And then we had a baby.

So yeah, little bit of a break in the old blog the past two months.  About three days after our last post I was admitted to the hospital with pregnancy-induced hypertension.  Three days after that on September 23, 2012, little miss Piper Dee made her way into the world at 33.5 weeks (7 weeks early).  She was 3 lbs 9 oz and 16.5 inches long.  She spent 20 days in the NICU and came home with us on October 12, 2012.  I'll keep it short since I'm dealing with precious nap time here, but here are some photos showing her journey from birth date to now:

Just born.

First bottle.

Finally meeting my girl in the NICU.

Laying on her bili blanket (treatment for jaundice).

Piper in her isolette before she was moved to an open crib.

Receiving a blessing from our minister Chad.

Her fingers in mine.

Meeting big brother Amery.

Home!

Pipers baptism. This is the same baptismal gown worn by me and my sister. It's 45 years old.

My pretty girl captured by Libby Ann Photography. You can bet we'll be posting more of these when we get them.

Some people have asked about her middle name.  Jon's mom's name was Merri Dee and my grandma's name is Dee, so it's a way to honor them both.

Guilty

The easiest way to get to my friend Mandie's blog is to go through the link on our blog.  Every time I passed by ours I felt a little bit worse about slacking on posts this summer.  The guilt of not posting anything since July finally got to me.  We really did do stuff the rest of the summer.  Lots of stuff.  And then it got really, really hot and we holed up in the house most weekends or spent time in the pool.  To ease my guilt, you get pictures.  Not a lot of explanation, but this is the best I've got right now.  Getting ready for Amery's birthday, family visits, and a certain baby girl are taking up a lot of time right now!

We spent time on Grammy and Grampy's boat:

 Rocked some swimming lessons:

Dressed up for hippie day at school:

Moved into a big boy room:

Visited a cave:

And checked out a Lego festival:

Fourth of July Fun

We had a lot of fun celebrating Independence Day yesterday.  We started with Plan A - pool party at home with friends.  One of their little ones got sick so we moved on to Plan B - spend the day with grammy and grampy and swim in their awesome neighborhood pool.  Turns out BOTH of the neighborhood pools were closed for the 4th (why? dumb).  We moved on to Plan C - drive 10 miles back toward Austin to go to the big pool in town.  It was crazy crowded but we still had a great time.  We headed back out to grammy and grampy's for dinner and fireworks.  Some pictures from our day:

My masterpiece. A patriotic triffle of pound cake stars, strawberries, blueberries, and whipped cream. It was simple and delicious. I can once again thank Pinterest for this one.

Amery's first sparkler. The cup as a hand shield for little ones - brilliant. You may be shocked to hear that this idea came from, wait for it, Pinterest.



Finally it was time to head down the marina for fireworks. Waiting for it to get dark enough is tough for the 3-yr-old crowd.



A million years later, still waiting...

Taking pictures of ourselves, thinking it will NEVER get dark.

Finally! He was definitely impressed.

And then there's this awesome little video of our smart boy. Throughout the fireworks show, he was calling out their colors in Spanish. What a little sponge he is right now. I suspect his teachers, many of whom speak fluent Spanish, are to thank for this.  Oh, and Dora and Diego.  Lord knows he watches his fair share of those two.



A Girl!

19 weeks, 3 days, 1 baby girl.

Safari Week Photos

The Late Night Benediction team before the race.

Jon and me at the start.


Amery's first trip to the beach. King Fisher Beach at Port O'Connor.

With cousin Jax. The water was that shallow halfway out that big pier in the background.

The guys at the Victoria checkpoint on Monday afternoon.  Looking a little tired.

Waiting at Seadrift for Papa to get in on Tuesday evening.

They made it! It took them 80 hours and they finished in 63rd place at 18:05 on Tuesday.

The guys at the finish line.

Happy to have Papa home safe with us!

See? Bigger!

Flashback Friday

The last time these two were together (April 2011), they looked a little something like this:

Not-so-little-anymore Avah and Amery are together again for a week of fun in Texas.  Upcoming events include seeing Papa off on the Water Safari, swimming in the pool, spending some time on the Texas Coast, and fighting over a stuffed Mickey Mouse that neither one cares about unless the other one has it.

