happy spring!

the first day of spring is apparently up for debate. whether it is the 20th or 21st depends on where you look, but according to janie's closet, today is the day. it has seemed pretty spring-y in orlando for a few weeks now, and we have spent a good deal of time outside. we took janie to seaworld for the first time, which was a great success. i was hoping that she would be completely amazed at the dolphins or at the shamu show, but it turns out she was most impressed by the sting rays and the tourists screaming on roller coasters.

checking out the sting rays.

watching the roller coaster fly by for the 100th time.

no better end to a day at the park than a real ice cream cone.

last summer, we spent many hours packing for the beach, driving to and from the beach, and unpacking from the beach, only to spend a total of about 1 hour actually on the beach. this year, i am determined to make these trips worth the time it takes to prepare. last monday, we headed to new smyrna with some friends and most of our belongings. it was perfect. we brought a huge play pen for the babies, every beach toy imaginable, a little blow up pool, snacks to last us a week, multiple changes of clothes, a tent and pack n' play. we managed to get in 4 hours of beach time, followed by a lovely dinner at JB's. now that we have a day at the beach mastered with one baby, we will probably spend the rest of the summer learning how to make it happen with two. by the summer of 2012, i will be knocking out at least a novel a day, oceanside.

back to the blog

for real this time.

life at our house has been fun, crazy, and is flying by! baby #2 will be here in about 9 weeks. he is currently the weight of four oranges, and about 16 inches long. i think we have been too busy for the reality of having another baby in this house to sink in. i forget i'm pregnant at least 4 days out of the week. the other 3 i spend dreaming about mcdonald's filet-o-fish sandwiches and shamrock shakes, which makes it easy to remember that there is a little person growing inside my belly. (i have yet to give in to the filet-o-fish)

there is a lot to be done before this little guy arrives. currently, he has no room or definite name. we are in the process of getting what used to be the guest room turned into janie's new room, and once that is complete, we will transform janie's chandelier adorned nursery into a nice manly space.

old news

once again months have passed and we have been terrible keepers of a blog. the good news is, it's not for a lack of exciting stuff. the bad news is, the people reading this already know everything i'm about to write.

in short, janie is on the move, the holidays were great, and in may there will be 4 of us!

amazingly, we captured janie's first steps on video, making it only about the 6th video we've taken of her since she was born. luckily, grandparents are really great at documenting their grandkids lives and so we have plenty of photos. for christmas janie got a tricycle that she loves. it looks like a rocket ship, complete with a phone, sun shade and handle for us to push until her feet reach the pedals (although by then she will probably be ready for a 2-wheeler).

we are expecting simonds baby #2 in may and it's a boy! we were both really surprised to hear it (both that i was pregnant, and that is was a boy). for some reason we really thought it was another girl. i felt exactly the same as i did when i was pregnant with janie, craved all the same things, and this baby's heart rate was exactly the same as janie's was at every appointment we'd had until the ultrasound, so we just assumed that it must be a girl. we are so excited about having a little man around and are quickly accumulating boy things. we probably need to start thinking about replacing the super girly chandeliers and crystals in the nursery with manly things like lanterns and metal.

next week janie will be 1! i can't believe that it's been a whole year. that sweet little girl has brought us more joy in 358 days than i ever could have imagined experiencing in my life. everyday her personality is a little bit more hilarious, adventurous and feisty. she has no fears, except for the vacuum cleaner, and is smarter than we often think. we are so grateful that we get to be her parents.

the beach

i love the beach. i could spend every day there. luckily, janie seems to share the same affinity for sun and sand. we have been able to get out to the beach a number of times in the past month and it has been so great. we used to travel to the beach with a towel, a few bottles of water, and a book. things are slightly more complicated since the arrival of janie. now we pack most of our house into the back of the car for a two hour beach day. this is just one of the two cars that we took to the beach loaded with gear for four adults and two babies. we forgot water bottles, remembered one towel and i can assure you that reading books at the beach is a thing of the past and we did not waste any space transporting them in this trip.

the husbands headed out early to do a little fishing before we arrived with the chaos. it is a new kind of adventure going to the beach with babies, but it is so much fun. janie could happily play in the sand and water all day without food or naps. we usually conclude the day with an early dinner at JB's or a stop at frozen gold for some ice cream. this weekend we chose the filthy, but wonderful JB's and it was perfect. even with an extra hour of packing and unpacking in order to make it a beach day, i'm already anticipating our next trip back.

on the home front things are good. janie is crawling, standing, waving, clapping (perhaps on accident), has at least one tooth (she won't open her mouth long enough for us to see if there is a second), is eating all sorts of finger food and getting into everything. it's crazy that in just 8 months she has learned all of these tricks. she is great. we are blessed.

tonight!!

