Tony and Beth Online

Cole Tries the Spoon

2012-02-19T09:02:00.000-06:00

We are trying to use up some of our last bits of baby food, so we decided to try to let Cole feed some of it to himself. It was carrots mixed with some infant cereal to make it a little thicker. He knows that the spoon goes in the mouth, it just ended upside down a few times, and he needed some help scooping the food onto the spoon. It made quite a mess, but was pretty cute to see him try to feed himself.

Birthday Presents

2012-02-19T08:53:00.000-06:00

Cole sent me flowers to work on Friday for my birthday!

And Tony brought home my favorite cake from Merritt's Bakery - Strawberry!

It's going to be a great birthday! The last of my 20's!

Cars

2012-02-17T20:46:00.000-06:00

Cole is truly a little boy. He LOVES cars! He has a few that he drives all around the house, on the floor, up furniture, from room to room. Here are a few pics of Cole with his blue car.

Then there's the big red car that Nana and Pop Pop got him. He gets to ride on that one. Right now it's Mommy and Daddy powered, but hopefully soon his little legs will be long enough to move it himself. He loves having us push him all around the house though. He laughs and has the best time.

Nana and Pop Pop's Visit

2012-02-05T20:52:00.000-06:00

My parents came for a visit this weekend! Yay!

The end of the week didn't go so well for the Cole-man. He came home from the babysitter's with a fever on Wednesday afternoon. I called the pediatrician's office and made an appointment as soon as we could on Thursday and took Thursday and Friday off of work. The poor little guy had the fever Thursday and Friday. We found out at the doctor's visit that he had a sinus infection and a virus which was giving him a sore throat. The days he had the fever we were doing Ibuprofen every 6 hours, and we started an antibiotic for the sinus infection. He has been SO active lately, it was a drastic difference. He was the worst off in the mornings when he woke up and the medicine for his fever had worn off. He didn't even want to move. He just sat or laid on me and slept. It was so sad. Luckily Friday evening he started to perk up a little bit and woke up Saturday with no fever and hasn't had one since! The antibiotics are helping the congestion, but it's not completely gone yet. I was worried he wouldn't be feeling very well for my parents' visit, but it turned out ok.

My parents' came in Friday night (later than expected...thanks Continental and storms!), but we still got some good Hideaway Pizza for dinner and visited for a little bit before going to bed.

Saturday, Tony and I took advantage of grandparent babysitters and did our 22 mile run for our marathon training. It took us a little over 3 hours, but we made it and felt pretty good about it and that we actually made it that far! We also celebrated my Mom's birthday with a cake, presents, and dinner at Charlestons. Yummy!

Here are some pics of Cole helping Nana open her presents:

Before dinner we did a few errands and stopped by BuyBuyBaby because my parents' wanted to get Cole a Valentine's present. :) They picked out this cute Radio Flyer car. Cole's legs don't reach the ground on it yet, but he likes to be pushed around in it and to walk behind it or push it around himself.

Cole also did great at dinner that night. We haven't taken him out in awhile, but it was really a lot better now that he can eat finger foods. He entertained himself with that for most of the meal.

Pop Pop gave Cole his bath Saturday night too. Cole loves splashing and playing with the toys in his bath and Pop Pop didn't disappoint! They had a lot of fun together.

Today we had half a day before taking my parents to the airport, so we hung around the house in the morning until Cole woke up from his unusually long morning nap. We had lunch at another favorite, Old School Bagel, and did some shopping/walking around Utica Square. We were sad to have to take them to go back home, but we know it's only a few more weeks until we head to The Woodlands for another visit!

Wow...

2012-01-29T15:31:00.000-06:00

Cole had a "bean burrito" (aka mashed beans on a tortilla) for lunch today. He wasn't very into it until I gave him the whole wrap. He had thrown a bunch of pieces on the floor, but took a few bites off the bigger part. Needless to say it made quite a mess!

This picture is classic! Check out all four of those teeth!

10 Months Old!

2012-01-26T20:28:00.000-06:00

I'm a little behind on the 10 month post (18th was the day). We have picked up our running on the weekend and I'm pretty much worthless at blogging during the week unless its a short post. Anyways, enough excuses...here's the update on the little man.

10 Months has brought us until a whole new baby experience with the little man. He has become so much more mobile and eventhough he his not walking, he is a fast crawler and can pull up on everything...and I mean everything! We spend the evenings chasing him around the house and telling him "No". Things Cole loves to do and is not supposed to do: stick his hand IN the toilet, push the on/off button on the TV so it makes noise, push the buttons on the cable boxes, slide open the media stand doors so he can get to the cable box, pull things out of outlets, and grab things in general that he shouldn't be. Maybe we should "baby proof" more, but you can't take away everything that they get into. It's just not possible.

On the plus side, it's really cool to see him exploring and checking things out. He remembers where things are and will go back to places and toys that he likes. He definitely has a sense of what he wants and doesn't want. We even get a little tantrum when we tell him "No". It's funny though because he starts crying and wants you to hold him and make him feel better after you were the one who made him mad in the first place.

We went to the doctor in between 9 and 10 months and he was 22 pounds and 31 inches long. He's dropped down into the 40th percentiles for weight but continues to be in the 90th for his height. He's wearing 12 month clothes and size 4 diapers.

His eating has been going really well for the most part. He eats very little baby food anymore and mostly finger foods. Some of his favorites are pita bread and hummus, bananas, zucchini, applesauce, pasta, and cereals. He is starting to have more food preferences and will not eat or get mad when we give him something he doesn't like. We are starting to work more on using a sippy cup since we are getting closer to finishing up breastfeeding. He doesn't take to it right away, but will show a little interest. So that's something we are working on for the next transition.

Cole has 4 teeth now, two of which are still coming in. We went through a rough patch with teething and not sleeping and being fussy, but it's been better this week. We are learning what to look for and how to make him feel better, so next time it won't be as rough, we hope!

Daycare has also been going well. Coming back from Christmas break was tough, but he's back in his old (new) routine. He's taking an hour nap in the morning and two in the afternoon. He loves having the other kids around to watch and play with. I think he's bored at home now! We are so thankful to have a place that we like and that he enjoys. I never have a problem dropping him off in the mornings and he wants to keep playing when I pick him up.

Some of the things Cole does to make us smile:
-crawls with no clothes on from his room to the bathtub at night
-his little faces he makes when he's eating
-when he crawls over and sits at our feet with his arms out waiting for us to pick him up
-his laugh and what he laughs about
-stands up in is bed for us to come and get him
-starting to give kisses or will lean in for one
-will throw a ball back and forth (in his own way and not always in the right direction)

I could go on and on, but there's a few! We are often tested with our patience these days with all of his activity (I know this isn't going to go away for awhile), but the good things always outweigh the challenges. Now we need to start planning a 1st birthday party!!!

My First Sewing Project

2012-01-26T20:01:00.000-06:00

Tony got me a sewing maching for Christmas this year! I had mentioned I wanted one, but I've never really sewn anything before. My Mom used to sew a lot when we were little...matching dresses, halloween costumes, etc. So that was really my only experience, watching her do it. I see so many cute things and think I could make that if I only had a sewing machine. Well, now I have no excuse. My Mom gave me a little tutorial on how to get started when we were home for Christmas, but I hadn't done anything since then.

My niece (Tony's sister's little girl) has a birthday this week, and I wanted to get her a little apron for her birthday. I started looking on Etsy and then it occured to me...I have a sewing machine for this reason. I need to use it. I tried to talk myself out if it thinking it was going to take me a long time to do it, but I decided to just go for it.

I took Cole to the fabric store, bought a pattern, and all the necessary materials. I did it in little chunks, washed the fabric one day, layed out the pattern and cut it out another time, until we got to a weekend where I was able to have some time to sit down and acutally do the sewing. Surprisingly it only took me about 2 hours to do all the ironing and sewing...and I'm pretty slow at both! I think reading the directions on the pattern was the most difficult part. That sewing lingo!

I think I did a pretty good job for my first project...I'll have to ask my SIL what she thinks when they get it because she does some sewing too. I'm not great at sewing perfectly straight, but it wasn't so bad that I needed to re-do it or anything. I got better as I went, I think. I enjoyed the work and the satisfaction on finishing the project too. It does take a lot of focus, especially since I don't have much experience.

Here are some pics of the finished project!

Hair Do

2012-01-16T20:33:00.000-06:00

Tony fixed Cole's hair while I went out running tonight! I came home to product in the hair, spikeyness action. He looked like he had a little spunky attitude with his hair like this. Cute little man! :)

It's Official

2012-01-16T13:49:00.000-06:00

We are doing another marathon! Tony signed us up last week for The Woodlands Marathon - in The Woodlands, TX where I grew up and my parents still live. It's happening on March 3rd, seven weeks away at this point. We are not doing a serious training plan like we did for Big Sur, but we are making sure that we are doing some longer runs. It's just impossible for us to do a strict schedule with Cole and working right now. I think we will still be fine though. We have already done a 16 and 18 miler. We want to get in a few more quality longer runs, but that's about it.

With the new year we also started our third running journal! We keep track of our distance, times, and weekly/monthly/yearly mileage. Last year Tony ran 2,192!! miles. His goal was 2,000 and he definitely did that and then some. My total was 745, but I did have a baby and was pregnant so I got off to a slow start the first four months of the year. The previous year, 2010, Tony ran 1,623 and I was at 1,207. I don't really have a yearly goal, but I try to be close to 100 miles a month, but it doesn't always happen. We shall see what 2012 has in store for our running, but a marathon is first up!

Texas Post #5 - Swings!

2012-01-06T20:05:00.000-06:00

I had to post a few of these pictures because it just reminds me how much Cole is growing up! He actually fits in the baby swings at the park! I had taken him to the park in our neighborhood, but it was and has been pretty chilly before we left for Christmas. My parents' neighborhood has a nice little park that we took Cole to one evening to check out the swings there. I think you can tell from his face, but he was having the best time! It was so cute! Tony, of course, pushed him higher than I did and he loved it even more!

Texas Post #4 - Best Friends

2012-01-05T17:00:00.000-06:00

Wednesday was our busy day of seeing friends and driving around town, but we were SO happy to do it! Our first stop in the morning was my friend Alyssa's house. She and her husband and NEW BABY(!!) live in downtown Houston. We drove down to see them since little Grant in only a few weeks old. He is such a cute little guy, so calm and snuggly. He just slept in Tony's arms for part of the time. Cole was all over the place of course! It was fun to see how 9 months during this first year makes such a huge difference. In the future, it'll seem like nothing. I hope these boys become friends even if we don't live near each other anymore. Dave and Alyssa are doing such a great job adjusting to parenthood. They even had Dave's family staying with them for a week.

Wednesday evening we went over to my other friend, Sarah's house. She's married to Mike and has 3 kids. Sarah also had a baby this year in July. (Side note: Cole was trying to give little Evie kisses - yikes!) Our other friend Kristina was also in town from Boston! So we had a great dinner kids and all and chatted and watched the kids play for a few hours. We even got a picture of the kids, minus Evie who was sleeping, in front of the Christmas tree. They all got some fun gifts from Auntie K too. This was also Kristina's first time to get to meet Cole, so that was really cool too. I forgot to get a picture of them though!

Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T21:10:00.000-06:00

Little man's first New Year's Eve was celebrated with a dinner of pita bread and hummus and pear/blueberry mixture. He had a great bath and was in bed by 8:15 pm. He likes to party - that's for sure!

Texas Post #3 - Aunties & Baths with Pappa

2011-12-31T21:03:00.000-06:00

Cole loves his Aunt Janie and Aunt Stacy!! It was fun to get to spend so many days with them and time that was quality and not rushed or busy. Aunt Janie showed Cole how to climb the stairs, and Cole loved Aunt Stacy's hats! Both of them are so great with him and just played and played most days. They also did some diaper changes too!

Tony and I were able to go out one night to dinner with no baby! Our friends Johnny and Katie came up to see us, meet Cole, and go to dinner. We went to Jasper's in Market Street. So good! My parents watched Cole and put him to bed that night. This started the streak of Pappa doing Cole's baths! They had so much fun that night. My Mom said Cole was cracking up at him, and they were splashing and having a good old time.

Texas Post #2 - Christmas Eve and Day

2011-12-31T14:59:00.000-06:00

On Christmas Eve day we did our family pilates class and went for a run later that day. We also started the Christmas celebrations with going to church at WoodsEdge at 4 pm. We enjoyed the music and message as always. We wish we could transplant WoodsEdge in Tulsa! We really miss going there. We went to the earlier service so we could be back for Cole's dinner time and ours too! My Mom always makes lasagna for dinner and we loved that and ate the whole thing up! After Cole went to bed, we wrapped up the night decorating cookies and playing cards (which we did A LOT on this trip)!

We also get to open one present on Christmas Eve and it's always PJ's! Cole got to open his first present too. He actually did pretty well with it once we handed him each piece to tear off. It took him awhile though!

Christmas morning Cole slept until his normal 7:30, he ate first, and then we woke everyone else up. With the little man we had a lot more presents under the tree! We were all pretty spoiled this Christmas. Cole got tons of toys and clothes! Almost every toy had sound, lights, songs, the whole deal. Once we had a few opened up, he was not interested in opening any more presents. So we opened them and saved their play time for later. He also loved playing with the boxes and paper. He was so worn out when nap time came around.

Once we were done opening gifts and Cole went down for his nap, we ate some breakfast - coffee cake and egg casserole - YUM! Tony and I definitely had seconds. We spent the rest of the day talking to family on Skype and on the phone, hanging out, going for a run, and that's about it! We were in PJ's most of the day! We had our Christmas dinner feast of ham, potatoes, etc. and watched a movie at home to round out the evening. We used to go to the movies Christmas Day, but that's pretty much impossible with a 9 month old. So we settled for the next best thing at home. My Dad did get a new DVD player for Christmas, so we got to check that out at least.

It was another great Christmas Day with family, which is just what we needed! With everyone living so far away, these times don't come very often anymore. So we just really enjoyed and appreciated every minute of it!

Texas Post #1 - Stacy's Event

2011-12-28T15:52:00.001-06:00

We got to Texas on Thursday evening after an interesting drive down. We planned on leaving in the morning, but we got about an hour down the road, after getting some breakfast, and I started having some stomach troubles and got sick at a gas station, so we turned around and went back home. I slept for an hour and started feeling better and decided to try leaving again. I felt a lot better and we made it to my parents with no other issues. Kind of a weird thing!

