Look what Annabelle can do!!!!

I have discovered that Annabelle seems to be an all or nothing kinda gal. She went from no steps to walking all over the place in one step! She is an expert at walking now, but she tends to only be motivated to walk when there is someone waiting to give her a hug at the other end of her journey. It is So fun to see her be so proud of her accomplishment and it is amazing that she is taking so many steps! There is no stopping her now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy July 4th

My sweet friend, Shelley, made this adorable shirt for Annabelle to celebrate this year's 4th of July. Shelley is a mommy to a wonderful 7 year old little girl, Abbey, and teaches Kindergarten in Frisco. She is wanting this to a her last year to teach and so has started a business making these shirts to bring in some extra money. She makes adult and children sizes and they are just darling! The funniest thing to me is that whenever I have seen these wonderful friends, Abbey has one of these cute shirts on. It never fails that someone comments that they like her shirt, and she PROUDLY says that her mommy makes them! It brings a smile to my face each time! In case you are looking for some fun summer shirts, feel free to look at her website www.sewmuchjoy.com

Another Celebration for Italo

On Italo's real birthday, we had a little family celebration with Annabelle and then Italo and I went out for a overnight date! We went to eat at Canary Cafe-which was delicious and then we enjoyed a baby free night a local hotel. It was a wonderful celebration to celebrate the best husband EVER!!!!! What a CUTE Birthday BOY!

Annabelle trying to sneak a peak-and some icing off the cake before the "party"

Is that a super Hero belt you got?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

The BirthdayBoy and his present opening helper!

SOCKS!!!!!! Doesn't Italo get exciting stuff for his birthday.... :)

Happy Birthday Italo!

We had a great time celebrating Italo's birthday this year. It was a multi-day celebration, kicked off with a joint birthday party with my brother, Andy. He and Italo are 2 days apart (same year) so it is fun to celebrate both of them at the same time! This year, we went to a bowling alley and tried to entertain Annabelle as I bowled a score of somewhere in the 70's......(that is really bad if you don't follow bowling scores). But, the company was great and we got to celebrate with some of our favorite peeps!

Family Date Night!!!!!!!!

I have a wonderful husband and he is very considerate about balancing time to himself, time for me, time together and time as a family. There are the occasional times that I have to hid the XBOX 360 remote from him in order to get him to pay attention, but for the most part, he is really very wonderful. An example of that wonderfullness was a few weeks ago when Italo emailed me at work and told me he thought we needed to bring our date night back. But, since we have Annabelle now, we would have to do it a little differently. So-from 5:30-8:00, we do Family date night and then from 8:00-whenever we have our personal date night. It is just s time where we do not get on the computer, play Xbox or do chores. Instead, we spend time together as a family. We have had two family date nights and they have been great! The first one, we went to a nearby Park and let Annabelle play. The swings were her favorite FOR sure and the higher we pushed her, the bigger her smile was. I LOVE to see her face light up when we play rough with her and I am so glad to see that she likes adventure!

The second week, we had my Dad and Andrea over for a game of Nertz! Nertz is one of my favorite games and I had such a good time playing for 3 hours! I love Family Date night and I can't wait to see what the next few weeks hold!

The things you can do with Technology! I can morph into Keira Knightley:

MyHeritage: Family trees - Genealogy - Celebs

I can solve the question of who Annabelle looks like most:

MyHeritage: Family tree - Genealogy - Celebrity - Collage - Morph

What did people do before technolgoy!

Does this Kid ever get to Dry Off?

I have more pictures of Annabelle in the water! This time we are in the lake near Killeen, TX. My brother and sister in law recently moved to Killeen so Allen could work at the University there. Last weekend, my family went up to help them warm there house! We got it really dirty-so if that is what a House warming is all about-mission accomplished :) My mom and stepdad brought their boat up to Killeen so they next day we could all enjoy the water. Annabelle had lots of fun as long as the boat was moving. When people fell off their tubes on the back of the boat and we had to stop, she got pretty vocal. She loved floating around in the lake and of course splashing everyone! But, we had a really nice morning in the water.