing the hand stretches from aikido. These are the basic joint locks you learn to do when you first stop. HOW CUTE IS THIS??? Also, at the end, watch how she corrects herself when she does it wrong!!

Last, but definitely not least, check out baby Ellie!!! She arrived very early Tuesday morning. Lindsay is doing great!!


I loooove this photo so much!


Doesn't Autumn have the best look on her face??


We're so excited to have another little miss in the mix! I need a new tag because she's not a LittleColley, is she? She's a LittleSellers! Ha! Check out PassingPinwheels for more posts about our last few days and a photo of us together with baby Ellie!

Catching Up

I know everyone is dying for more adoption news! If you haven't been reading Passing Pinwheels, that's where you'll find the most frequent updates. There, and on Facebook which is a little more real time.

I thought I'd finish up my Christmas photos! This was probably my favorite Christmas event. Autumn has been fascinated by nuts in the shell for some time. I'm lazy so I never buy them like that. Santa had the brilliant idea to give her a small bag of nuts in her stocking. I am soooo glad because she absolutely loved them! Everything came to standstill. She forgot that she hadn't finished unloading her stocking! Several times over the next day or two, she got them out and showed friends the different nuts. Too funny. Also, THAT HAIR.


Hot cocoa (well, hot chocolate soy milk!) with presents is a tradition we started last year. And my mom has spent the night with us the last 2 or 3 Christmas Eves so she's gotten to do gift opening with us! This year, Autumn handed out all the gifts. She's gotten pretty good with heavy lifting! And I have to confess I'm really happy with how patient she was. I'm not sure I could have stopped opening to hand out gifts when I was five.


After we wrapped up at our house, we went back to Mike's parents' place. Santa Baxter came by to greet us! Note Autumn's much improved hair situation.


Another popular gift: ear muffs. I'm really confused though because we can't find them anywhere. I think I'm going to have to do another hoarding sweep of Autumn's room! She tends to put things into bags and stash them around. About the time we start missing things, it's time to make sure everything gets put into its proper place until she builds up another hoard of treasures. She is, apparently, a dragon.


I'm not sure how Uncle Brad became a head rest. But they both seem cool with it.


Is there a better way to repurpose bows? I think not.


I have another funny face series.




And Christmas is not Christmas without a box. We live in box land these days. Autumn builds castles, cars, trains, cat houses, boats. You name it, a box has become it. At the end of gift opening Autumn said, "why didn't Santa bring me a box?" Hahaha. I love her. We managed to procure a box.


That takes care of December, I believe! We're getting all caught up before the new normal hits!! Keep an eye on Passing Pinwheels as we work towards Monday the 28th when we get to bring baby Grant home! Also, on the 28th we are going to launch a special fundraiser that I am very excited about!

THE CALL!

I promise I'll do a photo post this week but you have GOT to click here and read about our adoption news!!!!

SO MUCH NEWS

First! Welcome to baby Hudson!!! Hudson was born yesterday and has a full head of hair. Congratulations to Ryan and Leah and Tyler!

(totally stole this pic from Lindsay's facebook)

Second! We knowwww what we are having! :D Any guesses? Well, let me tell you by sharing Autumn's prayer tonight:

Dear God, thank you for Lainey and P.D. and for mama and papa and for my new baby brother and for tyler's baby brother and for give a pig a pancake. Amen.

Yep! It's a boy! Autumn's reign as Colley Family Princess remains supreme. :D Here's one of the ultrasound pics:


The ultrasound was a lot of fun. He was super active, just like Autumn was at her 20 week ultrasound. Everything looks great--no cord problems, no visible issues, just bouncy baby-ness.

Autumn is excited about her new baby brother--she says he's going to be the prince, she's going to be Belle, Aunt Penny is going to be Cinderella, and mama and papa are going to be pirates. So, apparently, we are just one big play in Autumn's mind. :P I'm glad she's taking it so well because she was totally convinced she was going to have a sister named Cinderella and she'd call her Ella. Hahaha. Funny kid.

Anyway, that's it for now! I have a ton of picture from THREE different parties over the last four days so I am going to try to get those up before Sunday.

So...

Here's a shot from our session with Elizabeth Wiggs last month:


Zoom into the book why don't we?