On Friday evening, The Woodlands Country Club, and a reception for Stacy since she won the Kraft. They wanted to give her a membership and do a Q&A session with her for any members that wanted to come by. It was really a cool deal to get to get to go to! We don't really get to see or hear Stacy talk about golf in the "professional" way like she did that night. It was neat to see people so interested in what she does and wanting to learn things from her. She was so well spoken and did a great job. We even took Cole with us. Someone held him most of the time, but it wasn't bad. My Dad's golf buddies got to meet him, so that was cute to hear how my Dad talks about Cole to them. :)

Here are a few pics from the event:

Family Pilates Day

2011-12-24T20:54:00.000-06:00

For, I think, the 3rd year in a row, we all took a pilates class together today. Even Cole came to get in on the action. He did really well playing with his toys and pilates equipment while we were doing a work out. My Mom and Dad go to Pilates Place of The Woodlands with Greg, so that's where we all went to get our workout on. Stacy, of course, put us all to shame because she works out all the time, but we had a really fun time.

A few hours later once Cole went down for his afternoon nap, Tony and I got to go on a run together for the second day in a row. We did a nice 7 miles (same as yesterday). We are enjoying our old routes in The Woodlands and having time to chat while we run. We've actually gotten used to running by ourselves, so we're having to adjust to running together again! How times have changed!

Cole's New Trick

2011-12-22T20:56:00.000-06:00

Now, this is not the most flattering picture of the little man, but too cute not to share. Tony took this while I was gone last weekend visiting Stacy. This was the first time Cole stood up waiting for one of us to come and get him in the morning. Hence the crazy bedhead and pajamas falling off (I think Daddy forgot to button the top of the PJs :))

9 Months!!

2011-12-21T14:04:00.000-06:00

Cole turned 9 months on Sunday! We can't believe he's 9 months old! It just seems like he's growing up and getting closer and closer to a year already. I think these are some of my favorite "month" pictures. I (of course) just think he's getting cuter and cuter. :)

He's turning into a little man now. He's moving all over the place. He does an army crawl to get around and can go from his belly to sitting very easily. He's also started pulling up on a few things (his crib, a little step stool, the coffee table, the side of our bed). He will stand up for quite a while entertaining himself once he stands up.

He still does lots of talking and even says something that sounds like "baby". His little personality is really starting to show. He's very determined and knows what he wants right now, but he's still pretty flexible when we want him to go do something else or take him places. He's always going from one toy to the next when he's playing too.

His favorite activities right now are crawling around, opening drawers and doors, playing with toys, finding things he shouldn't be playing with (magazines, cords, remotes, electrical outlets, etc.). He does the same thing at the babysitters. She says he is all over the place!

He loves sleeping on his belly and will sit up, stand up, talk, move around his crib until he falls asleep. It's pretty entertaining to watch him on the video monitor. He's a great sleeper and has started sleeping almost 12 hours at night on the weekends and does two good naps during the day.

He continues to be a great eater too. We've been working on more finger foods, but still eats mostly baby food.

In the last month he also made another trip, this time to Phoenix for Thanksgiving. Cole got to meet his great-grandparents and my mom's side of the family. He did a great job traveling again.

We are so excited for Cole to experience his first Christmas this week! It's going to be so much fun for him, we hope. I think Santa's going to be very good to the little man.

Christmas Time

2011-12-10T21:06:00.000-06:00

The Sunday we got back from our trip to Phoenix, we went to the Christmas Tree farm in Owasso to pick our our tree! We love having a fresh cut tree...it smells so good! We had a good (and easy) time picking one out, and took a few pictures while we were out there. It was a nice, but chilly day so we didn't stay too long.

We also all got new stockings this year. Since we had to add a third one, we figured we might as well get Tony and I some matching ones and one for Cole too. I also got the material to make the garland on the mantle at Nutcracker Market. I was excited to finally get that put together. I think it makes the room look very fun!

Here's a picture of our tree that we picked out. It doesn't have ornaments on in this picture, but we do have ornaments on our tree by now! It took us until the weekend after we got the tree to get them put on though.

Today I took a few pictures of Cole in front of the tree. I tried to get a cute one with him holding an ornament, but he wanted to play with it or eat it, so this is what I got...

Thanksgiving - A Little Late!

2011-12-03T18:32:00.000-06:00

We went to Phoenix for Thanksgiving this year to be with my Mom's side of the family. Her parents and sister and her kids live out there. We flew out on Wednesday afternoon and came back on Sunday morning. We had a great time hanging out with everyone. Stacy and Janet were both there too. We rented a house again which works out so nice for all of us to hang out and for Cole to be able to keep his normal routine.

Thanksgiving day was started with a Thanksgiving Day Classic run in Peoria, AZ. My mom, Janet, Tony, and I all ran the 10 mile race. We had the coolest weather of the weekend that morning, and we all had a great run. Here are our results:
Tony - 1:12:47 (11th in age group)
Beth - 1:13:50 (5th in age group)
Mom - 1:40:56 (11th in age group)
Janet - 1:40:56 (15th in age group)

Here we all are after the finish!

Later in the day, we went to my cousin, Michael's house for Thanksgiving dinner with his family, my mom's sister and brother, my grandparents, my other cousin...everyone's kids...etc.! There were a lot of people! Cole got to meet his great-grandparents, and everyone got to meet him for the first time. It was also Tony's first time to meet some of them.

Here are some more pictures from the week.

Cole had to take his bath in the kitchen sink because there were no bathtubs in this house...kind of weird, but we managed. Cole gave everyone a show every night! :)

We spent most of the time just hanging out. We went running, shopped at Trader Joe's, had a cookout at the rental house, things like that. We were all just ready for a relaxing weekend, and did just that. We didn't even do any Black Friday shopping!

We did take our Christmas card pictures. These aren't the ones we used, but I wanted to share a few.

Crafty Project

2011-11-21T18:51:00.000-06:00

I did these awhile ago because my sister got a new place and I was looking for a good housewarming present for her. I saw these cute yarn wreaths on Pinterest and thought...I can do that! I did it and they were super easy. I bought a straw wreath and some yarn to wrap it with. Then I made the little roses with different colors of felt. There are tons of blogs with tutorials on how to do the roses, so I just followed one of those. Hot glue and a few buttons later and I was done. It was super easy, but a little time consuming with the yarn wrapping. I had a little baby throw up mishap on one of them, so I had to start over after I had wrapped the entire thing! I was a little frustrated with that, but it happens with a little guy around. I think my sister liked hers too...she got the red one, and we kept the grey.

8 Months!

2011-11-19T20:56:00.001-06:00

The little man turned 8 Months on Friday! He is a busy boy these days. During the last month we've taken Cole on trips to San Diego and Houston for long weekends. He's gotten to be quite the traveler, and we are getting better at packing for trips!

He's continuing to go the the babysitters during the week and takes two good naps there and does well with all his meals. We still have a weekday schedule and weekend schedule because of getting up at different times. Cole eats 5 times a day during the week (every 3-4 hours) and 4 times (every 4 hours) on the weekend. Naps are pretty consistent though with a morning and afternoon nap. We are still using a sleep sack at home, but not at the sitters.

Cole is also busy because he is on the move! He has figured out how to army crawl on his belly to get to things he wants. I think he's pretty close to really crawling because he's rocking forward when he's sitting up. He has also gotten really good at rolling on all sides and in all directions. Between that and the army crawl he's all over the place. We crack up watching him because he gets focused on what he wants and just goes for it now. All this moving also makes his sleep positions pretty interesting. He will flip ends, roll around, lift up, all kinds of stuff until he gets comfortable. He mostly ends up sleeping on his side though.

Cole continues to be a good eater and has started doing well with a few finger foods like puffs and teething biscuits. The puffs took a little practice, but he's gotten much better. We've tried a sippy cup a few times, but that hasn't taken off yet. He also has two teeth right now! The two bottom ones are continuing to come in, but you can definitely see them in his mouth now.

Cole is wearing 6-12 or 9-12 month clothes and a size 3 diaper. He's still pretty big for his age. We are stocking up on winter clothes right now since it's about to start getting cold here! We probably should get him a little snow suit. :)

Cole loves all toys and household non-toys too...cords, remotes, keys, magazines, etc. He's into different kinds of blocks, cars, the exersaucer, riding in the stroller, stuffed animals, books...pretty much everything! It's all interesting at this point. He will just sit and play with toys on his own now and can entertain himself as long as he's not tired.

He's doing a lot of talking and noise making...he does da, da, da's, ba, ba's, ra ra's, etc. I've her a few ma's but nothing that sounds like ma ma. Maybe soon? He's such a happy little guy and just brings so many smiles and laughs to our family! We think this age he's at is just so much fun!

Cole's doing a little standing up for short periods of time with something to hold onto. He was not very interested in taking pictures after awhile and wanted to stand up against the chair for a bit. :)

This Made Our Week!

2011-11-17T12:46:00.000-06:00

Chuy's is coming to Tulsa!!

One of our favorite mexican restaurants from Texas (Austin & Houston first, then they opened one in The Woodlands) is opening a location in February! We think it's the first one out of Texas, and we are SOOO EXCITED! We haven't found any mexican places here that we really like. They just aren't the same. But that is all about to change!

Shaky Weekend

2011-11-06T14:49:00.002-06:00

This week has been pretty much the usual...working, running, hanging out with Cole, etc. Pretty uneventful really which is fine by us! We were looking forward to this weekend too because we didn't have anything planned, and we pretty much kept it that way.

Friday night we went for a family run and picked up some dinner afterwards and just had a low key night. We woke up at 2 am Friday night to our whole house shaking! It wasn't raining, so it couldn't be thunder...it was an earthquake! The center of it was about 80 miles southwest of here, but we still felt the shaking. It was a 4.6, the 2nd largest in Oklahoma ever. Since it was the middle of the night, it was strange, and we had to ask each other if we really felt that.

Saturday we went to Utica Square to go to the Pottery Barn Kids, got some Starbucks and enjoyed the beautiful weather. We also got lunch at the new Jimmy John's that opened in Tulsa near there. We love JJ and always wished they would open one here. The rest of the day I spent cleaning, which carried over to today, and Tony watched a bunch of football. We squeezed in a run for each of us too.

Here's the guys hanging out on the couch watching one of the games.

We went to bed late last night after the LSU/Alabama game, which I fell asleep during. Tony said, hopefully we don't have another earthquake tonight, and not even 10 minutes later when we were watching the news, the house started shaking again! It started out slow and built up to the point where I was getting kind of nervous. Then it slowed down again and stopped. It lasted about a minute total and the news reported that it was a 5.6 earthquake in the same area as Friday night. Who knew that Tulsa would have earthquakes like this? I always worried about tornadoes, so this is one more thing! I felt an earthquake here before Janet had one in San Diego! I just hope we don't have another one anytime soon.

Cole did really well with the time change this morning and slept until the new 7:00am! Yay! We didn't have to get up at 6:00am like I thought we might. I finished up my cleaning, Tony did some stuff in the yard, and we made a quick trip to the grocery store. The earthquake was the biggest thing we had going this weekend. We also had fun hanging out with the little guy. We really look forward to the weekend with him. :)

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T19:19:00.000-06:00

Cole's first Halloween! They had a little party at the babysitter's today...Pirates & Princesses, so he came home with a pirate patch and little goodie bag with a Halloween bib and new toy. I don't think he really minded the pirate patch too much. :)

We got him the skeleton pj's since he goes to bed at 8 pm, there wasn't any point of getting him a full out costume to sit at home in. So the comfy pj's were the way to go this year. He liked seeing the Trick-or-Treaters coming to the door tonight.

Fall Break in San Diego

2011-10-30T16:16:00.000-06:00

Just like last year, we took a trip to San Diego over fall break. Last year just Tony and I went, with Cole in the belly. This year, we had the Cole-man and my parents for the trip. We rented a house in La Jolla, just north of San Diego and Ocean Beach (where Janet lives). We planned on being with Janet for her first weekend after David was deployed, but with David's accident, it was a different kind of trip. We spent a few hours each day at the hospital visiting David or hanging out with Janet if David was doing something else. David also had his parents and friends there too, so it was a full room! I think Cole brought a few smiles to everyone which is always good.

We did a little driving up the little beach towns to La Jolla one day and went to Janet's favorite jewelry shop, Noon. We also went to the San Diego Zoo again for a few hours for Cole's first zoo trip. We went to some good restaurants, went running, and hung out at the rental house. It worked out really well having the rental house because Cole could nap in a separate room and we had space to hang out all together. Plus a full kitchen and washer and dryer is great with a baby. The house was up on a hill with awesome views of the ocean. We only had one really clear day though, so that was kind of a bummer. We saw one great sunset from the full glass windows in the living room one night.

The flights with Cole went pretty well on this trip. As he gets bigger it gets tougher for him to nap, but we managed to get him to fall asleep for a little bit of each flight. He was a trooper and didn't make us pay the no nap price too badly...really only once when we were at the hospital. He was done after we had gone to the zoo and everything. We had to leave and take him back so he could have a nap, and we even ended up bringing food back to the house for dinner the last night.

I can't say that it was a relaxing trip, but it was nice to see my parents, Janet, and David too. We are learning what we can and can't do with the Cole-man when we travel, that's for sure.

A Little Halloween Present

2011-10-29T21:24:00.000-05:00

Cole got a Halloween present in the mail this week from my Aunt Kathy and the Heil crew. There was a really sweet card and a shapes block set. Cole is loving playing with toys, so we were excited that he had something new to play with. He loves dumping the blocks out and picking them up, putting them in his mouth, then throwing them around, and moving on to another one. He even partially unwrapped the present himself! :)

7 Month Mark

2011-10-25T20:29:00.001-05:00

Last week was Cole's 7 month birthday! Here are a few pictures from his photo shoot. :)

I've been updating the new things he's been doing lately, so I won't repeat. The one new thing is that he is sprouting a little tooth now! When we were in San Diego, I felt his gums in the morning...nothing. Then that evening, I felt again, and there was a little sharp thing poking out of his gums. You can't really see it, but you can definitely feel it and see the little bump of gums around it.

In the past week or so, Cole has definitely gotten more vocal. He does da, da, da, and la, la, la's all the time. He's much more interactive and pays attention to everything. It's neat to see him focus on something new and try to figure it out. We really do love this age that he is at now. It's a lot of fun!

