2012.

this year was the best.  seriously.  and i blame avery for it all.  i'm so, so thankful for our little family.   

in january i was on maternity leave and spent most of it cuddling a very tiny baby.  charlie's parents came to visit and meet their granddaughter for the first time.  we also started house hunting in colorado and then debated about moving back to d.c. for a bit before finally deciding on staying in colorado.

in february i went back to work, we celebrated a very mellow valentines day, and avery met her cousin for the first time.

in march we made an offer on our house and read a lot of books.

april brought a lot of packing & work on getting ready to move.  my mom also came out for a week to spend some time with avery.

in may we finally moved and my sister came out after she finished finals.

we had a visit from charlie's mom in june and spent a lot of time working on the house and taking avery to the pool.

we took avery on her first roadtrip to telluride in july and then came home to a visit from my parents & then had another visit from family at the end of the month.

we finally made it to the reservoir in august.

we did some hiking in september & alex and jeff came to visit for labor day weekend. 

in october we took a trip back to maryland to see lots of family and friends and celebrate a wonderful wedding.  we also celebrated avery's first halloween.

we celebrated thanksgiving in november.  

and we finished the year with two family visits, two birthdays, and christmas in december.

one.

this baby girl turned one just a few days ago and there aren't a lot of words to describe how i feel about all of it.  this year has been both the longest, shortest & best of my life.  i'm so grateful that this little lady showed up a year ago and made us a family.  she's the best.

last week ...

this last week was so busy and so fun.

we celebrated two birthdays, went to one birthday party, and attempted to get ready for christmas.

we had plans to be at the butterfly pavalion right now thanks to some free passes from one of my co-workers, but both charlie and avery are napping on the couch so it's looking like that may have to happen another day.   

avery got a taste of opening presents by helping charlie on his birthday.  turns out ripping paper is more exciting than the present inside.  christmas morning should be fun.  

we got a very small amount of snow on wednesday, which made everything look nice and christmassy.  i brought some inside for avery to play with while i was working and although she ended up cold and soaking wet she had a blast playing with it.  i'll have to get her a snowsuit so she can play with i outside the next time we get some.  the dogs love snow and were happy to spend a large part of the day outside chasing each other around.  

and on thursday my baby turned one, which meant that i panicked on wednesday night and started baking cupcakes and making pom poms so that she wouldn't think we forgot her birthday.  charlie told me i was crazy, but it turned out that she really did like the pom poms, so i hung them up in her room after her birthday so she could have them year round.  also it make me feel like all of my hard work was justified.  we made her favorite dinner that night (grilled cheese with avocado), gave her a cupcake that afternoon, and let her take a super long bath, which is one of her favorite activities.  i think her favorite present were a bunch of bowls that i got her from target.  she loves to stack and unstack them all day long.  

and now we're (almost) ready for christmas.  and definitely ready for a longer than normal weekend.  

it's the little things ...

...  sweet baby hugs.
...  a rearranged living room.
...  a husband who is home after being gone for a week.
...  grilled cheese & avocado sandwiches.
...  an afternoon trip to the swings with the baby and dogs.
...  attempting to make something sort of crafty and actually having it work.
...  counting down the days until my mom and sister visit.
...  looking forward to birthday celebrations this week.
...  being done with christmas shopping.
...  watching avery learn new words: ear and paw are her favorites right now.
...  watching avery learn new things and then being more excited for her than she is for herself.
...  a baby who's attempting to walk.
... spending a morning drinking coffee, listening to christmas music, and reading christmas books.
...  weekend mornings with the family.
...  a glass of wine on a friday night.
...  a baby who's sleeping through the night (some of the time).
...  evenings with charlie after avery's in bed.
...  clean laundry.

happy 30th!

happy, happy 30th birthday to my favorite person.  

i'll save the mush for your birthday card.  i'm so happy to be celebrating with you & so glad you're in my life.  enjoy your steak and help yourself to two pieces of cake.  

love you.

Furniture rearranging.

this weekend we took another trip to ikea.  it's a love/hate relationship with that store.  i was looking for a few small things but nothing big, furniture-wise, like we usually are.  i was surprised charlie came along for the ride.  he hates ikea with a passion.  earlier this week our rug in our living room officially became too dirty and disgusting to a crawling baby crawl around on.  when we first got it, i loved having a white rug because it was neutral and light and contrasted well with our dark floors.  but i came to hate that rug because of the random stains that kept appearing on it, mostly courtesy of the dogs tracking dirt in the house.  i'll be honest, it also wasn't comfortable at all and we do a lot of sitting on the floor and playing with the baby.  in fact our furniture doesn't get much use until avery goes to bed.   when charlie was away last week i rolled it up and put it down in the basement.  and honestly, i enjoyed having just the hardwoods to play on.  yes they're hard but they're clean!  something i love.  but when charlie got home from his business trip last week he was all 'i definitely want a rug in this room'.  so when we went to ikea i agreed to look although i didn't want to spend much money on anything since i wasn't really sure exactly what i wanted in that space.  

family room when we first moved in.  we've actually moved all of that furniture elsewhere except for the couch and the chair.

the other thing i have to admit about our family room, is that it never felt cozy to me.  at first i thought it was the paint color.  so we painted.  then i thought it was the fact that we had nothing on the walls.  so we built picture ledges and hung a floating shelf over the tv.  and then i started to think it was the paint color again.  but yesterday i started to think it was because of the layout of the room.  we had some wasted space, which didn't leave a lot of room for playing on the floor.  and to remedy that we had decided not to put our coffee table in the room.  the problem with that was that there was no where to put food when we had guests or when we wanted to watch football and eat snacks.

family room after new floors, paint, curtains, and hanging things on walls.



anyway, i convinced charlie to quickly move some furniture around before the broncos game on sunday.  i think he thought it was going to be a waste of time but admitted after it was all over that he liked the room much better with the new set up.  

 

the ottoman is new and we both love it.  it's a nice place to prop your feet and we can always put a tray on top if we want to use it as a table for food.

those curtains have been hung up since july and i have yet to hem them.  maybe now that we can actually see them i'll be motivated to do something about it. 

i must admit that i didn't pick up for any of these pictures.  the grey rug in front of the new couch was $20 at ikea.  charlie really liked the rug and i liked that if i hated it in 3 months it wouldn't be a big deal.  although i have to admit that it's growing on me.  it's smaller than the original rug that we had in this room but it's the perfect size to sit down and build some block towers or read a few books.  

so all that just to say that after switching a few things around i've gone from hating this room to loving it.  and i even love the paint color again.  

christmas.

i'm madly in love with this picture.

my two favorite people (and one of my favorite dogs), my favorite room in the house, and our christmas tree which is finally in a house that it fits!  

it's moments like these that are why i love christmas.  because there's nothing i love more than hanging out with the people i love.  it's pretty awesome every once in a while to stop and appreciate things like sitting on the floor & reading books with your favorite people.