The elusive sunny day

I hope this post finds everyone safe. I've gotten a few texts and emails asking how we are and we are fine. We haven't been directly affected by any flooding so far although some of the streets in and out of Germantown are flooded off and on. Ryan and Leah are also okay in Birmingham, thank goodness. Lauren is fine but Tuscaloosa is in pretty rough shape. Mike's parents had their neighborhood garage sale this weekend and are taking the leftover clothing and household items to Tuscaloosa for the people who have lost everything. Brad sent this photo to Mike and it's crazy. The tornado passed right by the condo. Fortunately, Lauren wasn't there or driving there during all of this. The buildings that are standing in the center of the photo are the condos. There used to be businesses and houses where there is now only debris.


Sigh. So much destruction and more to come with these floods.

On a slightly happier note, we took advantage of some nice weather last week and went to the Botanic Gardens again. Autumn and I went with Penny but only really saw the My Big Backyard area. When we went with Mike, we saw most of the Gardens before going to the playground. Mike's favorite area was the Oak Grove.


Happy girl on the bridge.


I think this goose was on a nest? I don't know but it didn't move even when we passed close by. Autumn chose to believe the goose was sitting on eggs. :)


Next time I want to bring food for the fish. They were craaaazy.


We tried to get a picture of Autumn's head next to this flower but it didn't really work out well. Seriously, the flower was huge.


I call this Contemplation on a Boat on Dry Land. Hahaha. Do you like her blue nails? My mom did them. :P She also has flowers on her toenails...they had fun that week with the nail decorating kit I got them for Christmas.


This is Mike ready to go home. :) There weren't any oaks around so he was all done. Aren't those worms on the hill behind him kind of freaky?


We had a good time together. I was surprised that Mike was all for this trip on his Good Friday off but he said he figured it was his last chance for a pleasant outdoor family trip before it got too hot. He's so funny. We are complete seasonal opposites. If it is 75 degrees or above, I am happy. If it is 74 degrees or below, he is happy. Autumn's like Mike so he's been joking that he wants to have me hypnotized to believe I like cold weather. Maybe our new little guy will be like me and then it can be two against two. :D Although maybe it would be two against three since Molly likes colder weather, too. What in the world am I going to do if I'm the lone tropical type in this family of hot people??

Easter Sunday!

I don't know about you guys, but there has been some wild weather here lately! Gorgeous days interspersed with serious storms. Today we had another tornado warning where the news people are all, "the main location for potential tornadic activity is approaching Germantown..." so Autumn and I had lunch in the closet. :)


There's supposed to be more weather drama tonight so I'm charging my phone and getting in bed a little early to try to get some sleep before another closet trip.

Anyway! Yesterday was Easter! I hope all my friends who celebrate Easter had a great day. Here's Autumn before we left for church. I curled her hair (princess hair) but I didn't do enough styling product so pretty much the second she started moving, the curls started falling out because her hair is exactly like her mama's.


She got those gloves in the small basket the Easter bunny left at her place at the table. :) Can you believe they are from the dollar bin at Target?? She didn't wear them to church but has had fun putting them on and taking them off.

Here she is coloring an egg before we dyed it.


We went to the 8:30am service. They only did childcare at 10 and 11:30 (there were three services just for Easter) so Autumn went with us and we served in the children's areas during the 10:00 service. Autumn did really well. I was concerned she wouldn't like the loud music but, oddly, the one thing that she was "scared" of was this blinking light on the ceiling that needs to be fixed.

Also, this was funny. There was a girl in front of us who was turning around to look at Autumn. Autumn stopped coloring, looked at the girl, looked at me, and then stage whispers, "MAMA, THAT GIRL IS LOOKING AT ME." And then spent a good chunk of the rest of the service sitting in my lap and putting my hand over her eyes so no one could see her and she couldn't see them. Silly monkey.

Oh, at church they showed this Gospel spoken word video. You might enjoy it...it is nicely done. Click!

My mom is out of town visiting Donnie and Liz so we went over to Mike's parents' house where, of course, the Easter bunny had paid a visit! He (she?) even left a note on the basket!


And there was much rejoicing.


Autumn is still a little confused about why the Easter bunny comes when we celebrate Jesus coming back to life again. See, I kind of don't think I thought about stuff like that when I was almost 4. I think I was just happy to get candy, haha. We talked a little about it (new life, eggs, and all that) but nothing too crazy in depth. I'm just glad that our reading of the bible stories and her church lessons seem to be making an impact on her.

