Celebrations, Part 2

This is catch up, haha. I meant to get this posted this week but obviously that didn't happen. It was a good week, though! I'm feeling pretty decent which is nice. Just tired. I've been slowly getting onto a normal schedule again. I've gradually gone from just making it through the days, to making dinner most nights and cleaning up the kitchen, to actually getting back on a pretty normal cleaning/calling people/errands schedule. It's nice! Anyway, I have a couple pictures from Angelee's birthday party. Angelee is one of Autumn's best friends and they have a lot of fun together.


It was funny, though, she declined a chair and took her princess tea sitting on a ball.


Angelee is also Stephan's goddaughter which is a neat coincidence--they became friends before I knew Angelee's connection to Stephan. He got pretty into the party theme.



The next party was Ella's. Annalise sent out some cute thank you cards. Autumn got a postcard thank you and the picture was of her and Ella.


At the party, Autumn played pin the princess on the castle.


And pretty much just had a great time.


I think everyone at the party had a good time.


Although there was one funny thing. After the party was over, all the little girls went into Ella's room. I think it was too much for Autumn because she came out and declared, "there are TOO MANY people in there!" And she sat with me until another little girl came out and played with her in the play area. :)

That's it for the parties! Next week I should have some pictures of our trip to Birmingham where we got to meet the very cute Mr. Hudson!

Celebrations, Part 1

This week, Autumn and her papa celebrated her upcoming little brother together!


:D Not really, but she looks so happy! Also, here's a blast from the past...Mike appears to enjoy photographing our daughter with his vices:


:D

Anyway, last week we had one baby shower and two birthday parties! The shower was at our house and it turned out really great. It was for one of our community group members. Elyse is having a baby girl and has one little boy named Micah who is just the sweetest little kid.


I got to decorate the house (with some help from Cheri!). It turned out a litttttle pinker than I intended but it's so happy and spring-like that I have left all the decor on the tables.


Inside each lantern, I put a nest and an egg. Dede brought some cute birds and I added those to the mix.


Even the cupcakes were pink! Tara did the cupcakes and I made the toppers from the invitation I ordered on Etsy.


Here's the breakfast room table.


And here we are! This is my community group. The husbands are in Mike's group. We meet on the same night which is nice. Also, ignore my hair. It's being crazy in this picture. And you can't really tell because of the black, but I'm definitely showing. It was funny, today at church I had a couple of people people go, "are you....???" I think no one is ready to be like OMG YOU'RE PREGNANT because I am still a little at that "pregnant? or donuts?" stage, to use a phrase from a blog I like.


Ok, I just realized that if I post my pics from the two birthday parties, this post will be just ridiculously long. So I better wait and do a part two later. I hope everyone is doing well!

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!