Valentine's Cards at Tiny Prints!

Can you believe it's already January 31st? I mean, seriously. Tomorrow begins the second month of 2012, and with it comes one of my favorite holidays - Valentine's Day!

My excitement about V-day dates back to some baller classroom parties my teacher's put on for us back in elementary school, and those memories of first crushes and receiving valentine's and chocolates propelled me through my awkward single girl phase before I arrived at nearly-married B. Anyhow, I want Ava to have as wonderful a memory and anticipation of Valentine's Day as I do, and so I try to do it up right each year, complete with personalized Valentine's.

This year at Christmas, we saw some pretty fantastic cards come our way from Tiny Prints, and so I knew that I wanted to give them a try! They have some amazing Valentine's card selections, from full-sized Valentines Day Greeting Cards to smaller Valentine Cards, and I was immediately drawn to this design. Now, we'll be able to knock the socks off of our friends at our moms group's valentine's day party!



As for you, you can find out more about Tiny Prints and all their awesomeness by checking them out at the following places:

-"Like" Tiny Prints on Facebook for updates about great promotions!
-You can get up to the minute Tiny Prints news by following them on Twitter, or
-You can find them on everyone's new social network fave, Pinterest, for great creative ideas!

Which is your favorite Tiny Prints card this year?

Friday Phone Dump.

Too cool for school:

Happy girl!

Ready to weather the storm (which was really and truly terrifying! A tornado touched down five mins away!!!):

Ava taking dinner into her own hands:

"Princess, mommy!"

Ava is obsessed with being a "tiny baby" right now. Sigh.

And last, but not least, our new froggy friends, Mickey and Minnie Mouse :)

Wordless Wednesday: Bridal Portrait Preview!

Obviously I can't/won't post any of my dress prior to the wedding, but here's a couple of our little flower girl to tide you over :D

Girl's Weekend!

David's bachelor party was this past weekend, so he took off with the boys to Vegas, and my mom, Ava and I got to have a girl's weekend. We had a GREAT time!

Friday, since I unfortunately still had to work, we loaded up all four kids and drove down to New Braunfels to the Natural Bridge Wildlife Safari for the second time. It was awesome.















After we dropped the boys back off at the end of the day, we headed to Michaels to make a quick stop to look for a flower girl basket for Ava. Over $100 and an hour later, we walked out with the makings for some DIY wedding crafts, including A's flower girl basket, her flower girl headband to coordinate, and - most importantly since my bridal portraits were the next morning - the makings for my flowers. I hadn't been planning to do silk flowers, but I wanted a bouquet to do my pictures, and most of all wanted to do wedding stuff with my mom, so we decided on colors and flowers then and there. We spent the rest of the night putting them together and chatting/watching TV and movies together :)

Here's the finished bouquet (pardon the crappy phone picture):



Saturday morning began bright and early, since we were planning to take advantage of the natural morning light for my bridal pictures. I had been stressed about how to do my hair and makeup, since I was planning to have them professionally done and my pictures started at 9am and I had no one booked yet, but my mom and I made it happen. It was awesome. She's definitely the mother of four girls! Ha!

I won't say much about my bridals, except that I always have a hard time in front of the camera that way. When photographed interacting in a normal setting, I'm all about it. But just me, in front of the camera, trying to act natural? FAIL. Thankfully, my photographer is so fantastic, she made it work and I can't wait to see the final product :) There will be a sneaky sneak peek this week for Wordless Wednesday of our flower girl :)




After that was over, we headed over to Central Market to play and eat lunch, since we were all starving after hours of "playing dress up" (Ava was such a trooper!!!!). We had a great afternoon! From there, we went home, and just chilled out for the rest of the night and Sunday before my mom left after lunch, enjoying one another's company. Ava LOVED having grandma in town!!!!!

Friday Phone Dump.

I'm out and about exploring Austin and New Braunfels with my mom, who is in town for the weekend while David enjoys his bachelor party in Vegas, so I'll leave you with this for the week. This is an absolutely perfect way for me to clean out my phone camera each week, and also let you know what we're up to when we're not around. Thanks, Emily!

Playing at the park:

She's got quite the arm!

Being a perfect angel at church!

Charlie's littlest angel:

From our playdate this weekend with the girls:


Lovin' on daddy while he BBQ's (safely, of course!):

Mommy's little tomboy:


I'll be back Monday to talk about our fun weekend, including a wildlife safari and bridal portraits!!! Have a great weekend!

"Balyina!"

"Mommy, balyina (ballerina)! Nutcracker! See toes?!"



She makes my heart swoon :D

In other news, taking her to the Nutcracker left an obviously huge impression on her. She talks about it almost every single day!

Wordless Wednesday - Besties.

My Trip to Carter Physiotherapy: Part 2

If you haven't read about my first trip over to Carter Physiotherapy, you can check it out here.

My second visit started right where the first had left off, re-checking my hip alignment for progress. Thankfully, and due to the miraculous hands of Dr. Carter, I was able to do the at-home stretches to the point of alleviating my pain, and my alignment showed signs of improvement also! Score!