We had a fun egg hunt. She loooooves hunting eggs. I need to set up some scavenger hunts at home or something. Autumn was particularly tickled by the eggs that the "silly Easter bunny" dropped in the fountain.


Our lucky ducky got some dollars and coins in her eggs again! She put them in her bank along with the ones from Roxie's birthday. It's getting full so soon she'll get to divide up her bank (we're doing the savings/donation/buy something fun thing) and get that soft My Little Pony!


Afterward, P'd, Boppa, and Lauren took turns rolling her around the yard. I wish I had taken some video because her laugh is just so infectious. Hardly anyone can helping smiling when she's cackling away.


On a different note, I made a cake! Mike had asked me to make this Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake from Cook's Illustrated. It was kind of involved so I made it Saturday to bring to Easter dinner. I assembled all the ingredients and they were really pretty all laid out. These are the dry ingredients. It took me a few tries to find some Dutch process cocoa. I used all mine and sometime since I ran out, regular grocery stores stopped carrying it so I ended up going to Penzey's, which wasn't a huge deal because I love that place.


The recipe has you make a pudding and use a certain technique for mixing the batter so you get that height and crumb of an old fashioned cake, as opposed to the rich, smaller cakes that are kind of in right now. The frosting was also a little bit of a chore, it needed a double boiler like the pudding and then an ice bath to get it to just the right temp. Was it worth it? Oh, yes.


I definitely won't make this cake for anything but an occasion or special request but it was soooo good. Mike took some to work today and one of his coworkers called it the best cake he'd ever had (I'm not sure he was entirely serious, haha) and asked for the recipe. It was fun to do something so involved!

In which I am very random

1. If Autumn were a dog, this is what she'd look like: clickie!

2. Did I tell you I am officially in my third trimester? Yay! Went to the doc this week and all is well. I feel like a hoss but I'm inside the target weight for this stage and everything is measuring fine. Next visit is a 3-D ultrasound. I didn't get one with Autumn because it was like $200 which, no. The 3d is routine at this practice and they are going to do a weight check because of Autumn's growth issues. I doubt there will be anything too funky going on though because she had umbilical cord issues and this time there are no (known) umbilical cord abnormalities.

3. This children's Bible is awesome. Our friend Michelle gave it to Autumn for Easter two years ago. I love the illustrations--it's one of the few books that seems to have people of every color in it--and the stories. I've been reading Autumn different parts of the Easter story this week. Today we read about how Jesus died on the cross and tomorrow we will read about His resurrection.

From page 292:
"My body is like this bread. It will break," Jesus told them. "This cup of wine is like my blood. It will pour out.

"But this is how God will rescue the whole world. My life will break and God's broken world will mend. My heart will tear apart--and your hearts will heal. Just as the passover lamb died, so now I will die instead of you. My blood will wash away all of your sins. And you'll be clean on the inside--in your hearts.

"So whenever you eat and drink, remember," Jesus said, "I've rescued you!"

4. Roxie's birthday was last week! I get the fail award because I didn't take any pictures of things like the fruit arrangement Valerie made. It was cute...she cut out the letters of Roxie's name in pineapple! It was a Minnie Mouse party which totally delighted Autumn. We all know how much she likes anything Mickey.


Valerie also planned an Easter egg hunt. Autumn was the most mobile of the kids and the only one who had really done an egg hunt before so I tried to corral her into one area while the others did some hunting. Once they gave up, Autumn swept in and gathered everything else. :) She ended up with 4 eggs that had a dollar each in them! She was seriously excited and put the dollars in her mickey bank where she is saving up to buy a soft my little pony.


Roxie was so cute while everyone sang her happy birthday. At first she looked a little baffled. Then she started to enjoy herself.


Then she was all, "this is for meeee!"


This was part of her gift from us. It was not popular with her. :P


I like this picture.


The gift Roxie is leaning on above was as interesting to Autumn as it was to Roxie. Mike ended up putting it together for them to play with.


My mom got Roxie a little push/ride car. The second I took it out of the box and put it together, Roxie took off. Mike got all worried and followed her around. :) When my mom saw this picture she said, "Mike loves babies, doesn't he?" And yes. Yes, he does.


