just for giggles

whew! i tell you what - i forgot how hard it was to have thalia all to myself...and i had gamma here to help! i know i still owe some michigan pics and balloon fiesta pics - i promise to have those up this weekend.

in the meantime, here is a little something to hold you over. i think this was before we went to michigan - chris was at the studio and thalia would NOT go to sleep. she had just figured out how to flip her light on and off, so every time i shut her bedroom door, she would wait a few minutes and flip the light on. this went on at least 4 times. i think this is the last time i went in her room. i expected her to be standing by her bookshelf like she was the other 4 times. instead, this is how i found her:

much love and more sleep,

c, c, and t

we're back :o)

Yes, it's true. I am back and ready for more blogging. I know I mentioned a little bit about this in my last post, but what a tough patch of life I've been wading through lately! September was even worse than August. But the good news is that I have turned a corner and am ready to take on life again with a smile :oD

Just a few quick updates on what we've been up to over the last 7 weeks:

first volunteer experience

a few weeks ago, chris and i took thalia with us to a food bank in raleigh to help pack and deliver food bags for needy people. thalia did a great job helping fill the bags, then carried the bread when we ended up delivering the food door to door! she loved it, and brought a smile to most of the people's faces we saw that day.

first big girl underpants

yep - we are working on potty training. it has been a really interesting experience. we are getting to the point where she knows she is not supposed to go in her pull-ups or underpants, but still refuses to go on the potty. i need to figure out a way to get her past that. she runs hot and cold on wearing her underpants. i think now she knows that when she wears them she might have an accident and it really tears her up. it's so sad! who knew potty training would be so emotional!

first hair cut

after two and a half years, we finally gave thalia her first hair cut. yiayia did it, because i didn't trust that thalia would sit still for me! yiayia of course did a great job, and thalia's hair looks so much better. she loves telling everyone that she got a hair cut. it's really cute.

first harvest

thalia has been helping me "harvest" the garden she planted. she loves picking the tomatoes, but doesn't like to eat them.

more regular updatesto come, including our trips to albuquerque and michigan!

much love and more sleep,

c, c, and t

And 29 hours later...

I have a new NIECE!!! Stella Grace Wimer was born on Thursday, August 26 (my birthday!!) at 10:52am by c-section! Poor Aunt Stephie followed in my footsteps with having a terrible labor! Shockingly, Stephie went into labor unexpectedly on Wednesday morning. We weren't planning on leaving until Wed night, so Chris hadn't packed or anything. I was at the chiropractor and missed Stephie's phone call. So while I was on my way to work, I had to call Chris and tell him to get out of bed and get packed ASAP! We finally got on the road around 1030 and the way stephie was progressing, we totally thought we were going to miss the birth! Yiayia and gigi hopped on a plane, chris and i were FLYING through the mountains...it was quite the experience. luckily (for us) we made it to the hospital in record time, and stephie had just had her water broken. we spent the night at the hospital...ask chris about where he slept some time...and when we woke up in the morning, aunt nikki had surprised everyone by catching a red eye flight!! so all of us girls got to be at the hospital for baby tini! long story short, after 29 hours, the baby hadn't really come down and she had only dilated to an 8. on top of that, tini's heartrate would drop periodically. so the doctors decided enough was enough, and called for a c-section. to EVERYone's surprise, stephie and barrett had a little girl! they came home on saturday and are adjusting to nursing, and pooping, and not sleeping :o) here are some pictures from the hospital and home.

yiayia made a little baby coozie cocoon for stella!

this is my favorite pic i think. i also think she looks a lot like barrett

papou wasn't there for the birth but he got to the hospital later in the afternoon.

aunt nikki looking fabulous after a red eye flight

the birthday girls! stephie took a GREAT picture of us with a happy birthday sign i stole from work - more on that to come. wait til you see what my friends at work did to me!
how precious is this picture?! poor thalia is a bit confused and sometimes calls stella her baby sister. :o)

yiayia and her grandbabies

tini stella sleeping

we are having a blast getting to know the newest member of our family, and helping stephie get acclimated to being a new mommy. so far, she is doing fantastic! more pics and stories to come for sure...especially some from the rest of our trip to michigan.

much love and little sleep (we've been rockstars this trip!)

c, c, and t

fun at jordan lake (and the cousins) - aka we are BLESSED!

we are so lucky and blessed to have a fantastic lake just a few miles from our house. i say a few miles because our favorite lake in michigan was four hours away...so 20 minutes seems like it is at the end of our driveway!!

we have also been lucky and blessed to have spent a number of summer days at the lake this summer, with many of our friends and family.

at the beginning of the summer, we went out with our new friends, the copelands. dan and i work together, so we decided to introduce our families at the lake. thalia had a ton of fun with chase...and riley, chase, and dan had a blast on the boat!

over the fourth of july, gamma and gampa came down to visit. we had lots of fun digging in the sand!

unfortunately, we had forgotten to bring a swim diaper with us this time. so thalia sucked up half of the lake in her diaper!

finally, just a couple weeks ago, we had lake day with our church. it was gloomy, but we did a baptism in the lake, and had a really nice time fellowship-ing, and getting to know some families better. there are a lot of young families at our church, so we fit right in.

this is a picture of chris with thalia, pastor mike with hannah, and brad with ellie - aka daddy/daughter moment :o)

i mistakenly thought that thalia was done swimming. so i changed her out of her swim suit and into her cover up. of course, since we didn't leave the lake, she decided to walk deeper and deeper and deeper into the lake until she was basically swimming in her cover up. the sun had gone down, and it was starting to get chilly. unfortunately, the only thing we had that was "dry" was chris' shirt! of course, everyone at the boat launch thought she was just adorable - and she ate it up!

