Always good to go home again..

We headed to Broken Arrow for the weekend for Easter and other family celebrations. Its always good  to go home again and be with family (blood and church) especially those you don't get to see as often as you like. I love that familiar and warm feeling of being home again. I also like that you don't worry about doing things like you would at your now home, no laundry or chores you feel like you should be doing. It's always refreshing and restful. Here's some of what the weekend had to offer...

We celebrated Mema's 90th birthday! 

Cousin Bear's birthday was the same day we had the party so we celebrated 90 years and 3 years. 

Ava enjoyed cake and ice cream time. She also loved bubbles and an impromptu Easter egg hunt. 

Of course in true Browning family tradition there was a sing-a-long.

Ava was memorized for a little while with the music then she realized it was 4:00 and she hadn't had a nap yet, things went a little down hill from here for most of the rest of the day. I didn't take pictures of that part but just wanted to tell the whole story of our weekend to try to keep it real on the blog. In this season of our family life its not always sweet smiles and laughter but we try take the bad with the good and usually with toddlerhood just wait a little bit and the mood will change again. 

Next day was Easter Sunday, it worked out great, I got to sleep in and grandma and her dad had already fed her breakfast so when I gave her basket she could have a little candy then and enjoy the other goodies before we had to get ready.

What Ava wore:

Dress and Shell: Baby Gap

Shoes: Target

Hair Bloom: Gifted by Aunt Jen

The dress was a little big but I'm in love with it and am hoping she can wear it for a long time to come. (I may or may not of kind of cheated and used some of my Christmas left over gift card money to buy it. It had me at yellow and ruffles!) 

She figured out quick they had treats in them, I should of known saying "lets find all the eggs then you can have 1 treat" didn't make much sense to her at this stage. Next year I think I will do one M&M in each then she could enjoy as she goes (Ryan's idea). 

Hope you had a great Easter!

The good stuff.

We are kicking off April with some down time at home tonight. When I think about all that is going on this month I can get a little overwhelmed but tonight I tried to consciously soak up these moments of a quiet family dinner on the porch enjoying the end of the day together. I hope to carry that practice through the rest of the month as well, so many great things going on this month, I don't want to get lost in pre-planning or worrying for what's next on the list and not appreciate and live in each moment as it comes. That will be easier said then done but worth re-directing myself each time, as something struck me as I looked through these pictures that this is the good stuff, this is our life, this is living the dream and I don't want to miss the precious moment that is now. You can let the good stuff pass you by or you can grab onto it with a firm grip and give it your full attention. We often do that with the not so good stuff in our life, I want to do better with doing that with the good stuff...

Her "please mommy?" face...

So here's the run down for this month:

• First Tuesday Book Club gathering of my beloved reading group, I pick the book this month, this is tomorrow and I'm still reading reviews tonight, I just can't decide!
• Easter Weekend, also my mother-in-law and my Mema's birthdays to celebrate!
• Chicago trip - going for a training for work, AM and I are braving the big city with toddlers in tow, wish us luck!! Ava's first flight. The unseasonable warm temp trend I hope will stay in place and be much warmer than the last time I was in Chicago in April.
• Ava's 2nd birthday, planning a family day of fun, just our little family.
• Ava's birthday party a week later, decided I wanted to make her cake this year and lots of other handmade touches. Decided to still keep it small this year just our family and a few family friends.
• Also this month finish training and run my first half marathon. I can't tell you how excited I'm getting about this actually seeming possible, don't get me wrong I have some real fear too but I've been working for months towards this goal. I will have to do a whole post on this journey of doing this, but think I will wait till after the half.

So there it is, a packed month, it will be great, Lord willing, one day at a time, each day I'm sure will have the good stuff and the not so good stuff but reflecting on a favorite quote from a favorite books is "two women looked out from the behind the same bars, one saw mud, the other saw stars". Here's to grabbing hold of the good and giving my full attention to the stars.

April 2012, lets do this!

Weekend Wrap up

This weekend has had a little bit of everything, the relaxing, the productive, the indoors, the outdoors, the sick and the well, time for preparing and time for spontaneous...

Saturday morning started off with Ryan mowing the yard. These two found it quite entertaining, staying glued to the windows most of the time. After Ryan got done mowing I went on a 5 mile run, it was beautiful and lovely day to run. Unfortunately I forgot the sun screen and got a slight burn but otherwise was so glad to wake up not be sore at all today! 

Ryan caught a second raccoon for the week. Something had been getting in our trash bins, apparently these cute guys were the culprit. Don't worry no harm came to them, they just crawl in the cage to get the ham and then the door closes behind them, Ryan takes them down the road a ways more in the country and releases them again.

The neighborhood kids were quite excited about the catch.

Saturday evening Ava and I enjoyed a dinner just the two of us, I had a craving for Mazzio's we went about 5:00 before our grocery shopping trip. We were the only ones there for most of the time, Ryan is still in crunch time for work till the end of the month so he was at the office, so we tried to make the most of the time just the two of us.

Then Poor Ava bear started throwing up Saturday evening. Hopefully she's in the clear now, I made her first couch pallet for today. I remember growing up mom and dad would always set up with the best couch pallet when were sick with all the comfort items you could want.

Rest of today involves a six mile run later this evening and laundry this afternoon, I hope Ava is well enough to enjoy the sunshine later today. We also worked on the play room, cleaned and organized for the garage sale later this spring and I did some reading on finishing up training for the half marathon, only 5 weeks to go, while I'm a little behind the schedule, I am confident as long as I can stay on track from here I think I can do it!

