Wedding Weekend

This weekend we attended my cousin Kameron's wedding.  The weekend was so fun getting to see our extended family.  The wedding was beautiful, and we are so excited to welcome a new cousin.  Alex was in the wedding, and since we were all dressed up I tried to get a few family pictures.  I didn't get any of the actual wedding party because I was busy keeping a certain little boy out of the pictures.  He was obsessed with trying to walk up the steps of the stage.  Thankfully it was his nap time during the wedding!

Look at that sweet smile!

 We never get pictures of just the two of us anymore.

Final Installment

First time with Play-Doh

 Reading with Pop

 

Playing "Pirate Ship"

Dressed like pirates

Playing with Georgia

More Pictures From the Beach

I was hoping to get more pictures up sooner, but I have again been nursing a sick boy back to health.  It seems that Sterling just got better from last time.  What I thought was allergy symptoms (runny nose, watery eyes, and coughing) turned into pink eye in both eyes, an ear infection and a bad cold and fever. 

Unfortunately, I have caught some of what he has so it's been Daddy to the rescue.  Anyway, here are some more pictures, I'll get some more up later.

We always try to get a family beach picture.  You would think that as the children get bigger it would get easier, WRONG, with my child being the main cause of stress because he didn't want to get in the sand.  But we managed to get a few that he wasn't bawling.

Mother's Day Pictures From the Beach

We were able to go on a wonderful beach trip with my in-laws for Mother's Day.  I have tons of pictures to share.  I will start out with pictures from Mother's Day.

 

I mean what mother would not be proud of that precious face.

 

One Sweet Little Boy

Updates

My sister is mad at me for not posting any pictures of Sterling lately.  To be honest, neither one of us has been very excited about the camera this week.  Sterling was very sick last weekend.  He ran a temp of 104.5 Friday night (this was over a week ago), and we thought we would have to take him to the ER.  Thankfully his pediatrician told us to try to get the fever to come down and bring him in on Saturday morning.
Since we were at the lake, we got up early, early the next morning to take him in.  He came home with two ear infections and several medications.  When he felt up to it we traveled back to Sylacauga to see my grandmother who was visiting from Texas.  Unfortunately, the pictures of her and Sterling are on her camera and I didn't get to download them before she left.

Sterling was feeling much better but he was so exhausted all week, and I just did not take any pictures of him in his miserable state. 

Yesterday, Sterling woke up with a terrible rash.  The doctor said it is probably viral and why he was sick before.  After some internet research, Dr. Mom has diagnosed him with Fifth's Disease.  His rash looks just like the pictures online and apparently you don't get the rash until about a week after being sick.  Thankfully it doesn't seem to itch or really bother him at all.  But I had to take some pictures of him rash or no.

Here is a picture from Nanie's birthday.  We all surprised her on her birthday, and Pop took us all out to eat.  All the grandkids are supposed to be helping her open her gifts, but they are playing with her iPhone instead.  They were so funny.  This was pre getting sick!

Here are some from today:

He isn't sleeping here, but he would play hard and then lay down with his blanket for a little while to rest.  I guess he is tired from not going to sleep until about 11:00 and then waking up in the middle of the night.  He woke up screaming (which he never does) I couldn't get him to calm down so I finally took him in the living room to watch a few minutes of Praise Baby.  Eventually he was able to go back to sleep.

15 Months

Wow! That sounds so old!  Sterling turned 15 months yesterday, and it seems like he has grown up so much in the last couple months.  I just look at him and think you really are a little boy now (as opposed to being a baby not a little girl)  ;)

He loves playing with his cars.  He will sit on the floor and play with cars for so long, making a cute little car noise.  I have noticed that his play has changed.  It seems like he is using his imagination more which is so precious. 

He is getting much more proficient on the walking front. Hopefully he will get more confident in the month to come.  