Prayer Request

2011-10-18T13:34:00.000-05:00

We found out on Saturday that my sister, Janet's, boyfriend, David, was in a skydiving accident earlier that day. He has been in ICU since then and underwent surgery on Sunday to repair his spine which was severely broken and his damaged spinal chord. He doesn't have feeling in his legs right now. The original thought of the doctor's was that his spinal chord had been severed and he would never walk again. Once they performed the surgery they discovered the spinal chord was intact, but damaged. We don't know what this means for the future, but right now they are focusing on recovery from the surgery and rehab to come.

Here's a picture of David with Cole when they met two weekend's ago. (It's from my phone, so not the best quality.)

David and Janet are handling everything so well thus far. They have been very accepting of this and just want to figure out what the next steps are and what life is going to be like now. They have been so positive and just have so much trust in God's plan for them. It's hard not to be in awe and just inspired by them.

David's surgery went great, and he is supposed to be moving out of ICU soon. Janet has spent every day at the hospital and has just become his little protector. She's taking good care of him and making sure he's getting rest with all the visitors he's getting. We know the journey will be full of ups and downs for them, but there are so many encouraging things and so much to be thankful for. It's a life changer though...please pray for them and David's family as he continues to heal and transitions into this new normal for them.

Cole Updates

2011-10-16T16:22:00.000-05:00

We visited the pediatrician last Friday. It was Cole's 6 month check up...a little late. He's doing great and meeting his milestones. He weighed 19 lbs 5 oz (70%) , 28.25 in long (90%), and 84% for head circumference. So he's still a big boy! The doctor gave us the ok to start him on 3 meals a day of solids, and that has been going well so far. We also got the go ahead to start him on some finger foods when he's ready...starting with the teething biscuit since it's easy to hold onto. We bought some today and here are some pictures from his first teething biscuit. What a mess! Please excuse the snot running from his nose. It's just not going away. Next time we will be having one of these in a diaper only.

Another new thing for the Cole-man is he finally rolled from his back to his stomach. He's been so close for a few weeks. The last few days of the week his babysitter told me he was rolling over in the pack-n-play when he woke up from his naps. Well, Friday night I was getting him ready for bed and he just rolled over like it was no big deal. Now it's non-stop and so fun to watch. He's done a few rolls back and forth too. It does make me nervous because he's rolling over in his bed too and sleeping on his stomach during naps mostly. At night he's still been on his back so far. This is how we found him Saturday morning!

We are entering the semi-mobile stage! I can't believe he'll be 7 months next week! So many changes coming our way!

Cole's First Pumpkin Patch

2011-10-15T20:51:00.000-05:00

We visited Carmichael's Pumpkin Patch in Bixby this morning. Tony and I had gone two years ago and tried to get our pumpkins there, but it was super muddy because it had rained the day before we went. They have a produce stand up the road that we ended up going to so we didn't have to get all dirty. Then last year, we did the same thing. But, this year, with the Cole-man, we wanted to get the pumpkin patch experience. This was our one weekend in October to go, so we got there soon after they opened at 9:30 this morning (got some Chick-fil-a breakfast for the mom and dad on the way). We got there early enough that it wasn't super crowded, which was good. We even saw two people that we knew!

They have all kinds of fun pumpkins though...white, green, orange of all sizes, stripes, etc. There are a lot of great places to take pictures of the little ones. So there were tons of families out. They also have a hay ride, petting zoo kind of thing, and I don't really know what else...we didn't check that out since Cole's so little.

We just took a bunch of pictures and picked up some pumpkins. We got two big, two medium, and quite a few little orange ones, a few little white ones, and a larger green one. I wanted a bigger white one, but Tony had already checked out by the time I figured out that I wanted to get one. :) Next year! Our house is looking much more fall like after our visit to the pumpkin patch! We also planted some mums in our containers by our front door. Now, we are waiting for the weather to cool off...which should be happening next week!

I just love this last picture! It's so sweet. I love my guys!

First Sick Day

2011-10-05T20:12:00.000-05:00

I just had my first sick day at home with Cole. He's doing just fine though. Last night we got him all ready for bed and I was walking to the rocking chair to rock him before putting him down, and he just started throwing up. I was shocked, frozen, I didn't know what to do! He threw up about four times and it went all over me, him, the carpet, and our chair and a half & ottoman. I was like uh Tony! He's throwing up! So we spent the next 30 minutes cleaning up the mess including baths for Cole and me. It was a mess! Luckily my Dad (who prepares for everything) got the chair and a half & ottoman treated and warrantied, so it's going to be professionally cleaned in a few days. Good thing because it smells! You never think about getting thrown up on when you think about having a baby, that's for sure!

I'm not sure what caused this last night, but the other baby at Cole's daycare was out yesterday because she threw up on Monday. So it must have been something going around. Our sitter wanted me to keep him at home just to let him rest and recover and make sure he was feeling ok. He had a pretty normal day today and didn't get sick again, thankfully. We are going to be heading back to work and the babysitter's tomorrow. We had a nice little day at home together. We slept in (until 7, but that's better than 5), took naps, cleaned up the house, and started packing for our trip to Houston on Friday. We also played and hung out...which is always fun!

It was a much needed day of rest and relaxation with the little man at home. :)

Every Runner Loves New Shoes!

2011-10-02T09:56:00.000-05:00

We both got some cool new shoes in the mail yesterday! It always makes it a little more exciting to go out for your first run in some fresh, new shoes. We wear our shoes for about 300-400 miles at the most before switching to a new pair. So it's an accomplishment and a reminder of a lot of miles when you leave an old pair behind. Now, if we could figure out what to do with the dozens of old running shoes around the house! We need to find a place to donate them, I suppose.

OKC/NW Ark Tournament Weekend

2011-09-25T10:25:00.001-05:00

I haven't had much time to sit down and write about our first weekend alone since Cole was born! Two weekends ago, our friends Matt (Tony's friend from since they were little) and Devan got married in Oklahoma City. Tony was the best man in the wedding, so we needed to head over there on Friday after work for the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. Since we also needed to be there for the wedding as much as possible, we worked it out with my parents to watch Cole for the weekend. This was the same weekend as Stacy's tournament in NW Arkansas that we always go to. So while we headed to OKC, my parents left from our house with Cole to head to Rogers, Arkansas (near Fayetteville).

We had a nice time at the rehearsal dinner and went to a restaurant bar on Lake Heffner on Friday. Saturday, we SLEPT IN!!! Yay! For the first time since Cole was born. It was amazing! Tony did a few things with Matt and the guys while I relaxed in the hotel room. We went for a run - part along the river and part downtown. We needed to go back and start getting Tony ready and over to the museum where they were having the wedding. After I dropped off Tony, I went and toured Penn Square Mall for a bit. I even got a new dress to wear to the wedding...on sale at Gap!

We had a great time at the wedding that night. We hung out with some friends, did a little dancing, eating, the usual wedding stuff. We were able to stay all the way until the end of the wedding and had a nice relaxing time celebrating Matt and Devan. My favorite part of the wedding was this cute little lemonade mixing station. You would get strawberry, raspberry, or one other flavor mixed into lemonade, and it was delicious!

Here are some pictures from the wedding:

The honeymoon was over after that though. We had to get up at 5:30 am the next morning, so leave by 6 am to drive to Rogers to meet up with my parents and see the Cole-man again. Cole did great for them, and I think everyone really enjoyed having him around. We made it to Rogers before Stacy tee-ed off, so we were able to see all of her round. We even took Cole out on the course for pretty much all of it. (This turned out to be a big mistake since he didn't get that good of a nap in the stroller, he was crying something terrible on our way back home that night.) But we were able to see everyone which was really fun, but we sure were tired by the end of the day. Then we had to drive back home too.

My parents flew back home on Monday morning, but Stacy stayed until Tuesday morning. We convinced her to babysit Cole on Monday while we went to work. She did a great job and even changed a few diapers, fed him, and got him down for naps, no problem. It was great to be able to see Stacy for that extra time too.

It ended up being a crazy long weekend, but it was all fun stuff. It took us a few days to recover because I had to go to Jenks Wild - my school's overnight camp - on Wednesday the following week. So we used last weekend to do nothing and spend quality time with the little man.

USA!

2011-09-24T16:22:00.000-05:00

Stacy is playing in the Solheim Cup this weekend! It started on Friday where she played one match and then two matches today. The US and Europe are tied going in to tomorrow, so it will be an exciting finish! The Golf Channel is showing the coverage live from Ireland, so we spent the morning watching it on TV. Cole had USA team spirit going on! The second picture actually has Aunt Stacy in the background! :)

Fun Times Eating This Week

2011-09-24T08:30:00.000-05:00

Cole's Half Birthday - 6 Months Old!

2011-09-18T17:03:00.000-05:00

Six months ago we welcomed our little 7 pound 9 ounce baby into our family! He has grown and changed so much! I don't think Tony and I realized how quickly the time would pass. I will have to update in a few weeks on his stats because we don't go back to the doctor for his "6 month" appointment until October 7th. With going on vacation during the week of his 4 month, it pushed us back that far again for his 6 month and we also couldn't get in the last week of September. So we won't get an accurate 6 month weight and length. It'll be more like 7 months, but what can you do?

The big excitement of turning 6 months was that Cole started sitting up totally on his own yesterday! He had been close for about a week, but was still tipping over. Now he's doing just fine to sit and even rock around a bit without falling over. We still sit right by him just in case because it's only been a few days. It's so fun to see him sitting and playing!

Eating solids has also been a focus in the last month. Recently we started doing two meals of baby food a day - a fruit or veggie in the morning and cereal at night. He has tried sweet potatoes, green beans, bananas, peaches, plums, and apple sauce. I just made some new things yesterday to start trying soon. More options open up after the 6 month mark. He is doing really well with his meals. We had a major spit up incident at night with sweet potatoes a few weeks ago and now he doesn't really like them. I'm hoping to try mixing them in with something else to see if he will eat them then.

Bottles have continued to go well. He eats between 7 and 9 ounces in the bottle and gets one twice a day at the babysitter. I've been told he's started holding the bottle on his own too.

Cole spent his first times away from Mommy and Daddy last weekend. Nana and Papa took good care of him though. Aunt Stacy even helped out and watched Cole all day while I was at work. Cole also was home with Tony for a few days last week when I went to Jenks Wild. He did so well adapting and didn't miss a beat.

We have a great schedule going right now. Cole eats every 4 hours on the weekend and 3-4 hours during the week. He sleeps from 8 pm until 7 am on the weekends and 8 pm until 6 am during the week. He continues to sleep through the night and rarely cries when he wakes up. He does a lot of talking though.

Cole has pretty much outgrown every 3-6 month outfit and wears 6-12 or 6-9 month clothes. We are still on our last box of size 2 diapers, but will be switching to size 3 very soon.

He really has an easy going personality so far. He smiles, laughs and "talks" a lot and loves going on walks, playing in the exersaucer and door bouncer, sitting up, or standing (with help, of course). The play mat is still a hit and so is the swing every once in awhile. He definitely recognizes Tony and I, but really loves anyone who holds him or gives him attention. He still does well going to the babysitter and likes playing (or watching) the other kids.

Cole cracks us up all the time with his cute faces, noises, and smiles. It just melts our hearts! We love our little guy so much! We barely even remember what we did without him. We know the next 6 months are going to bring so many changes for him. We are trying to just enjoy every minute, and we really do love this age that he is at right now. He is so interactive and just the cutest thing ever! (I can say that since I'm his Mom!)

Our Big Boy

2011-09-16T20:59:00.000-05:00

Cole has been working on sitting up for a long time now. He's loved having us hold his hands or arms to keep him up, but now he's started sitting up all on his own! For a few weeks we've had to sit behind him to keep him from tipping over. He's gotten more stable over the last few days and can sit up for a little bit at a time without help. He still will tip pretty easily, but I think we can officially say he's sitting up!

Here are a few pictures from today:

(Fall has arrived and we had to pull out the long sleeves the past few days! We love it!)

OU/Texas Already?

2011-09-03T17:47:00.001-05:00

I can't believe it's September already and we are starting college football. Cole is sporting his two teams today!

He had a good week at the babysitter and even got to leave early on Friday and come to work with me for a little bit. We had a professional day at work on Friday, so we had a few meetings but that was it. We are getting more into the swing of things and getting out the door in the morning without forgetting anything! We definitely look forward to the weekend and sleeping more and spending time with the little man.

My favorite times with Cole are in the morning, after he's eaten. He's always in a good mood and so sweet. He was just laying on the floor this morning playing with his feet and faking us out on him rolling over. :)

With the long weekend we have a few little projects we want to do. One of them is to put down some more mulch and weeding our front flower bed. It's gotten a little out of control with it being so hot and us not wanting to get outside and fix it up! We talked about making a headboard for our guest bedroom, but I'm not sure if that's going to happen or not. The weather here is supposed to be so nice starting tomorrow - highs in the 80s! We've had 42 days over 100 this summer and we are over it! We are wanting to get in a good run with this great weather either Sunday or Monday. Other than that, we will be watching college football. OU comes on tonight and Tony's Dad is coming over to watch with us since he's in town until tomorrow. I guess we will be checking Texas's game on the computer since it's not on TV here.

Hook 'em Horns! (and Boomer Sooner for Tony)

Little Longhorn Fan

2011-08-29T09:03:00.004-05:00

Cole received a fun gift in the mail this week from Johnny and Katie. (Johnny was one of my first friends through swimming when we moved to Texas, and we went to UT together. He married Katie last November - we love her too!) I have a feeling Johnny picked this out though! It is the cutest little warm-up suit. I can't believe they make it so small, and it just looks adorable on Cole. I can't wait for him to wear it this fall!

The New Normal

2011-08-28T09:01:00.000-05:00

I haven't been able to write as often because we started our first full week of school last week. The first day was the Thursday before and teachers went back that Monday. So we've had two full weeks now of both of us working and Cole going to the babysitter. We decided on an in home daycare after visiting several daycares close to my school. We are happy with our choice so far. Cole gets a lot of attention and gets to be around some bigger kids too.

The first week was really hard. I cried before we left the house, after, we dropped him off and a few times at work. It was just so different. I had Cole all to myself for five months! Then Tuesday and Wednesday came around and we had Meet the Teacher night and the pilates the next night. So I felt like I had no time at home. Then the first two days with students came. It's usually hard enough to get used to going back to school and this was just making it harder. I can't even remember what day now but I even forgot Cole's milks for the day and Tony had to go home and get it. I was having a tough time!

This past week went much more smoothly. I didn't forget anything and we made it where we needed to be on time. We are starting to get more used to this new routine and we really look forward to our time after work and on the weekends together.

