No Words Necessary--starring Ava and Tyler

As promised...

...here are some updated pictures of my adorable niece,Avery Ann. She is a little bit over 2 months old now, and she is just TOO cute. She has the sweetest smile, and her hair is just AWESOME!

Look at that sweet smile, and that HAIR!

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She has SUCH a sweet face.

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Ashley sent this to me by e-mail, saying,

"We got our hair did to go to the dr yesterday!!!!" Love it.

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With all the pregnancy hormones, this one is about enough to make me cry!

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What do you think? Does she already look like she's going to be trouble?

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I am SO thankful to have Ashley, Matt and Avery in Michigan with us for at least another year while Ashley finishes her residency at the local hospital (as CHIEF resident, by the way, no big thang...). I'm afraid that they are going to scoot right back down South as soon as she is done, though, and I can't say that I blame them!

Basketball Fever

Jacob has been playing basketball in various leagues since he was 4, but last summer was the first time he really started taking it seriously and practicing, and started taking an interest in watching it on tv. I know he realizes how much Alan enjoys it, and you can tell Jacob really wants to make him proud by being good at it. They have really enjoyed playing together. This video is of Alan playing a game with Jacob last summer on the lower goal.

This year Jacob practices on a 10-foot goal (but still plays on an 8-foot goal in his league), and it is amazing how much he has improved. Alan is his coach. I'll have to get some new video and put it on here to compare.

A little bit too ambitious...

In Jacob's class at school, whenever a kid has a birthday they bring in cupcakes for the class. I had been seeing these REALLY cute fondant cakes online made out of Oreo cakesters...

... so I got the brilliant idea that I was going to make these little white fondant cakes with the University of Kentucky logo on them, since Jacob has gotten to where he is ALL about the University of Kentucky after watching every single one of their basketball games this season with Alan.

I thought, I'm fairly artistic, right? This is right up my alley! WRONG. I bought my Oreo Cakesters, fondant and food coloring, cut out my logo and began working on the first little cake. I got it wrapped in the white fondant and then I took some of the fondant and put a few drops of blue food coloring in it and mixed it into a pretty Kentucky blue. So far so good.

At that point, I started to cut the UK logo out of the Kentucky blue fondant using the logo I cut out as a stencil. Things quickly went downhill from there. (If I was better at this blogging thing, this is where I would have the play-by-play of pictures of my failure, but of course, I'm pretty bad at this blogging thing, so I don't.) I really underestimated how hard it would be to cut the fondant in all the nooks and crannies of that logo. I got through one single UK (which didn't look half-bad), and decided that there was no way I was going to be able to do 23 more of them.

So, we scratched that and went with plan B. I happened to have chocolate cake mix and icing in my pantry, so I quickly threw that together and made 24 cupcakes. I didn't really have a lot of any one kind of decorations for the cupcakes, and Jacob said EVERYONE brings in just sprinkles, so we brought out the whole arsenal of sprinkles, colored sugar, candies and chocolate chips and Jacob and I decorated them together. I am actually glad the pretty little fondant cakes didn't work out, because I tasted one and they were NOT very good, and Jacob and I had a lot of fun decorating these together.

Live and learn...now I just have to figure out a good use for my remaining 4 pounds of fondant...

What should I call this picture? Suspicious Minds

This is an old picture of Jacob and Ava from when they visited from Christmas, but I love the funny way they are looking at each other and I just realized that I hadn't posted it. I don't think either of them really knew what to make of the other one! I was trying to think of a cute caption for it, but I guess I'm just not creative enough. Any ideas?

Avery Ann Norris

Introducing Avery Ann Norris, daughter of Ashley and Matt Norris (Alan's sister and her husband), born February 27, 2010, 8 lbs, 4 oz and I think she was 21 1/2 inches. She is SO beautiful. I've been meaning to introduce her for a while, but I took these pictures with my non-digital SLR camera and then lent Ashley the picture CD. I finally got it back so I can share.

Avery with Maw

Avery with Paw

Avery with Maw and Paw

Avery with Uncle Alan




Avery with her daddy

She is less than a half hour old in these pictures. She was so alert! I can't wait to share the more recent pictures of her--she is just adorable! I'm still trying to figure that one out, though, because Ashley has sent most of them to me on her i-phone, and for some reason I can't save them as a .jpg or other format I can put on the blog. The best I can do is cut them and paste them into Word. I tried cutting them and pasting them into the blog, and that didn't work, either. If you know how to do this, let me know!

Hank at 20 Weeks

Isn't he be-YOO-tiful??? And no, his name is not going to be Hank. That is just what Maw and Ashley (Alan's mother and sister) call him--his family is BIG on nicknames! Since we haven't found the perfect name yet, we've all pretty much taken to calling him Hank in the meantime. If you have any suggestions for cute boy names, by all means, SHARE!

He is perfectly healthy, as far as they could tell from the ultrasound, and although he is supposed to be 10-11 ounces, they estimate that he already weighs 15 ounces! Apparently that is not as dramatic as it sounded to me--they said he is basically measuring only 6 days older than his estimated due date, since at this point he is starting to grow almost an ounce a day! Alan is 6'7", and Jacob was a pretty big baby, too, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that he is measuring large. Probably means another C-Section for me whether I like it or not. :(

Oh well, as long as Hank comes out healthy!

