11 Months Old

Daniel is 11 months old today! My, how the time has flown!! I'm having a blast preparing for his birthday party, but boy does it make me a little sad, sniff, sniff! So here are 11 things I love about this little guy!
1. I love that he is pointing to lots of things (and people)
2. I love that when he waves bye bye, he waves as if he is waving at himself, his hand is turned facing him. He'll sometimes even say "bye bye" while waving.
3. I love that he says, "ooooooooooooooooooooh" with his lips puckered, usually at something that has caught his attention, like a deer on the wall.
4. I love when he says, "ut oh" (he likes to say it alot)
5. I love his blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair skin
6. I love when he gives out his rare kisses, with an open mouth of course! :)
7. I love getting him up in the morning!!!
8. I love that he LOVES to watch daddy mow the grass!
9. I love that he loves Campbell
10. I love that he loves story time at the Library and laughes through alot of the songs with hand/body motions and puppet shows
11. I love to hear him babble, it is music to my ears and SO ADORABLE!! Some of it sounds like he is saying, "Bliggle Bliggle" :)

Oh how I love this boy!! Thank you God for Daniel, he makes my heart happy!!! You have blessed us beyond measure!!

Tour De South Vol. 2 (Sun Aug 23-Mon Aug 24)

Sunday we drove from Atlanta to Nashville. Since we had to drive through Chattanooga anyway, we decided to take a little detour up Lookout Mountain. We briefly visited Covenant College, where I attended from fall of '95-fall '97. I loved Covenant and made many wonderful friends there. I was able to show Mike my old dorm rooms. This is Carter Hall, it used to be an old beautiful hotel, there are amazing views from both sides of this building.

This is the view from my old room, amazing! Who would have thought I would be standing here 12 years later with my husband and son?! Wow, I can't believe it has been 12 years?!?! Wow, I am SOOOO THANKFUL to have a HUSBAND AND SON!!!! Thank you God!! Where has the time gone, it doesn't seem like that long ago that I lived here! We also got to briefly see Mike's original RUF campus minister at FSU, Ron Brown, who lives on the mountain, he is currently the RUF campus minister at Covenant. We continued our drive to Nashville and arrived in time for dinner at our friends Amy and Tyson Jominy's house. Mike grew up with Amy (since he was 4yrs old through 12th grade) Amy and Tyson have a beautiful home and two adorable kids, Luke (4) and Katherine (2). Daniel was in heaven getting to crawl around their playroom and play with all their toys! After lunch on Monday at Jack's Bar-b-que, a Nashville original in downtown, with Matt Bradley (one of Mike's BVI buddies), our gracious hosts played tour guides. We visited the Parthenon (a life size replica of the original-weird), Vanderbilt University (where Amy attended undergrad), and then on to the Opry Land Hotel (whoooooaaaa!!!).

In the Ryman Auditorium gift shop being silly. This was the original location of the Grand Ole Opry, in downtown.

I LOVED the Opry Land Hotel and we didn't even stay there. It was like you were outside, but it was all enclosed and air conditioned! We took a boat ride through one of the atriums and passed by this waterfall you see in the background. All the hotel rooms open onto the atrium, which has a New Orleans feel to it. There were beautifully manicured plants EVERYWHERE, I think they said they have 8 full time gardeners (which I didn't think was near enough to keep up with all those plants).

We finished off our night in Nashville with dinner at the Aquarium restaurant across from the Grand Ole Opry. Not sure who was more fascinated with all the fish and huge tanks, Mike or Daniel. (I think Mike) After a long afternoon sight seeing, we had three little kids melting down :(

It was a fun day, we really liked Nashville and would love to go back! Sadly, the next morning, as we were packing up to leave, Luke fell on his bike and the handle bar cut his face. Amy and her mom rushed him off to the hospital for some stitches (so we thought), and we found out later that he ended up having plastic surgery that afternoon. :( Amy said Luke has been a trooper though and is recovering well.

Tour de South Vol.1 (Sat.Aug22)

We just returned from our week long vacation, there are too many pictures to show you in one post so I am going to attempt to do several posts about our travels. We left last Saturday and had planned to stay in Chattanooga with my long time friend/mother of triplets whom I haven't seen in a over a year but she got sick on Friday. Her husband called to tell me she had gotten progressively worse throughout the day and I knew if Joel was calling, Jenny must REALLY be sick! So we opted not to go to their house of sickness and stayed the night in Atlanta.:( This suited Mike just fine, not that he didn't want to stay with my friends, but he was ELATED to be able to go to the Marlins/Braves game. Daniel and I decided we would attempt the late night outing with daddy, Daniel was in a good mood (as usual). I think he was a little overwhelmed at first, we were up high, the lights were bright, the sound was loud, and there were SO many people to see, but by the end of the night he warmed up and was thoroughly enjoying himself!

Daniel is doing the chop (not in honor of the Braves , *the Marlins are Daddy's team,* but because we want him to learn it as he is growing up a SEMINOLE!)

Matching Shower!

This lovely lady is due to have her second little girl on Sept. 9th. Several of my friends have had or are having their second girl and throwing a matching shower is just the thing that sisters need to outfit them in matching clothes! It is so fun to see all the matching clothes, pjs, bathing suits, etc. that people come up with! Ashley is wise beyond her years and has incredible faith! I enjoy being in a Bible study with her and listening to her thought provoking questions. She has an incredible website and her love of being frugal is contagious! You can see her website here.

