Big Tex & Little Ave

Avery got to meet BIG TEX Saturday!!!! It was so fun. We had fair day with the Wombles. Avery was a trooper. We finally woke the little prince up at 10:30, so that we could head out. We visited the car show, trick Dog Show, and had lots of fried goodness. We even got to see Brian and Marcus and Grandma and Grandad for a few minutes. We stayed from about 11 until 5 and had all the fun we could stand, and only I got sunburned! Michael's favorite was the corny dogs, I voted for the fried pickles and Blake and Courtney liked the fried snickers. I hope you all get to enjoy a fun Saturday with your family soon, too.

But How Does it Change

When I was pregnant with Avery everyone kept telling me to get ready everything was about to change. I would get so frustrated, I wanted to know what that meant. I thought it was so scary to not know what those changes would be. So if there is anyone wondering, these are a few of the changes. Some good some, bad. Exhibit A-the living room. The picture on the left is pre-Avery. On the right, baby toys exploded. I will say that at this point the most ANNOYING thing about having a child is that my house is ALWAYS a nightmare. This believe it or not is picked up. I have never been a great housekeeper, but I could keep things picked up and put up. Now, we all this junk that I just can't find a good home for. I am hoping that as he gets bigger I can contain the mess, but I am sure all the more experienced Moms are laughing as they read this.

Some of the best changes are in my husband. It is so much fun to come home to not 1 but 2 smiling faces. It is awesome to see Michael with Avery. I don't know how people can be jealous of their spouse loving their child, nothing is more special than to watch Michael interact with Avery and see how much they love each other. It is such a fun change for our relationship to change for the better as we learn to be parents together.



Vacations have changed a little, too. Last year Womble/McCord vacay was a cruise on the Caribbean, this year we were supposed to cruise Lake Palestine, but stayed at our house thanks to Ike. I think we will have grown-up vacations again, but I must say this was a change we didn't mind. Both trips were a BLAST! I had just as much fun watching Praise Baby with the kiddos in their jammies as we did watching shows aboard the Rhapsody of the Seas.

The last few months have been full of changes, but I can honestly say almost none of them were as dramatic as I thought they would be or people made them sound. I was super hormonal for about 2 1/2 weeks after he was born and it took about 2 months before I got over him coming early. But, we still have our lives and they are better because of Avery. We do eat in shifts most nights, but we still talk while we eat our dinner. We still go out to dinner, we just go to places that are loud so we won't be too distracting. We don't make it to class because Avery sleeps late, but we still go to church and are working our way back to class. We still see our friends and they love having Avery around. Change is inevitable, one day I will learn this. But, the best thing that Avery has taught me is that change can be soo good when you let it!

No Way

Even Avery can't believe it. There's no way he is already 6 months old. It seems like just yesterday I was wondering if wee would be a he or a she, and now HE is sitting up smiling and laughing and learning new things every day.

I thought and thought about what would be a good 1/2 Birthday tradition to start. Avery was very excited to have 1/2 birthday cake in his honor. This year we went with white cake with fun fetti. I am thinking the tradition will be you get to choose a box cake and help make it. Then we will eat one half and he can choose who he wants to share the other half with. This year we chose our neighbors George and Brenda, they seemed really excited.
By the looks of things we won't have to convince Avery to eat his birthday cake. While we couldn't stop him from touching the icing we did get it off his fingers before he ate it.

This smile continues to melt our hearts every day. Even being the most non-morning person I know I can't resist it when he shots me a giant grin first thing in the morning.

We are so thankful for our easy going, happy baby. I am continually asked "is he always this laid back?" I can honestly say yes. He cries when he is hungry, sometimes not even always, and when we put his PJ's on. Most of the time even when he cries it is not too hard and not too loud. He loves to look at books, but we are having the occasional reminder that we don't chew on books. The play mat remains the greatest invention ever, followed closely by the off brand bumbo chair. It came with a tray that holds a toy he absolutely loves, between those 2 things he will play for hours. He also loves to stand up like a big boy in his exersaucer thing scooting back and forth to look at all the fun toys.

We love our little prince and look forward to starting many more family traditions.

100th Post

In honor of my 100th post I decided to think of 100 words of wisdom or encouragement that help me and/or are important to me.....