Joy

I can not tell you how excited we are to finally share the news that we are expecting another baby. We waited a bit longer to share the news of this pregnancy after our other experiences this year, but things are going well so far and we are SO happy.

We had an ultrasound at 6 1/2 weeks and the doctor scheduled another one for 12 weeks because there were three gestational sacs (but only one fetus) and the doctor wanted to see how that "resolved itself." At the 12-week ultrasound, there was only one gestational sac, and we held our breaths waiting to hear the heartbeat and see the baby move. When we had Jacob, I feel like I took it for granted that everything would be okay. This time, I can't explain to you the unadulterated joy I felt when I saw the baby flipping around inside me! As an added bonus, we found out at that ultrasound that we are having another BOY! I had no idea you could find out that early, but you could clearly tell it was a boy, even to my untrained eyes! Nice to know two months earlier than I expected, but now I am anxious to get him named as soon as possible so we can start calling him by name.

As I said, everything is going well so far, but if you want to throw some prayers our way, we won't turn them down!!!

My New Little Man

Okay, he's really my sister Susan's new little man, but whatever. Check out this sweet little guy...

Of course, I just want to EAT this picture it's so cute.

The new family.

Killing me...

I truly just about can't take how cute my niece Ava is...

Especially when she lives 1400 miles away. :(

Cub Scouts

Jacob and all of his little buddies started Cub Scouts this year. Actually, I don't know if it is correct to call them Cub Scouts, because at their age they are Tiger Scouts. Is Cub Scouts the generic term given to all of them, then they change animals as they age? Or would that just be Boy Scouts? No idea. Anyway, Jacob had to memorize a bunch of Boy Scout information to earn his first badge the other night, the Bobcat badge, and he was pretty proud of himself.

Then they got around to the good stuff. Every year they have a boat race. They give everybody a little wooden boat kit, everybody builds their boat, then they bring them into a meeting and race each other. These boys could not have been more excited about it. Jacob was particularly excited because he and Alan went online to a website devoted to making these Boy Scout boats in a way that they will go the fastest but are still within regulations--there really is such a website. According to Alan, the boat they chose to make was an 11 on a 1-10 scale of difficulty to make. They actually sawed the boat in half and made a catamaran. Jacob was 3 for 3 in the races, and he was completely psyched. After all his hard work, Alan actually missed the races because he is coaching Jacob's basketball team and had to attend the first coaches' meeting. Amazing how one kid can keep you so busy! Here is video from one of the races Jacob won (Jacob is on the left):

Fighting a Losing Battle...

Ever since he was old enough to understand the phrase "when I grow up...", Jacob has wanted to be a firefighter. Frankly, I have not done much to encourage this at all, because the idea of him running into burning buildings terrifies me. I keep making other, less dangerous, suggestions that he completely ignores. I have been hoping that he only wants to be a firefighter because every little boy wants to be either a firefighter or a policeman, and wishing that he will grow out of it.

Well, lately it seems that my wish might be coming true. He has been showing a definite interest in other professions. Unfortunately, however, his motives are not pure. As he has been learning the value of money by saving his own earned money to buy things he wants, he has suddenly become much more interested in how much money various professions earn. And suddenly he wants to become a doctor. It's funny (not really) how in first grade these kids are already aware of which professions are traditionally the "rich" ones.

Don't get me wrong, I would be unbelievably proud if Jacob became a doctor...it's just that I know that Jacob still really would rather be a firefighter. How do you teach your child the value of money, while still de-emphasizing its importance in the big scheme of things?

Here is one of the ways I am trying to do that:

Sigh. This picture is from our visit to the local fire station during a Cub Scout meeting. I still really really don't want him to grow up to be a fireman. But I will always encourage him to follow his dreams and not to base his decisions on worldly things!

Introducing...

My new beautiful nephew, Tyler James Cottrell!



Susan had him this morning at 7:46 a.m. He weighed 8 lb, 5 oz and was 20.6 inches long. I can't wait to see the pictures with big sister Ava holding him! At 18 months, her life is about to change very drastically!

Crazy Hat Day

When we got home yesterday afternoon, Jacob announced that tomorrow would be "Crazy Hat Day" at school. He was very concerned about what hat he would wear. He said that 1) he had to make it; 2) it had to be cool; and 3) it had to be funny. He and I bounced around ideas for a while, which means he spent half an hour shooting down anything I proposed ("What is funny about THAT?" "Mom, really, I said cool"). He got really set on the idea that it would somehow involve a jet plane (cool, he said) and a pirate hat (funny, he said). After a little more discussion, we added one more requirement--that it had to kind of make sense.

Here is what we finally came up with:

Jacob ended up coming up with the concept all by himself. That is a hat from a frog-themed birthday party he went to--we took the eyes and tongue off of it. Then we taped on a platform from his Ben 10 Alien Changer (which you probably know nothing about unless you're the parent of a boy aged 4-10). Jacob drew and colored the body of the jet plane and the wings (notice the flames on the wings), then he cut the body of the plane and slid the wings in. Then it was my job to figure out how to get the plane to "fly." I have to say that when we were done, we were pretty darn pleased with ourselves!

New Post!!!

I actually have a new post down there somewhere, but I actually started working on the post in May, so when I finally hit "publish post" it went below the two or three posts I published more recently. So scroll on down and you can thank me later for making you pass those to-die-for pictures of Ava again.