i'm sure i told you a few months ago that chris' cousin elizabeth had her second baby girl, emma ruth. we have also been blessed to spend a lot of time with the kruger-weathers girls lately. and thalia just LOVES baby emma!

emma was sleeping, so the bigger girls decided to "sleep" too. this was on the porch of cracker barrel today...my first endeavor to eat a meal other than breakfast there. what a success!! i think i may actually like the lunch menu better than breakfast!

ok, this is a totally random thought...i don't know if i have posted this picture or not. apologies if i have, but i just love it! i saw it when i was scrolling through my ginormous file looking for the picture of the girls fake sleeping.

on that note, we head to michigan for Tini's grand entrance on wednesday night. so if you don't mind saying a couple prayers for us since we'll be driving so late. we can't wait to see everyone and meet this little person who thalia swears is a boy. she hasn't faltered since christmas! we'll see who's right in just a little while!

thanks so much for all of your thoughts and prayers. we love and miss you all!

much love and little sleeping in,

c, c, and t

i'm back!

i have a confession to make...i've been avoiding my blog updates :o( i know, i know...it's a terrible crime, and i'm sorry. truth be told, i've been really going through a rough patch lately, and i had a hard time bringing myself to post upbeat, happy updates when i felt so lousy. on top of that, we have continued to be wicked busy lately. but we have been having fun, and i finally have some good news to report. plus, my pictures are really backing up...so that combination has led us to this post!

hanging out

she loves wearing these "bedhands" that yiayia made her. unfortunately she has been stretching them out, but she put this one on all by herself.

chocolate goatee from eating ice cream

wearing her new goggles and john deere shirt from gamma and gampa (or gampa and gampa as she says lately)

gardening (aka weeding)

i HATE weeding as it turns out. i can only ever get around to weeding this one little corner of our landscaping. i just got brave enough to look around the side of the house, and well...i'm going to be spending a lot of time outside today. here is thalia sweating it out with me the other morning.

the pants were her idea.

swimming at kristy's pool

chris keeps trying to get her to go underwater but she laughs too much.

going to bulls games (go bulls!)

it was SO hot the other night. the sweat in her hair was after only being at the game for 15 minutes!

on top of all this excitement, i was offered a permanent position on my team last week! :o) that means we really get to stay here, and that there is no chance of me going back to the field. it also means we won't be heading back to michigan, but that was kind of the idea. i get to work on the same team, but won't be doing the same job. it's kind of hard to explain, but it is a great opportunity to expand my skillset, get to know new people, and build my own responsibilities. it is a huge weight off my shoulders. and i get a raise! which also takes a weight off my shoulders.

chris is also doing well. he picked up 5 new students, which essentially doubles how many he has! he is also working with a management company on a contract for his band, and is getting ready to do a lot of traveling to different fall music festivals in September.

finally, aunt stephie is almost ready to have her baby!! i can't believe her due date is only 2 weeks away! stephie started her own blog, where she has really cute pics. so you should definitely check it out! stephieloves.wordpress.com

more to come soon, i promise! also, check out our pics from our camping trip last weekend!

much love and more sleep,

c, c, and t

catching up

let me tell you...teething all 4 eye teeth at one time does not make for a happy baby or a happy mommy. add to that me not sleeping well and you have one tired gal. so here's some catching up for ya:

a few weeks ago, chris, thalia and i did the Komen Race for the Cure with some of our church friends. it was another scorcher this year! poor thalia was soaked in her stroller. so chris took her out for a while and let her ride on his shoulders.

after we finished, we were walking around the campus and of course had to go see the helicopter. the medics let thalia sit in it; of course they thought she was adorable since she was so excited to see the "hepticopter".

later that day, we went over to kristy's apartment to use her pool. thalia LOVES being in the water...but still isn't into her picture being taken. guess i pictured her out when we were down here by ourselves.

we ended our weekend adventure with a trip to sonic for a slush, which thalia calls a "surpee"

thalia has definitely gotten into a movie phase. we were so excited when she started watching them, and now we can't get her to stop. this is her watching a movie in our bed.

to distract her from yelling she wanted to watch another movie, we started playing "airplane". she loved it!

just after this picture was taken, we realized that our A/C had gone out upstairs. hooray for no A/C when its 100 degrees outside!

needless to say, we spent two nights in our family room, camped out. the cool thing was our air mattress is the exact height and dimensions of the square of our couch! so thalia got one side, i got the other and chris got the air mattress. we were kind of hoping the unit was busted so we could get a new one under the home warranty that came with the house. alas, the thing was just disgusting! i have never seen an A/C unit look like that before! so a guy came out, cleaned it a bunch of times, and now we have cold air again :o)

we have also entered a phase of little miss "i can do it all by yourself (myself)", as well as little miss sassy pants. case in point: this is a picture of me chasing thalia into our neighbor's yard when she wanted to walk to the car by herself on her way to daycare. walk to the car turned into walk down the grass...complete with her hands on her hips.

she also likes to have her own "buggy" at the grocery store. of course this trip all jillian and i needed was a couple packs of beer!

finally, she likes to carry her own backpack on water park days at school. the thing is still about as big as she is, but she carries it to and from the car every week. what a goof.

in another post, i'll tell you all about our fourth of july adventure. it's a doozie! i'm waiting for some pics from gamma before i post the rest.

i hope you all had a great weekend!

much love and not so much sleep,

c, c, and t