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.

Zombie Post

I am soooo tired. Nothing new there, huh? Haha. Things are moving along for me pregnancy-wise. Week 18! A week from Tuesday, we find out if we've got a new little miss or a new little mister. :D Craziness, huh? Everyone has kind of assumed we're hoping for a boy but, really, we're happy either way. Another little girl would be so fun, plus we have a TON of girl stuff. And if we have a boy, it'll be cool to see what it's like to have one of each. So we're pretty chill either way.

I have some fun pics to post soon. Our aikido class had our yearly peacejam workshop this weekend. It was a ton of fun and the main reason I'm so wiped out this weekend. But first I want to get caught up with...these!


A couple weekends back we went to Birmingham. Autumn and Tyler had a blast together. They got to do the carousel.


And they played like crazy at Ryan and Leah's house. Before we had to leave, they even got to play on Tyler's little gym.


Mike had some fun, too.


I'm not really sure how she managed it but by the time we went in, Autumn was covered in dirt like a little urchin, haha. (I just realized that this photo does not do justice to how dirty her face was.)


And, after the trip, Molly was overjoyed to see us home again!


Not really.

You know what's crazy? The next time we go to Birmingham, there will be a new LittleColley! And, Mike and I will know what gender our LittleColley will be so we can "discuss" (read: disagree, hahaha) on names the whoooole way down!

Celebrations, both happy and bittersweet

We've had kind of a strange week filled with goodbyes and celebrations. before I get to some other photos, I'd like to ask you guys to say a quick prayer for the family of my Uncle Rex who passed away last Saturday. To tell you a little about Uncle Rex, he was one of those people who "looked like they swallowed Jesus," to steal a phrase from a friend. Quick with a smile and always with a joke or a song on hand, I deeply regret not spending more time with Uncle Rex. He was my dad's uncle, the brother of my biological grandfather who my grandmother divorced when my dad was a baby. She put us in touch with Uncle Rex when I had a middle school family tree project and we realized I had almost nothing to fill in for my dad's side. He totally embraced us, filled in some blanks, and became the uncle I'd never had. We visited him through my high school years, even going to a couple family reunions with him where we met a bunch of people who looked exactly like my dad. Uncle Rex was at my wedding and my first Christmas parties and he was there when we lost my grandmother and then my dad. And it wasn't just me and my family he affected--when we came to his visitation, the line was almost out the door. Anyway, I could go on but for now just: thank you Uncle Rex and I will miss you (but I'm sure I'll see you again someday).


So, that was the sad part of our week. Kind of in an odd exact opposite, Mike's birthday was this week. We didn't really do anything big. We went to Birmingham last week to celebrate Family Birthday Week and I have photos to come of that later. I need to go through them. Thursday we went out to eat on Mike's actual birthday and Friday I began preparations for Mike's Annual Birthday Fajita Dinner Extravaganza. I did the shopping and made the filling for his fried apple pies so that could cool overnight. I finished up the apple pies after aikido Saturday and, man. These are probably the best ones I've ever made:


The actual dinner was...laborious, haha. I did all the prep work after making the pies so that the cooking phase wouldn't be too bad. I've learned from making this meal that if I clean up after each phase, it isn't nearly as bad. But it's still an entire day production because it's all fresh ingredients that have to be chopped, sliced, pureed, and all that fun stuff. For those of you who like to cook, I made:
Mexican Rice from Cook's Illustrated: rice sauteed with fresh garlic and jalapenos and then finished in the oven with chicken broth and a puree of fresh onions and tomatoes.
Classic Fajitas, also from Cook's: Flank steak sprinkled with lime juice, salt and pepper and seared to medium rare served with grilled onion and red bell peppers.
Mexican Creamed Corn: Corn, jalapenos, and, oddly but deliciously, cream cheese.
Looking at it that way, the dinner doesn't seem like such a big deal to make, haha. It ended up like this:


Mike was a happy 34 year old. :D


It was sweet, he put on jeans and a nice sweater in honor of all my hard work. I had on my workout clothes from aikido. Autumn? She had a pajama day because she loooooooves her panda pajamas.