One of the biggest challenges so far is pumping at work. I have classes all the way until lunch. So I have to quickly pump before I eat (we only get 30 min) and then a little more during my plan time. I feel like my time at school is very rushed trying to do that and get as much done as possible so I can leave to get my little man. But I'm making it work so far. The other challenge is not having the weekend to sleep in. Getting up at seven didn't bother me when I wasn't working but now I get up at five during the week, and I just was to sleep until say eight! I'm not a napper, but I've had to take a few on the weekends.

I'm also trying to fit running into all of this. I think once the weather starts to cool off it will be easier because we can take Cole with us, and especially on the weekend get our runs done at once rather than Tony going and them me going.

Otherwise we haven't been doing too much on the weekends. We have a few little projects we want to work on with the three day weekend coming up and then it gets busy with my parents coming, golf tournament, and a wedding all in one weekend. So we are just enjoying not having much that we have to do right now.

Here are a few pictures from this morning. Cole LOVES the exersaucer right now. He's figured out how to get himself all the way around to play with all the toys. Our baby is just growing up! :)

Cole at 5 Months

2011-08-19T17:32:00.000-05:00

Yesterday our little Cole-man turned 5 months! He's turning into quite the little character. He is smiling and laughing all the time, even squeeling which is pretty funny. Of course all those things just make us smile too! He still hasn't done any rolling from his back yet, but rolls off his tummy all the time. Since we don't have a doctor's visit this month, I don't know exactly how much he weighs or his length right now, but he's growing! We are probably on our last purchase of size 2 diapers and he's wearing a few 3-6 mo clothes still, but mostly moved onto 6 month or even some 9 month one piece pjs.

We started taking him to the babysitter this week since I started back to school on Monday. He's doing really well taking two bottles and getting in a few good naps there. He has another baby friend his same age and quite a few other "big" kids to keep him entertained.

He is still doing a great job sleeping at night and really just adjusts well to any situation we put him in. We feel so lucky!

Right now, Cole loves the exercauser and can spend up to 30 minutes in there playing with all the animals and sounds around it. He's semi-into the door jumper and still loves the playmat or even just a blaket with toys or the Bumbo. He has lots of choices for activities now. He continues to do lots of "talking" and making noises.

We've also started taking him out in the BOB running stroller when it's not so incredibly hot outside. We got a break from the heat wave for about a week and he really enjoys just watching the world go by and listening to Mommy and Daddy talking.

Another milestone was starting with baby food which I've written a lot about already. He's tried rice cereal, sweet potatoes, green beans, and peaches. He likes them all so far. The green beans took a few days for him to get into though.

Like always, we can't wait to see how he grows and changes over the next month! It flies by way too fast!

Sweet Potatoes!

2011-08-11T09:14:00.000-05:00

We moved on from rice cereal to sweet potatoes! Cole loves them! We've only given him 1 ounce for the past four days since you only introduce one food at a time and want to make sure he doesn't have some kind of reaction to it. But he eats that ounce in like 5 minutes! Yesterday we tried to give him a little rice cereal again after the sweet potatoes and he was not interested now that he's had food with some actual taste to it. He makes some of the funniest faces when he's eating and he just leans forward and attacks the spoon. Feeding him occupies all of our available hands too because he likes to grab the spoon and bite it and move it all over the place. We are going to try green beans next and them some fruits after that. So much fun!

Girls (+Cole) Weekend

2011-08-09T14:30:00.000-05:00

Tony was at a bachelor weekend for one of his best friends last weekend in Scottsdale, AZ, so my Mom came to visit for the weekend and keep Cole and I company. Tony left on Thursday morning and my Mom didn't get here until Friday night, so I had my first overnight stretch with Cole by myself. It went really well, and it wasn't hard at all. My Mom and I just did some shopping and went out to eat for lunch each day, but we hung out at the house the rest of the time. She and I both were able to do our exercising in the morning, did our errands, and then had dinner at home. We also got a few veggies and fruits to make some baby food for Cole. I didn't really know how to start with that, so she helped me out. We made sweet potatoes, green beans, and peaches. It was really pretty easy!

Our favorite place I took her was Buy Buy Baby - it's the Bed Bath and Beyond baby store. We had a ton of fun in there! Cole got some more sleep sacks, a "Baby Bullet" for making baby food, some sheets, and a doorway jumper! Here are some pics of him in the jumper. So cute! He does pretty well in it for about 10-15 minutes before he gets tired. I think as he gets a little stronger, he will enjoy it for a longer period of time.

We had such a great time with Nanna and can't wait for her to come visit again in September!

Charleston Visit

2011-08-05T11:10:00.000-05:00

Here are some pictures from our couple days in Charleston while we were in South Carolina. We flew in and out of there and since we had to be out of our rentL house on Saturday, we had that afternoon and Sunday to spend there. We stayed at a Holiday Inn historic hotel on Meeting street which was really nice because we were a short walk to everything. We walked through the market and a few shops along the way. We also did a carriage tour which I had never done before. It was neat to hear the stories and hear about all the history of the city. It was super hot when we were there so we had to take a cool off break after that and check into the hotel. We went to dinner that night at a really good Italian place and had some Ben & Jerry's for dessert! Really just walking around and checking out all the houses and shops is the most fun part about going there.

Sunday morning, Tony and I managed to get in a five mile run while my Mom watched Cole. We checked out some more residential areas and found a place for all of us to go to breakfast called Toast. We did a little more walking in the morning, but had to head to the airport before lunch time. This part of the trip was just with my parents and Janet. So we enjoyed those few extra days with them.

Our plane rides back to Tulsa did not go as smoothly as the ones going! Cole was a different baby! He was fussy and crying the entire time. We tried everything to entertain him and it wasn't working. He didn't sleep at all. The only time he was quiet was when he was nursing. Needless to say, we got some dirty looks and comments from people sitting by us. But we were trying everything. I wanted to say, do you think we like hearing him cry? No!

We were ready to get home after all that! We were all exhausted. It was not the best ending to the trip, but Cole was good for the other 7 1/2 days we were there. So we can't complain too much.

Myrtle Beach Trip

2011-08-03T09:23:00.005-05:00

Here are some pictures from our trip to Myrtle Beach, SC. We went over two weeks ago now. I just haven't gotten around to writing about it yet! We left on Saturday, July 16th very early in the morning and flew to Houston and met up with Mom, Dad, and Janet, and all flew to Charleston, SC together. Cole did great on the flights going there. I think because they were pretty early in the morning, he was still tired, and slept for over an hour on each flight and some in the airport. Once we got to Charleston, we had about an hour and a half drive to our house that we rented for the week in Surfside Beach.

We had a huge group for the week, but not everyone could stay the whole time. We had my whole family, including Stacy for two days, Janet's best friend Kelly, my Dad's sister, her husband, and their four kids, my Dad's brother, wife and their two kids and a girlfriend. So we started with 18 people plus Cole. It was a full house, but tons of fun! I think we had to do a grocery run pretty much every day!

We did a lot of relaxing at the beach. We took Cole out a few times, but it was pretty hot, so he didn't stay out too long before he started getting tired. He got lots of attention the whole week though! I know he loved it! We went out to dinners, played putt put, did some shopping, played cards, the guys played golf a few days, and Tony and I were able to go running together pretty much every day. With so many people, there was always something to do and plenty of laughs when we were all hanging out. It really was a relaxing vacation, and even with Cole needing to take naps and things like that, everyone was flexible about it which was nice. We loved getting to spend quality time with everyone!

We left the beach on the following Saturday to go back to Charleston since our flight was out of there. We stayed one night there and flew back on Sunday. More about Charleston next!

Rice Cereal-YUM!

2011-07-29T08:38:00.005-05:00

Wednesday afternoon Cole got his first taste of rice cereal, which I'm sure tastes like nothing or the breast milk that it was mixed with. But it was also his first encounter with a spoon. He didn't quite know what to do with it all. He would take some of the cereal in his mouth and then just push it back out with his tongue. I don't know if he even swallowed any! He did eventually end up crying because he was tired of sitting up in the Bumbo.

We tried again yesterday, but he wasn't feeling too well after getting his immunization shots the day before and was having nothing to do with eating cereal or a bottle. He was actually running a fever most of the day, so we ended up giving him some Tylenol which really helped. He seems to be feeling better today, so we'll make another attempt with the cereal. Our pediatrician told us to just have fun with giving him food and not to stress about it and to just see where he is at with it for his six month appointment. So no pressure Cole!

Cole-Man at 4 Months

2011-07-28T08:53:00.005-05:00

We had Cole's 4 month check up yesterday. We are a week late with this because of going on vacation. His stats are: Length: 27 in (96%), Weight: 16 lbs, 12 oz (78%), and Head: 44 cm (86%). So he's dropped out of the 90th percentile in his weight, but he's still really long. Cole has continued to be a great sleeper. He goes to be around 8 or 8:30 and doesn't wake up until 7 in the morning, and he's pretty predictable with that. He still eats about 5 times a day, but we are starting to see him being able to go longer in between feedings. The doctor said we should start him on some rice cereal once a day, so we'll have some pictures of that soon!

The major milestone Cole has achieved this month is the roll over! Two days ago, he was on his tummy and started to cry and get upset and just pushed his arms up and rolled right over. Now he has figured out that he knows how to get off his tummy and will roll over pretty quickly. He also is full of smiles! We love this of course and try to make him smile all the time. He will also do a little laugh every now and then, but that is a little harder to come by. It has to be something really good to make him laugh!

Cole is still wearing 3-6 month clothes, but is starting to grow out of the ones that are a little smaller. He can also wear some 6-9 month clothes as well. He really grew while we were on vacation! He is also done with the swaddle blanket, we think. He's been sleeping in a sleep sack for the past few nights since he was waking up out of the swaddle blanket anyways.

During his 4th month, Cole also went on his first vacation (which I still need to post pictures of!) to Myrtle Beach, SC and Charleston, SC for a week. He did a great job on the airplane on the way there, and not so good on the way back. I think he was just really tired and ready to be back home since he was really off his schedule in Charleston. But, he did really great otherwise. All of our family really enjoyed spending time with him for a whole week. He got lots of love!

Cole's personality is really starting to show. He's so much more interactive and watches everything. It's so much fun! We love our little man to pieces!

Happy Anniversary!

2011-07-27T08:52:00.003-05:00

We celebrated our 3 year anniversary yesterday! Many things have changed since we got married - moving to Oklahoma, new jobs, visiting new places, etc. but most of all becoming parents to our precious little Cole-man. Our relationship has grown and just keeps getting better.

To celebrate, we had an offer from one of my co-workers to babysit, so we went out to dinner just the two of us. We waited until after Cole had eaten his last meal for the night at 7 pm. We gave him his bath and let the babysitter do his lotion, story time, and put him to bed. He actually went right to sleep which was a relief! We ate at a local place called Lucky's. We had been there for breakfast with Tony's family and really enjoyed it and wanted to go back for dinner. They have great food with kind of different flavors, so we had to try and share a bunch of different things. When we got home, Tony had gotten a cake from Merritt's that looked similar to our wedding cake, so we had that for dessert.

We are looking forward to what our next year of marriage has in store!

Vacation, Finally!

2011-07-15T20:17:00.001-05:00

We leave for our vacation tomorrow to Myrtle Beach, SC! We are staying for a week at a house on the beach and then spending a night in Charleston before heading home. This is our family reunion trip since we didn't get to go to Toledo for the Jamie Farr tournament this year. (It was cancelled this year due to a senior tour event there. It'll be back next year.) So my aunts, uncles, and cousins that live in Ohio are all coming to the beach too, and we are all staying in one big house together. We are looking forward to hanging out on the beach and relaxing, shopping, playing golf-Tony, and just hanging out with the family.

When we lived in Anderson, SC, we used to go to Myrtle Beach every summer because it was only a few hour drive. Since we've moved to Texas, I think we've only been back once or twice. One thing I remember as a kid is always going to the water park, Myrtle Waves, and we thought it was so big and the coolest thing. Then going back years later, we went to the water park and realized that is wasn't quite what we remembered. We did the whole thing in about an two hours when we used to spend the whole day there! It's be cool to see how things have changed even since the last time we were there.

Since we have the little man with us this time, it'll be a little different that's for sure. He definitely has his schedule that we keep if we want a happy baby. So, tomorrow is going to rock his world. We have to get up at like 3 am to leave the house by 4 am for our 6 am flight! Then we have another flight in Houston at 10 am to Charleston. We are not used to getting up so early anymore...thankfully! Last time we flew at that time in the morning, Cole got up to eat before we had to leave anyways and slept the whole time on the plane. I have a feeling he won't be sleeping much! He really is used to sleeping in his crib or in his car seat or stroller. So I will be really surprised if he sleeps on one of our laps. So we will pretty much have to leave the normal schedule behind tomorrow. Plus you're supposed to feed them during take-off and landing to help their ears. Cole will be eating off schedule then too. Oh well! I've heard that it takes a couple of weeks after going away on vacation to get back on your normal schedule. It's worth it though to spend time with everyone! We will take lots of pictures! Cole will be celebrating his 4 month birthday while we are gone too!

Cole's Favorite Thing

2011-07-06T07:49:00.003-05:00

This is Cole's new favorite position. He would rather be standing or sitting up (with our help) than anything else most of the time. No progress in the rolling over department, but he sure does love this. Tony and I like it because he gives us tons of smiles and giggles when we pull him up!

4th of July Projects

2011-07-05T09:45:00.003-05:00

Since we had a three day weekend, we decided to do a few projects around the house that we've been wanting to do for awhile.

The first was to paint our laundry room. We painted it the same tan color as the rest of our house when we moved in, but since the room has no windows it was kind of dark looking. We needed a change. So we decided on a light green color that brightens up the space so much more. We did the project in one afternoon with us taking turns playing with Cole when he was up. I want to get a few hooks to hang on the wall for coats and things like that.

The next project was to recover our dining room chairs. We were given the dining room furniture from a friend who was moving and wanted to get rid of it. It's a nice, big round wood table and chairs. The seat cushions were just a tan color. We want to get some color going in that room, so decided to start with the cushions. We went to JoAnn Fabrics, they were having a sale so we got the fabric 50% off and got a 15% teacher discount. We were able to recover the chairs for about $40! Here is the before and after. Now we need to do some new place mats and some curtains and we'll be all set.

