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.

RELAXING DAY AT THE BEACH

Last Sunday our friends, Jonathan and Suzanne invited us down to their family's beach house where they are vacationing for the week. This house is very old and used to be used for military training along with others nearby in WWII. Some of the original furniture is still in the house and their family is working on remodeling some of the rooms. I love the back porch which over looks the gulf. There
are about 7 rocking chairs and a hammock on the porch, the first picture in the post is a view looking to the right from the porch. I could just stay there all day, the breeze coming off the gulf was great, not too hot at all! There is an old sidewalk that runs down behind all the houses in the area
and it just reminded me of something right out of a magazine! Anyway, we just had the best time, ate lunch, played on the beach while the daddies fished. Jonathan and Suzanne's oldest daughter, Mary Rose, was so cute, she wanted to go fishing with the daddies and use her new Barbie fishing pole, I think Mike was impressed! Mike caught two flounder and he fried them up for dinner along with some grunt fish he had caught on Friday night. It was SOOOO good! We had cheese grits, french fries, salad, and brownies! It was a perfectly relaxing day! Good food, good fellowship, good times! Thanks Jonathan and Suzanne for sharing your vacation with us! Sadly, I took no pictures of them and their sweet girls :(

I finally did it!

We went out to the country for lunch with our good friends and saw some goats after we ate a picnic lunch of the best sausage dogs ever!

Our little boy is growing up SO fast! Here is his 9 month picture (better late than not at all).

I almost always request a strawberry cake for my birthday, yum!

The sista's

This is our funny friend, Katie, we have been friends for 22 years!

My aunt Kim shooting some pics of Daniel, she loves photography!

Daniel was fascinated with grabbing my dad's nose, he thought it was hilarious!

I have been wanting to start a blog for a long time and I could give you a ton of excuses as to why I haven't done it before now, but I will spare you! Thanks to my dear friend, Stephanie, she helped get me started. Thank goodness I have many technilogically saavy friends!

Rather than try to recap on my life up to now, I think I will just start from here and go forward. I like the idea of a blog because it is kind of like journaling and scrapbooking, neither of which I am making time for right now.

Last week my mom graciously came to help us with Daniel and she brought with her, my grandmother and aunt! They all had a blast and it was so comforting to know that Daniel was well taken care of and loved while I was working!

"The Babysitter Club!"

This past weekend, we went to my home town for my birthday and to attend a wedding. I felt like I had a week long birthday celebration, it was wonderful!

Ok, so I am still learning the layout of this blog! I should say that the picture on the top of the blog is taken by my friend, Caroline, you can link to her website at the bottom of the blog. She did NOT take all the amatuer photos I have in my post, my photography is a work in progress ;) I think I could use some lessons!