Florida

We went to St. Augustine, FL for the wedding of one of my best friends a couple of weeks ago. It was a lot of fun and we were so happy that we could be there for her and her new husband. We decided to make it a real vacation by staying a couple of days. It was worth it - the weather was perfect and we were able to relax a little bit before the crazy busy construction season starts.

We let the grandparents watch Josie and she really didn't seem to miss us much. I'm pretty sure she had more fun with them than she would have had with us anyways!

I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

After missing our first flight, we enjoyed ourselves by chilling in the airport all day long.

Audrey couldn't have been more perfect. She slept when we needed her to and didn't fuss hardly at all.

We skyped Josie as much as we could because it just wasn't the same  without her. 

After we finally made it there, we crashed at the hotel and woke up hungry. This is the restaurant that Bill Murray owns with his brothers. It was cute and affordable. Oh, and the food was good too. ;)

Huge golf ball in the building (in case you don't see anything special in this picture behind my cute little family).

The restaurant is on a huge golf course and that was also where the wedding was.  It was a gorgeous place and we couldn't get over how perfect the weather was (especially compared to the blistery winter back home).

The men in the wedding surprised the bride with their outfit choice for the wedding rehearsal... none of them are actually Scottish.

While we were busy rehearsing, AJ hung out with daddy. They had a lot of quality time together that weekend. I cannot get over her cute little bare feet!

All of this was cleaned up for the wedding. The bricks were so hard, walking on them with our heels was painful and we were all feeling it after the wedding the next day!

We went to a steakhouse for the groom's dinner, and the bride showed her hubby what she had gotten him - bobble heads that were personalized to be them! They were eerily spot on.

Bride's bouquet

Time for the wedding to start! It got windy right beforehand, so Audrey didn't even get to show off her cute wedding attire... she was wrapped in a blanket pretty much the whole time.

Her brother walked her down the aisle. It was emotional. And great.

And the close up of the bobble heads.

The bride and I.

The next day, we decided to check out the town (oldest in the country - some amazing history) and go to the beach.

We were a little overdressed, but the sun felt amazing. We figured it'd be too windy and cold but it was surprisingly gorgeous. Audrey didn't seem to mind either, even though her hat was too big.

At the end of the day, we went to the fort. Again, a lot of cool history and we were totally into it (nerd alert).

Audrey wasn't sure what to think of the nice weather. She's only ever known  freezing cold winter.

I forgot the shade for her car seat since we don't use it in the winter back home, so we had to make due.

Pretty ridiculous, but it did the job!

The city had a lot of cool older buildings.  I didn't think to take pictures of any of them, but we did come across this one imitating the Gone with the Wind house. The restaurant was called Scarlett O'hara's. It was cute.

We had a ton of seafood. I couldn't get enough! Every meal that we could, I tried a different kind. I didn't have anything I didn't like which surprised me. I used to dislike seafood a lot, and was always afraid to try it... but now I love it all. 

She spent a lot of time in here since we were walking around a lot, but I promise we took her out enough to move around and enjoy the weather.

On our way back to Jacksonville to fly home, we stopped at a Chick-fil-a . We'd never been to one and wanted to see what all of the hype was about. It was good. Nothing special, though.

Chick-fil-a has flowers on every table. Definitely classier than McDonald's.

We didn't have to spend hardly any time in the airport on the way back, but Audrey did get a chance to show off her new moves (lifting her head and looking around for a much longer period of time) to anyone that was interested at our terminal. Sadly, not many people seemed to notice... but her proud parents sure did.

Like I said, it was wonderful to be in the sun and have some time away. I'll do a separate post about what it was like flying with a baby, but already a bunch has happened since we've gotten back and I (and my blog) need to move on and catch up!

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All about the attitude

Sometimes I have the urge to write real posts. The kind that show all of my flaws, where I talk about how hard it is to be a mom to two under two, where I complain/vent about this and that and look for the support I need to keep going. 

Other times, I want to get as far away from that as possible. I want to show the sunny bright side and document all of our happy moments as much as I can. I struggle with this, too, because I don't want to give future moms false hope and allude to this rainbow perfect world. It isn't always easy and fun, and I don't want to hide the messy parts of life.

What I always come back to is that I need to watch my attitude. When I write or talk about how hard life is, I wallow in the misery. I spend my few moments alone grumbling about the day, the bad moments, and my frustrations.

It's a fine line to walk. I don't want to appear fake with my perfect little world, but at the same time, I want to be constantly finding the joy and relishing on that more than the little things that go wrong. I've gotten so much better about letting things go and not dwelling on them. Focusing on this has made me a better person, and I hope that it's affecting the people around me positively. 