Oh, speaking of Autumn, this is for Liz:


:D I hope this outfit was everything you hope it would be. Liz got this shirt, picturing it with the striped tights and a poofy skirt...lucky for us, I happened to have all of these things on hand for Autumn. I should have had her put on her black boots because, man. They made the outfit.

Anyway, I'm tired and I think I am going to bed. haha. Yes. At 8:54pm. I think I did a little too much yesterday with the food prep and aikido. I probably should have skipped aikido although I had a great time in class. I've been just wiped out all day today so I've been taking it pretty easy. Happy birthday, Mike! Thanks for being a good papa and a great husband. :) I wish I had a more creative blog post for your birthday but I hope that a meal made with much effort makes up for it.

A Looooong Week...

It's been a rough week at the Colley House but I think we're over the hump. :) We had a sick Mike and a sick Autumn early in the week and late this week my hormones decided I had enough of a reprieve and staged a revolt. Even so, we had some fun and I even checked a few things off my to-do list. One of my favorite things this week was that we had a couple of pajama days since everyone was too icky to go anywhere. Autumn picked her panda pajamas.


Note Molly's unwillingness to be petted. Haha. Much to my surprise, those two get along pretty well. Molly allows Autumn a lot more leeway than I would have expected and, for some reason, this week Autumn has started referring to Molly as "my cat." Autumn also got to sleep with us for 2 nights. She was so phlegmy that she'd wake up frequently and it was just easier to keep her in our room. One of the times I am very thankful we upgraded to a king sized bed!


Don't ask me why but for no reason at all I had to urge to bake. I decided to do a king cake. I've made two before. One was pretty decent and one didn't rise enough. This time the cake turned out beautifully. I mean, looks-wise. I knew when I was putting this dough together that it was going to be too tough--I had to add liquid which meant that I ended up kneading it too long. But, I really feel like if I could do this one more time before Mardi Gras (this year, not next...this one cake a year thing makes it hard to improve), then it'll be perfect. Anyway, this year Autumn was a big help.


She whisked the dry ingredients and finished creaming the filling. She also pretty much made the colored sugars herself. And declared them "beautiful." :) Beautiful is her word right now. Everything is beautiful: my new shirt, my purple eye makeup, the snow, her princess dress. I like it.


This year I braided the cake instead of doing the jelly roll. I was really, really pleased with it!


And after the decorating...I did a terrible job of attaching the two braids.


Like I said, it was a little tough but still:


:)

Odds and Ends

We've been pretty boring around here this week so I don't have a whole lot to blog about. I thought I'd just do a quick update and post a couple pictures.

Me:
I'm doing much better than I was! I'm 14 weeks along and the morning sickness is definitely tapering off. I'm still very tired a lot but I'll take that over how it was around weeks 7-10. My kids aikido classes start back up later this month. I have scaled back to once a week for the time being. I actually didn't really want to do the toddler class again (just have my older kids class and my adult class) because it's exhausting and I feel like I'm doing a terrible job but I found out that almost all the kids who were coming are coming back--how cool is that? Plus, every time we go to school now Autumn asks, "when we going to my kido class?" :) So, if anyone has any tips or tricks or activity suggestions for toddlers (we don't just do aikido--we sing, count in Japanese, act like different animals, stuff like that), I am all for them!

Oh! And I just realized I haven't posted many photos from our session with Elizabeth in November so...here are some of those:


Mike:
Mike has been very busy with work and side work. He's started working a 7am-4pm shift which means he misses rush hour but also means he wakes up at 5:30am! I am NOT an early riser so I will pass on that! He's also been going to a different side job every night. It's a huge blessing and I'm really thankful for his technical skills and for his clients. Mike has also been a little sick late this week with some sinus stuff. Poor him. Autumn has the same little bug so they are very pitiful together today. Mike is on my happy list because he got me a papa john's pizza for lunch today. I have been wanting one for a couple of weeks now so I am very grateful for that little splurge. Thank you, Mike!