Want to see something crazy? Here's Autumn at her first birthday party:


HOLY COW WHEN DID SHE GROW UP??

What a Week! Part 1...

Seriously, this week was some kind of busy! On top of all the things we had to do, I started my biggest project. I went through all of autumn's old clothes and separated hand me downs for Roxie and future nieces from the consignment/to sell clothing from the things I feel comfortable putting in the garage sale. I still have a couple more boxes with toys and things like blankets to go through so the playroom is truly a disaster, haha. Does anyone in the Memphis area have a favorite consignment shop that takes kids clothes? Or is anyone interested in going through any of this for themselves or a family member/friend?

I didn't get any pictures of it, but last week Penny had Autumn and me over to her house and we had pizza and watched Tangled together. I really enjoyed Tangled...Autumn did, too, when she wasn't getting nervous about the two kind of bad guys. She was also really confused about how the mama ended up being the real bad guy which made for interesting conversation. We had another fun day this week with Penny. We're counting down until Penny takes a weekday job in May (she's a nurse and works on the weekends right now) by trying to do some of the things we've talked about doing. Wednesday we did My Big Backyard at the Botanic Garden. It was a lot of fun and not exactly what I was expecting.

We started off at the bird area where there's this big bridge the kids can go across and then take a slide down. Autumn must have done this 2 dozen times before we left for the day.


Penny's mother in law Mrs. Debby came with us and brought her grandsom Harrison. He is seriously adorable and was so happy the entire time. Autumn liked him a lot.


They had these wooden slat things in a natural puzzle area. I thought they were really neat and wouldn't mind finding some for our house. Autumn made basically a huge maze but we walked by some boys later who had made themselves a small box and were sitting in it. Super cute.


One of her favorite spots was the area with the playhouses. She had two that she really liked. One was made of big, um, sticks, I guess? And inside, the table and chairs were tree stumps and there was a washtub full of wooden blocks. Another had mallets in a box so you could play a wrench xylophone, some chimes, metal bowls, and wooden blocks.


We have a tendency to kill our grass so we have a yard service that comes and sprays weeds every few months--it ends up being cheaper than re-sodding every year! It's great but I do miss clover and dandelions. They had a whole area that was, deliberately or not, overrun with both. Autumn had so. much. fun.


There were also swings placed in various places along the path. This one was in the butterfly area and was shaped like a cocoon.


This is one happy little monkey.


On the way out, we stopped at the fountain and let the kids put their feet in. I'm not sure if this was actually allowed but, really, who could say no to these little feet??


By the end of the trip, both Autumn and Harrison were absolutely wiped out. I think Autumn could have stayed all day but I planned the outing a little too close to her naptime.


Sometime before it gets too hot, I definitely want to make the trip with Mike. I think he'd really enjoy it and I'd like to see more of the gardens. Autumn would certainly welcome the chance to stay longer!

This won't be the last time the words 'Land Whale' appear here...

When I was uploading the pictures for this post, I had to go through like 10 pictures Mike took of me and Autumn today and it was seriously depressing, LOL. I feel better than I have felt all pregnancy but between my hair not obeying, my skin pretending it is 14 again, and the fact that I am rapidly approaching land whale proportions, complete with a swelling nose...man. :P I did just look at how many weeks along I am and realized that, according to the books, this is my last week in my second trimester! So, I feel a little better.

I've been having a little bit of a hard time getting good exercise in. My acupuncturist friend Chuck and my chiropractor have done wonders for me but walking and doing aikido, my main sources of exercise, were really doing a number on my lower back and hips. Soooooo, after talking about it and trying to put it off...I joined a water aerobics class since there wasn't really a yoga class that fit in my schedule.
(I'll be the one in the back trying to figure out how to run in the water)


The first one I went to was okay. It was shallow water and the average age was about 500. They were super nice but I decided to give deep water aerobics a try and that was a bit of a better workout...the average age was more like 65 so more vigorous movement was encouraged. :) In both classes they were very, very concerned that I not hurt myself and it was kind of hard to figure out how to reassure the ladies that there is pretty much NOTHING that I'd do in there that could hurt me without sounding like a snob so I mostly smiled and nodded. I mean, considering that I spent about half of aikido Saturday doing techniques on my knees (I call that Japanese bar fighting--it's really called suwari waza) with guys twice my size...I think I'll be okay. Hahaha. But this will be good. Extra workout, no impact, maybe it'll help with some of the swelling.