First School Program

Every year, Amery's school holds a pre-K graduation ceremony and the 3- and 4-year-olds perform songs with their classes.  This was a couple of weeks ago now, but I finally got one of the videos off the camera.  I have a few others I'll upload later, but I wanted to get this one on here first because the song is meaningful to us.  This is the song Slippery Fish as performed by our friend Fredie.  He and Jon grew up together in Austin.  He and his brother Ralph performed at Amery's 3rd birthday party and we will never be able to outdo the awesomeness of that party because of them.  Right around that time, I gave a copy of Freddie's CD - Kazoo It! - to Amery's teacher, and she loved it so much she passed it around to the other classrooms.  They loved it so much that they decided to use the Slippery Fish song as part of their big end-of-year program.  Here's a video.  Amery is in the front row.  I've included the lyrics below the video since it's nearly impossible to figure out what the kids are screaming singing.



Slippery Fish
by Freddy N Friendz

Slippery fish, slippery fish swimming in the water.
Slippery fish, slippery fish - GULP, GULP, GULP!
Oh no! He's been eaten by an...

Octopus, octopus squiggling in the water.
Octopus, octopus - - GULP, GULP, GULP!
Oh no! He's been eaten by a...

Tuna fish, tuna fish flashing in the water.
Tuna fish, tuna fish - GULP, GULP, GULP!
Oh no! He's been eaten by an...

Great white shark, great white shark lurking in the water.
Great white shark, great white shark - GULP, GULP, GULP!
Oh no! He's been eaten by a...

Humongous whale, humongous whale spouting in the water.
Humongous whale, humongous whale - GULP, GULP, GULP!
Oh no!
No more fish.

Oh right, I also wanted to share a cute picture of Amery that Jon took before the performance.  I've included both the cropped and uncropped versions because, well, you'll see.

Cropped:

Uncropped:



Birthday Season is Upon Us.

And it couldn't have come at a better time. A lot of our friends' children have birthdays this time of year. We had two this past weekend, and we have two more next weekend. This may sound like sheer torture for some folks, but for us it's great.  Jon is so busy getting ready for the Water Safari this time of year that Amery and I need to find ways to keep busy without him.  Enter birthday parties - or what I like to call "Operation Energy Burn-Off."

First we hit Connor's birthday party on Saturday at an awesome, shady little park with a cool playscape and a trackless train for all the kids:

Jon joined us later that day and we cruised up to Grammy and Grampy's pool in Lago Vista.  I don't know if he was more excited about the pool or that fact that he got a whole bag of Cheetos to himself and didn't have to share:



On Sunday we had an awesome time at Jack's party at a "jumpy place" but I didn't get any pictures because Amery wouldn't stop moving long enough for me to snap one.  On Monday we cruised around town for a bit, then headed down to San Marcos for some Water Safari necessities and a little time swimming and throwing rocks into the San Marcos River:

 Amery and I broke in the pool for the season on Monday night - a perfect end to the busy weekend.

Hooper Hero

I'm kind of in love with this video.  It's short and very sweet.

Wordless Wednesday

Big Boy Room Progress

We will eventually be moving Amery into the current guest room, and while grandma was in town we she made some progress on the decor.  This room has needed some curtains since we moved in six years ago.  None of our guests complained so it just got put off.  A couple of weeks go we picked up a pair of these Lightcatcher Curtains at Tuesday Morning for $19.99 per panel (it may have even been $14.99, I can't remember).  Off-white wasn't my first choice, but they didn't have a ton of solid colors to choose from.  In the end I really liked them, and they block out a TON of light when closed.

Next we searched and searched for some Hawaiian fabric to make a valance to match his PBK Island Surf Bedding (he has this quilt with this navy/red reversible comforter):

I don't plan on changing the wall color in the room which is currently that green color you see in the quilt.  So in the end, we decided a plain navy valance was the best we could do.  A quick search on the Hancock Fabrics website lead me to this awesome ribbon.  A little bit of Witch Stitchery, a hot iron, and a towel over top of the ribbon (turns out those white flowers are plastic!) and we had a valance:

A couple of tiebacks tied the valance and the off-white curtains together:

It was tough to get a good photo in low light, and the canopy bed in the way doesn't help things much, but I think it looks pretty darn good:



Adding the hibiscus ribbon allowed us to tie it in with flowers/leaves in the surf bedding while still keeping it masculine.  When we move him into this room I plan on taking off the door to the walk-in closet and replacing it with a curtain.  Right now the door swings into the room and takes up precious wall space on the only wall that can really "hold" the bed.  Since I have a bunch of hibiscus ribbon leftover, I'm thinking a navy blue curtain with red ribbon accents at the top and bottom or maybe along the long edge.