xoxo.

a valentine's day post of many pictures.

breakfast.

school.

cookie decorating.

sk & alden.

violet & cooper.

callie.

tabitha.

georgia rose.

layton.

mimi.

twin bros...boden and colby. sk talks about boden more than anyone. apparently they play chase on the playground. hmmmm.....

home for the after-party...balloon & sucker time.

checking out her valentines from her friends.

sk's valentines to her friends....owl always be your friend=)

back...

spotting the green sucker she'd been wanting...

gift for mommy & daddy...

roses and a gift card for me;)

and sk finally got her pluto and goofy!!! she was beside herself....

thanks mimi/papa for the goof! i think she has the whole gang now!

happiness = sucker + goofy + pluto

kisses...

so of course we had to dress up as minnie!

sk's class makes a placemat for every holiday party they have. this was the one from today=)

trey cooked our annual valentine's day dinner. we've done this for the past 3 or 4 years now. the yummiest dinner he makes....lamb with mint mustard sauce, orzo with feta & pine nuts, and yummy steamed asparagus with lemon. delish delish delish.

i always provide the champagne with berries, but since i'm not really drinking any alcohol these days i obviously didn't get any. but trey surprised me with this fun sparkling drink - some kind of organic sparkly non-alcoholic drink from whole foods (not the champagne that i love, but the gesture was so sweet. and it looks just as fun as our usual v-day drink!)

and finally, after dealing with this mess this morning.....

i decided to braid it after bath tonight. i've heard that it makes life easier in the mornings when they sleep in a braid and my friends with curly-haired girls confirmed this for me on facebook tonight so i'm hoping it works for us!!

happy valentine's day!!!!

17 weeks.

so here's a pic of my 17 week growing tummy.

i'm still wearing my regular jeans but i can't button them so i wear a bella-band. it's really kind of annoying so i should just break out my maternity jeans. i live in yoga pants or leggings everyday, but we went out to dinner tonight so i tried to look halfway decent. it takes some work these days especially since my pregnancy-induced ACNE is STILL here. so much for it getting better with the second trimester. i'm now a few weeks into the 2nd tri and it's really not any better.

the babe is about 5 ounces now (about the same weight as a turnip) and is about 5 inches long from head to bottom.
i am no longer nauseous. i feel pretty good and am not too tired. i haven't gained very much weight yet, but i'm sure i'll explode soon. i felt the tiniest hint of "flutters" last thursday night, but no real movements yet. really looking forward to that! i remember missing that once sk was born. i kept waiting to feel a baby moving all around in my tummy!
i don't have any real cravings, but i do eat one or two peaches a day. i also enjoy cheese alot - we've been enjoying trader joe's cheese selection because it's really good cheese without the gourmet cheese cost! i also have been enjoying my ben&jerry's froyo, but i'm planning on giving up refined sugar again for lent so.......there goes that special treat. it will be good for me though. i have quite the sweet tooth when i'm pregnant!

that's it! will post again in 2 weeks for the big gender reveal. i'll have some good pics of the little guy or girl to share, too.

atlanta weekend.

trey, sk and i traveled to atlanta this past weekend. one our good friends from college (and one of my old roomies) is getting married in march and had a couples engagement party/shower on saturday night. i won't be able to go back for her bachelorette party so i didn't want to miss her shower and i'm so glad we went. it's always so great seeing our atlanta friends. we miss them! it was such a fun party! i didn't take one single pic of anyone, but we had a great time.

we stayed with sk's lala and dougie while we were there and they were so sweet to babysit sk while we went to the party. it was a short trip....we arrived late friday and left after breakfast on sunday, but lala and dougie did take us to the georgia aquarium on saturday which was alot of fun. sarah kate enjoyed it! she couldn't wait to see the frog exhibit and i think that her favorite exhibit was the penguins. she got to crawl through a tunnel under the exhibit with trey and they were able to stick their heads up through little glass bubbles and get up-close and personal with the penguins. she loved that and wanted to do it again=)

we took a few pics with my camera but most of them are iphone pics.

sk checking out some frogs. that big, HUGE, brown, slimey blob in the far left of the pic just up from the water & rocks is a frog. sk deemed some of the frogs "prince naveen" and some were "princess tiana" - from "the princess and the frog." i think this was prince naveen.

lala bought sk a frog that she loves!

thanks lala for the frog!

