Everly: 6 Months

6 month olds are my favorite to take pictures of!  They can sit, they smile (mostly on demand) and most importantly they don't move too much!  Emma's 6 month pictures are my favorite that we have had taken to date so I wanted to continue the tradition and have Ev's pictures made at the Stockyards.    

I am obsessed with this picture of Everly's baby feet.

Obsessed. The chubbiness.  The toes curled. The sweet polka-dotted jeans.  Obsessed.

Look at how chunky those feet have gotten in the last six months.

I was a crazy person looking for this sweater.  I just love it.  I am so glad I tracked it down and overpaid for it :).

Everly- you are just so so so beautiful (if I do say so myself!).

And your smile kills me. With love of course!

This sheep dress is also one of my very favorite dresses ever purchased for the girls.  And Everly was wearing it in my very most favorite picture of the whole batch.

Can my girl be any cuter?  I am sure you are saying "yes, get over yourself".  But I just can't.  I think she is so cute!!

Look at the baby rolls on her leg!

Another one of my favorites.  Those chubby baby feet are just everything to me.

You will see Emma's pictures tomorrow, but at this point during the session she had just given up.  However, Everly and I did not give up.  We trudged to the front of the stockyards so that I could get a picture of this dress + this turquoise wall + my girl.

Love her gummy smile!

Thanks for continuing to smile Ev's!

Just as obsessed with this background and dress as when we had Emma's pictures taken :).  I just can't get over how much hair Ev's had at 6 months compared to Emma.  

Love these girls of mine :). And these pictures.  Pictures are also everything to me.  Probably why I have a blog ;).

The Four of Us

I knew these were going to be the hardest pictures to get, but I just kept telling myself "I will be happy if we get a picture where we are all four looking at the camera".  Well, as it turned out my favorite picture is Emma and Everly looking at each other and not the camera- who knew!  

As you can see above and below, there was a lens flare on the camera, which turned out to be sort-of awesome!  We got to have a 30 minute make-up session with Jenny and Emma was in a much better mood!

This was one of the first pictures we took when the day was just starting out :).  

For the second photo shoot, we switched up spots and had them made at Veterans Park near our house.

Hugs for Everly (less you think all was perfect in picture taking world- there was an outtake where Emma had her elbow in Everly's face) :).

Love this one!

And in black and white!  This is probably the one I will put up in the family room!

Love this sweet family of mine.

So lucky to call them mine!

Family Picture Week

Yay!  We received all of our pictures that we had Jenny take of the girls and our family.  Be prepared to be overwhelmed with the cuteness that is my family this week :).

It's Official

It’s Official.  Two weeks from today, I will be heading off on an around-the-world type of trip.  My official itinerary is Dallas – Chicago – Shanghai – Kuala Lumpur – Dubai – Freising – Houston – Dallas with dates spanning June 7^th through June 21^st.  I will be spending three business days in Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur and Freising (GER) and will spend the rest of the time on airplanes J.  I have so many mixed emotions about this trip.  I am equal parts excited, terrified and nervous.  This will be the longest amount of time that I have ever left my husband or babies.  I am so excited to see new places, experience new cultures and see how the company I work for operates in other parts of the world.  However, I am terrified to leave Wes, Emma and Everly for this long.  I will be gone for 15 days.  15 days without kisses from my husband and my babies.  15 days without anyone calling me mommy to my face. 15 days without  Emma saying “hold ju”.  15 days of pumping and dumping my milk.   15 days of not squeezing Everly’s chunky baby thighs.  15 days without kissing by husband goodbye as I leave for work.  I am nervous too.  Nervous that Emma and Everly will forget how much love I have for them.  Nervous that something terrible will happen to Wes or the girls while I am gone.  Nervous that Everly won’t latch on and this is the end of our breastfeeding adventure.  Nervous that I will have several breakdowns on this trip (who am I kidding, this will happen no matter what!). 

I am trying to let the excitement outweigh the scariness + nervousness, but I would be lying if I said it was going well.    

