it's one of those weeks.

you know,

the kind that make you want to pull your hair out?

i feel like i have been working non-stop {dang you heather! you're never allowed a vacation ever again! i sure hope you're enjoying yourself!}

i feel like i have hardly seen my serena & sean.

i feel like my inbox will NEVER be cleared out.

i feel like we have totally maxed out our babysitters... and we will need one tonight and tomorrow.

i feel like i haven't relaxed in ages and my shoulders need a deep massage.

i feel like i'm really excited for our dress rehearsal tonight and concert tomorrow, but i kind of can't wait for saturday when it's all over with.

sorry. had to vent.

in other news, we went to another ob appointment yesterday and though it is super early to be calling it, doc thinks it looks like a girl! {let's hope it is now that we've told everyone... or our poor boy will be completely offended and embarrassed.} i'm not putting too much stock in it {sean is}. we'll find out for sure next time.

{sorry i just blogged at work, stephanie. i needed a 5 minute break after i sent those dang handbooks off to be printed.}

i love you, friend.

this sweet journal is coming in the mail for me :)

i've said it before, but sarahjane is amazing. her illustrations are so perfect.



don't they make you want to be a kid again?

utah voices spring concert.

i bet you need something exciting to do this weekend!

it's going to be awesome, i promise. purchase tickets here.

relaxation and relief.

last night i had a burger and fries, just like i wanted.
then we went to bath & body and bought a bunch of this good stuff,
along with some lemon and coconut lotions {two of my favorite scents}.
sean got a last minute invite to the jazz game,
so i
put serena to bed,
gave myself a pedicure,
watched who do you think you are?,
had an apple with peanut butter,

AND

finally finished the custom order that has been in the works for a week. this morning i shipped it off. it was a huge relief! now i'm so very ready for a break from the etsy shop.

i had a delicious and nutritious lunch.

quinoa salad. recipe here.

and i really really want a burger and fries for dinner.

i'm pregnant. i can do that without guilt.

and speaking of tulips.

i was so happy to find these when i came in to work on wednesday. {happy administrative professionals day to me!}

penguin's poems for love.

isn't she beautiful? i'm a little bit of a sucker for poetry books, and especially when they are beautiful on the outside too. the cover was designed by coralie bickford-smith who did all of those pretty penguin classics. it was a pain to track down {i could only find it in the uk}, but so worth the cuteness it will add to my shelf :)

{includes poems by w. h. auden, william shakespeare, john donne, emily dickinson, robert browning, roger mcgough, etc.}

tulip festival.

yesterday was perfection. serena & i went to the tulip festival with my mom. we had mexican for lunch on the way. stopped to buy sunglasses, which i haven't had for probably 6 months. the gardens at thanksgiving point were so so beautiful. the colors were so vibrant! the hyacinth smelled so pretty! the wind made it perfect {otherwise it would have just been hot}. we blew some bubbles into the wind, had an ice cream cone, and our skin got sun-kissed. i wish the sunshine would have stayed for a few more days.

the name game.

have you ever checked out nameberry.com? it's a pretty great source if you're in search of baby names. they recently posted lists of the top 100 boys and girls names of 2010 so far. not the most popular, necessarily, but their top names. here are the top ten of each:

boys:
1. henry
2. finn
3. oliver
4. james
5. asher
6. jack
7. max
8. quinn
9. jude
10. liam

girls:
1. charlotte
2. seraphina
3. olivia
4. elizabeth
5. isla
6. sophia
7. alice
8. violet
9. lucy
10. ava

we have two names in mind for a girl and though they weren't at the top, they were on the list. i'm kind of happy about that. one of them was found on both lists, which i thought was weird because i never thought of it as a unisex name.

we really struggle with boy names. we wouldn't have used a single name in the top 100. we are in trouble if this little one is a boy.

is your baby's name on the list?