Honor your commitments.
Take responsibility for your actions.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength.
Accept gifts graciously; allow others the pleasure of doing something nice for you.
Love keeps no record of wrongs.
Be yourself.
No one likes to feel left out.
Say I am sorry.
Say I love you.
One hundred years from now will it matter?
Always pack extra clean underwear.
Neither height nor depth or anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God.
Remember to choose people and relationships over tasks and things.
Love one another.

Wedding Pictures!

Linde and Jeff's wedding was amazing. Linde's friend Taylor did an amazing job of capturing the big day for Mr. and Mrs. Giddens. :)
They managed to squeeze in a pic with baby boy as he napped in the stroller just after we all got to the reception. I was really proud that Avery's stroller fit in to both the black and white wedding colors, and our family's shout out to Linde's favorite color green!
I have recently started seeing the jump wedding pictures and I think they are so cute, I am really glad we got to take a few. I think I got pretty good air.
Avery was charming from the moment we made it to the church, here he is before we even started getting ready. I couldn't resist it!I think one of my proudest moments of the wedding weekend was when Avery sweetly gripped the ring all the way down the aisle. He was so cute that when he and Michael turned around to go to their seats there was a congregational ahhh... How could you not join in :)

Michael and I were so thankful to be able to be a part of Linde and Jeff's special day (see our green.) We had so much fun and made great memories. Happy 2 week anniversary.

WOW!

My friend Annalee has had great pictures taken by Lisa, at Now and Then Photography. When I told Annalee how much we loved the photos she mentioned that Lisa is our friend Felicia's sister-in-law. I shamelessly sent Lisa an e-mail mentioning that if she was ever in our area we would really like some pictures. I also dropped Felicia's name as well as Annalee's. Well, we finally got to have Lisa take our pictures yesterday. She did such an amazing job. Lisa truly gave us a great experience as well as some wonderful photos. You should definitely use Lisa if you live near her in Austin, or work hard to convince her to come back to our area if you live here. We will be campaigning for her to come often! If you want to see more pictures of our little precious go to Lisa's blog.


By the way I finally figured out how to do link's with people's names I am loving it, thanks Annalee you know all the good stuff.

Mr. Big Stuff

Look who's 5 months old. I can't believe it! I think my favorite thing about this month has been how much Avery's personality is growing. It seems like every day he is more interactive and fun. Even tonight when he was realizing how fun it is to yell! Michael and I said so many times last weekend that we were so thankful that he has such an easy going personality. He was so sweet to smile and flirt with so many people for all the wedding festivities.

Avery's most notable skill would be that he is almost sitting up. He has definitely mastered the "gorilla sit" as Michael calls it, and can last about 2 seconds in a big boy sit. I was really hoping he would be sitting by Thursday, we'll see how quick the photographer is.

On a personal note, I am looking for a new weekend babysitter based on this picture. As you can see Avery is trying to look like it is no biggie that he is playing with Mamma's Popples....

While he may not know any better his Daddy definitely does. Besides, Maddie took care of Avery, or me, and got him his own Popples. Why isn't that Popples in the picture? If you are interested in the babysitting gig let me know. The pay is not great, but the charge is pretty cute.

Mrs. Aunt Linde

This weekend Aunt Linde, became Mrs. Jeff. We started off the fun Friday with a wonderful pool party/bridesmaids luncheon and then enjoyed a great rehearsal dinner, Rudy's, Jeff's fave.

Saturday morning we were able to have a few hours of quality family time which was so fun. Avery and Linde shared their morning personalities. Then we all started getting ready for the big day. Avery and I did have to talk and let him know that know that Aunt Linde's married he has to be the #2 man in her life, he reluctantly agreed once she promised he could be a close second.

I think it is safe to say Linde and Jeff had the time of their lives. Everything was beautiful and perfect. Not one detail was missed and yet they didn't have to worry about a thing. The ceremony was great, the looked fabulous and then we all headed to the reception for a fabulous party.
We were all able to have so much fun thanks to the hard work of these 2 wonderful women. Mom and her best friend Alison worked so hard to plan a flawless wedding weekend for Linde and Jeff and all of us to enjoy. Great work ladies! It was AMAZING!

Hopefully I will have more pictures to share in a couple of weeks from the photographer. I did a terrible job of taking pictures, but I was glad to at least have these few to share. We truly had a great time and are so glad to welcome Jeff into our family. We are looking forward to many fun times with Jeff and his family.