Happy Birthday, Daddy!

Daddy celebrated his 29th birthday on Tuesday! Just one more year to enjoy his twenties :) Too bad he had to work all day, but we had Sterling, aka Uncle This, over for dinner that night. Ainslee had fun giving her daddy all of his cards and "helping" him open presents. She also had a blast showing off for her Uncle This (long story on the name, but I think it's sticking).

Giving Daddy sweet birthday kisses

Bringing lots of drinks to Uncle This


Then she turned on the stereo, took off her pants, and insisted on a dance party. Not sure why the pants come off when the music comes on, but she does it every time (we are hoping she outgrows this soon)!

Daddy and Uncle This participating in "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes"

This picture CRACKS ME UP! Here's what's going on: The Bible song, "Deep and Wide" is on, Daddy is doing "wide", Uncle This is doing "deep", and Ainslee has just gotten bored with the whole thing and is leaving!


Not the kind of birthday party we would have had a few years ago, but I think Daddy had a fun time! :)

Pink or Blue?

We won't know for sure until March 18th, but according to our fortune cookies at Pei Wei it looks like we might be having another little girl. (Because we all know how accurate fortune cookies are!)

Jason opened up his cookie and showed me this:

I thought that was pretty crazy until I opened mine and found this:

A girl inside, eh? How weird is that?! That completely contradicts the two dreams I've had in which our baby was a boy (all my dreams while pregnant with Ainslee were that she was a girl -except the one where it was a kitten). I will be shocked if this little one really is a girl.

On a more serious note, at my last doctor visit I was diagnosed with placenta previa. Apparently it is fairly common early on in pregnancy and can easily correct itself, but if it does not there can be lots of unpleasant complications. When I go back on the 18th, they will be checking to see if it is still a problem. Prayers for it to "fix itself" would be much appreciated!

Belated Valentines

Every year Mommy and Daddy have a fabulous Valentine's dinner at an amazing house in Tapitio Springs. The dinner is actually a fundraiser for mission trips taken by members of our Sunday school class. It is a wonderful night of delicious food and fun fellowship and it all goes to a great cause - I can't think of a better way to spend Valentine's Day. And one of my favorite parts is that it is never even on Valentine's Day! That's right, February 14th is my birthday and we can celebrate Valentine's on some other random day! :) Anyway, this past Saturday was our dinner date night, so Grammie came down to go on a date with Ainslee to Chick-fil-a :) I think we all had a great evening!

Just the "3" of us :)

Grammie and Ainslee ready for their dinner date too!

On Sunday, we met up with Grandma and Grandpa after church to have lunch, visit a farmer's market, and make a trip to Bass Pro Shop. We had a fun afternoon visiting and playing and enjoying the beautiful weather! Of course, this was all made possible by Ainslee's refusal to take a nap :)

She loves test driving the boats

And the 4-wheelers with Grandma

She sure loves her "pa-ahs," as she calls them both :)

After leaving Bass Pro Shop we had one worn out little girl who crashed in about 2 seconds in the car. We let her get in a good cat nap so she would be fresh for our dinner guests, Katie, Bo, and Cameron! We grilled and ate some leftovers from Saturday nights dinner! We had such a busy and fun weekend filled with some of our favorite people!

Crashed out with her sunglasses on and a pacifier in her mouth! :)

Bo Daddy with the girls, this makes me laugh so hard!

Happy Birthday to Mommy

We had a fabulous birthday celebration last weekend in Corpus. Aunt Yo and Uncle Trevor were wonderful hosts and made Mommy's birthday very special. We left Friday after Daddy got home from work and made it just in time to eat home-made pizza and watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.

On Saturday, Yo surprised me with a giant rainbow birthday cake! Apparently it took her an entire day to make, but it was beautiful and yummy! Ainslee loved telling us which color she wanted to take a bite of next.

We played Settlers of Catan whenever Ainslee went to bed or took a nap, we are addicted!

After nap time, we took Ainslee down to the sea wall. She had been asking to go to the beach the entire week before we left! This was as close as we were willing to get, since it was pretty chilly. She loved walking right next to the water, which kept us on a very close watch.

I had the brilliant idea of feeding the sea gulls some of her goldfish. I didn't think it would be a big deal since I only saw one near us... Apparently word travels fast, because we were immediately surrounded by them. Daddy was a little worried they were going to attack Ainslee :) Of course she wasn't scared at all and had a blast watching them.

Strolling with Aunt Yo

She thought she was big stuff sitting on this bench.

Our family of almost 4

We were pretty worn out and cold by this point, but Yo wanted to make sure Ainslee got to see the Christopher Columbus ship.

After we warmed up at home for a little while, we headed out for dinner at La Playa and came back to play Catan after Ainslee headed to bed.

Sunday morning we attempted to get ready quickly, and by quickly I mean before 11:00 am, and went to Cracker Barrel for a delicious brunch. I had been craving biscuits and gravy for a few days :) We all stuffed ourselves but worked it off later on at the park.

Ainslee discovered the joy of going down a slide on her tummy.

But she had even more fun going down the slide with Mommy!

We had a super fun time and can't wait to go back to meet Ruby, our new doggy niece, who arrived soon after we left!

Play-Doh

This is what we have been doing when it is too wet or too cold to go outside (which seems to be the case almost every day this winter)! Sometimes it can keep her occupied for over an hour, which I think is some kind of toddler attention span record!

This is her in action smashing the play-doh

Her new "cheese" face

Everytime I get out the play-doh now she says, "cheese" and thinks I need to take her picture while she plays :)

Ainslee Goes to Preschool

Ainslee had her first day of preschool on Friday. She attended Grammie's class at Hunt School. She got a huge grin on her face and walked right into a classroom full of 4 year olds. She was not in the least bit intimidated and really seemed to enjoy her short time there.

She had lunch in the cafeteria


She listened to stories and did a few finger plays


Played with the dollhouse


And made a collage


Then she came home and took a super long nap :) I think she is more than ready to start school!

Baby Update

I know 4 posts in one day! Can you tell I am feeling much better??? It was really rough there for the last month or so. I think the 2nd trimester wonderfulness has come a little early (much earlier than the 20 weeks it took when I was pregnant with Ainslee). I had a routine monthly check-up yesterday, that went a little unexpectedly. Thankfully everything is just perfect, but I had a scary 45 minutes or so where the nurse couldn't find the baby's heartbeat. After talking with the doctor, I had to wait to have a sonogram to make sure everything was okay. When the sonogram tech asked if I was "ready for this" I just about lost it. She was quickly able to see the baby and said that the only reason they couldn't find the heartbeat was because the baby would not hold still! Little one was EVERYWHERE doing somersaults, flips, kicking, and waving. The heartbeat was just fine and we got some unexpected pictures of him/her. It is amazing how quickly the baby grows in just 3 weeks, no more looking like a puppy! :)

In the last one, you can see five little fingers up by the face