Though the appointment was initially scheduled in order to do a second treatment for my existing back pain, the visit's purpose changed dramatically when I revealed that I had woken up the day before with one of the worst cricks in my neck of all time. It was so bad, in fact, that 36 hours later, it was still going strong and keeping me almost entirely from turning my head to either side or looking up and down.

Dr. Carter checked it out, having me look in all four directions while manually feeling for the cause of the tension, and admitted that it was more than your run of the mill crick in the neck. A major reason likely had to do with the way I had fallen back to sleep around Ava in the middle of the previous night, so the pain I felt functioned more like that of an injury than your standard "I slept wrong" type of pain. Anyhow, once he was able to get a detailed explanation of where it hurt and what provoked it, he set to work on trying to alleviate the pain.

Now I'm sure this is starting to sound like a glorified massage. But let me tell you, it was much more than that. Sure, he did use some massage techniques in order to decrease the tension in my neck, but he was also constantly evaluating the effect he was having on the area by having me look to the sides and up and down to see exactly how much my range of motion was increasing, and studying the way in which his techniques were affecting what was going on with me intramuscularly. And, if we're being completely honest, it was more painful than your average massage!

What I can honestly say also, though, is that the pain was entirely worth it, and I felt relief almost immediately! Whereas I walked in grateful for my blind spot mirrors and with a very limited range of motion, I left being able to turn my head significantly farther in each direction, especially to each side. I was sent home with instructions to apply ice three times daily (with a barrier to prevent the ice from burning my skin), and to work on my posture in order to keep the muscles relaxed. And, much to my extreme relief, I felt significant improvement immediately that carried over to feeling completely healed within a few days!

Here is more on what Dr. Carter recommends for the all-too-common crick in the neck!

Wolfy.

Ava has an imaginary friend.

I would have told you she was a bit young for an imaginary friend. In fact, I don't remember having one until I was five, though I don't remember much at all before I was five, so there is that. Anyhow, Ava's invisible friend has emerged with full force in the past few days, and it's pretty stinkin' adorable.

His name is "Wolfy". And yes, we've clarified that he's a boy. She told us so. She also mentioned that he's blue, and, duh, a wolf. She's been obsessed with wolves since we saw one on Little Einsteins a few months back, and brings them up often, so this really isn't the biggest surprise in that her imaginary friend takes wolf form. I get that she's trying to make sense of her fears, and anytime she talks about being scared, it's always been "wolf!", so this is definitely helping that.

When you ask her about Wolfy, she'll tell you he's a "nice wolf". And lately, that nice wolf is EVERYWHERE. We'll be sitting cuddled up on the couch watching Dora, and she'll say, "Mommy! Wolfy! RIGHT THERE!" Sometimes, she'll pull a pillow off of the couch and lay it on the floor and say, "Wolfy nap". The other day when we were playing outside with our (real) dog, Hank, she told him, "Hank, sit," Adding, "Wolfy sit too." Awwwww.

I kind of like Wolfy, to be honest. And I think it's a cute way for her to work through her fears :)

Cheers!

Ava is obsessed with the word/concept of "Cheers!", and she totally seems to understand it (we may be drinking too many weekend mimosas at brunch...)!

It started off that she would cheers our cups at the dinner table, which we got a kick out of. Now, though, she does it for everything that's the same. Yesterday was one of the most precious instances:

Putting Ava into the car after the park, she was staring deeply into my eyes.

Ava: "Daddy has green eyes."
Me: "Yes, you're right!"
Ava: "Mommy brown eyes."
Me: "Yep, just like Ava."
Ava, pressing her eye to mine: "Cheers!"

GAH! She's just so cute. She's also been cheers-ing our toes together, since they're both painted the same color, and the other day when we were both blowing our noses, she touched her kleenex to mine and went, "Cheers!"

I love this age. Totally almost makes up for the fact that she dropped her animal on the ground earlier and said, "aw, shit." :X

Wordless Wednesday: Dancing at the Zoo!

An Impromptu Trip to the Cameron Park Zoo.

Yesterday, itching for something fun to do in the gorgeous weather, we made the nearly 100 mile drive to Waco, Texas to the Cameron Park Zoo. We didn't decide until mid-morning to go, so we timed our departure to directly after our early lunch, and it worked perfectly. Ava slept the entire drive, and when we got there, she was refreshed and ready to go!


The gibbons hammed it up for us!

The bald eagles made me sad :( Poor caged birds!

This was seriously the most child-friendly zoo I've ever visited. There were themed playscapes everywhere!

The cutest little monkey:

Aren't these fish fascinating?

There was a little cave you could crawl into where you could see the alligators up close and personal. Ava was brave!

The regal jaguar - one of my faves!

Ava in a teepee!

How awesome are these owls?

Their herpatarium was world class:

Ava wasn't remotely afraid of the snakes!

I'm partial to the giraffes...

When asked what her favorite animal was, Ava told us the rhino!

The elephant wasn't posing for us :/

The majestic lion:

She was not cooperating for this one: