Holiday Recap 2

So Christmas night we went to Mama Lainey and Papa D's house. This picture of the three of us seriously cracked me up. She's totally eyeballing the gifts.


Autumn and Tyler's big gift was a kitchen and grill set with all the accessories, including an apron and hat for each of them (which reminds me: I have a chef hat pattern for kids! I can't wait to try it out!). Autumn made us all laugh with her talking on the phone and bustling around the kitchen routine. I have no idea where she might have gotten that. Haha...


They ended up playing with the kitchen set while the grown ups opened their gifts. Autumn occasionally came out to help me with gifts. You can tell here from her WIDE OPEN EYES that it's getting late and she had been playing hard.


I finally got to give Nanny her apron and I could also finally tell her that the reason Autumn associates houndstooth with Nanny is because she had seen me working on that apron for a while! I think it looks great on her!! I'm super happy and it was worth all the work and learning how to do rick rack from internet tutorials. :P


Oh, here's a fun gift that Autumn got. It's so. very. true. Ha! I am, however, going to take some paint or something to the quotation marks around the big because it's going to drive me insane. Actually, what I need to do is submit this photo to the "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.


That weekend we also got to go to Houston's which is my faaaaaavorite restaurant. I got some really nice shots. This one is a nice one of Brad, Nanny, and Boppa but the thing that is the most interesting to me is that Autumn and Brad have the exact same color eyes. Isn't that neat? I think changing eye colors are really cool, I guess because mine are always the same brown. Autumn ranges from blue to green to grey and Mike is green to blue. My dad's eyes used to be green or nearly clear, oddly enough. Sometimes it's strange to see Autumn's eyes go clear grey like my dad's did.


I've already put this one on this blog before but I like it so much here it is again. I'm totally going to frame it.


I am almost caught up! Yay!

Holiday Recap 1

We had a really, really good holiday. It's taken me forever to post anything because I'm trying to get back in the groove of things. I think we're in pretty good shape right now, though. Anyway, let's hop into the wayback machine and head back to Christmas Eve...we dressed Autumn up in her Christmas dress of awesomeness. She loves every second of wearing that dress although a stranger would never know from the faces she made in the photos.


My family doesn't show up here very often but I promise they do exist, hahaha. This is my brother Donnie. Mike and I actually "see" him and his girlfriend Liz a lot...almost every night. In Warcraft. >.> Hahaha. Christmas Eve we got to see them in person and not just their avatars.


This is my sister Valerie and her husband Justin. They are just over 20 weeks pregnant with a girl whose name is to be determined. Justin is telling people her name will be Justeena Edweena. :P I remember for a little while I told people that Autumn was going to be Ilaraze: a combination of my name and Nanny's given name Ilawene. Boppa calls her Halla, teehee.


My mom pretty diligently avoided the camera that night so we'll move on to Autumn's Great Discovery: egg nog.


I won't bore you with the 2.5 million photos we have of Autumn opening gifts but this one is pretty funny. There's a wagon in that box. It is heavy. So heavy that we couldn't figure out how my mom got it up her apartment stairs. Miss Autumn thought she might be able to carry it to Papa who was going to help her open it. :D


The next morning, we did breakfast and gifts here at our house. My mom came over and helped critique some of the foods I was experimenting with for our New Year's Day Brunch. I made biscuits and tried out an apples and granola recipe as well as one for hash browns. I'll have to link those later because they were absolutely wonderful. Autumn rolled out some biscuits with me. She was all "I need apron! I need cook!"


We baked her creative biscuit creations, to her delight.


Ok, one last gift picture. This gift was the hit of the lot. It cost me $3.99. I got her this hello kitty chap stick for her stocking. Seriously, barely anything else existed after that...she would say, "I need lipstick!" and then whip out her little bag of chap stick.


That's it for now!

Happy New Year!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday. Or, at a minimum, a better holiday than Mike had:


Haha. He had a good holiday. He's just a little peopled out. I have a ton of really great photos but I thought I'd post a year recap like a few others have done. I thought it might be kind of fun!

In January, Autumn started Mother's Day out. And I had long black hair!


February brought the biggest snow I have ever seen in Memphis...I think the official Lakeland tally was 11 inches.


In March, we went to Colorado to visit Brian and Andi and their kids Nate and Sophia. We also went snowboarding which really could have gone better than it did, hahaha.


This doesn't have any particular story attached for April but I love this photo. :P This is her first documented icy stare.


In May, Autumn turned two. It's hard to believe she's going to be three in a few short months. Incidentally, I'm already planning her birthday in my head. :D


June brought Autumn's first toasted marshmallow experience.


July was a busy month. We went to Florida where Autumn decided she hated the beach but kinda liked the pool. My grandmother moved to the Philippines where she is doing well. And I made this dress for Autumn.


August brought Vegas! And in Vegas, Mike's mom found the first of the...Tink Dresses!


In September, I turned 29 and Autumn had her first school pictures made. In this outfit. Complete with the blue beads, lol.


October was a milestone month with Autumn. Looking at the photos, I'm seeing a lot of places where she really came out of her shell--she played with animals and in the bouncer at Tyler's birthday, she cooked with me and her Aunt Penny, she played great with her Uncle Rex at their first meeting, Autumn rocked out at the zoo, all kinds of things. I think October was the first time Autumn had her nails painted, too, which, if you have spent much time with her recently, you'll know was a major event for her. She loves some nail polish! "I got nails painted, mama! Lula paint nails!"


In November, we went to see the Playhouse Disney Live show (which was not super great, lol) and had all the family things around Thanksgiving, and some friends of mine and I went to see New Moon. :D Oh, and this Thanksgiving was Autumn's first year at the Big Girl Table!


I'll still have some December pics to post but here's one for you...


We hope you had a happy new year!

Merry Christmas!

The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David!
Luke 2:11

A message from Autumn:

Yes, Autumn, there is a Santa Claus...

But Autumn could be slightly more impressed.


It was pretty funny. Tamara and I took Autumn to see Santa on Friday. Autumn was pretty chill about the whole thing, just showed him her nails and her shoes and hung out. No freak out but no real smiles, either. UNTIIILLL, Santa gave her THIS:


I missed the photo op because I was trying to pay but after Santa gave her this lollipop, Autumn totally went back and gave him a hug.


Another stop on our weekend before Christmas train was dinner with Mike's family in Birmingham. We had a good visit. Leah and I coordinated and dressed Autumn and Tyler in one of their matching outfits. Haha. They were pretty active so this is about the best I got of them full body. We'll call it an action shot.


They did slow down a bit. Just long enough for Leah to read them a couple books and then it was off again. Can you believe that Autumn is old enough to go off and play with her cousins in the play room?


I don't blame her for wanting to get away from this face...


Haha, just kidding Uncle Kyle. By the way, do you like Mike's picture taking skillz? He took the one above. We had a fairly uneventful trip home. When we got to Mike's parents' house, Autumn and her P'd partook in some dancing. This is one of the sweetest things ever.


Afterward, she took a bow.


So, after our weekend of visiting, I spent this week working on the last of my gifts. I made this little turtle for my friend Christy. It ended up being a lot tougher than I expected, lol. It was so funny...I had put the turtle's body down while I was working on the shell. Autumn saw it and said, no lie, "What's wrong with it? What happened? I scared!" Mike decided it looked like a brontosaurus and chased Autumn around with it. I admit, it's a gimpy little guy (well, girl, I guess) but I told Christy, who loves turtles, that it was made with lots of sweat and a little blood from where I stabbed myself hand sewing part of it.


Happily, the turtle looked a lot better with its clothes on. I mean, it's still terrible but it has personality, right? :P And, like Mike said, the flower turned out quite nicely, hahaha. And the button is even a Vera Bradley button! Which I didn't notice until Christy pointed it out. :P


I put the turtle (whose name is Henrietta, I think) in front of Molly to see what Molly thought. She was unimpressed which is good. I figure that if the turtle truly was scary, Molly would have tried to take it out.