Autumn:
She's a little sicky. Poor thing woke up in the night sick and coughing. She's mostly fine in the day. Plays, then snuggles, then plays, then snuggles. Haha. She and Mike just had some monkey and papa sniffle and snuggle time on the couch watching football. I think she's going to be fine in a couple days. Other than that, she's doing great. Loving her new Christmas toys. She likes to pat "her baby." She'll say, "is my baby still growing in there?" She's talking up a storm and mostly really well. One of my favorite things she says is "very, very" except it comes out as "werry, werry" like, "that is werry, werry pretty, mama." Oh! And she bought me a bracelet. :) Autumn, Aunt Lauren, and Lainey were out and about last week and, I don't know whose idea it was, but Autumn ended up getting me a gift. Lainey says Autumn went up to the sales lady and told her that the door was locked but she needs to see the colors for her mama. Later, Autumn said, "I got you a present! I want you to open your bracelet." Hahaha, toddlers are not so good at surprises, huh? It was sweet.


By the way! Click here and see this pic of Autumn from Donnie and Liz's wedding. I'm going to have to order a big one to hang and like 20 small ones to give out. :D I was looking at it and recognized Landon and Tamara in the background immediately. I didn't realize it was me, too, until I thought, "hey, those are cute shoes...oh, wait, those are my shoes." There's also a blog post with some more wedding pics.

I think that's enough for one Sunday night! I will leave you all with a pic of Autumn having tea with her babies:


Have a great week, everyone!

Snow Day!

The much anticipated Snow Day actually arrived, much to my surprise. I usually doubt it when people get in a frenzy about snow, preferring to be pleasantly surprised over sadly disappointed, haha. Mike got an early start on playing in the snow by walking around outside at, like, 11pm. I was at my computer in front of the warm heater when suddenly a couple of big snowballs hit my window and startled me.


Autumn woke up crazy early ready to roll out. We made her eat breakfast and get dressed first.


I think this might be the first time she was able to make snowballs all by herself.


But, like always, she had just as much fun getting hit by snowballs as making and throwing them.


We had a family effort at making a snowman. Mike made the base and I made the middle. There's no pic of me making the middle (Mike took some video) but I maintain mine was the best. :D


Autumn made the head. She was too impatient to roll it for very long so we have a very tiny headed snowman.


The house looked really pretty. It was painted back in late October and I think I forgot to post a picture. It looks great...if you need a good painter, let us know and we can get you the info for the guy who did it. He also did Mike's parents' house.


This was a funny little snow formation. It kind of ribboned out. There wasn't any support for the dips so I don't know how it happened like this.


We had some little animal tracks all over our front walks. :) Our neighbor has a couple of cats that roam so I'm guessing they did some winter exploring.


Anyway, after a lot of pictures, video, snow angels, snow romping and snow chases, we called it a morning. Autumn had snow in every crevice--hat, hood, gloves, socks, everything. But it was a lot of fun!


I also thought I'd break out some old snow pics. Mike and I have been kind of marveling about how grown up Autumn is these days. Here she is seeing her first snow in Birmingham back in 2008. Not super impressed...


I just love this picture. This is from 2009.


I think that was the year we got like 11 inches of snow. Since we were on the golf course, we had a huge expanse of white to play it. Autumn wasn't too thrilled about it at that time, though.


Last year is about when she started to get excited about snow.


But this year? This year she was anticipatory about the snow coming and just chomping at the bit to go out when it got here. :) Funny how times change!

Christmas highlights

We had a great Christmas and I hope everyone else did, too! Christmas week was so much fun with all of Mike's family here and Christmas day was full of presents and food and both of our families. Over at the Colleys, we had crazy hair:


along with presents and wrapping paper stuck to funny places.


There was a very happy little girl


and a very happy little boy (who said, "oh, my goodness!" a lot).


But the fun wasn't over...after covering their eyes,


there was much rejoicing!


And then much riding and bumping. :D


And the fun still wasn't over! With my family, a pillow pet found a home.


and baby Roxie had an adorable first Christmas.


Oh! And I can't forget Mike's GIANT CLOCK. He will always know what time it is.


All in all, it was a great day and no blog post will be able to express how thankful we are to be so blessed with family, friends, and, most of all, a savior to celebrate.