Oh, Emma!

Oh, Emma!  I was looking through these pictures I had taken of you and I just felt that I needed to write down some thoughts about this age (since we are no longer doing monthly updates- thank goodness, they are exhausting!).  You are 27 months old and I have a love this stage!

You have a big personality.  You can go from happy to upset in a matter of seconds.  Seriously I am amazed at how fast things change in the toddler world. Your highs are really high and your lows can be really low.  Sharing is not your strong suit and continues to be a daily battle :).  You like to push Everly down which annoys me to no end.  Then, you make up for the next morning when you coo "morning Eberleah" while patting her on the back.  You have a big heart that sometimes has mixed emotions :).    

You talk so much.  Literally so much.  My favorite things you say are "I try some that", "name: Emma, name: mommy, name: Eberleah" as you point us all out, "I go Nonni's house", "I lobe you too mommy", "I do it myself", "I miss you Bailey, I miss you", "yummy yummy", "oh gosh", "oh man", and "pretty pease, cherry top". You are a sponge just soaking up everything- it is so neat to watch your vocabulary develop on a daily basis.

The other day I heard you say "I can't do that" when referring to swimming in the pool.  It was heartbreaking- I want you to know that you can do anything you set your mind too.  It it is mine (and your daddy's) mission to make sure that you have the confidence to do anything you set your mind too.

You are a rolly polly hunting, worm holding, zoo loving, ice cream eating, crazy dancing, dirt digging, pool jumping, school going, bow wearing, tooth grinning, color identifying, mess making, brownie stirring blue eyed sweetheart.  

You are just as beautiful on the inside as you are on the outside.  Love you to the moon and back sweet Emma.

Seattle Recap: Day 2 (iPhone Version)

Yay!  Everly slept in until 6am this morning!  We woke up feeling a little more well rested than the day before.  Wes had looked up a restaurant- Portage Bay Cafe that I wanted to go to (really really badly!) and found out that it was about 3/4 mile walk from our hotel.  He had also looked up the best breakfast in Seattle and found that Serious Biscuit (same owner as Serious Pie from the night before) was number three on the list.  We had a feeling this might be our last day in Seattle, so what were we to do? We decided to split a dish at each place- best decision ever!  We went to Serious Biscuit first because they opened at 7am and we arrived shortly thereafter and split the Zach- buttermilk biscuit (what they are known for) + fried chicken + fried egg + bacon + Tabasco gravy.  Oh my words- delicious.

After sharing this, we walked over to Portage Bay Cafe and settled on the the bananas foster french toast.  It may not look like much from this picture (although Wes had this on its own and also claims just as amazing).

But they are known for their berry bar!  You can put as many strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, oranges, pears and homemade whipped cream on your plate as you want!

It was seriously outstanding!  This is what my plate ended up looking like!

And a shot with my iced coffee from my Instagram account :).  This was definitely my favorite place we ate all trip!

Oh my goodness we were so full (so full we skipped lunch!) after breakfast was all said and done, so we made our first attempt at using the bus system and made our way to the zoo!  We walked around a couple of hours taking in the sights.  The zoo was nice, but a bit too natural for us- most of the animals were buried under brush!

A little before noon, we got back on the public transportation and headed to the main attraction for the day- Safeco Field for a Seattle Mariners baseball game!

We love seeing other ballparks- if you remember Emma went to the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A's stadiums so it seemed appropriate that we take Everly to the Seattle Mariner's stadium.  This was the one point on the trip where Ev's had had enough.  She would latch on and then throw herself off wailing in between- just plain overtired.  After about 15 minutes, she finally calmed down and slept for about five innings of the game!

When she woke up she was all smiles and played with daddies hat and charmed the people around us!

View from the 3rd level, look closely and you can see the Space Needle in the background :).