We also have a third project that is almost finished. I haven't taken pictures of that yet. We had my dresser from growing up in our guest room. It was a light pine color and was kind of looking a little yellowed. We decided to make our first venture in staining and sanded and stained the dresser a blueish grey color. It looks really cool, but we don't have any hardware for the drawers yet. So pictures of that to come. We want to get our guest room a little more together and are thinking of doing a fabric headboard too.

It was a little challenging getting things like this done with the little man around now. We couldn't always work on something together and had to take turns playing with Cole or I had to feed him. But we managed and are really pleased with how everything turned out.

Homemade Pizza

2011-07-01T16:03:00.003-05:00

I made the pizza dough recipe from the June Southern Living. We have another recipe that we usually use for crust, but I wanted to try this one. We could not track down the 00 flour, but made it with regular flour anyways. I think the 00 flour is supposed to make it crispier. So hopefully we can try that one day. The recipe made enough for us to have two meals which is a good thing because it's a little bit of a process to make, but it did freeze well.

We made a pesto one...

and a tomato sauce one...

Both were really good. We made them one at a time so we could use the pizza stone. It makes the crust cook so much better. We will definitely use the recipe again. It's a weekend one though.

This is what Cole was doing while we were cooking

New Recipes

2011-06-27T13:20:00.003-05:00

We tried a few new recipes this weekend to get us out of our weekly food rut. We seem to eat the same stuff all the time. We love cookies around here, almost as much as ice cream, but you can always put them together as one awesome dessert too! Tony found a website called FoodGawker where people post pictures of recipes and you can click the picture and it takes you to wherever the recipe can be found. So we made these chocolate chip cookies. I halved the recipe because it says it makes 8 dozen cookies! We would never eat that many nor do we need to! I got about 3 dozen out of half the recipe. I also did not do the "tips" it has on there, but they still turned out really good. I used regular chocolate chips and all purpose flour instead of pastry flour, but I did use bread flour. I think the bread flour really made them stay puffy and not flatten out. Here is a picture of how ours turned out.

We also made these honey lime enchiladas with a green sauce. We also only made one pan of these, not two. They were really good though! Tony made some pico to put on top of them and had some chips with it.

We spent more time in the kitchen yesterday afternoon that we did relaxing, but we had a good dinner and dessert when it was all said and done.

Cole Talking

2011-06-27T11:12:00.002-05:00

Here is the little man doing his "talking". He loves the little octopus that's on the top of his play mat. He gives her smiles and talks to her all the time.

Weekly Recap

2011-06-24T08:45:00.004-05:00

This week turned out to be pretty busy! Cole and I made trips out of the house every day except Monday, which is pretty unusual for us.

On Tuesday we went to my teaching partner's house to visit. It was a nice day so we were able to sit and visit on her back porch for a while and she had lunch for us. Cole was good and even did a little "talking" which we got a kick out of.

Wednesday we went downtown to meet Tony for lunch and to introduce Cole to his co-workers. We hadn't been up there yet with Cole, so he got passed around for awhile before we went to Mod's, a crepe place, down the street from Tony's office. One of Tony's friends from growing up works with him, and he and his wife came to lunch with us. So that was fun to see them and catch up.

Thursday was baby day! One of my friends from work had her baby boy on Wednesday, so we went to visit them at the hospital. We pretty much went through our whole pregnancies together, so it was fun to see them with their little one! Hopefully he and Cole will be buds one day since they will be pretty much the same age. Yesterday evening we went to visit a friend of Tony's who had their baby two weeks ago. Holding two teeny tiny babies was so fun! They didn't even move and were so cuddly. It's such a short time for them to be so little, it's easy to forget that Cole was ever that small! However, I will take the sleeping through the night, smiles, and playing that Cole likes to do now!

Today we are going to take it easy, but need to run one errand to get a gift for a shower we are going to tomorrow. Cole needs to get some good naps in today and rest up for a busy day tomorrow. We have a baby shower and a couples wedding shower in Oklahoma City in the evening. We are pretty much going to be gone all day, so hopefully Cole will find some time to take some good naps and not be a grouch. :)

Father's Day

2011-06-20T10:47:00.004-05:00

Happy Father's Day to my wonderful Dad! He's such an important person in my life and now in Tony and Cole's too. He takes care of us still and always makes an extra effort to keep everyone close even though we all live far from each other. We only wish we lived closer so we got to spend more time together...maybe one day? Even when you get married no one replaces your Dad as one of the most important men in your life. Love you Dad!

The other favorite man in my life is now a Dad too! Tony and Cole are good buds and have their little things they do together already. Mostly baths and stories right now, but I know Tony is really looking forward to the day he can play sports and things like that with Cole. In a few short months, Tony has grown into a great Dad to Cole. He is so much help to me and really has a love for the little man and makes time to spend with him every day. Happy 1st Father's Day Tony! Cole and I love you bunches!

Little Man is 3 Months Old!

2011-06-18T21:32:00.005-05:00

Cole turned 3 months old today! 3 months in baby weeks is 13 weeks. (I didn't know this and had to look it up.) We took some pictures today, but I'm kind of bummed because we don't have our good camera right now. It's having some auto focus issues and we had to send it back to Canon. Hopefully we won't have to wait too long to get it fixed and returned. But we got some cute ones anyways...it's pretty easy to get cute pictures of this little man. :)

The past month we've seen the most changes in Cole. He's continued to grow, but he's still wearing the 3 to 6 month clothes. He seems bigger, but not as much change in that as we saw between the first and second months. He has become so much more social and aware. He smiles all the time and has started to laugh a little bit. It's kind of like an inhale with a noise right now. His "talking" has also increased. He talks to himself and us and his toys on his playmat. He was laying in bed tonight just talking to himself before he went to sleep. It's fun to see him developing this happy side that he shares with us. He doesn't cry nearly as much as he used to either. And when he does cry it's so much more predictable and easy to figure out what's wrong. Cole loves to be carried where he has face forward and see everything that's going on. His favorite spot right now is sitting on our laps facing out and sitting up with our help. He just smiles and makes cute little faces when he's sitting up. You can tell he loves it. He has also discovered his hands even more. They are in his mouth all the time! Between sucking loudly on his hands, his "talking" noises, and his smiles, he just cracks us up! We are loving the amount of interaction we are getting with him already.

The major excitement for this month has been in the last week. We were working on his "sleep training" for about two weeks. Cole really sleeps well at night and has been able to sleep from about 9 pm to 7 am regularly. Naps had been pretty inconsistent and we were still having to work him to sleep by holding and bouncing him. Two weeks ago we started to let him cry for 15 to 20 min when it was bed or nap time and if he was still crying we'd go to him and help him go to sleep. This continued until one day, he cried for the 15 minutes, but went to sleep on his own! He did this for one nap only for a few days and then one day he just did it for all his naps and for bed and we haven't looked back since. He's started to cry less and less when we lay him down too. I told my Mom today that we don't know what to do with all this extra time on our hands. We were spending a lot of time each day helping him get to sleep, but it was worth it now! His naps have also improved since he falls asleep so much easier now.

This past month we also took Cole on two road trips, to Houston and to Springfield, IL. It's not easy to impose your baby schedule on other people and still do fun things on little trips, but it's not really our style to pass up doing trips and going places. We've gotten pretty good at traveling with a baby already, I think. While in Houston, Cole also had his first swimming experience which he liked of course since he loves the bath already. Springfield was Cole's first golf tournament.

We can't believe that it's already been 3 months since Cole was born. In some ways it feels like a long time, but short in others. Each week continues to get easier and easier. We really can look back now to those first few weeks and month or so as the most difficult/challenging times just learning what to do with this little person. We really have developed a routine that makes each day more predictable. As always, we can't wait to see what the next month brings though!

Happy 3 Month Birthday Cole!! We love you bunches!!

Springfield Golf Tournament

2011-06-14T12:29:00.002-05:00

We took Cole to his first golf tournament last weekend in Springfield, IL. This was our second road trip with him and it went pretty smoothly. We drove from Tulsa to St. Louis on Thursday night and stayed the night there and had only an hour and a half drive to Springfield on Friday morning. We made it to Sprinfield in time for Stacy's 8:30 tee time. After this pic was taken, we had a disaster with the little man. We were watching Stacy putt on the 14th hole when Cole starts pooping. You could hear it, but it didn't seem too bad. I was just going to change him when we got back to the house we were staying at off of 16. Well, then he started another round of pooping and it came literally squirting out the side of his diaper all down my shorts and my leg. It was so embarassing and I really wanted to cry or scream or something! But I couldn't make a scene. That would just make it worse! So we had to walk all the way back to the house we were staying at and clean both of us up. The joys of being a mom!

Running During Pregnancy and After

2011-06-06T16:17:00.007-05:00

Our blog has been taken over by baby stuff, but Tony and I still have a place in our lives for running! I wanted to go through my experience with running and being pregnant, which I've done a little bit, and then afterwards too. I had a hard time finding info on running while you're pregnant. Even though my doctor told me that I could keep running, I didn't really know to what extent because obviously I wouldn't be able to run like I was used to.

For the first 7 months of pregnancy, the only thing I really did differently was monitor my heart rate while running which let me know when I needed to slow down. I read in some articles not to let your heart rate go about 140, others just said to make sure you could still have a conversation while exercising. I found that 140 was pretty hard for me to maintain while actually running during these months. So, I was usually more like in the 150s, but I was able to have a conversation and not feel like I was straining my body. I think it's really about what your body is used to. I even ran a few races during my 4th/5th months, but obviously it was for the fun of it and not for the time or racing aspect. I would say up to about my 6th month, my belly was not an issue. I didn't feel like I had to alter my form which made it even more difficult to be running slower, but not feeling like there was a visibly obvious reason for it.

During my 6th and 7th months, the belly started getting bigger to where I started to shorten my runs and not doing anything longer than 5 miles. I think I also cut back to running 4 days a week and also started to get a little slower. But it still felt great to get out an exercise.

18 weeks

31 weeks

My last few months were the most difficult for me. After 31 weeks I had to switch from full runs to run/walks which progressively went from more running to more walking. I tried to do 3 miles and timed myself running for 10 min, then walking for 5, for example. As I got bigger, I had to lessen the running. I think the least I went down to was 5 min running and 5 walking. My last 3 weeks of pregnancy were the time when I said forget running! It was just getting too hard with such a big belly and I felt like I was not going much faster than a walk. I'm sure the people in our neighborhood thought I was crazy! So I resorted to walking during that time.

After having Cole, I couldn't exercise for 6 weeks because my body had to heal from the delivery. I really lost my desire for running because all my time was focused on the little guy. So it's kind of good that you're not "allowed" to do anything because then you can't feel guilty about not! After my 6 week check up at the doctor, I was given the ok to exercise again and went running that afternoon. This was the last week of April.

The first time I ran again it felt so awkward. I felt like I had no muscle and my arms and legs were just not working together. My abs and back also felt really weak and I had some good stomach cramps going. But I started with 3 miles and stayed at 3 miles for a few weeks. It took about three weeks until I really felt better running, but each day got a little better. In the three weeks since, I've been able to work up to running 4 miles consistently and have done a few 5's and a 7 miler. My pace has also gotten better. I am pretty much out of running in the 9 minute range, and have been closer to 8:30-8:45 unless it's really hot outside. I don't feel like I can do the distances I used to do, but now, six weeks later, I feel like I'm back into it. Running is not a struggle like it was at the beginning.

Running has also helped my sanity. After 6 weeks of doing no exercise and not really leaving the house much, I was ready to get outside and really have some time to myself. Luckily, Tony really gets why I run and has no problem watching Cole while I go out. It's been kind of tricky finding time for both of us to run, and a lot of times I end up feeding Cole while we're eating dinner, but it's working for us right now. Also, Tony runs in the morning most days so I can go in the evening. Even if I don't feel like running that day, I often just do it anyways because it makes me get out of the house and have a break from being a mommy for even just 30 minutes.

Between the two of us, we've also run three races now since Cole was born. Two for Tony and one for me. We've decided to alternate for now. We have two races we both like to do in October, so we'll have to figure something else out for those. We are also hoping to do another marathon within the next year and maybe two for Tony. We know how much work goes into training now and it'll be a lot more challenging with a little one, but we still have that as a goal.

Road Trip

2011-06-02T12:56:00.008-05:00

For Memorial Day weekend we made our first family road trip to The Woodlands to see my parents. We left on Thursday afternoon and Tony was able to schedule some work things in Houston to combine the trips. The drive went pretty well. Cole had some crying episodes, especially when he was starting to get tired, but he ended up sleeping pretty well overall once he got to sleep. We only had to make a few stops and the time went by quickly because of taking care of Cole and feeding him. The same was true for the drive home. We were just a little more tired coming back.

While in The Woodlands, we were able to see some friends, go running (even though it was 100 degrees!), go swimming, and just hang out. It was really relaxing and felt like a vacation. We were able to go to a few of our favorite restaurants too. My cousin, Bryan, also came down for the weekend. I know Tony enjoyed playing golf with him and my Dad. It was so nice to have my parents around and some more hands to help take care of Cole. Too bad they won't move to Tulsa! :) We also went to lunch with Tony's Mom and Sean since she's still in the US for a few more weeks too.

A few swimming pics

A few more from the weekend

After Bath Time Last Night

2011-05-24T09:25:00.004-05:00

We are trying to establish a bed time routine of eating, a bath, a story, then to bed. Cole is not quite cooperating with the "to bed" part just yet! He looked too cute after I put lotion on him last night and we had to take some pictures.

2 Month Appointment

2011-05-20T09:47:00.005-05:00

Cole's 2 month birthday was Wednesday...it's gone by so fast. Not as fast as the first month, but still! I took a few pictures of him on Wednesday, but wanted to wait to write about it until we had been to the doctor.

We had a good check-up yesterday. He's doing well and is a growing boy. He's actually a BIG growing boy! He measured 25 1/4 inches long (97%) and weighs 13 pounds 12 ounces (91%). We couldn't believe that he's bigger than 97% of babies his age! I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing! You never know if he's going to stay that big as he gets older, but Tony's tall and has some tall relatives and the Lewis side of my family is very tall. My Dad's as tall as Tony and my boy cousins are all taller than that! So it wouldn't surprise us if he was taller. He also had to get 3 shots and 1 oral vaccine. I was dreading this since he was born! Tony makes fun of me for it, but it was very sad yesterday. When he got the first shot, he screamed like I've never heard him before and his poor little face was purple he was crying so much. I started getting teary just seeing him like that. After it was over, he just curled up on Tony until we got in the car and he slept the whole way home. The rest of the day he was pretty tired and cried off and on, but he went to bed pretty early without much protest and slept really well.

