Baby Rooms, Birthdays, and Bossypants

 I am loving baby girl nursery decorating. I have so many ideas and hope they all come together!

Printer's Alley provided me with a good starting point of inspirational fabrics: 

I think robin's egg blue + celery might be the winning combo.

Here are some of my wish list items so far...



Serena and Lily



Carousel Designs







Cafe Baudelaire on Etsy

Cork board via Etsy



Owl Bookends, Pottery Barn Kids

This Saturday was jam-packed with birthday celebrations. It was the perfect day to celebrate cousin Oliver's 4th birthday at the city park in Burlington. We had so much fun!!



(Can you spot a mischievously handsome child waiting to pick up some ladies?)







The train ride was cool...



but Van kept a tight grip on daddy!



Happy Birthday Oliver!

After such a fun morning, Van crashed in the car ride to Chapel Hill where we celebrated Aunt Routhie's birthday! Despite the Tarheel's unsuccessful, nail biting comeback we still managed to enjoy an outdoor BBQ party on a beautiful fall Chapel Hill afternoon.  I may have updated pictures soon!

Lastly-- if you haven't already, I encourage you to read Tina Fey's Bossypants.  It is weird and funny. Just that.

 I don't know why this makes me laugh so hard, but I'll leave you with my favorite page so far:

Happy Fall!!

Turning 2 Blue Party!

The highlight of Van's 2 year old birthday party was his new play house!!

Isn't it cute? Thanks to some late-night, long assembly hours from Diddy, Pop-pop and Daddy, this house (which began as a ton of individual pieces) 

was built and ready to surprise him Saturday morning.

A doorbell too!





Cousin Oliver!



Open house...



We also attempted a hand-print activity for the kids to take home.

Thanks to Evans's artistic mom & aunt, this too was a success!



And footprints!





Happy Birthday Bud!





We still need to teach Van how to steer his jeep. Evans pulled his back out trying to lift an off-roaded Van out of the ivy patch! An urgent care trip and some pain killers later, he is set to heal after a few days of rest.



We could not have pulled off such a fun party without all Van's grandparents who helped with everything from babysitting, cooking, painting, cleaning, urgent care wheel chair support, and backyard construction work! We love and appreciate everyone who could come to the party and miss those there in spirit. I am so glad we have these precious handprints to remind us of such a fun day!!



Vitality:

The capacity to live.

Also known as Auntie Snags's definition of motherhood.

We've been doing lots of living around here!!

Our trip to Vermont was sensational. Van was a trooper with 2 of our days beginning as early as 3:45 AM...he greeted us each morning with a "PWANE??!! PWANE?!?" (airplane) each time.

We even experienced an extremely turbulent flight home, but Van thought it was fun! He was smiling and saying "wheee!!" each time we hit a windy patch of clouds. All other passengers were gripping their seats...

Frasier greeted her cousin Van with open arms and the sweetest heart. It was the perfect age to get them together.

They were instant buds, and like their mothers--

have their own way of communicating with each other.



You'll catch up soon, Baby Zeph!





Apple picking!





At the pumpkin patch!



We stayed pretty busy.  Snags & I had a glimpse of life with three children under the age of three and it was quite overwhelming! (We even had an adult to match each child!)

May we come back soon, please?

Last but not least, we found out the gender of the little baby in my belly!

This February we will be excitedly welcoming a little girl!!

Everything looked strong and healthy. She's got some big shoes to fill...Van has been such an angel to us over the past two years!