Happy Halloween!

Aubrey hopes you all have a Happy Halloween Day!

John's Birthday

So I know that John's birthday was almost a month ago, but I still want to share the pictures and the cool stuff we did. Aubrey and I picked out a few presents.

Aubrey helped him open his presents. Isn't that nice of her? 

We left Aubrey with a baby-sitter that wasn't related to her for the first time and went out to dinner. It was really fun. We also had a Root Beer tasting party. Sadly, I forgot to take pictures of the taste test table. We bought Dixie cups and lined them up on the table for each different kind. We also made root beer which I did take pictures of. 

The homemade root beer was amazing. My favorite from the taste test was A&W and John landed on Mug, with Barq's a close second. 

Happy Birthday, John! We love you. 

Stuff I Made

So, I have been crafty lately. It's something I look forward to during the day and it motivates me to get all my work done. So I wanted to share a few of the things I made. I'm also working on photographing my projects, so please excuse the amateur pictures.

I really needed a place to organize my time, family events and random papers. I was drooling over these awesome bulletin boards. So I wanted to make some of my own. I got a regular frame to be the dry-erase part of the Wall Of Organization.

I put fabric under the glass and just use a regular dry erase marker to make my daily to-do lists. I found a frame with no glass in the clearance section at Michael's. It was perfect for the next section of the Wall Of Organization: the magnet board. This part turned out to be a little more complicated than I anticipated. I went to Home Depot and got a metal sheet. I covered that with the same fabric. 

John had some super-strong magnets and he said I could use them. So I glued some pretty glass on them and had some lovely magnets. 

It took a little more work and cost a little more than I thought, but it turned out really well. And the best part is it's really working to help me stay organized. 

The next thing is an idea a good friend of mine had. Someone made her daughter a really cute pillowcase dress and she thought we could use it as a pattern for a dress for Aubrey. I has some fabric that I had bought intending to use in Aubrey's room, but those decorating plans kind of changed. So the fabric was available for a new project!

It's pretty cute and Aubrey wore it to church. Sadly, the binding fell off while we were there. And it's kind of too short for her. So I'll still have to practice my dress-making skills. 

Aubrey: Home for 4 Months

Isn't she so cute? She rolled from her back to her stomach today, for the very first time. She also ate rice cereal and did pretty well. We'll keep working on it! She also thanks Grandma Janis for the very cute outfit. 

Remembering Rachel

The weekend that Aubrey was blessed, we also had a celebration for Rachel. A dear friend suggested that we choose a symbol for little Rachel and that a butterfly would be a good one. So we decided to do a butterfly release to remember Rachel.

We got the butterflies from this farm. They are cooled so they are dormant but alive for shipping. They come in these lovely custom envelopes.

The butterflies like to crawl on fingers before flying away.

Many of the butterflies liked visiting Aubrey.

Aubrey Got Blessed

John gave Aubrey a blessing on September 4, 2011. Both sets of grandparents were able to be here and share the event with us.