the whale shark is quite large;)

sk originally said that she didn't want to see the sharks, but she enjoyed looking at all the sharks and fish in the big tank...

looking at the jellies....

they took the penguin exhibit out of our aquarium here so it was fun to see these guys again! sk loved them=)

a big thanks to lala an dougie for taking us to such a fun place!!! and for keeping our girl saturday night. i think all the fun wore sk out! she took a nice nap on the way back to charleston yesterday....

and this guy must have been worn out, too! he waits until sister goes to bed each night before getting all cozy on her bean bag.

some funny things about sk's trip to atlanta:
sk and i talked all week about how we were going to georgia for the weekend to see lala and dougie in atlanta. she was excited:) she and i left friday afternoon to go to metter, ga, to pick up trey who had been in the area with a client for work. so as we left our house sk said, "lala and dougie live in atlanta bread?" ha...sk and i eat there a good bit. i said, "well, they live in atlanta, georgia." she said, "we in carolina, mama. we going to georgia bulldog!" too funny. she's just relating it all to stuff she knows (bulldogs and atlanta bread co. are 2 things she knows very well). so we left for georgia bulldog and barely got out of our driveway before sk fell asleep. she slept for about an hour and woke up while we were on 17 heading towards 95. when she woke up she asked, "mama, are we in georgia bulldog yet?" i said, "no, not yet." cracked me up=) she said, "oh we in carolina."

when we got to atlanta it was around 8pm and was dark outside. we went through the city instead of taking 285 since we were coming into town on 75. and when sk saw the city skyline all lit up at night she said, "OH WOW, look at all the castles!!!" it was too cute. she really thought there were castles everywhere. "dat MY castle, mommy....oooooh, dat one yours, mommy.....dat beau-beau castle and dat castle for daddy!!!" we all had castles. sweet little charleston girl goes to the big city. too cute! she would have been born and raised in that big city if trey and i hadn't decided to make a change. now her castles are made of sand;)

finally, i think it's time for a "belly" pic. i'm 17 weeks now & i'm starting to show some so i'm going to get trey to take a pic tonight and i'll do a pregnancy update. 2 weeks from tomorrow we will find out the gender and hopefully see pics of a very healthy baby lucy! can't wait to start planning the nursery=)

valentine craft & cookie making day.

sk and i did our valentine's day craft and made heart-shaped cookies today. glad we did both in the same day....one big mess and one big clean-up. done.

first, she painted hearts.....

which we later turned into owls......

i didn't get a pic of her with her owl. she made this for her dad and took it to the church tonight where we met him for dinner. she was so excited about it!

while the paint on the hearts was drying we rolled out the cookie dough and got started on making hearts....

sk likes to do it all herself so getting 12 hearts took a while. but in the end, they looked pretty good! the dough i made is for 36 cookies. so i have a bag of dough in my fridge.....i was done after 12.

ready to go in...

out and cooling....

next up: decorating.

reaping the benefits of all her hard work!......

sk enjoyed her valentine's day themed morning. we also watched her elmo's valentine's day movie. we read "froggy's first kiss" before nap and bed. now she's all ready for the day of love.
speaking of love....she said 2 things today that i wanted to document. one is sweet and one is funny. that sums her up:)

sk and i ate lunch outside on her playset picnic table today. beau was very busy chasing things and he is really trailing moles under the ground which leads to digging. so while we were eating i kept calling out, "beau beau! where are you? no digging!" i just stay on top of him to make sure he is behaving. anyway, she's ALL about disciplining the dog. she knows he isn't supposed to dig and she tells him all about it. so at one point she got up from the picnic table and sees him in the bushes and yells, "beau beau, what you doin? you come outta there please mister!"
ha! so something i would say....i guess i say "mister" when i'm being serious with my boy!

when it was time for nap i laid her in her crib. she said, "i need covers mommy!" so i put her blanket over her and then she said, "nite-nite mommy, i love you so much." awwww.....also something she hears me say, but still so sweet. we love each other alot and i'm really really glad and lucky to get to spend my days at home just being her mommy.

i found an iphone pic from this past weekend at mimi and papa's. my mom went over to st. marys on saturday and took bryce a balloon so she picked up a get well balloon for sk, too, since she was sick. sk was obsessed with her balloon! she loved it so much....so much that when we left the house without it on sunday my mom met us in town to give it to us. sk said, "i not have my balloon.....i soooo sad" as she hung her head real low. but we got it and it's still flying high=)