These are my favorite kind of weekends (minus Ava being sick of course) I love when its a little bit of everything. Pretty soon our weekends are booked solid for a while. so it was good to enjoy one spent mostly at home. Hope your enjoying your weekend!

23 Months

This week we hit the 23 month mark! Here's the monthly highlight list. 

• Singing! It so sweet when she breaks out in songs like her abc's, or twinkle twinkle little star, she can now sing all of those songs and today for the first time she sang a along in church when they sang Jesus loves me. I've tried to get video of her singing solos but she always stops when the camera comes out. Her other favorite song lately is if you're happy and you know it, she loves to do the stomping your feet part and frequently asks me to sing "happy feet".
• We have frequented the play ground in our neighborhood several times now and almost daily she will ask "go to park?" She just started being brave enough to go down slides on her own and she loves it!
• She knows several shapes, is counting to 5ish in order, and can sing her ABCs.
• Baby dolls are still her favorite, especially putting them down for naps. I can already see that one of her spiritual gifts is being a nurturer. It is natural to her like breathing. When babies or other kids are crying,  she says to me "they sad" and often tries to think of someway she can offer comfort. In the church nursery the attendants tell me she is making sure other babies have their toys and goes around giving pats on the back. 
• She loves to ask me "what doing mama?" Here's a frequent conversation we have these days: "What doing mama?" "I'm driving" "What doing mama?" I'm driving" to break this cycle I say "What are you doing" "I readin' book". pause for a moment. "Mama are you drivin'?".
• She loves the zoo and as soon as you enter often she starts saying "elephant" - by far her favorite animal (which is what I came up for her birthday theme this year). Our elephants are at the very back of the zoo so its a trek back there but hard to say no to that enthusiasm. 
• She loves to brush her teeth, sometimes asks in the middle of the day. I'm not sure how long she would keep going. I always have to stop the brushing after a while, often to her disappointment. 
• She's started testing limits more, When I have to put her in time out she immediately starts saying "listen and mind", this is the language I use when I put her in time out and get her out to try link that not listening and minding means time out. I think it's interesting when I give the 1 timeout warning she usually always still has to go to timeout but when I get her out of timeout and have her repeat whatever I told her to do, she always does it right way? So I feel like she's making some connections with it but its still a work in progress. Luckily she usually does listen and mind and this makes both our lives easier. 

This girl will be 2 next month! Seems like her birth wasn't that long ago. I am loving this stage too, she's so fun, funny, curious, affectionate and active!

Happy Friday...

Sometimes you just need to put the chores on hold and do something fun, especially on a Friday! I decided this Friday to keep Ava with me as sometimes I now take her now to Mothers day out for part of the day on Friday at our church to get errands ran and have a little me time. But I just wasn't feeling it this Friday, this Friday I wanted to just take it easy, spend the day with Ava and spend the day with some best friends. It was funny that on Thursday AM and I both tried calling each other and kept missing each other, both with the same thing on our Friday radar, we needed to spend some quality time together.  It was so good today to not have to be anywhere at any special time and to just enjoy watching our girls play, getting to talk and laugh as long as we wanted. Friendship is one of God's richest blessings, I love the friends he has placed in my life and don't thank Him enough for the ways he uses them to nurture, encourage and challenge me, each in their own way. Speaking of friendship check out this first shot I got today:

Ava and Iz holding hands, they love to do this out and about or just hanging out next to one another in their car seats.
 It melts our hearts every time!

This gives me hope for a successful beach trip this year, Ava wasn't a big fan of sand last year, her and Izzy played for a long time very happily in the sand today.

Someone has gained some independence recently when it comes to going down the slide.

Hope you have a great weekend! Put the chores on hold and go do something fun, call up that friend that you just need to be with because you know it will be good for your soul. Happy Friday!

Hello Spring!

Not that we had much of a winter but we are still excited for spring to start arriving. We enjoyed some outside playtime this week before the rain and cold arrived:

A few signs around our house that the new season is upon us: a sweet little Easter dress is hanging in someone's closet ready to makes its debut, side walk chalk and bubbles are at the ready in our outdoor play basket, there's a picnic blanket in the trunk of my car for any spontaneous outdoor detours we might need to make, and the feeling of spring cleaning fever is taking hold (some major de-cluttering and organizing is in our near future!) Happy springing forward weekend! 

Ups and Downs...

Well the last few weeks has been marked by lots of ups and downs, thus the lack of posts. I am glad as I reflect there was lots of ups to balance out the downs and that February 2012 is in the books!

Downs:

Ava got the stomach bug and threw up 10 times throughout one night. After she got better from that she got pneumonia! I realize that doesn't take up a lot of room for the "down" section of this post but it was pretty consuming of our time, energy and attention and we are just starting to get back to normal around here. 

Ups:

My birthday was that same weekend as the stomach bug, once she felt a bit better, Ryan took me to get some fitted for real running shoes for my birthday. I quietly rung in year 31 and I'm okay with that these days. Also very thankful Ryan and I somehow did not get the stomach bug!

My boss thought it was my 30th, she and the rest of our little management team group gave me the most touching gift, When I arrived at our weekly management team there were 30 cards all over the table with an affirmation written on each one about me. I hated to break it to her it was my 31st but absolutely was so touched by the thoughtfulness of them. I love the people I get to work with, they make me want to be a better clinician and person. 

I went to our ladies retreat, Ava came swimming with me before I spent my very first night away from her. I had a good time and my most favorite, some good sleep, the-no-dog-no-baby-no-snoring-husband kind of good sleep. It was glorious. 

We are glad to welcome March. Hopefully it will bring wellness along with its sunshine and first glimpses of spring!