{find the rest of the lists here and here.}

thank you, serenabee customers.

lookie what you bought for me!

i ordered them large in hopes that they will still fit me in august when my belly is big...

can't wait for sunny days at the pool!

i'm still alive.

just completely buried in yarn.

it's crazy how selling your stuff for dirt cheap makes the orders roll in :) i'm currently working on a custom order for a lady who wants me to match flowers to 15 different outfits for her three daughters. it's fun, but WOW a lot of time.

we have also been celebrating sean's 30th birthday. i think he's offended that i didn't do a birthday post for him, but i was under the impression that he wanted to not be reminded that he is now an old man! weird... sean will be in his thirties and me in my twenties for the next five years!

serena has decided to cut 3 teeth at once, so we've had some pretty miserable {sleepless} nights around here. it's a good thing she's so cute and i love her so much.

tonight we are off to lindsay's second derby bout! we're pretty excited! go o town! we're bringing some friends and i think they'll love it.

tv makes me cry.

esepcially when i'm pregnant. a few things i cried about this week:

watching a re-run of the "sectionals" episode of glee. rachel singing "don't rain on my parade" = amazing.

this story on the news. {it was so upsetting to me that i cried on and off for at least an hour.}

when o'neal won the car and gave it to sunshine {biggest loser reference}.

fyi.

i will continue updating the shop until sunday. so if you wanted something that just sold, wait a few hours and i'll list it again.

last call!

after much thought, i have decided to close my SerenaBee shop. mostly because:

1. i never update it.
2. i hear oversized bows are the next big thing for hair {and i'm not fond of crocheted bows}. i'll still be rocking the flowers, though, don't worry :)
3. everyone and their dog can crochet these days, so it's not so unique anymore. you can find about one billion etsy shops selling the same stuff that i do.

i'm keeping it open for one more week. for my closing sale, everything in the shop is now half off. that means most headbands are $5.00 and clips are $3.00. if you want 'em, come and get 'em!

{serenabee will be closing on wednesday, april 21}

a year of fhe.

have you seen this website? 52 family home evening lessons. each month has a theme and there is a lesson for every week. each lesson includes a scripture, song, lesson plan, activity and sometimes an additional coloring page or treat. i love it!

april's theme is our beautiful world and this week's lesson is about the seasons. i love this darling download:

check it out here.

bleh.

fried chicken instead of a bun.

wow.

this made me dry heave when we drove past kfc today.

promised before & after.

i'm happy with it. but more importantly, sean loves it. after all, it was his birthday present.

eleven.

{not the best pictures... but she won't sit still long enough to have a decent picture taken...}

at eleven months, serena:

loves dancing and "singing".
copies everything we do.
crawls and "cruises" all over the place.
has 4 teeth on top and 2 on bottom.
wears size 24 months.
has a george mcfly laugh.
is finally starting to feed herself {she rarely puts anything in her mouth, so doing it with food was a hard concept}.
she has almost mastered the sippy cup.
waves "hi" and "bye bye".
understands "no" but doesn't necessarily obey.
shakes her head "no" and nods "yes".
STILL throws fits EVERY TIME she has to get dressed/undressed/diaper changed. {you would think she would realize by now that it's just a part of life...}
loves to push buttons.
holds everything to her ear and pretends it's a phone.
crawls up the stairs {finally had to put the gate up}.
loves the imagination movers, mickey mouse, and charlie & lola.
sits facing front in the car. {best thing ever!}
likes to eat applesauce, bananas, oatmeal, waffles, noodles, peas, asparagus, and whatever is on our plates.
brushes her hair if we give her a comb or brush {tries to, anyway!}.

i say this every month, but i really can't believe how quickly she is growing up! this month has been so fun with all of the new things she's learning. i love that she is understanding more and copying us. she is a little sweetheart and we're excited to celebrate her first birthday pretty soon!

{pictures later}

food, glorious food.

i am so drooling over the last few posts on eat your veggies, peas. if only i felt like cooking EVER. i guess pregnancy will do that to a girl. i want to eat all the time, but heaven forbid i cook anything. check out these nummies:

chicken cordon bleu pasta by gretchen

beef pot roast by emily

crunchy garlic chicken by gina

tonight i am challenging myself to cook something. maybe you'll see a post on EYVP from me tomorrow. {maybe. probably don't count on it though.}

small update.

sorry for the lack of interesting posts. a few updates:

thank you thank you thank you all for your great suggestions for recovering my photos. my dad & uncle have been working on it. they bought a recovery program and it looks like they will be able to get my photos and itunes back! i am beyond ecstatic and grateful! i will be purchasing an external hard drive AND backing my photos up online. lesson learned. crisis averted. no more tears about that {there were quite a few}.

sean and i have been busy spending part of our tax return on a new tv and entertainment unit. sean is giddy about his ginormous new tv. i don't think i'll ever understand why size matters so much to men when it comes to their tvs. but it's obviously important to him, so i let him get the huge one, even when i had made it known i preferred the 42 inch. we spent 3 hours putting the dang ikea storage unit together tonight. i'll have to post a before and after tomorrow when i can take a picture in daylight.

