She keeps me in stitches!

I wish I could have a video camera on Autumn every single minute of the day! She makes me laugh more than I can count! Of course, when I get the camera out to catch her wit on camera she stops and won't do it again. She loves to sing, especially in the car, and during a song, if the voices start to sing higher, she too will switch to a really high pitch voice to sing...hilarious!

Here are some funny things she has said lately...

- hearing people talk either on the radio or a different room where she can't see them..."I hear 'em....I hear the peoples!!"

- right after she gets dressed or when I ask her if she likes a certain thing, "Sooooo cute, so precious, I like that!" Her new word this week she likes to use a lot is precious!

- after taking a drink of juice out of mommy's cup, "I got a mustache!!" (We have never said anything about a mustache before when drinking!)

I tried to get video of her yesterday. Again, she was reading so animated and knew all the words to a book, so I grabbed the camera half way through and then.....nothing! So I turned the screen her way so she could watch herself read. She would start to say a few words and then realize she was watching herself on camera and bust out into singing "Happy Birthday!" By the way, she is OBSESSED with this song when you want to video her. That is all she wants to sing! So I may start a sing-a-gram business for Autumn to sing Happy Birthday to people since that is all I can get out of her when the camera gets turned on!

Nothing really exciting going on here since we are staying inside trying not to melt! I am getting everything ready for her 2nd birthday in a couple weeks. So stay tuned for some Sesame Street party fun and some adorable pics I captured of her for her 2 year pics!

Happy 100th Birthday Autumn!!

Our baby is 100 weeks old today!!! We love you so much Autumn and have enjoyed every single day of the past 100 weeks with you!!! Thanks for being our lil sunshine!!

Love you,

Daddy and Mommy

HGTV Carnagey Version

Today, my wonderful husband spent most of the day in the scorching heat creating this landscape masterpiece!!!

I wish I would have taken a before picture so you could have seen the "white trash" version of it before! Just picture, the right half rocks, the middle was a black tarp and the left side was mulch. Did you picture that hideous eye sore??? Oh, and add weeds in the mix to finish you off! Yeah, I apologize to my neighbors who have looked at it for the past year. The rock was leftover from when we had our pool, but when we sold it, we were stuck with lots of rock and nowhere to put it. So we decided to purchase more and made a rockbed instead of a flowerbed. With the leftover mulch, we combined it with our other flowerbed and added these pretty plants...
So there you have it!!! My sweet husband spent the 4th slaving away in the heat instead of relaxing in a pool, having a cookout, and relaxing on his day off! I'm so blessed!!!

Celebrate Good Times, Come On!

Last night we went to my parents to celebrate my nephew Leif's 2nd birthday and early 4th of July cookout and kiddie pool party! The most exciting thing was that the birthday boy was actually there for his own party!! He didn't make it to his 1st birthday party due to pink eye, but the rest of us partied without him!!

The kids partied all night with these awesome glasses!!

The birthday boy!!

All the kiddos, and if you look closely, even baby Jude got in on the fun!!

Autumn likes to be a "helper" and feed others when it comes to other people eating around her! Looks like Aunt Carrie became the victim this time around!!

Now that this holiday has come and gone, I realize that Autumn's 2nd birthday is around the corner (sniff, sniff). She is becoming more and more of a big girl and less baby. My how time flies!! I'm going to go and stick toothpicks in my eyelids now, so that I won't blink and she'll be off to school!

Autumn's First Haircut!

I took Autumn to get her first haircut yesterday!! She did amazing and was so excited sitting in the big chair! I think her favorite part was playing with the cape that was covering her!! Haley did a great job!!

Here she is singing a song! I'm telling you, she is ALWAYS singing!!

Her big curl that we cut.

New look...not much different...just no curly rat tail in the middle hanging down! haha

22 Months

I can't believe Autumn is only 2 months away from turning 2. I know every mom says it at each stage but I think this is my favorite stage so far!! Now that I'm going to blog more (cross my fingers on that one), I want to document more of what she is doing so I don't forget! She is such a sponge and surprises me with things she has learned and things she says. This month she learned to recognize all her letters and numbers up to 11. She can count to 20, and this month surprised me by counting backwards from 10 by herself.

She is constantly singing from the time she wakes up to the time she goes to sleep. Her favorite song that I hear at least 5 times every hour is ABC's. If she starts singing "Twinkle, Twinkle", she will switch sometimes in the middle of it to ABC's since it's the same tune!!

She LOVES to play and splash in the water, sit and read all her books, give zerberts, and yes, Elmo is still "the man" in our house!

This month we finally retrained her to go to sleep by herself again! With all of her many previous illnesses before, her symptoms would get worse if we let her cry, so it was hard to teach her to go to sleep by herself without any crying. But the key to the easy transition this time was keeping the door open when we leave the room! Now Luke and I have time at night together by ourselves which is great!!!

