Lena's first trip to the aquarium

Lena and I went to the Florida Aquarium in Tampa for the first time. Lena loves looking at fish so I figured she would love it, and she did! We went with Laura and Ethan and the kiddies had a great time!

Ethan and Lena and her new mermaid she had to get from the aquarium!

Lena and some fun fishies!

Yay for fish!

Most important bit of news...

Ricky is home!

Ricky got back a few days ago from his almost 14 month deployment. He is well and in one piece. What more could we ask for?! Ricky is in Germany right now and will be coming to Tampa at the beginning of June for 27 days of leave, then going back to Germany for a few months to finish some stuff and then move to Ft. Benning, Georgia. There will be more pictures of him to come when he gets to Tampa next week.

Catching up

Ok folks...clearly I am not the best blogger. It seems that I forget that I even have a blog sometimes! Yikes! Anyway, i'm going to try REALLY hard to play catch up over the next few days, so keep checking back!

Here are some pictures from when me and my friend, Laura, took our kiddies to the Strawberry Festival. Lena got her first strawberry shortcake and didn't seem to like it. We had a great time, and Lena and her "boyfriend" Ethan had a fun time holding hands. Seriously, how cute is that?! Ethan is Laura's son who is almost 2 now. Ethan is also my Godson and has a crush on Lena :)

Beach Day!

Last week we had a babies & beach day! Laura, Alison and I took our kiddos to the beach and had a great time! Lena enjoyed the actual beach, not so much the water though :) Here are some pictures of the fun!

Last ones!

And more!

More pics!

Georgia!

Last week Lena and I went to Georgia to visit our friends Jessica, Grant, and Kiera Flynn. I've mentioned them before on the blog but in case you are a new blog stalker, we used to be neighbors in Germany. Jess and I are great friends and I needed some QT time with her, so we drove to Georgia! It was so much fun and exactly what I needed. While we were there, Jess took some phenomenal photos of Lena and I. I was going to try and only post my favorites, but I love them all, so there will be a lot of pictures, so prepare yourself!

Jess, thank you for using your gift to capture Lena and I, I absolutely love these photos and can't wait to wall paper my house with them. Thank you for your friendship, your love, your listening capabilities, and being able to speak to my heart. (And for getting my sense of humor!). You are a blessing to me!

My first half marathon

Ok, so I have some catching up to do...

On Feb. 1st I ran my first half marathon! For all you non-runners, a half marathon is 13.1 miles. It was awesome and extremely challenging! The weather was terrible and rained on me for miles 9-13 and the wind was terrible! And it was cold. But, I did it anyway! Here were my stats:

My finish time was 2 hours 18 minutes

I finished 915 out of 1842 females

I finished 2123 out of 3449 total finishers

Here are some pictures to prove it!

Important discovery

I totally forgot to post this! A few weeks ago Lena made an important discovery...

She discovered where her toy box is! Now she has no problem crawling over to it, and choosing which toys she wants to play with. This also leads to more toys sprawled about the house, but that's okay! :)

Lena's first trip to the park!

My next door neighbor has a little boy who is 3 months older than Lena, so her and I get together a lot to have our kids play together. Last week we took them to the part together and it was a ton of fun. Lena wasn't too sure about the swings at first, she just held on for dear life. But, she started warming up to the idea.

Oh! And Lena-poo turned 8 months on Tuesday! How time flies! Now I get to start my planning for her first birthday party! YAY!

Play time with Corky

Here are some fun pictures of Lena playing with Corky. Corky is slowing adjusting to a mobile Lena. Sometimes he will just run circles around her while she is crawling and bark at her and she thinks it's SO funny. It's great to see them play together!

Crawling!

Here is a little video of Lena crawling. She started crawling a few weeks ago and now she is speedy and curious! She took her own little personal tour of the house yesterday, it was funny to watch. She is having a lot of fun with her new found mobility. Oh, and tilt your head...the video is sideways.

I have teeth!

Lena has her 2 bottom teeth in and she is working on her top ones. It's fun that she has teeth now because she can get a few tastes of real food instead of baby mush! ha! However, the un-fun part of teeth is that it hurts when she bites! Yikes! :)

Happy Belated Valentine's Day

I'm going to do some blog catching up, so prepare yourself :)

Here is a little picture of Lena in her Valentine's Day dress! She's the cutest!

Seriously, I need to blog more...

So last weekend I took a little mini vacation and went to Texas to visit my friend Shauna and attend her "creative camp out." Shauna is an ARTIST and I mean that in every way. She paints, she is a pro photographer, she sings, she writes music, she knits, there is nothing this girl can't do. Shauna and I met in Germany and became instant friends. Shauna and I are cut from the same cloth and she is such an inspiration to me and has the ability to challenge me and love on me and speak truth into my heart. I LOVE this girl.

This is Shauna

Shauna guided me through my first attempt at painting and helped me cultivate my inner artist. Thank you, Shauna for my creative therapy, I really needed it :)

Shauna got a candid of me in deep thought in my painting process

My finished product. I painted one of Shauna's photographs she took in Venice.

Me, Shauna, and her sister Jacklyn lookin' fly