From 4 weeks ago we have made some huge progressions. Cole now sleeps through the night (7 to 9 hours at a time) and is getting up around 4 or 5 am to eat and then goes back to sleep for another 3 to 4 hours. He's eating 6 to 7 times a day. In between eating and sleeping he has a more relaxed personality. He will now lay down to play and is getting better with tummy time and holding his head up. He doesn't require us to hold him all day long anymore. He has started to like his swing and even took a few naps in it during the past week. He still loves his rocker seat and the bath. At around 6 weeks he started sleeping at night and napping in his crib. So he now sleeps in his room all the time. Another big thing happened a little over a week ago...he drank a full bottle! He fought that for a long time, but we finally had some success with it and have been able to go out to eat or run an errand without stressing about when he was going to eat. We've also seen a few smiles, but cannot wait until they come more often! We become more and more attached and in love with this little guy every day!

For the next month, we are starting to work with him on his napping and going down to sleep. Up until now, he's not going to sleep unless we are holding him. So we are working on teaching him how to soothe himself to sleep which equals a lot of crying in our near future! But, just like the bottle, I thought he would never do it, and he has. So it's just going to take some work and it won't be fun at times. It's what we need to do for the long run though. I'll be having one sore back as he gets older if we don't! It's funny because when he was so little, I loved when he slept on me! And I still do, he just can't do it all the time.

We are so excited to see how much he changes in the next month! I'm sure there will be new challenges along the way, but we feel more confident each week in our own abilities as well as knowing him better and better.

Cute Face!

2011-05-16T13:23:00.002-05:00

Cole - 8 Weeks

2011-05-16T10:19:00.005-05:00

We are not quite to his official 2 month birthday, but he is now 8 weeks old! My Mom came to visit last weekend. We didn't do too much again, but we did go out to eat at Charleston's on Friday night when she got here. We also went to another favorite, Old School Bagel, on Saturday for lunch and did some errands. On Sunday, we went to Lowe's and got some flowers to finish off our landscaping work. My Mom helped us plant those too. We've had visitors every few weeks lately, which has been really nice. I feel kind of bad because we don't really do very much with Cole's eating and sleeping schedule, but hopefully it's enough. I hope that our visitors just want to hang out and spend time with Cole, so it shouldn't matter too much.

With my Mom being here, Tony and I were able to go running together on Saturday and Sunday. We ran 5 miles both days. I wasn't too fast, but I was happy I made it the distance. It went by so much faster with someone else to run with! We can't wait until Cole can get in the jogging stroller and we can run together more regularly.

Here are some pictures from the weekend...

Cole and Sophie

2011-05-13T11:36:00.002-05:00

Cole has started to become more alert and willing to play with some of his toys. Here he is playing with his Sophie the Giraffe. I had to put it in his hand, but that's ok! So fun!

Happy Mother's Day

2011-05-08T11:53:00.003-05:00

Happy Mother's Day to our wonderful Moms! Being new parents, we now fully understand the huge job it is raising kids and how your life forever changes. Thank you for everything you've done for us. We love you so much!

Ready, Set, Run 5K

2011-05-07T11:21:00.004-05:00

I finished my first race post-pregnancy! I only started running last Friday and I hadn't really run a full run since February. Needless to say, I wasn't expecting much. Tony did this race last year and since he did a race right after Cole was born, it was my turn! It's only a 5K, so I felt like I'd be able to finish it no matter how much I ran in the week before. It just might not feel very good! But, after some rocky, first runs last week, I feel better and better with each day of running. I feel like I have no muscle and have to find my form again. Also, mentally I have to remind myself that I don't really have any limitations anymore on how fast I can run or my heartrate.

So back to the race today. It starts at Hunter Park in South Tulsa, near my school, and runs around a little pond there and then heads out to the trails along the Creek Turnpike. You really just go out and back aside from the loop around the pond at the beginning and end. There are some good sized hills on the turnpike path too because it goes under the highway and up on each side. That's what I was most worried about. When you're not in good shape, those hills will kick your booty. I ended up doing way better than I thought I would. My time was 24:59 / 8:10 pace. I also saw one of my students and his mom at the race, so that was fun too. The race had a couple hundred people participating and the draw is really that it's a family event. There's food, music, bounce thingy, and just a relaxed atmosphere. It benefits the Autism group of Tulsa as well.

I hope that we both are able to do the race again next year. Any babysitters interested? :)

Aunt Janie's Visit

2011-05-05T16:11:00.009-05:00

Last weekend Janet came to visit all the way from San Diego! She came in on Thursday night which gave us an extra day with her. We had so much fun even though we didn't really do too much. This was supposed to be her first time to meet Cole, but with going up to Toledo, she had already gotten to see him. Now she got to see how much he's grown in three weeks!

I was so impressed with Janet and how she helped so much with Cole. She changed very dirty diapers, gave him a bath, held him a ton, and just helped out so much.
Bath time!

Getting massaged and some tummy time

We went out on Friday because I had my 6 week doctors appointment and then had lunch with Tony at Dilly Deli. We also went out on Saturday morning to the Cherry Street Farmers Market, like we did with Tony's family a few weeks ago, and went out to breakfast after that. Since Janet was there Tony and I also got to do a run together. I got to run for the first time on Friday! We really just hung around the house besides that. It was just relaxing.

I was definitely sad to see Janet go on Sunday. We started making plans for when we are going to see her. We are going to head out to San Diego on my fall break again like we did last year. Cole will be seven months by then, so it should be pretty fun. Plus we are trying to convince my parents to come out there that weekend too.

Bath Time

2011-04-28T14:02:00.004-05:00

These pictures were from earlier this week. Cole LOVES getting a bath! At first he hated them and would scream the whole time, but within the past few weeks he's been so calm and quiet while getting his bath. He likes the warm wash cloth over his belly to keep him warm. He looks so serious in these pictures, but we are still waiting on him to smile. So to me, not crying means he likes it!

Another guy in the household likes bath time too...Tony's taken over that job! I like doing it too, but Tony needs some time with Cole. So that's their thing now most of the time.

Easter Weekend

2011-04-24T12:38:00.004-05:00

The weekends always go by so fast! This weekend Stacy came to see us on Saturday afternoon. On Saturday, we made it out to run some errands to restock our pantry and refrigerator. So we went to Sam's, Reasor's, and Wal Mart to get lots of stuff. By the time we were done Stacy was here. We relaxed the rest of the afternoon, but the excitement of the day was that Tony, Stacy, and I got to go out to dinner without baby Cole. This was our first time to go out without him since he was born. Tony's mom offered to babysit for us so we could go. We went to Charleston's, which was where Tony and I had our last date before Cole was born! It was a nice, relaxing meal, and we really enjoyed the short break.

The weather has been dark, cold, and rainy all day today, but we still went to church for the Easter service at 9 am. Cole did great and slept the whole time. The music startled him a few times, but he did well. He's been more fussy lately, so we weren't sure how it was going to go. We came back and Cole got his Easter basket from his Gigi and Pappa (my parents). We tried a few pictures of him with it and they came out pretty funny. He wasn't too into the pics!

I fed Cole while Tony started making our brunch. We had tons of food that was all delicious! Frittata (from skinnytaste Andie & Mom!), bacon, croissants, pancakes with blueberries and granola, and fruit. I think I had seconds of everything! Here's Tony with all of his creations. Thank goodness I have a husband who likes to cook!

Now we are watching some TV, Tony's reading the paper, and Stacy and Cole are doing this...

Cole - One Month

2011-04-20T13:39:00.004-05:00

We celebrated Cole's one month birthday on Monday! I got these cute monthly stickers off Etsy, my new favorite! We made cupcakes and sang Happy Birthday to Cole too. He really enjoyed that. He's grown so much in a month. We measured him and he's about 22 1/2 inches long now and about 11 pounds. He's definitely filling out and not looking like a newborn anymore. He's becoming more aware and will stare at us now. He likes eating and sleeping and being held by mommy and daddy...well actually anyone who will hold him! He's really comfortable with other people. He likes to lay on his play mat every once in awhile and likes his infant seat/rocker. The swing is out for right now, but I keep trying to make him like it! :) We love our little man and can't wait to see what the next month has in store!

Cherry St. Farmers Market

2011-04-16T13:12:00.006-05:00

Tony's sister, Andie, and her little girl Louise are in Tulsa this week along with Tony's parents. We went to the Cherry St. Farmers Market this morning. It was a little bit chilly this morning, but sunny, so it wasn't too bad. We got some coffee/hot chocolate and some pastries when we first got there. We bought some bread, green onions, and mixed greens for salad. We had a really good time, and will definitely be going back as the summer goes on. I'm sure they will start to have some different fruits and veggies. Here are some pics from our trip.

Etsy Obsessed!

2011-04-15T14:00:00.002-05:00

I'm becoming a big fan of Etsy! We got four prints for Cole's room from there and I ordered something else the other day...it's a surprise...you'll see soon. I like to just look around on there and see what kind of cute things people are making and selling. This store, Eight Baby Legs, has the cutest onesies! I might have to get one for Cole, but I'd have a really hard time deciding which one! I do like this whale one though. If I had a girl, I would be all over the ones with the flower appliques!

Cole is Loved

2011-04-14T13:51:00.005-05:00

Obviously he is! But Cole got two packages in the mail today from his great grandparents. One is from my Poppa on my Dad's side, the one who passed away. Aunt Kathy had a Build A Bear Bunny done for Cole from Poppa. He name is Louie, of course! The other is one of my favorite books as a kid, Babar! This came from my Mom's parents. They remembered how much I loved it and wanted to get the book for Cole too. I already read it to Cole this morning!

Thank you to the greatest Great Grandparents!

Congrats Stacy!

2011-04-14T11:37:00.003-05:00

Our Stacy won the Kraft Nabisco Tournament! We are a little behind on posting about it with our trip to Ohio and everything. She's on the cover of this week's GolfWeek and has a great article in there. You can click here to read more articles about it too. There are tons of articles out there about it. I think I could spend all day finding more and more. She even made ESPN's Top 10 for the weekend. This was the LPGA's first major of the year and Stacy's first win! We could not be more proud and excited for her! She works so hard and it's easy to see how much she loves what she's doing and how seriously she takes it. This win is much deserved!

My parents and Janet were able to be there which made it even more special. Unfortunately, when they did they traditional jump into Poppie's Pond to celebrate the win my Mom hurt her leg. She had to go to the hospital immediately after and they thought it was broken. Luckily when they got back to Houston she had it looked at again and found it was a muscle strain. She doesn't need a cast and is supposed to start walking on it soon. I know she's still in some pain, but it's getting better and should heal in a few more weeks. The really sad thing is that she had been training for her first marathon in June and had gotten up to running 14 miles! I'm so impressed with how she's stuck to her plan and was really getting into the running. So she better pick another race! I think she got the running bug. :)

Tony and I watched Stacy's entire round on TV. That's the bonus of leading a tournament! I think we saw every shot she hit that day. We couldn't believe how it was all playing out and so wished we could be there too. I cried watching her walk up to the 18th green. It was such a special moment for her and one she'll never forget! Congratulations Stacy!!

Unplanned Events

2011-04-11T12:51:00.014-05:00

We had to take our first trip with Cole on Tuesday of last week. We weren't planning on doing that until a few months from now, but things happen. My Pappa on my Dad's side passed away the week before from heart failure. He'd also had Alzheimer's for quite some time and he really wasn't doing so well. We had talked to him on Skype the weekend before he passed away and were able to introduce him to Cole, which was really special. I think they just stared at each other for most of the conversation, but it was still cute. I think (with lots of help from the relatives up there) he knew who Cole was that day and that he was meeting his great grandson. A few days later Pappa joined Grandma in heaven and I know that they are happier together. It was always hard to see him without her over the past year. The viewing and funeral service were very nice and it was especially great to be around family and friends who loved my Pappa so much.

The viewing and funeral were Tuesday and Wednesday of last week in Toledo. So we got up very early (aka after Cole's 3 am feeding) and headed to the airport to fly to Detroit. Cole did great on the plane going and coming home. He ate at the beginning of each flight and slept the rest of the time in someone's arms.
Here we are on our first airplane ride.

I had to say the heck with it and breastfeed him in public several times including on the plane, in the airport, etc. But, I'm so glad I had my nifty little smock thingy to hide everything. We also had nursing going on at the funeral home, the car, people's bedrooms, the church nursery, wherever we happened to be at that time. Tony tells me that breastfeeding is a full time job, and I'm glad he recognizes that and gives me some credit for it because it is not easy. The schedule and the logistics are always on your mind even when you're not feeding. I also felt like I had to spend a lot of time away from everyone else and wasn't as much a part of the family time, but I really didn't have any other option. I felt like it went well though. Now, the only thing that wasn't so great was Cole's sleeping. He had a hard time for lots of reasons, I think. We were up early and going to bed late. He was sleeping in people's arms all day. He was in a pack n play and laying flat which he hadn't done much of at home yet because he's been sleeping in this little napper attachment on our pack n play. So we did several sessions of sleeping on Dad's tummy, but we survived. Stacy was really thrilled with all the crying that was going on when it was Cole's bedtime. :) Her room was the closest to ours. Sorry Stace! Tony and I were worn out after the trip though. I really didn't get the sleep that I had been getting at home. We came back on Thursday afternoon and had the rest of the weekend to recover though.

On our way home, we had some extra time at the airport, some how, I don't know how because it took us forever to do anything, but we were able to get some homemade chips that we love from this Guiness bar in the Detroit airport. This was Cole's first trip to a "bar".

Stacy was on our flight home and literally saved me from a breakdown a few times! In my defense, I was so very tired. Cole had a screaming fit while we were trying to check in and carry all our bags across the airport and she took him and calmed him down. She also held him almost the whole plane ride home. Here they are all snuggled up.

This is how Cole spent the entire trip...

While we were in Toledo we really just spent most of the time with family. We had meals together and just hung out pretty much. Of course we had great food from Aunt Kathy and cookie cakes and malt cakes. Doesn't get much better! Cole even got his own malt cake. My Dad gave him a little frosting even after I protested!

Even though the trip was for a sad reason, we were so happy to be able to make it to Toledo. Everyone got to meet Cole for the first time. My parents were the only ones who had seen him in person. We were able to spend quality time with our family which really is the best way to honor my grandparents who truely just loved every second they got to spend with us. They were there in spirit as we all enjoyed our time together.

