baby christoper & the lego tower that love built

welcome to the world little christopher! the world's cutest baby - seriously - LOOK AT HIM. shon and chris make some good looking babies, lemmetellya.

baby christopher says HI

this past weekend i drove over a river and through the woods (literally) to meet baby C. i love him so much. he's perfect. he is the most alert week-old i've ever seen. he's a big boy with a head full of hair - i told shon it looks like he is wearing a wig. it's awesome.

i did a lot of watching him sleep, hope that's not too creepy
(but if it is then i don't care, i couldn't help myself!)

here we have him laid OUT and chill-laxing.

life is good

and now some boppy action...

playing around with mommy and grandma

can you guess what he's doing here? (clue: hold your nose)

i came home from north carolina to find this wonderful valentine from my hubby. this is way better than any hallmark card.

can't you just feel the love

ok, that's all i have for this post...short and super sweet! blog to ya later!

baby g is here (!!!), 8 years of wedded bliss, white stuff & nerd alert on high/a tiger beat over-pose (both very satisfying)

shon and chris welcomed their lovely baby boy to the world last friday - seriously, what a blessed day! they are home and are doing well! i will post a photo once they do on their blog, i don't wanna steal any baby thunder ya know? but i can tell you that he is perfect and so very handsome!!!

in other wonderful news, matt and i celebrated eight years of wedded bliss last week. for real, we are super happy and in luhve. here we are eight years ago in hawaii (where we got hitched, i highly recommend it) - could we be cuter??? the answer is no.

on the beach outside our hotel in kauai

here we are in maui - notice my super short blonde hair!

AND, a BIG BIG BIG thank you to matt's sister michelle. these arrived in the mail a few weeks ago and i finally got around to scanning them.

nerd alert on high

but really, this one is my favorite. this is a calculated pose, i can't begin to think how cool matt thought he was here...please don't be hating on me cause i married a tiger beat model. he told me that he thought that shirt was awesome and wore it ALL the time.

a tiger beat over-pose

here is a photo of mr. rowdy - he is the HAPPIEST baby in the whole world. he is 4 1/2 months old now and has the gift of gab. he is a talker lemmetellya. he also loves to smile, laugh and stand.

i picked him up from the nursery at the gym this morning and the baby-watcher person told me that he did nothing but talk and smile at her the whole time i was gone. how adorable is that? i can't get enough.

baby doll and mr. smiles

matt and i saw this one morning, it really cracked us up. lottie sue placed her "key kats" around a pot of hot dogs the night before.

don't they know a watched pot never cooks?

we also enjoyed some snow a few weekends ago. they called for a foot of snow (of course, they like to create weather drama here) and we got about three inches and that was fine with us. we had enough for sledding but it was gone in two days.

lottie sue smiled the entire way down

whee!

a few other random photos from that weekend...

tickle time with rowdy

lottie sue helps daddy keep the fire up

we are lego-crazy here, this one was built by lottie sue

rowdy finds his thumb

look at me! i'm smiling!

the kids and i went over to visit with grandma (my mom's mother) the other day. she had a keepsake box that was her mother's and she showed me items of interest.

this is the birth announcement my mom sent out when i was born

enjoying a watermelon: the tall fellow on the left is my great-great grandfather, lee, and his children, oscar, john, ollie and pearl jesse (my great-grandmother), plus some other kids that may be cousins?
(grandma said that he used to run a
thrash machine on a farm for a living)

the woman in the front on the left is aunt lizzy morris, she was the sister of my great-great grandmother - they lived in texas

this is a photo of grandma and grandpa on their wedding day

also, becce sent this to me for my birthday. our mom was a wonderful cook and she made everyone's favorite cake on birthdays - mine was red velvet, becce loved carrot cake and i think cera loved red velvet as well but i will have to get her to verify that. anywho...becce has her recipe books and sent this to me. if you love red velvet cake then make this one, it's wonderful. i ate this particular cake on january 17th most years of my life.

even better when made with tlc

in fashion news...lottie sue usually wears whatever we put on her but the other day she was very specific about her outfit. and i must say, it was pretty adorable.

a lottie sue original

and now i leave you with a few items of interest and then i'm dropping some google knowledge on ya...

• you know i love me some mr. pollan - food rules worth following
• humans were born to run barefoot, i think that would hurt but i have tender feet
• i love stuff like this: what's your 'six-word memoir' - mine would be "two kids under three. gotta run." OR "i wear black pants every day."
  

i read this in a magazine and thought it was so helpful, lemme share. i google ALL the time but i didn't know that i could get so specific. it's google-rific.

to find:  pdfs, excel spreadsheets or powerpoint presentations

use: filetype:pdf, filetype:xls or filetype:ppt
example: canon manual filetype:pdf
why: if you include the file type in your search, google will turn up only relevant files. for example, entering filetype:pdf will find all the pdfs that have to do with operating your new camera. (for excel files, use filetype:xls; for powerpoint presentations, filetype:ppt.)

to find: narrowed-down information

use: a hyphen (minus sign)
example: jaguar -cars -football
why: you want information about jaguars―the animal, not the car or the sports team. placing a hyphen before terms you want to exclude will omit pages with those words. type a space before the hyphen, but not after.

to find:  a product you saw online (but can’t remember where)

use: intitle:
example: intitle:“frye boots”
why: using the term intitle: searches the words in the title bar of web pages and can be particularly helpful if you remember the name of an item you liked but not where you found it. just be sure not to put a space after the colon and to use quotation marks around the phrase.

to find:  a verbatim phrase

use: quotation marks
example: “bikram yoga”
why: using quotation marks around a phrase or a person’s name can eliminate many of the irrelevant links you would otherwise turn up.

7 things you can do directly in the google search field

• perform calculations. to figure out what 15 percent off that $78 shirt amounts to, just enter “78 x .15” into the search field, click “search,” and the answer will show up at the top of the results page. no clicking on a second link required.
• convert measurements. how many cups equal a liter? simply type “cups in liter.” you can also find out currency conversions (“15 dollars in euros”).
• track flights. find out if your flight is on time by entering your airline and flight number.
• locate packages. hunt down an mia delivery by entering “track” plus the tracking number for a direct link to the status page.
• look up addresses. type in a person’s home phone number and, if he or she is listed, google will turn up the mailing address.
• find movie showtimes. enter “movies” plus your city or zip code to see theaters and showtimes for the next three days.
• listen to songs. thanks to a google partnership with the music site lala.com, you can type the title of a song and its artist and a playable file will appear at the top of the results page.

the more you know, the further you go!