After the game, we took the longest bus ride ever to find a Caribbean pork place I had heard about- Paseo.  It was hot and everyone was sweaty from the game.  Our saving grace was that Everly slept through the entire bus ride.  We didn't exactly get on the perfect bus and it dropped us off 8ish blocks from our location- STRAIGHT UPHILL with a baby on my back.  Oh yeah and they only accept cash, which we were all out of, so really Wes had to walk another two blocks (straight uphill) for an ATM machine. But oh.my.goodness it was worth it.  The place is so tiny and unassuming- no name on the doors, just these identifiable red doors.  We had the Caribbean Roast sandwich (which is their most popular seller) and it was super super yummy.

We ended up taking it to the park that we had found the night before so we could spread out and let Ev's crawl  and enjoy our delicious sandwiches (yes, the picture of her crawling is actually from Day 1- but we went to the same park!).

We had a two day pass to the Space Needle so we decided to go up again to watch the sunset.  It was a much better crowd (and view) than the night before!  I was hoping for the sky to turn orangey/purple but it didn't happen.

After the sunset, our legs were spent but we had one final stop to make.  I decided last minute that I wanted a mug from the original Starbucks (these mugs and tumblers are only sold at the original location) so we scurried back to Pike's Market to pick one up as they were literally shutting their doors :).

We also got one last view of the Public Market sign lit up with the bright blue sky- I was still giddy every time we saw it!

On day three, we got up, packed and headed to the airport to come home!  Ev's was a hoot at the airport finding her image in the reflecting glass and eating her bagel.  She did pretty well on the plane ride home taking two naps :).

Seattle, you were good to us- we liked visiting you a lot!

Seattle Recap: Day 1 (iPhone Version)

We just got back from a whirlwind 72 hours in Seattle!  We had such a blast!!  We took Everly with us while Emma stayed with my in-laws!  We are forever grateful for them watching her so we could soak in a new city with the littlest Mitchell :).  My uncle works for an airline so we were able to use his buddy passes (which means flying standby)- once we realized we were not going to get a flight out on Tuesday morning (which was our plan), we gathered our stuff and decided to leave three hours before our flight took off (in the pouring rain!) on Monday night.

We were a hot mess as we got on the park and ride shuttle from the rain.

Playing in the airport before take off- we wanted her to get out as much of her energy as possible!

Lucky duck- got to fly first class for her first plane ride.

Mommy and Everly in first class!  To say I was worried about flying with Ev's was an understatement.  When we were getting ready to go, all of the worst case scenarios just kept going through my mind.  She was a perfect angel- sleeping the entire 4 hour flight.  I couldn't have asked for anything better!

We arrived in Seattle close to midnight and decided to get a hotel right by the airport.  Best decision we made.  We crawled into bed for four hours of sleep before Everly decided we should wake up at 4:30 (which was 6:30 her time)!  Honestly, we couldn't blame her- she had just been so good on the plane ride, but we both could have used a couple extra hours of sleep.  We played for a bit and then got ready to head to downtown Seattle on their monorail system.  How does she look so much more alert than me!  

We got off in downtown about two blocks from our (new) hotel, but made a pit stop at Starbucks before dropping our luggage off!  They have a ton of Starbucks in Seattle.  There was one on what seemed like every street corner!

We got to the hotel and surprisingly they already had a hotel room that we could check into before 8 in the morning!  We dropped our luggage off, made some coffee in the room and got ready to go exploring for the day.  You will notice that Everly is riding in the Ergo in almost every picture you will see in this post.  We L.O.V.E this baby carrier!  I toted Ev's all around Seattle in this (sometimes in the front, sometimes in the back)- we never used her stroller once!

Our hotel was at the intersection of Pike Street and 6th Avenue- perfect location that my husband found!

We just had a short walk down Pike Street and we arrived at the Pike's Place Market- I was seriously giddy over seeing this sign.  If you look close, you can see that it was 8:30 in the morning!

We were starving and our hotel check-in lady had given us a recommendation to eat at Lowell's in Pike's Place Market- we shared the Dungenous crab Eggs Benedict and some coffee both of which were fantastic!