Some of you guys get it but if the responses of the various family members we did the book to is any indication, a few of you miiiight need a little help:


:D

Yep! We're expecting baby number 2 sometime around July 15! How cool is that? It was kind of a long journey, punctuated by things like counseling for me to deal with how rough my delivery of Autumn was and fertility treatments both eastern and western and lots of people have been waiting on this for a long time and it's finally here!

I'm actually only 9 weeks along but a lot of people already know. Of course, our family is huge so like 20 family members have known for about 5 weeks. I also told the people I train with for obvious reasons. We don't want unexpected kicks or punches in less than ideal places, right? So, now we're telling you!

I have a few prayer requests, too. First, please pray for me. I had about 3 weeks of absolutely debilitating morning sickness. I even had to go to the emergency room for IV fluids and medicine. That kind of helped me reboot my body and things have been improving. I also have continued acupuncture which is think is also helping. With the exception of a sinus problem (this crazy weather), I've been doing remarkably well this week. A friend of mine told me yesterday that I'm actually experiencing "normal" morning sickness but that it feels like "good" to me because of the last few weeks and because of how things were with Autumn.

So, you saw that I had an ultrasound, right? Well, apparently, I produce inferior umbilical cords. :) If you remember, Autumn had a 2-vessel cord which was the source of all of our delivery drama--she stopped growing at 34 weeks. Well, this little one has a cyst in his or her umbilical cord. It should go away before the first trimester is over but they still want to do some monitoring. If it's still there in a couple weeks, I'm headed over to the same high risk doctor that I saw with Autumn. Everything else looks super healthy so that's great news.

Last but not least, please keep Mike and Autumn in your prayers. Mike has been so awesome. He's grocery shopping and cleaning and just being generally awesome in addition to his normal job and side jobs. There's a lot of time left so I hope he doesn't burn out!

Here's Miss Autumn:


She's sick today. That was her yesterday after I got her from school. She was running a fever, poor thing. Papa D and Lainey rescued her, though, so she slept on the aikido mat before the kids class while we waited on them to come get her. Autumn sick is truly one of the saddest things in the world because she just kind of lays there and is so, so sweet.

Anyway, that's a lot of updating! I know I haven't been on the blog lately but now you know why! I've seriously been going to bed between 7:30 and 9:30 almost every night but things seem to be normalizing a little bit. How are you guys? Getting ready for some great Christmases, I hope!

Warning: Cuteness ahead

It's been a whirlwind week!! I've got a bzillion photos to post so I'm finally getting this wedding posting wound down so I can move along to things like anniversary surprises and train parties. :D

The wedding day was, as all wedding days are, crazy. I had to make an emergency run to Hobby Lobby, the church wouldn't let the catering people (Lainey&co) in until after 10am (for a 1pm wedding!!), and so on. Even Autumn wasn't without her accidents. Literally. she must have been nervous because she hadn't had a potty accident in ages. But, we got there on time and my mom's friend Jacqui did her hair. I even put a little blush on Autumn. And, tell me if that is a Mike face if you ever saw one.


Autumn's been on this kick where she seriously wants to be Cinderella for Halloween. She did want to be a cat but then she got this foofy dress and I talked her into a princess so the dress gets plenty of use. Yes. I know. People keep telling me it seems out of character to encourage the princess thing cause I'm all kick butt or whatever but you can fight and be girly. Or at least I can.


As part of this princess thing, though, she's determined that Mike will be a prince and I will be Belle. :P She was pretty tickled by all the dresses and tuxes. It was like a princess show.


We've been calling Autumn "Little Lindsay" lately because they look a lot alike sometimes. :) Not so much in this picture but how cute are they?


Took me long enough but here's the blushing bride!!


With the maid of honor, her sister Michelle. You guys might remember her wedding just a few weeks back!.


This is kind of fun. Here are the ladies of the bride.


And the ladies of the groom (minus Valerie and Roxie who came in later).


After the wedding, we did family shots outside. It was pretty warm for October, I thought, Autumn agreed. She wandered around like a whiny Christmas doll going, "it's hooooot." You see boppa there in the background? He was looking sharp in his tux as an usher!


So done with it all. :)


So, in case you didn't see earlier, my mom was adorable. Seriously. I have the cutest mom. I'm excited about this because maybe it means that I'll look something like this when I'm 50. Sweet!


