He is Risen!

HAPPY EASTER!! I love how my sister wrote it so eloquently on her blog, and I'll just quote her here... "Easter is the true celebration of the victory we have in Jesus, who was sacrificed for our sins, who overcame death, and who is living today to offer us forgiveness and eternal life with Him." How wonderful.

I don't think we ended up with any "still-frame" pictures of the three of us all dressed up on our camera. :/ I think they're all on Mom's. I'll get one from her and post it. I do have some video of Avery running around in her Easter dress after Sunday lunch, though! She looked precious in the outfit that Gram & Grandpoppy bought for her. Little girls are SO much fun!

Then we were off to hang out with the Poages and to have a "real" Easter Egg-hunt with cousin Ian! Thanks, Josh & Mel, for hosting us! We had a blast!!

Wedding Pictures

So... after all the egg-hunting pictures we made at Zilker Gardens, my camera battery was dead and my memory card was full. :( Boo. So all I got from the wedding were these three pictures... but the wedding was GORGEOUS! ...I only wish I had been about 25 lbs. lighter to enjoy it!...

Easter Weekend in Austin!

FUN, fun!!

Collin was a groomsman in a wedding Saturday night in Austin, which gave us a great excuse to head to hang out with Gram & Grandpoppy for Easter weekend. We had a full weekend of festivities, and LOVED having built-in babysitters for the rehearsal dinner & wedding. (Thanks, Mom & Dad!!)





Avery was spoiled rotten with cupcake-decorating projects, egg-hunts, outdoor fun, treats, toys, a trip to McDonald's. Avery discovered chocolate, and she's definitely a fan! (We must be related...) I posted a few of our favorite pictures from Saturday, but I'll also include a slide-show that covers just about everything from Saturday if anyone has time to kill and wants to watch.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter!

Silly Girl...

Weird what kids decide to do to entertain themselves while Mom cooks dinner...

I have no idea why she was doing this or what she found so funny about it, but this gives an all-new meaning to the phrase, "Sitting on your can!" :)

An unprecedented post...

Now THIS, I never do... I've actually scanned-in a magazine article to post.

I stumbled on this while in the Doctor's waiting room for my last check-up. It was SO spot-on that I found myself chuckling out loud without even thinking of how crazy I probably seemed to the other women in the room.

This is for anyone who's ever been the mother of a 1-year-old... Gotta love it. (Click on images to englarge for reading.)

Daddy's SO funny...

One empty paper towel tube, one bouncy-ball, one silly Dad and one giggley girl...

LOTS of laughs!

Are we sure it's March?!

Sometime this morning around 4am, I woke up to hear Howie whining from his crate in the Sun Room. He's started to make a bad habit of wanting to get up to go outside and potty or get a drink of water- ALWAYS at some ridiculous hour of night. (Dogs seriously ARE like children sometimes.) Since I'm still scared of the dark at 28-years-old, I always delegate the night time dog duties to Collin. I nudged him... said, "Howie's whining" and went back to sleep. Minutes later Collin came back in and said, "It snowed... like half an inch!"

I had only a vague recollection of this semi-conscious conversation when I got up with Avery at 6:30 and looked outside to see a beautiful blanket of snow. WOW. When you never see it in your own yard but once every 10 years, it can be really exciting.

Today was Mother's Day Out for Avery, but we bundled her up and let her play in the yard for a bit before hitting the road to drop her off at school. I'm not sure she knew what to do with it, or even understood that it was something cool... she just headed down the sidewalk like she does on our daily walks around the block! Ha! But she IS getting better at saying "snow" and knowing what it means. (...not that she will ever really need to know that word since we live in Texas, but just in case...) Either way, it'll be hard to teach her the difference between Winter and Spring if stuff like this keeps happening.

Maybe we should start doing Egg-hunts on Dec. 25th when we always find ourselves having to run the A.C. and then come in by the fire with hot chocolate on Easter Sunday when we somehow mysteriously end up with snow. Just a thought...

Baby, it's COLD outside!

So... it snowed tonight! Weird...

Not that we even have a decent-looking yard, as you've seen in pictures, but this weather has seriously got to shock the system of all the plants! One day it's in the 70's and the next day it snows. Crazy!

I wish it had been daytime and we might have gone outside to play in it! We watched from the sunroom as I made a desperate attempt to capture the moment on video. Here was my only note-worthy clip: (And I use the term "note-worthy" very lightly!)

A "tail" of time...

Funny how a pony tail can suddenly transform a baby into a little girl.

When did this happen? When did the infant I once held effortlessly with one arm transform into this walking, talking, curious little person... complete with opinions, personality and a sense of humor? The biggest mystery is how I simply didn't notice the time passing. Until today.

I remember a time when an hour felt like forever. One of my earliest memories is watching my Dad pack the trunk of the car before a Christmas trip to Lubbock and asking him how long it would take to get there. When he answered, "Eight hours," my mind was blown. I could not fathom how long that was, but I knew that Sesame Street was one hour and it lasted a long time. Eight hours might as well have been eternity.

So how did I get from there to here? Who can explain to me now why years pass like minutes in the life of the same girl who once believed an hour was never-ending? I guess somewhere along the way, we all become so used to this crazy thing called "time" that we don't even realize it's whizzing by.

But fortunately, for those who occasionally take the opportunity to step back and take a look, days like today happen. A simple walk occurs and "time" taps you on the shoulder, directs your attention to something that's grown gradually without you knowing it, and unveils this mystery before your eyes. In Avery today, I saw a girl replace a baby. She's more of a person now... More of a friend now... And I guess, God willing, it'll just continue to get better like this as time goes by.

I'm sure tomorrow I'll jump back into the flow of things and, once again, time will be invisible. But for some reason today, I enjoyed stepping outside of things and standing in the moment... In awe of the sneaky-speed of time and what it can produce when you're not looking.