So the take away from this little thought process of mine is this: I'm going to continue to post about our lives in a positive way. Of course my life isn't perfect and of course that will show too. My focus is on the good things, God's blessings on us, His grace, the funny moments. 

I've heard that if you make yourself smile when you are upset, it makes you feel better. I like that.



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A little busy

I had great plans to get all of my pictures edited and in one place in order to create an awesome post about our awesome trip, and this little thing called parenting keeps getting in the way. We're busy dumping out every toy in sight, having mini-meltdowns, reading the best stories out there (think: 3 little pigs with pictures), drinking milk, avoiding head on head collisions while rolling on the floor, and building forts. 

Tune in soon, though, because I'm itching to dump those photos and stories into a long post or two and it will have to happen tonight. Or tomorrow.

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Josie says

As we have discussed before, Josie is growing quite fond of her sister. If AJ is crying, Josie will look at me, with her most concerned facial expression, and ask, "her cryin'?" Crying is said like this: CurEYEin? She used to say it like "cwyin" back in December so it's fun to see how she is continually learning how to mimic what she hears.

She also says "What happened?" with the same super sweet but concerned facial expression. I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing because she gets so over the top concerned.

The phrase we mimic the most is: "S'in there?" She often drops the first part of the phrase (the whole phrase is probably more than she could comprehend) so a couple of months ago she just started to add an "s" to the beginning of words to represent an entire phrase. That morphed into adding more words but keeping that "s". What's in there became "s'in there?" with a heavy "r" sound.

When Josie decides that I should be done using my computer, she comes up and says "shut the door" while she closes the screen. It sounds like "shut thee doh!" I try not to laugh because she shouldn't be slamming it shut, but it is pretty cute. So many times, I have to hold back a smile when what she's doing is appropriate or something I want to encourage. But her innocence just makes it cuter!

Girl likes her puzzles and can be heard asking to "puzzle gether" at all times of the day. I guess she's heard me say "let's put this puzzle together" a time or two before!





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Post vacation blues

We went to Florida last week, and I want to blog about it, but for now I just need to write this down. 

Adjusting from vacation is not fun. Josie stayed with her grandparents and Audrey came with us. Both of them have had to adapt to the changes in their own ways. Josie is testing the limits, seeing if we as her parents are the same as when we left (we are, so I wish she'd just stop!). Audrey is recovering from strange schedules and sleeping in our arms (airport, out in public, etc). 

Yesterday was sort of the calm before the storm. Josie was so happy to be back at home so she wasn't too bad, but then she didn't take a great nap and the rest of the day was a struggle. Audrey is like a different baby. She's crabby all.the.time and is sleeping (or needing to sleep even though she fights it) constantly. I so hope that she sleeps herself out of this mood and wakes up her sweet happy self!

For now, I'm just trying to get through this day. My to-do list is ridiculously long and I can't do any of it when either or both of the girls are awake. That leaves... 20 minutes (during nap time if they happen to sleep at the same time for even a little while) to run around frantically like a chicken with its head cut off. 

Joy.

One time-out down, countless more to go, I'm sure. 

I'm telling myself over and over to find the little things, the sweet moments throughout the day and enjoy them as much as I can because I'll never get these days back. For the most part, I am doing this, but while I'm right in the the thick of it, that feels so hard. 

Happy Friday!





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Good bye Reader

With Google Reader shutting down, I sadly have to figure out a new way to follow all of my favorite blogs. So annoying... I'm trying out Bloglovin.com, and I really hope it's as easy as Google Reader was...

Thoughts?

Follow my blog with Bloglovin



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Photo update (because I'm too lazy for words)

I don't mind holding her while she sleeps. She's only this little once.
Look at those lips.




It's been a while since Buckley's made an appearance here. He's doing good.




We went to a hockey game with our small group from church. We had awesome seats. Like right behind the glass.






We went to a banquet type thing (I'm not sure what it is called exactly..?) where they served us dinner and then had a dance afterwards. It's a customer/vendor appreciation type thing. Anyways, I was super excited to get Josie dancing, and I didn't even have to do more than just give a light suggestion. She was on the dance floor immediately, but instead of dancing, she spent most of the time watching the other kids. It was hilarious. She was just a little bit too young to make friends and join in the fun, but I would bet that she thought it was just as fun to watch.






She kind of ventured out and joined in while they were laying on the ground...but the minute she joined them they were up and off to the next thing. As you can see, the band was interesting enough to distract her, on her belly or not.



Whew... maybe someday I'll have a blog with real posts and real stories/words. This is good for now, though. :)