Speedy Runners

2011-04-02T11:13:00.003-06:00

Last Saturday my Mom and Tony ran in a 10k in Bartlesville called Run the 'Ville. A friend of Tony's signed him up because he had a free entry and since my Mom is training for her marathon in June, she was ready to run that distance too. Unfortunately we had some really bad weather that day. I think it was about 40 degrees, cloudy, windy, and misty rain. Cole and I went, but ended up spending the entire time in the car because of the weather. The good news is that Tony and my Mom both won their age groups! Tony also placed 2nd overall. His time was 40:42 (or something like that...Tony will change it if I'm not right!). My Mom also surprised herself and came in under an hour at 59:49. Here they are later that day once we came home with their trophies!

I have to say, it was pretty hard to just sit in the car during a race and not be able to run. Only 4 more weeks now until I can start again. Tony has signed me up for a 5k race the weekend after my 6 week check up. I won't have much time to get back in shape for that, but I'll just do the best I can and enjoy it!

2 Week Check Up

2011-03-29T14:29:00.003-06:00

Cole went for his 2 week check up (even though it hasn't been 2 weeks yet) with his pediatrician today. He did a good job while getting looked over by the nurse and doctor. His measurements were: length 21 3/4 inches which is the same as when he was born because he had a misshapen head, weight was 8 lbs 10 oz which is a pound more than when he was born. So the boy is eating good! The doctor said we were doing a good job with him and he's growing like he should. Yay! We also found out that he's in the 90th percentile for his height. Now, who knows if he'll turn out tall, but he is right now for his age. We go back again in May for his 2 month appointment.

Quality Time With Mom and Dad

2011-03-27T20:41:00.001-06:00

Our Morning

2011-03-24T11:45:00.002-06:00

Today so far has been very relaxed. I got to sleep until 9. Tony and my Mom were up with Cole even though he was still sleepy too. Cole ate, the rest of us ate breakfast, and Cole got a bath. After he was all cleaned up Tony and Cole read the paper for a little bit.

Back Home

2011-03-22T10:36:00.007-06:00

Thank you everyone for the sweet comments. We've spent the last couple of days trying to get adjusted to life at home. The days have been fine, but the nights have been a little tricky. It's been a little of an adjustment not getting as much sleep as we're used to. But we know it'll all get better with time. Here are a few more pics.

Cole Edward

2011-03-20T21:29:00.007-06:00

Cole Edward blessed us with his presence at 1:19 p.m. on Friday, March 18th. He weighed 7 lbs. 9 ounces and I must say, he's a cute one! The name Cole doesn't come from anywhere specific other than it was the name Beth and I decided on. The name Edward was my grandfather's first name and is very special to me. I grew up just a few blocks away from him and although he passed away when I was 16, he's one of the best men I've ever known. I was fortunate to spend a lot of time with him growing up and he taught me more than I can put into words. I can't wait to one day tell Cole where he got his middle name and share with him all the great things that my grandpa taught me.

Tomorrow is THE Day

2011-03-17T07:30:00.003-06:00

I figured I would update what's happened this week with baby news. I went to the doctor on Tuesday morning this week. As with the past month of appointments, nothing had really changed, dialated 1 cm. Four weeks ago, I thought that was great, now not so much. The baby has been head down for awhile, so that's good. With Friday being the due date, my doctor wanted to go ahead and schedule a day to induce because she didn't want me to go past 41 weeks. She gave us a choice between this Friday and next Friday. We, well really I, decided this Friday was going to be it. I have mixed feelings about it because I didn't really want to be induced, but that weighed with another week of being big and pregnant and the fact that my body has not done too much in a month, made the choice this Friday. Obviously you can't even predict what's going to happen and when the baby's going to come. For all I know, I could go into labor today, or I could have to be induced next Friday if I waited that long.

So, the decision has been made. Tomorrow it is. We have to go to the hospital at 5 am to get the whole process started. My parents are coming tonight on the last flight from Houston and will be here through the weekend. I think my Mom is going to stay for a week and my Dad will stay until mid-week.

I've just spent the last few days getting things ready around the house, going for walks, and just relaxing. I was blessed (sarcastic!) with a lovely cold last Friday, so I've been trying to get over that as well.

We will be up bright and early (actually it'll still be dark outside!) to head to the hospital and will update as soon as we can! We are so excited to meet Cole! :)

Happy Birthday Tony!

2011-03-13T12:03:00.003-06:00

We are celebrating 31 here today for Tony! We actually got a cake yesterday because the bakery we like is closed on Sundays. So we got to have birthday cake a day early. It's very yummy! Chocolate cake with vanilla icing and chocolate ganache over the top!

We are still baby-less and Tony doesn't have to share his birthday unless something happens in the next 12 hours. :)

Belly Watch

2011-03-10T19:11:00.001-06:00

This pic is from 37 weeks, I think. So almost 2 weeks ago now. I am pretty much the same size now. It hasn't changed too much since then. I look awkward in the ones that I'm looking at the camera, so this is it for right now!

Thanks!

2011-03-09T17:45:00.006-06:00

It’s nice to know that at least a few people still read our blog. So thank you for the comments. For whatever reason, we just hit a major blog slump in the past month. Most of it is probably my fault because I don’t think I’ve really put anything on the blog in a very long time. And not that it’s going to improve drastically once we have a newborn baby in the house, but hopefully we can at least get some consistency.

Beth and I were talking the other night about the last 9 months and how many different things have gone on. It’s hard to believe that the day we found out we were pregnant, it was the very end of July and about 100 degrees outside (and miserable). Since then we’ve gone through the Fall, Christmas, a blizzard, and now we’re a few days from Spring break. And our little guy still isn’t here! Hopefully soon!

We went to a birthing class at the hospital a few weeks ago. It was a seven hour class on a Saturday (Beth’s birthday actually) and although neither one of us were really too excited about giving up a Saturday, we knew it’d be useful. It turned out to be very informative and I think we both felt better about things coming out of it. There were 9 other couples in the class and it was interesting to see the dynamics of them. Some of the husbands were very involved (probably too involved to the point of being creepy) and some of the guys didn’t do much of anything. I like to think I was somewhere in the middle. You’d have to ask Beth. We watched a bunch of videos (live births and all) and learned more about c-sections (not fun). Luckily we had already gotten a tour of the hospital before the class because the lady giving the class had hurt her knee in the snow storm and was unable to walk us through the tour (I thought it was a lame excuse since we were in a hospital full of wheelchairs, but whatever).

We also got the renovation bug a few weeks ago. Ok so we didn’t do anything too crazy but we did replace the mirror in our spare bathroom. I got the idea to get rid of the boring plain glass mirror and put in a framed mirror instead. I think it turned out pretty good. What do you think?

Missing

2011-03-08T17:58:00.002-06:00

So we've been missing from our blog for almost a month. Sorry. It's like we've been busy but we haven't been. Since we've been gone, Beth has gotten a year older and our little boy has really gotten big. In fact, according to the dr our little guy is around 7 lbs. right now (well actually as of last week). We are currently 10 days from the due date and can't wait! In fact, I think if you were to ask Beth, she would have been fine wrapping this birth thing up about 2 weeks ago. I like to give her a hard time about her complaining, but in all honesty, it hasn't been that bad. She's been a real trooper through this entire pregnancy. If it were me, I would have broken down after about a month.

Beth only has three days of work left for the school year. I think on the one hand she is really excited and on the other, she is really sad to leave all of her students. She's really grown to like all of them a ton and it's definitely going to be hard not seeing them anymore.

Other than that, we are just waiting. The baby room is ready. We've got diapers, clothes, and anything we can think of that will help us get through the first month or so. After that, who knows. We'll play it be ear. Hopefully we'll get back into a routine of this blog thing. Does anyone even still read this thing anyway?

Snow and More Snow

2011-02-09T12:45:00.010-06:00

The big news around here the past two weeks has been the snow. Tulsa has gotten an extreme amount of snow. We had a snow that we missed two days of school for a few weeks before this, but last Tuesday we got 15 inches of snow. I have never seen so much snow in my life! The wind also caused the snow to make huge drifts everywhere it could collect. When I walked out in it, the snow came up over my boots and you couldn't tell where the road, driveway, anything was. It was just snow everywhere.

So needless to say, we couldn't get out of our house until Friday because our streets in the neighborhood were so piled with snow. They don't plow the neighborhoods here either, so that made it even worse. The temperatures didn't get above freezing until the weekend either. On Friday, we went up to Tony's work for a few hours so he could get some things done. I went and worked on some school plans for my maternity leave. While we were there, it started to snow again! So we headed home and made a quick stop at the grocery store. We got about 4 more inches that day. So no school from Tuesday through Friday last week.

It actually started to melt off this past weekend and they did a better job clearing the main roads, but the neighborhood was still awful. Huge ruts in the road that a low car couldn't make it through safely. We made it out to do a few errands on Saturday. Tony even found a stretch of road that's never busy to run on. I actually went out one day too.

Tony went back to work on Monday and Tuesday this week. We still did not have school due to the condition of the neighborhood streets. The sun came out and started melting more of the snow, so it was actually getting better. We had a huge row of icicles on the back of our house.

Just when things were starting to look better, we got another round of snow last night into today. They are saying we got another 6 inches or so. Add that to all the snow that we've already gotten and it's a mess again. Luckily we had gotten the entire driveway clear, but now Tony is out clearing it again. The windchill today is in the negatives and is going to stay cold into tomorrow too. It's not even worth trying to go anywhere today. Streets are covered again and all the melted areas have iced over. Tony stayed home from work again. I haven't had school since last Monday. We're going to have pretty much two weeks off of school, which is nice, but more time that has to be made up at some point. It's also not fun when you can't really go anywhere.

We are holding out for the 50s and 60s they are predicting for the weekend! We are over this snow!

2010 Year in Review Part 1

2011-02-06T19:26:00.000-06:00

Here we are over a month into 2011(I'm a little behind this year) which means it’s time for our annual year in review. Okay, since we’ve only had the blog since 2007, I guess this is only the 3rd time we’ve done this, but who’s keeping track right? Last year was a great year for Beth and I. It was our first full year of living together since we got married and it was pretty nice. Beth spent half of 2009 in Houston and half in Tulsa and I spent half of 2009 flying back and forth.

2010 started with Beth and I driving back to Tulsa from Houston. We were two days from starting our marathon training and we couldn’t wait to finally start. It had been in the 70s in Houston and we weren’t ready for what was ahead. As we got about 50 miles outside of Tulsa, the remnants of the major Christmas snow storm were everywhere. As we pulled into our neighborhood and saw that the streets were still covered with snow and ice, we realized that we weren’t in Houston anymore.

Unfortunately, January didn’t start very well. The second week of January Beth’s Grandma passed away. Luckily we were able to make it up to Toledo, Ohio for the funeral and although it was great to see all of Beth’s family again, the circumstances were less than favorable. Because we were barely into our marathon training, we decided to take our running stuff with us to Ohio. And of course when we got to Ohio there was snow everywhere as well. Luckily we had just left the cold and at least knew what to expect.

The rest of January and February was full of a lot of running. We even had to join a fitness center for a few months as the temperatures in Oklahoma got down into the single digits. There’s just something not so fun about running outside when the temperature is around 0 with the wind chill. I hate running on treadmills, but didn’t have another option at that point.

We welcomed in March with a planned trip to Las Vegas for my 30th birthday. Yes, I’m officially old. Beth had never been to Las Vegas and for whatever reason I thought it’d be fun to go(I hadn’t been in quite a few years). We flew out of Tulsa on a Friday and got to Vegas late Friday night. We stayed at the Wynn on the north end of the strip and really enjoyed it. Although most people don’t, we decided to rent a car so we could get off the strip and explore. Plus we had to do a long run while we were there since we were still in the middle of marathon training. And at that point we were only 6 weeks away from the actual race.

Beth and I decided to do our long run on Saturday, which was also my birthday. We got up and had breakfast then headed out to Red Rock Canyon where we thought we’d have a nice relaxing 16 mile run. Man were we wrong. As we got out of the car, we realized it wasn’t going to be a fun run. The wind was blowing about 35 mph and the road inside Red Rock Canyon was so busy, that we felt like we were dodging cars. Finally after 3 miles we decided enough was enough. We ran back to the car and decided to drive a few miles back into Vegas to finish our run. We parked at a grocery store and spent the next 13 miles running into 35 mph winds, but at least we weren’t having to dodge cars.

After we finished our miserable run, I decided it was time to introduce Beth to In N Out burger. What a way to celebrate our run. And a great place to have a birthday lunch. Needless to say, Beth was hooked! For the rest of the year, any time we went somewhere with an In N Out burger, we went.

After lunch, we headed back to the hotel to relax and shower. We had a reservation for my birthday dinner at Mesa Grill which is one of Bobby Flay’s restaurants. We ate at his main restaurant, Bar Americain in NYC, a few years back and it was awesome. Dinner ended up being great. We were both stuffed beyond stuffed after the meal so we decided to head back to the hotel.

The rest of Las Vegas included lots of walking on the Strip and a trip out to the Hoover Dam.

April was a big month in the Wysocki household. At the end of April, Beth and I ran in the Big Sur International Marathon in Monterey, California. Although the marathon definitely wasn’t easy, our 4 months of training paid off. We had a great time and felt like we were pretty prepared. Carol, Beth’s Mom, was nice enough to meet us in California and we had a great time touring the area with her. We arrived in San Jose on Friday evening and met Carol at the airport. We got up Saturday morning and drove to Monterey to go to the race expo and pick up our race packets. We found out that our bus to the start line would be leaving at 4:15 a.m. and we would need to be there around 3:50 a.m. This meant leaving our hotel at 3:40 and getting up about an hour before that around 2:40 a.m.

We spent the rest of Saturday just checking things out around Monterey and trying to rest a little. After dinner at California Pizza Kitchen, Beth and I decided to head to bed. It was a little strange going to bed at 7:30 p.m. with it still being light outside, but we needed to rest up. The alarm went off way too soon, but Beth and I were really excited for what was ahead. We walked over to Carol’s hotel and she dropped us off at the bus. The bus to the start line was long(about 45 minutes). As we pulled up to the starting line, there were people everywhere! We got off the bus and searched around for a place to sit down since we still had over an hour until the race started. But before we knew it, it was time to line up and run the marathon. I won’t recap the marathon again, but Beth and I had a great time. We finished around 3 hours and 49 minutes which put us 494th and 495th out of 3,453 runners.