The views of the harbor (from the 3rd floor) were amazing!  Everly slept on my back during the entire breakfast!

After breakfast, we wondered around Pike's Market until we stumbled upon the original Starbucks!  I was seriously geeking out over this.  If you have been reading my blog for long, you know that my dad and I as well as Wes and I frequent Starbucks quite frequently in our hometown, so it was super special to see where it all started!

While we were walking around the market, we went by this bakery that smelled out of this world.  Seriously I wish I could have bottled up that fresh baked fragrance.  It was a tiny hole in the wall place with just a narrow entrance and people lined up outside.  We ended up picking up the chocolate cream hazelnut roll for a treat later on in the day.

We ventured down to the harbor only to find out that the first harbor cruise wasn't until 12:15 so we had some time to kill and went to the aquarium for a bit.  The aquarium was small, but had a couple of really neat exhibits- specifically a fish tank you could walk up to that Ev's loved.  We let her get out of the Ergo and crawl around a bit which was nice for both of us!

After the aquarium, we looked for a refillable diet coke place and lucked into finding Ivar's fish bar.  At this time we only purchased a diet coke, but after our harbor cruise we went back here and had fried salmon that was amazing.  Ev's loved watching the seagulls.  I loved eating our chocolate hazelnut pastry that we had saved :).

After our break, back in the Ergo Everly went for a nap while we made our way over to the harbor cruise.  I love taking boat rides when we are on vacation whether it be the Port Aransas Ferry, Staten Island Ferry or the San Francisco Bay tour and this was no exception- definitely one of the highlights for me on this trip!  Not sure if Everly can say the same- she had just woken up from her nap!

Just look at this view- and this was from my iPhone.  More real pictures to come!  The weather was just absolutely gorgeous.

I cannot tell you how nervous this made me, but Ev's absolutely loved hanging over the side giggling the whole time!

Happy girl!

We went back to Ivar's to refill our diet coke + get salmon and chips which were just so yummy (I had never even heard of fried salmon before!).  Then we made a stop at the famous Beecher's Cheese store to try their curds + cheese samples.  Then we headed to the beginning of the market to walk through the whole thing during peak market times and I was just blown away by all the sights and sounds.  The flowers were gorgeous and colorful and cheap and everywhere.  The fish was so fresh!  The market was really buzzing.

We went back to the hotel and rested for an hour or so before making it to Serious Pie.  If you go to Seattle, make sure you go to this place.  It was so good!  It is owned by a former Top Chef contestant- Tom Douglas.  

They have happy hour from 3 - 5 where the pizza's are $6!  Wes had the clams, pancetta and lemon thyme pizza while I had the soft egg, prosciutto and arugula pizza- they were amazing!  I know I have said this about everything that we have eaten so far, but seriously we did not eat one bad/mediocre item the whole time we were there!  I read a few blog posts before we left and they did not steer us in the wrong direction :).

After we ate, we took the monorail over to the space needle.  It really was a stunning day.

If you look closely, you can see Mt. Reineer in the background.  It is only visible 80ish + days a year and we were able to see it all three days we were there which I thought was pretty special.

Panoramic picture of Seattle from the Space Needle.

We hung out at the top for a bit and then headed down and found the perfect little park for a Starbucks drink + watching Ev's crawl and walk.  There was lots of shade and a fountain that was orchestrated to music.  The grass was so green, the weather was fantastic and the atmosphere was just so perfect and relaxing.  It really felt like we were in heaven just soaking our baby girl and the surroundings all in!

After we hung out for an our or so, we decided to take the monorail back to downtown to watch the sunset from a little park right outside of Pike's Market.

Once we got down to the market, we decided to check out the gum wall first- it was equal parts amazing and disgusting :).

A little more weighted towards the disgusting :).  It was much bigger in real life than I had imagined.

We wrapped up the evening watching the sunset with an interesting crowd before heading back to our hotel and tucking ourselves in bed for the night.