Oh, one really cool thing at the wedding was...dippin dots!! Did you know that you can order dippin dots for a party?? That was the one thing that Liz really wanted and it was a huge hit! I managed to grab some and get it for her before she headed out. She said she'd been trying to work her way there but never made it through all the people.


I didn't take many pictures at the reception. And for some reason I have none of me, Mike and Autumn. And the only one of Autumn and me together is terrible. Now that I think about it, I don't have any of Donnie and Liz. :P While I'm complaining, haha, I also wish I got some of them leaving with all the bubbles and stuff but this will have to do. I took a picture of this because I'm proud of myself for mounting the pictures I stole from the photographer's website. Haha. All this non-photo taking means the photographer is probably going to make entirely too much money off of us.


Autumn ended up being a good barometer for the end of the reception. By the time she was wilting (clutching the flowers I gave her off the cake server), things were winding down.


And all that was left were goodbyes and cleanup! The End. Or, rather, The Beginning. :)

Wedding Part 1: The Rehearsal

I drank some of Mike's coffee at 9pm and now I can't sleep. But that's good news for anyone who was wanting to see wedding pictures! The weekend ended up going really well, especially considering how quickly everything was put together.

First of all, I would love to thank Lainey, Papa D, Nanny and Boppa. We all know that I totally love my inlaws and that I think they are incredibly amazing but this weekend...man. Truly, there is no way I can thank them except by promising to do for others the way they have done for me and my family. I'll tell you more about what everyone did in Part 2: The Wedding. Lainey and Papa D let me host the rehearsal dinner at their house because I wanted something more intimate than a restaurant and, well, I have no living room furniture so my house wasn't going to work. :P I was thinking it'd be something simple and nice but...yeah. I forgot that Lainey doesn't do anything by half.

The rehearsal was fun. I got to go to part of it. Long enough to get a picture of Autumn dancing down the aisle!


I decided to use a little bit of a warcraft theme for the rehearsal dinner. I wanted it to be something that Donnie and Liz would get but that other people who aren't geeky would just think, "hey, that's cute!" It ended up working out perfectly. Faith Long recommended Shannon Taylor to make the rehearsal dinner cake which was a replica of the Alliance banner, the faction we play in warcraft. Seriously, it was awesome:


I also made potion party favors which were just test tubes filled with red m&m's to go with the fall theme and to simulate health potions in game. Cheri, who did the flowers and general awesome set up for the wedding and rehearsal dinner brought me a treasure chest to put them in.


I took some photos of us in game and set up a little thing that plays on the idea of Best in Slot, which just means that a character has the best, like, weapon that he or she will ever get in the game. Playing with my friends (with a shot of the 4 of us being stupid as our WoW characters) + Playing with the one I love (with a shot of donnie and liz dressed up as a bride and groom in the game) = Best in Life (this shot was after we killed the big, bad guy at the end of the game).


The invites were along the same lines. Warcraft quest text and a Warcraft-style monogram but not super obvious to anyone who doesn't play.


The full theme cart:


Other than the WoW stuff and buying the food, I can't take credit for how amazing everything else was. Cheri turned Lainey's backyard into a romantic, candle-lit oasis and all I did was put things where she told me to and they continued the work while I was with Autumn at the rehearsal. Even Ryan pitched in by going to pick up the food for us.








I think everyone had a good time relaxing, eating and, later, sharing stories about Donnie and Liz.


Lainey even found this adorable plate that doubled as a gift and decor. :)


Another great thing about the wedding? Seeing old friends. Here are Kiley, Rachel, and Louis. Louis was the minister and Kiley shared a few words with and about Donnie and Liz. I don't think I have seen any of them in a long time although we keep up with each other via Facebook and the grapevine.


I liked this picture of Donnie. I took it while Liz's grandmother was telling a hilarious story about the time Donnie caught a fish and was amazed and terrified at her fish butchering ferocity.


Liz's eyes are totally shut here but Justin there in the back? I lol'd.


And, of course, since I was either panicking about something, taking pictures, or doing something, I wasn't in any photos so I asked Donnie to snap a few of me and Mike. It degenerated very quickly.


It just went super well, not without drama (like unexpected out of town guests, timeline issues, and forgotten items), but what about a wedding is without drama?? Haha. That ended up being the case with the day of the wedding, too. Hopefully I'll get wedding pics up soon! Here's a preview:


Seriously. How can you stand it?