Anyway, our yard is doing some serious flowering. It's been kind of fun to see what's hiding around here. The azaleas we knew would be amazing and I've enjoyed watching to see which bushes would turn what color. We have two red Japanese maples and one green one. We found some tiny flowers and we don't know what they are called. Today was so pretty and Autumn's new dress was so cute that I wanted to go outside and take some pictures in front of the flowers.


I think Mike and Autumn are so cute together. Today I heard music and giggling and when I went downstairs, they were in his office spinning and dancing to the music.


Autumn's been going through a little bit of a phase where she's learning to express frustration. Poor kid mood swings from suuuper happy kisses to growling and stomping her feet. We have a lot of "ok, tell me why you are angry" conversations these days.


For the most part, though, she's such a great kid and a ton of fun to be around. The first thing she does every morning is say good morning to "her" baby and give him a kiss.


I took some more pictures around the yard. Autumn tried to find her toy camera but couldn't so she got her cell phone and "snapped pictures" alongside me.


She's getting to be such a big girl. She started buckling herself into her carseat last week. It was so funny the first time. I put her in the car and asked her to get in her chair while I talked to someone. When I looked in to buckle her, she was grinning and said, "I already did it!"


Oh, and we got to have Frank and Emily and Olivia over yesterday! That was a lot of fun. I made a chicago style pizza, by Mike's request. I like it when he has favorite meals that he asks for when friends come over. Autumn was really looking forward to seeing Olivia and I was hoping that when they finally arrived, Autumn wouldn't go into shy/antisocial mode where she hides. She actually did really well and after dinner, she wanted to be Belle and asked to dress Olivia up as Cinderella.


Olivia was a good sport but she was definitely more interested in coloring and drawing that indulging Autumn's dress up. :) I think Autumn is going to make her new baby brother a doll, poor guy.


The one thing Olivia wasn't having any of was a hat. She resisted all attempts at hatting. Autumn even gave Frank some bunny ears and Emily got a halo. Mike got a pirate gun which doesn't seem overly fair. Ha.


Wow, that was a long post! I probably need to do more than one a week when I have a lot of stuff going on. Ah, real quick...I have a couple blogs for anyone who might be interested. One is my sister's blog which is looking like a family blog kind of like this one. The other is my friend Michelle's. Michelle is in a unique situation right now with one of her daughters who was born with a meconium cyst and her blog is the story of their life since. Definitely check it out...she's a great writer and I might have to steal some of her super creative collages!

Lazy afternoons...

I went outside yesterday to find this scene...


After a hard afternoon of napping and yard work, Mike and Autumn took a break in the backyard together. They did the same thing this afternoon while I was cleaning upstairs. It was pretty cute, Autumn called me on Mike's phone and asked me to come down and sit with them, so I did. We never really got to do this kind of thing at our old house because golfers would always be around and it was annoying. Today was sooo nice with the wind and the birds singing and the happy little miss.


Yesterday, while Mike and Autumn were chilling in the backyard, I took advantage of some me time and started on a batch of soft pretzels! I had been thinking about making some and then when one of my friends started talking about wanting pretzels on facebook, I totally had to do it. I made some on Tuesday and they turned out okay. I didn't roll them thin enough and they ended up being pretzel rolls. This time was much better. Autumn actually ended up coming inside once the bread finished rising and helped me roll one:


Here they are after shaping and the baking soda bath.


And then after baking. Autumn decided to make hers a pretzel ball. :)


They were pretty good! Next time I will freeze about half of them before baking, I think, since they don't keep very long. I've been in a baking mood which is really inconvenient since I have so much to do with organizing the house! But maybe it isn't a bad thing. I've been pretty good about getting "real work" done before doing fun work. I've finished the pink room, I cleaned out the laundry room, and the hallway is almost cleared. Once the hallway is done, I'll need to finish going through our baby stuff and work on getting the playroom organized. Whew! So much to do! But through it all, I'm still trying to make sure Autumn and I get some good spring play time together. We planted some sunflower seeds together today. Autumn took the leftover seeds and put them in a straight line along the bricks (she's our ocd child, haha) so the ants and birds could take them back to their babies. :) And, of course, whenever it is warm, we're doing a lot of this:


She looooooves some sidewalk chalk!