serena is all over the place. yesterday she learned how to crawl up the stairs and now we get to straddle the gate every time we need to go upstairs. she is into everything all the time. on our way home from the store today, i put the diaper bag a little too close to her car seat. she quietly pulled everything out of it, found the goldfish crackers, dumped them all over herself and the car, and started chowing down. it was pretty hilarious. even though we just vacuumed the car :)

and that's all for now. sooooo glad it's friday tomorrow!

i ♥ ikea for kiddos.

all of ikea's dinnerware for kids is so adorable and so incredibly cheap. love the doggy sippy cups.


and i may have just found a $20.00 solution to the headboard dilemma. the picture doesn't do this canopy justice. it was darling on display. now if i could just be sure that serena won't yank it right out of the ceiling.

gone.

today i got some very very bad news.

remember when my computer was sick?

well, since then i have been using a different computer. the sick computer, which had all of my pictures on it, was waiting to be fixed. we're talking 6 years of digital photos. and every single photo i've taken since serena's birth. sean and his dad got around to working on the old computer today.

it is wiped clean.

everything is gone.

luckily, i used to upload all of my photos to my old work computer, and they are still there. but all of these are before serena was born. luckily i posted a lot of pictures on this blog which i can save.

unfortunately, in june-ish of 2009, i started uploading all of my photos to photobucket before posting them on the blog. partly so i could have them the size i wanted, and partly so weirdos couldn't click into them and have the whole giant image. and now i can't click into them. i can only have the crappy, small, poor quality images from photobucket. and i've been doing that for most of serena's life.

i don't have the full size image of sean, myself & serena on her blessing day. and i really only have maybe 6 from that day, all of which i put text over for the blog.

i have only a precious few pictures {posted on the blog} of serena's birth and our time in the hospital. i'll never have the cute pictures that sean took of her first bath at the hospital because i didn't post them on the blog.

i lost all but a few pictures of our trip to hawaii.

and so so SO so many more memories wiped out just like that.

i bawled my face off. and now i'll be searching every disc, flash drive, and memory card in my house to see if there might be a photo on it. hopefully you learn from my mistake and back up your photos. i'm so sick about it.

so, friends & family, if you have any pictures from the last year or so that include our little family, please email or burn to a disc. it would be much appreciated.

top ten reasons why i love april.

1. easter.
2. spring flowers and hints of green all over.
3. birthdays. {sean and half of his family, sister heather}
4. baby animals. i especially love the lambs that live near my house. sooo cute!
4. hopefully the end of snow and the beginning of walks outside.
5. umbrellas. my favorite is pink & polka dotty.
6. losing the tights & letting my legs see sunlight again.
7. spring clothes for serena.
8. spring cleaning.
9. strawberries and asparagus.
10. waking up to chirping birds.

now if it would just start looking more like april and less like january. i'm sooooooooo ready.

{all gorgeous photos from here.}

i dyed some eggs.

i got the urge while i was listening to general conference. i don't believe in fancy eggs and all of those shrink wrap jackets and whatnot, so i used regular food dye. i can't wait to have creamed eggs on toast! it's a favorite and i usually only have it at easter.

easter food is the best.

i'm making this cookie salad for the family dinner tomorrow. with lots of strawberries.

also can't wait to eat my peeps first thing tomorrow morning :)

thoughts and feelings about baby no. 2.

1. we are both ecstatic! i called sean at work to tell him the second after the test came back positive. we were both so giddy! we didn't expect it to happen so quickly, but we're thrilled that they will be so close in age {and still 2 years apart in school}. we think it would be fun to have another girl so they can be best sister friends, but we would be equally happy with a boy {if we could just agree on some boy names...}.

2. i'm terrified. i'm just getting used to being mother to ONE. i can't even imagine how any cleaning, cooking, showering or breathing will fit into the day with a toddler and a newborn. and what will i do with sleeping arrangements?? i figure the baby will sleep in the bassinet for a couple of months, but then we have to kick serena out of the crib. and we're not doing a toddler bed. she has to go straight to a twin. this makes me nervous. AND serena isn't even going to know what hit her! all of the sudden she won't be the center of attention anymore. poor girl! lots of things to worry about, but i try to just remember how excited we are and how fun it will be for serena to have a sibling.

if you have had 2 under 2, i would love any advice or encouragement {please keep all horror stories to yourself!}. i would especially love to hear what you did about sleeping arrangements.