My other sewing project turned out well. It's an Alabama apron for Nanny. I'm trusting all of you not to show this to her before Christmas, ok? :) Molly approves of this one, too, as you can see from the socks hanging out at the top of the photo.


I'm super happy with how it turned out. The apron took longer than I expected because I've never worked with rickrack. And the pattern doesn't call for any trim. I saw an apron that the designer of the pattern made that used rickrack as the trim on the waistband and in place of the ruffle and thought that would look nice with the houndstooth. I didn't really count on it being so hard! But, after only a couple of take apart and redo moments, everything came out as well as I hoped!


So, that's been our week before Christmas. Tomorrow night we're going to go to our church's Christmas Eve service. Everyone is welcome to come if your church doesn't have a service--it's from 5:30-6:30 at Fellowship Memphis which meets at Crichton College on Highland. I have something to post for Christmas but, in the meantime, safe travels to all and have a very merry Christmas.

Her father's daughter (with captions)

We went to Autumn's two Christmas programs at school this week (I know, it's craziness that she was in a program, time flies!). It was...cold-heart-meltingly adorable. :D And Autumn...well...let's just say she doesn't seem to have my enjoyment of being onstage. We figured one of three things would happen:

1. She'd run away screaming.

2. She'd do what she was supposed to do.

3. She'd suck her thumb and hold her tummy.

She actually did a lot of number three on the first day. Number one never happened, thank goodness. There wasn't a lot of number two, either. There was a fourth option I didn't consider: Autumn staying one place but doing pretty much everything but what she was supposed to do. Here are a few examples. By the way, Autumn is in the middle of the front row. Both days she had on a white shirt with an applique on it so she stuck out a lot. :P Sorry about the view. It was crazy how many people came to this and how early they got the good spots, lol.



I don't know why the end of the credits speed up like that (new software, still figuring it out!) but, anyway, of course, Autumn spent the next 4 hours singing all of the songs from the program. Over and over and over and over again. With hand motions! And insisting that mama do the hand motions! She even sang the songs for Pa D on skype. :P Figures, huh? My ornery little miss.

I'm kinda proud of her individuality. Hehehe. See? There's always a positive spin.

'Tis the Season...

...to take pictures! Every year when we go down to Birmingham, we do family photos. None of the ones of Mike, Autumn, and me turned out well but we got some cute ones of other people. For example, here are Mama Lainey, Papa D, and Tyler looking nice. And, I think this could be Autumn's first documented cheesy "photo smile." Ha!


I love this one of the kids with Brad and Lindsay. I like how Brad is holding onto the car Autumn is on like she's about to take off. She probably was!


All the Colleys! I love having a big family now. I think I've mentioned before that most of my dad's family doesn't really bother with us--with the notable exception of our very awesome Uncle Rex--and most of my mom's is in the Philippines. So, for so long it was just me and my immediate family plus our friends who are like family (you know who you are!). I love that Autumn gets to have lots of aunts, uncles, and (eventually) cousins.


This would be a great photo of the siblings if it weren't for the fact that Mike and I are sitting and leaning oddly.


Since our photos didn't turn out, Mike, Autumn, and I went to Mike's parents' place Sunday to have some potential Christmas card pictures taken. A few of them turned out great. This could be one of my all time favorite shots of Mike and Autumn:


We don't seem to pose very well so I asked Papa D to take some pictures of us swinging Autumn. :D They weren't Christmas card worthy but these are so cute!


By the way, let's all take a moment to go "awwwww" over Autumn's outfit. Teehee. It's so cute! Guess who got it for her? You only get one guess!


I think we'll end on this one. I like it for some reason--we're all looking up at Mama Lainey. And, it kinda tickles me because I look really, really filipina here. Hahaha.


By the way, if you have never gotten a Christmas card from us and would like to, let me know! I love getting cards as well as sending them so I'd love to get one from you! :D You can email me your address at sharaze at gmail dot com.