The last thing this month is Autumn became a big cousin!!! My little nephew Jude was born on the 14th and is handsome as ever, even though Autumn is jealous that he may have more hair than she does! We already love spoiling him rotten!!

I love you so much Autumn and so blessed to be your mommy!

Side hobby

One thing that I like to do is take pics for fun. While with my sis last week, she informed me that she has not taken one single picture this entire pregnancy....she is having the baby this Tuesday people. So, after I scolded her, I told her I would come do a little fun photo shoot so we can have some proof that this baby actually belonged to her!!

Also got a few pics of Autumn with the boys!

I have a few of Autumn that I took by herself, but will have to post those later. Don't want to ruin any Father's Day surprises!!

Family Vaca!!

So it has only taken me 2 weeks to blog! Baby steps people!! We got to go on our first real vacation as a family to Orlando! Sooooo.... much fun!! This will be a pic post, so I won't bore you too much! We got to go to Sea World 2 days and Gatorland. The rest of the time, we shopped and swam!

Yes, those are real animals, and yes my daughter is fearless and grabbed them with a death grip. They weren't too happy about that!

Got to watch alligator wrestling

Play in the splash park there because it was miserably HOT!

Autumn decided to feed the alligators her snacks!

Don't think I wanna mess with this one...

Now to Sea World, the land of Shamu!!!

Autumn LOVED all the shows! People were watching her more than the show because of her reactions. One time she cheered so hard and got so excited she started crying!!

Riding on the "false" killer whale

If she wasn't clapping, she was taking it all in

Her favorite animal now...

Our resort had a splash park area which we spent lots of time at!

This was her usual look, eyes closed, mouth wide open!

My favorite pic

Her favorite food is noodles, so once she found out you could swim with

noodles, that's what she wanted the entire time she was in the pool!!

Madness Monday

So this is how my Monday started....

With blood and an emergency trip to the dentist. I told you our life is getting more exciting!

Early this morning, Autumn was coming to see me and ran right into the corner of our computer desk. Gashed her gum from her tooth up to the top of the gum. Luckily the doctor said her tooth felt good and because the gum is still in place, no stitches. It will just look disgusting for a while. The only thing we need to watch is the color of her tooth to see if nerves were damaged. Praying she won't get a dead tooth! After this, all I have to say is that she is one tough cookie. Crying when it first happened but only lasted a few seconds. While the dr. was checking her out, she was singing on the top of her lungs..."la la la la That's Elmo's world!", his response..."I think she is going to be fine!!" So, how's your Monday?!!

Somebody's watchin me!

Autumn has been a little sponge these past few months. It has been sooooo... fun! She watches everything you do and repeats most everything you say! If she doesn't fully get what you are doing or saying, she does her best to do so. Here are some funny things that she has done or tried to!!

* She watches us get ready in the mornings and one thing she sees is us putting on deodorant. Well now, every time she is up on the counter getting "ready", she grabs our deodorant and puts it behind her and starts rubbing it in her crack! LOL Where she got that deodorant goes up the rear, no clue!!! Have to work on that one!

*While Luke was changing her diaper, she touched the wall and he said it was "texture" on the wall. From then on, she pointed to the wall and says, "Cookie Monster"! I guess she heard monster instead!

*For a long time she has "helped" me every time I go to the bathroom! She loves to go in there with me and explore the cabinets, rip off the toilet paper, and flush for me. After she's done exploring, she gets a bunch of tissue for me, wads it up in her hand and hands it to me! It's been fine so far until the other day when I went to take it from her, and she moved my hand out of the way and tried to wipe me herself! haha Oh dear! Had to stop that one real quick. A little too helpful for mommy.

*She is into numbers BIG time. She loves to count to 20 all day long. A few weeks ago, I was putting her to bed and she looked at the digital clock in her room and said "9!" ummm...yes it is. Then, "5!" Ok smarty! Never knew she recognized numbers, but now she loves to tell time on her clock. During nighttime routine she will occasionally look at the clock and say the numbers. If it changes while she is looking, she says "Whoops! It changed. What is it?" and then will say the new number. I laugh because she repeats those phrases every single time.

Those are all I can think of right now, I know there is more and will be many more! I'm just proud of myself for posting something! Until next time...

Let's give this another try!!

Now that I feel like more is happening in my life to actually document about and be able to share with friends and family far away, I will try to keep this up with fun stories and pics. This Mother's Day was by far the best I have ever had. As it is only my 2nd, I can for sure say that since it did not contain a sick crying baby, a failed lunch out which ended in coming home and having chicken nuggets and mac and cheese for lunch!!I had a very blessed day of spending time with my family and going to Yukon to spend the whole day with my mom and siblings. And to top it all off, we actually got a family picture (rare occurence). I got to watch Autumn play in the sprinklers for the first time with her cousins and after watching that HUGE smile and yelps of excitement, I need to go get one! I hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day! I will post again later with some fun quotes from Autumn. Until next time...