Kristin, Stephanie, Jana, Ashley, Julie, and me, we all brought yummy desserts for the shower.

I made petit fours, thanks to Darby and her tutorial, they were light and melted in your mouth just like she described.

These are the pillow case dresses I made for Luciana and Isabella. Lucianna got hers for her first birthday a few months ago so I made a matching one for baby Isabella, it's hard to tell the size difference from these pictures but one is intended for a 1-2 year old and the second for about a 6-9 month old.

A great weekend!

We went to this sweet girl's birthday party on Saturday and I was taking notes! Riley is the daughter of our friends Chad and Jessica. They used to be our next door neighbors in our old house. We adopted our dog, Campbell, from them when their dog, Dixie had puppies. We were sad to lose such good neighbors. Chad built our current house and we remained friends with him during the process. I think that says alot because I've heard of people having terrible experiences with building and we were blessed to have had a good experience! We love our house, thanks Chad! ;) The birthday party was great, complete with a bouncy house for the kids and good food for the adults.

I made this pillowcase dress for Riley, they are becoming my "signature" gift for 1 year old girls.

Sunday was an absolutely wonderful day! We got to go to church (I haven't been to our church in such a long time, I have either been working or out of town) and it was great! We took long naps (one of my favorite Sun. afternoon activities!), and then Sunday evening, we put Daniel down for bed and Mike and I had a date night at home. I have married quite the chef! For our 5th anniversary, we went to Charleston, S.C. We ate at Magnolia's, and we would put it in our top 5 favorite restaurants. I gave Mike the Magnolia's cookbook last year so we decided to pick a recipe from it and cook it together for our date. We chose crab cakes with tomato gravy, creamed corn, and sauteed spinach paired with Blackstone's Pinot Noir. I must say it all turned out DELICIOUS!!!

I made banana pudding and replaced the 'nilla wafers' with Nutter Butters. (My sisters made this dessert for Father's Day and they got the recipe from Southern Living). I must say, what a fabulous idea using Nutter Butters is!!!

10 Months Old

10 things I love about Daniel:
1. I love his smile and the way his eyes light up when Mike or me walk into a room
2. I love his funny crab crawl, he uses one leg and drags the other
3. I love that he is friendly and happy, he made friends with an older gentleman at Publix this week named Harry.
4. I love the feeling of his little hands on my feet and legs when he is underfoot in the kitchen
5. I love that he is still breastfeeding, and occassionally will stroke my arm with his hand while doing so.
6. I love his belly laugh
7. I love that when he gets excited, he pounds on his chest with his left hand wide open and points his toes all while making a whinneying noise (like a horse). Sometimes he flales his legs at the same time.
8. I love that he is a good eater (now eating almost everything that we eat) and a good sleeper at night (sleeps from about8pm-8am most nights)
9. I love when he layes his head on my shoulder and nuzzles up to me when he's tired
10. I love that he puts his paci in upside down

Daniel was 10months old on Aug.3, and while this post is about 11 days late, I still wanted to share it with you. I have been taking pictures of Daniel in this chair every month on or around his month old birthday. My mom made the ADORABLE blanket that is on the chair. Didn't she do an awesome job!

Daniel and Michael Paul playing in our makeshift baby pool.

Watching 'Elmo's World'

This past Monday, I watched Michael Paul for my friend Katie. She has been watching Daniel for me on the days that I work. Michael Paul is about 21 months. The boys were good and kind of entertained each other.

Mimi and Aunt Ashley come for a visit

Last week my mom came to help out with Daniel again. She is a preschool teacher and off for the summer. She graciously agreed to come three times over the summer to help with Daniel. It has been such a blessing having her come this summer! She bought Daniel this balloon and he LOVED it! It was his first balloon and he got SO excited playing with it! I worked on Tuesday and Thursday but on Wednesday, we all got to be together. We had planned to work on some sewing projects this trip, so after Daniel went down for his afternoon nap, we pulled out the sewing machines. Mom worked on some pillows for her couch and I can't say what I was working on yet. :) I'll just say I have a few projects up my sleeve and Christmas isn't that far away! ;) On Friday, Mom, Daniel & I hit Marshalls in the morning and then enjoyed lunch at Panera's before she left to go back home. We had a fun week and I think she enjoyed getting to spend time with her first and only (so far) grandson. Friday afternoon, my sister, Ashley came into town. We made homemade pizza for dinner and then after Daniel went down for the night, we snuck out to Starbucks, to catch up with an old friend, Rebecca. Ashley knows Rebecca from her college days at UF and I know Rebecca because she was my roommate post college & before I got married.

It was good to catch up with her and good to get out of the house, just the the girls! Saturday's activities included garage saling (we didn't find anything good:( ), a baby shower, a nap, and making a delicious dinner!

Ashley made this BEAUTIFUL summer fruit tart! Our cousin, Melanie, had made this for Ashley and my parents when they visited her earlier this summer.
Pomegranit Martinis, my favorite adult beverage!

So Fresh and so clean!

Working on our projects after Daniel has gone to bed. I am realizing I can get very little done now while he is awake. My friend Darby calls her little man a "rover" and I think Daniel might be taking after John Martin in his Rover like nature! ;0

So I can't figure out how to get the words under each picture so the captions don't really match up with the pictures but you hopefully get the jist of what I am talking about.