After the race, we headed back to our hotel to shower and change. Then it was time for In N Out Burger! And I swear it’s never tasted so good. After eating, we did the famous 17-Mile Drive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17-Mile_Drive from Pacific Grove to Pebble Beach. We also re-drove the marathon route to show Carol how many hills there were. After driving it, Beth and I couldn’t believe that we had just run it. We probably won’t be doing the Big Sur Marathon again, but it was an experience of a lifetime and we are both really glad we did it.

We got back to Tulsa and only had about a month until we left for Australia. The Friday before Memorial Day, we packed up and headed to Sydney, Australia. We took a 3 hour flight from Tulsa to LA and then a 14 and a half hour flight from LA to Sydney. We got to fly on the new Airbus A-380 which is the largest passenger plane in the world. We found it to be really comfortable and thought it was one of our best long distance flights we've had.

After the long flight and the 17 hour time difference, we arrived in Sydney. We left on Friday and actually skipped Saturday in the air and landed very early Sunday morning. After gathering our bags, we headed to line of cabs to catch a ride into central Sydney where our hotel was. Because it was so early, our hotel didn't have a room ready for us. This gave us a little time to walk around the neighborhood and kind of check things out. We walked down towards the harbor and even walked around a market that goes on every Sunday in The Rocks district.

Here are a few pics from Sydney:

Here are some pics from the Blue Mountains:

Here are some pics from Port Douglas:

We got back from Australia in the middle of June and just kind of took it easy aside from a weekend trip down to Houston for Beth's friend Alyssa's wedding. The beginning of July brought our annual trip to Toledo for the Jamie Farr LPGA tournament. We had another great time in Ohio watching golf and more importantly hanging out with all of Beth's great family.

We got back from Ohio and a few weeks later celebrated our 2 year anniversary. We didn't do anything exciting but just had fun celebrating. More excitement came a few days later when we found out that we were having a baby!!! It was a little bit of a surprise to us, but not completely. And now that we are only a few weeks away, we can't wait!

34 Weeks and Counting

2011-02-05T17:34:00.000-06:00

6 more to go! I've resigned to doing walk/runs now. Running for about 5 minutes at a time. Better than nothing I think. Getting more tired when I'm up on my feet all day at work. Going to have to try and sit down more...a little difficult with 30-6th graders! No food cravings and no official baby name yet...I get those questions a lot, so in case you were wondering. We do have a pretty good room going right now that's waiting for the baby, so we are moving in the right direction!

The Baby Room

2011-02-04T15:18:00.012-06:00

My Mom and Dad flew to Tulsa last weekend on Friday afternoon to help us do some painting and organizing in the baby room.

Friday, my Mom, Dad, and Tony got the first coat of everything painted before we went to dinner for my Mom's birthday. Stacy drove from Arkansas to celebrate too.
We went to Wolfgang Puck Bistro on Brookside. It has a cool atmosphere and the food was pretty good. We really liked the butternut squash soup we got for an appetizer. We also got a cake from Merritt's bakery...everyone loved that of course!

The second coat of painting was underway and finished Friday night.

Saturday was spent getting the furniture in the room, organizing the clothes, toys, diapers, etc. that we've gotten so far. Sunday we ran some errands and just finished up a few things in the room. We even got the stroller/car seat out of the boxes and set up.

Here's the finished product, for now!

My parents' flight made it out just in time before all the snow came on Tuesday!

Snow Days

2011-01-22T08:13:00.007-06:00

We had two snow days off of school this week, Thursday and Friday. This is what the snow looked like around our house.

We are hoping it all melts today. The temperature is supposed to get into the 40s. The roads in the neighborhood have still been pretty icy though. Tony still went to work this week eventhough it took him over double the time to get there on Thursday morning. I spent the snow days doing some cleaning and relaxing, but didn't get out much. I don't really like driving on the ice.

Wedding Present

2011-01-20T10:22:00.003-06:00

Yes, we got married 2 1/2 years ago now, but Janet hasn't forgotten that she "never got us a wedding present"...it didn't really bother us though. She said she wanted to get us something good and when she had a job and her own money to spend since she was still in college. So she made good on her promise and got this for us for our wedding! She picked out each letter and the framing of it. We had seen this type of art before, but I like Janet's choices and these letters a lot more than what we'd seen in the past. We found this spot for it in our dining room. Thank you again Jan! We LOVE it!

**These pictures are some of the first ones with our new camera. My sisters spoiled us...Stacy got us a new camera, a nice Canon SLR one. We've had fun playing with it and it takes such good pictures! Both of us had cameras that were YEARS old. So, a big thank you to Stacy too! We can't wait to use it on trips and baby pics!

Baby Shower!

2011-01-15T17:40:00.008-06:00

My best friends, Sarah, Kristina, and Alyssa threw a beautiful baby shower for me while we were in The Woodlands for Christmas. We had it on Friday the 31st because Alyssa had to work on Saturday, plus Saturday was New Years and most people had Friday off anyways PLUS my sisters were actually in town too! So it all worked out that this was the best time for a baby shower. Sarah was nice enough to have it at her house at 10:30 am, which is quite a feat because she has two little ones of her own to get ready plus get ready for people to come over. The girls made brunch type foods like coffee cake, yogurt parfaits, fruit trays, breads, things like that with coffee and punch. We also had mini cupcakes for dessert! Yum!

With the hostesses

We received tons of great gifts to get us started and ready for this little one...lots of clothes, bath towels, bedding, books, toys, high chair, rocker seat, car seat & stroller...too much to name really! It was interesting loading up our car to drive back to Oklahoma! I should have taken a picture because we couldn't even see out the back! We really are so thankful for all of our friends and family who have been so generous and excited for us.

We also played a celebrity baby name matching game, which I think everyone enjoyed. I didn't win though. I should have done some more US Weekly and People reading to get ready! I had a great time visiting with family and friends, some of which I don't get to see very often. So it was a really great way to wrap up our trip to Texas.

29 weeks at the baby shower

Home for Christmas

2011-01-08T08:55:00.005-06:00

Tony and I went back to The Woodlands again for Christmas this year. We left on Thursday afternoon before Christmas and stayed until the Sunday after New Years. We were there for a long time, but could have stayed longer. The first few days we just hung out at my parents' with them and my sisters, went to Christmas Eve church service, and did all the Christmas day stuff we normally do...opening gifts, coffee cake & egg casserole for dinner, Christmas dinner, seeing a movie.

Tony's favorite gift...OU clothes for the baby. Don't worry, we bought a Texas outfit when we went out shopping after Christmas!

We also frosted Christmas cookies this year. We even got David, Janet's bf, in on the fun. With so many of us, it didn't take long to get all the cookies looking pretty.

We did some after Christmas shopping/returns on Sunday with everyone which was fun even though all the stores were insanely crowded. We were able to go to some of our favorite restaurants while we were in town and had Mexican a few times too. We spent the rest of the week having a few dinners and lunches with friends or just going to visit them. It was nice to not feel rushed because we had so many days in town.

Tony also did A LOT of running...I'm talking 60+ miles in a week. Crazy! He's making up for my lack of running! I was still running about 4 miles each time we went out, but that was my last week to do so. I was feeling pretty good because I wasn't on my feet working all day, but my belly did start to get bigger towards the end of the trip making it tougher to run that distance. The weather was great for running. We had some days where we even wore shorts and tshirts...gotta love Houston in December.

On Friday, I had my first baby shower...more on that later. The rest of the weekend was spent watching football bowl games and relaxing until we left on Sunday. We also played a lot of cards this trip. Tony got the "pickle present" for finding the pickle ornament which was a game called Phase 10. I had never played it before, but apparently it's been around for awhile. So that became the new family game this time. I think we played almost every night. I won once at least!

We had a great time and enjoyed getting to see all of our friends and family. We were bummed to go back home on Sunday, but like always we've gotten back into our routine just fine. Now we are preparing for some possible snow and really cold weather the next few days!

3D/4D Ultrasound

2010-12-29T11:36:00.003-06:00

December

2010-12-18T10:55:00.002-06:00

December has flown by. I can't believe we are only a week away from Christmas! Beth and I haven't been doing too much lately, but have found enough stuff to keep busy. Last Friday we had my work Christmas party at The Mayo Hotel in downtown Tulsa. It's a semi-formal (suit and tie/dresses) event which is kind of fun to do every once in a while. Plus I think it's great that my company still does a Christmas party at a time when a lot of companies are cutting them.

On the baby front, we are moving in the right direction. Although Beth and I both feel like we are majorly slacking thus far. We've started clearing the baby room out and have decided on a paint color. We've also selected the type of crown moulding we want to do. The crib and dresser are here (although in boxes) and hopefully by the end of January we will have the baby room complete.

We have also started receiving baby gifts which is awesome. Beth's cousins Jen and Kelly sent us the sweetest package yesterday. It was a baby "starter" kit with tons of stuff that we will use right away. It was so thoughtful of them and Beth and I are super appreciative that they would think of us.

Beth and I had one other Christmas party last week as well. It was hosted by a vendor that my company uses and although I don't work with them directly anymore, they were nice enough to invite Beth and I. It was at a steakhouse called Mahogany Prime and it was great!

Other than that, we are just getting things ready to head down to Houston for Christmas. With the way the holidays fall this year, we'll be able to spend a good amount of time down in Houston with Beth's family. And we are both looking forward to that as well as seeing some of our friends that we haven't seen in a while. Beth will also be having her baby shower in Houston on the 31st which I know she is looking forward to.

First Big Baby Purchase

2010-12-04T16:59:00.003-06:00

The only real thing we've accomplished today is we made it to Babies R Us to buy the crib we picked out when my parents were here. We had a 20% on item coupon that expired today, so we used that on the big item. My parents are nice enough to buy the baby furniture for us, but we won't have them up here again until January so we went ahead and got it today. This is the one we picked out.

We slept in until 9:30 today because we've had a pretty busy week. We went out running, 4 miles for me and 10 for Tony before we went out to Babies R Us. It decided to go from 70 degrees yesterday to 45 degrees today, so it was a windy, chilly run, but a good one. I also talked to Andie, Tony's sister, and her kids on Skype this morning which is always fun! Her littlest, Alice, will be 2 in a few months, was saying "Aunt B" to me. It was pretty cute. The day was pretty much gone before we knew it though. After Babies R Us, we wanted to get some "lunch" that we brought home and didn't eat until like 4. So it wasn't really lunch by that time! We bought a Groupon deal for Mr. Goodcents (a sandwhich place) a few months ago and had $10 left on it, so that's what we had. We spent some time putting up some of our outside Christmas lights too. We only did the front ones because it started getting dark and it was cold! We are going to camp out in front of the TV tonight and watch OU play in the Big 12 Championship game...Tony says "Go Sooners!"

Food, Football, Family, and Shopping!

2010-11-28T11:52:00.009-06:00

The family all arrived on Wednesday. My parents and Stacy were here in time for dinner. We took them to Leon's, one of our new favorite places on Brookside. We also stopped at Babies R Us to look at some furniture a little more seriously than we had in the past. Janet was the latest to her here since she flew from San Diego and got to our house around 11:30. We all stayed up to see her, but didn't make it too much longer once she got here.

On Thanksgiving morning my Mom and I started working on the pies and pie crust. Janet also started helping towards the end because we started running a little behind because we had a minor plumbing problem! I was washing something off in the kitchen sink and water started pouring out from under the sink! My Dad and Tony basically took apart the faucet and found that one of the pieces in the detachable part had gotten loose. So they fixed it up and put the faucet back together and we were in business.

After the pies were all done and the turkey went in the oven, some of us decided to go for a run. The temperature was in the 30s and it was WINDY - big surprise, it's Oklahoma. So we all bundled up and headed out to brave the weather. All four of us ran 3 miles, then we broke up and Janet, Tony, and I ran 2 more, and Tony ran 6 more after that.

Once we finished running, we had to get working on the rest of the Thanksgiving dinner. Tony's parents, brother, sister, and her boyfriend came over for dinner too since they were all in the US this year. We had a full house, but luckily had enough seats and food for everyone. Tony's Mom made some really good spinach dip, cucumber salad, cranberry sauce, and some wine (not for me though). We also made mashed potatoes, green jello salad, stuffing, green bean casserole, and I'm sure I'm forgetting other things! I didn't get many pictures from dinner...

After dinner, we all sat around and watched A&M beat Texas. :( Not a fun year of football for my longhorns!

Friday morning, we got up kind of early and headed out to do some shopping. We left around 9 am, so no early morning, crazy lines, shopping for us. We went to the mall for a few hours. It was busy, but not terrible. The check-out lines were just really long. I got a few Christmas presents started, but not too much. After we were done with the crowds, we went to pick out our Christmas tree. We went back to the same tree farm in Owasso that we went to last year. It was still pretty cold outside, but we knew what we were looking for, so we made it pretty quick. Plus the football fans wanted to get home to watch the Auburn/Alabama game.

We brought the tree and wreath home, ate some leftovers, and watched the games. Afterwards, we wanted to go look at another crib store in town that doesn't have the greatest store hours, so we went there right away and looked around for a bit. We found one that we liked there, so we had to go back to Babies R Us to compare! I think we made a decision though and will be going with the one from Babies R Us. We also went to Ulta and then to dinner at the Brook. We came from for a round of cards before heading to bed.

Saturday was pretty laid back. We all slept in except for my Dad and Stacy who went to the LSU/Arkansas game in Little Rock. My Mom, Janet, and I went for a short run. Tony went for a long run-12 miles. We hung around a little bit, got ready to get some lunch and do a little more shopping. Tony went with us to Firehouse Subs, but he went back home to watch football and put the lights on the Christmas tree. My Mom, Janet, and I went to Utica Square to go to Anthropologie, Banana Republic, and Pottery Barn Kids, so I could show her the bedding that we liked. We walked around there a little bit. The weather was much nicer, so it was a good choice to go there on Saturday. For dinner, Tony and I did homemade pizzas. One was chicken, pesto, and garlic. The other was pepperoni, onions, green pepper, and bacon with red sauce. YUM!

We finished just in time to watch the OU/OSU game. Tony, of course, loved the outcome of that one! It was a good game to watch, and we were laughing at Tony going crazy over his team.

Everyone left around 10 this morning...my parents to drive back to Houston, Stacy to drive to Fayetteville then flying to Orlando, and Janet flying to San Diego. We had a fun, long weekend with everyone and were sad to see them all leave. Only 3 more weeks until we head to Houston for Christmas though!