Join us tonight for an open house at Hunter Vision. Eat good food. Enjoy watermelon lemonade. Talk with great people. Ask questions. Tour the office. Schedule your appointment. It will be so much fun. Come check it out!

nashville

last weekend andy and i took a trip to nashville to celebrate our second anniversary. it's crazy how fast two years can fly by! it has really been an awesome 730 days. i am still just as glad i married andy as i was the day i said "i do". he is a fantastic husband and dad. to celebrate the fantasticness, we flew to atlanta and dropped janie off with my parents and drove to nashville. andy finished college at belmont and spent a few additional years there after he graduated, and many of our friends have lived in nashville at some point in their lives so we started the trip with a long list of restaurants, venues, coffee shops and stores that we had to check out. a few friends have asked what we did while we were there. i'm not even exaggerating when i tell you that we ate. the whole time.

we started with lunch on friday afternoon at satco (san antonio taco company). according to andy, nothing much about it had changed since he was there 12 years ago and that was a good thing. the tacos were great, the queso was even better and we left feeling happy. after much deliberation, we ended up staying at the hutton hotel, and it was great. our room was on the 15th floor overlooking vanderbilt. i would definitely stay there again.

friday night we met up with my friend natalie and her boyfriend. natalie and i became friends when my family moved to california and my mom had connected with a lady who had a daughter my age. i had no friends, and wanted some so i boldly arrived at her doorstep unannounced, introduced myself and asked if she wanted to play tennis. she kindly agreed, and our friendship began. she now lives in nashville, so she took us to one of her favorite places, patterson house. it was a great little bar/small plate restaurant, clearly catering to the locals and not tourists. we were glad we had some regulars with us because otherwise we may have been thrown out. there were a serious list of rules in the foyer, which you were required to follow if you wanted to cross the teal velvet curtains to the bar. this place makes EVERYTHING from scratch, including their own cola! if you're ever in nashville, you have got to check this place out...just don't use your cell phone or try to peek behind the blue curtain, or you'll be black listed.

sadly, andy's two favorite restaurants in nashville, rotier's and barbara's were closed for the weekend! our plan for lunch on saturday was to hit one of those places, but instead we took a friends recommendation and went to burger up. the burgers were awesome and the atmosphere was really fun, and the best part of it all was that it was located right next to las paletas. a few weeks ago on the food network bobby flay challenged to owner to las paletas to a throwdown. las paletas serves only popsicles. amazing popsicles. the flavors are ridiculous: hot chocolate chili pepper, avocado, hibiscus honeydew, pineapple-strawberry-banana, and lots more. we headed over there for dessert and enjoyed a blueberry-peach and pineapple-strawberry-banana popsicle. they were so good, especially since it was 106 degrees. (next year we will celebrate our anniversary in alaska, or in january).

i won't bore you with any more detailed descriptions of where and what we ate, because i could go on for a while longer. some of the other places we went were bongo java, eastland cafe, pancake pantry, 1808 grille, marche. every single one of them was great. some conclusions from the weekend: i love the city of nashville, we can eat way more than normal people can, we would have far too much time on our hands if it weren't for janie, and we have a lot of fun together.

while we were packing on the pounds eating our way through nashville, janie was burning major calories learning to crawl, stand, and swim at my parents house in atlanta. by the time we got back she was chasing my parents dog, rascal, all over the house and standing up in her crib. she is completely mobile and so much fun. i noticed when i was getting her ready for bed last night that a pair of pajamas that were getting snug around her chubby little thighs are now loose. i'm kissing her cheeks more than ever now, because i know that pretty soon they'll be history too! her personality is becoming a little more clear every day. that little girl is confident, feisty and well aware of her cuteness. not a day goes by that i don't thank god that he picked me to be her mom.

better than 20/20

for the first time since third grade, i can see better than the perfect eye. it's amazing. in the third grade my friend jenna got glasses. she was really cool and i wanted to be like her, so when i went to the nurses office for the annual vision and hearing test, i lied. and then i got some pretty awesome tortoise shell plastic framed specs. from that day on, i've been wearing some form of corrective lenses to see pretty well. yesterday at 2:00 this is what i saw when i looked at the eye chart without glasses or contacts:

at 2:30 i underwent SBK, the next generation of LASIK, at Hunter Vision. Dr. Hunter and all of his techs were so wonderful. Dr. Hunter explained everything he was doing, and what i would hear, feel, smell and see the entire time. it really can't believe how easy it was. the whole procedure took about 15 minutes and by 7:00 last night i was seeing as well as i did with contacts. for the rest of the night things got progressively clearer and less foggy. this morning i woke up at 6:30 wearing the most awesome goggles ever, and instinctively rolled over to grab my glasses off of the bedside table. i don't think i will ever forget that zephyrhills water is made only from the carefully selected natural springs. those were the first words i read with my new eyes this morning and it nearly made me cry. even with contacts i would have squinted a whole bunch and still struggled to see what that water bottle said. i got in the car to drive to my post-op appointment and realized that this little logo on my dashboard that i thought read "dsc" in fact says compact disc mp3 text. it means equally as little to me now as it did when i thought it said dsc, but man, is it incredible that i've been driving that car for over a year now and have never known what it said! at my appointment this morning i was reading the 20/15 line already, and it should only get better from here. i never realized what i was missing out on all these years. everything is so crisp and clear, and colors are even brighter. i could go on about this for the rest of my life and probably will. everyone should check out Hunter Vision. you will not be disappointed.