Sterling's communication is also becoming much more sophisticated.  He is still a chatterbox trying to repeat everything you say.  He loves the ABC song and tries to sing it with us.  And he loves when we count with him.  He will move my finger around the page when we are reading a book wanting me to count the objects. He can say two and three and the rest of the numbers are cute little grunts (the same ones he uses to sing his ABCs).

He is also getting much better at non-verbal communication as well.  The other day he was looking out the window in the living room and crawled over to me, grabbed my hand, and started pulling me in that direction.  Of course we had to go play outside for a while.

On that note Sterling loves being outside! However, he still hates being in the grass, even with his shoes on.

This is what we call the Mowgli crawl.  I guess it is part of his transition to walking.

I had forgotten why it had been a while since I made spaghetti.

What an Eventful Week

We had quite an eventful week last week, and I am just getting caught up with everything.  It began last Friday with a much needed get-away with friends from college.  I headed to Birmingham to meet my "Section 1 Girls" for a slumber party.  (We had all of our classes together our Junior and Senior years at Alabama so we became very close.)  We spent the night reminiscing, catching up, and discussing everyone's crazy classroom.  While I loved teaching, it made me very glad to be at home with my sweet Sterling.  We had so much fun and all went out for lunch the next day.

Then I headed to Montgomery for our niece's birthday party.  Not before picking up Toy Story 1 and 2 and some books for Sterling's Easter basket.  I was pretty proud of myself for getting TS1&2 DVD/Blue Ray combo pack for $7 each!  We also got two free tickets for Toy Story 3 in the boxes.

You can tell Alex enjoyed that more than Sterling!

Sterling is on the left hand edge of the picture trying to escape!

Then I drove back to Gadsden spent the night and went to church.  At some point I trimmed Sterling's hair, and my own.

Thank you Disney for Winnie the Pooh.  His head stayed still the whole time.

Sunday night I headed back to Birmingham to meet my mom and sisters who had been in Nashville for the weekend.  We had plans to go to Birmingham on Monday to shop for Easter clothes and I wanted to go to a children's consignment sale early that morning so we decided to stay the night in Birmingham, which I must admit felt a little strange.  

Monday morning mom and I headed across the street to shop for Sterling's spring/summer wardrobe and got so many cute things, most of them even had the tags and plastic garment bags still on them.  We also got a steal of a stroller because I never got the stroller to go with my car seat.  It's a long story but I thought I was being practical and I had reasons.  But we have really needed a good stroller with good storage and Sterling and I have gotten much use out of it in the short time we have had it.

Then we headed of to get our Easter wardrobe.  As children my mom always had the whole family matching perfectly every Easter and Christmas.  Growing up we normally had matching dresses made by my grandmother and my mom had a dress made out of the same fabric as well.  Of course my dad always had the same colors in his shirt and tie.  As we grew older we stopped wearing the same exact dresses.  Mine was usually a little different (older looking) and when Jameson came along he always had something made to match us as well.  When I became a teenager we started "coordinating"  Meaning we had a color scheme that our dresses had to fall under but we were no longer cookie cutter images of each other.  The tradition still continues today and any one who lives in my parents house (they usually have at least one non-biological child living with them, a friend or a cousin) must match as well.  

This year the theme was Black and White.  We decided to let everyone pick their own "pop" of color.  Alex and I had yellow, mom and dad - red, and it turned out that all other siblings picked hot pink.  (Pictures of Easter to come)

Tuesday was spent washing new clothes, taking a walk with our new stroller, and organizing clothes for storage and putting away winter clothes.

Wednesday I had a cookie craving so I made Easter cookies during Sterling's nap.

Thursday began the furniture refinishing extravaganza.  Over the weekend Alex cleaned out the garage, mowed the lawn, and washed the cars. While I began refinishing inherited furniture.

I love rich, dark furniture and our current computer desk just doesn't fit with the rest of the room. Plus it is way too big for our guest room. I also love having furniture with a history.  It is even better when you know what that history was!  Alex's grandmother left us a maple bedroom suit.   So we decided to use Grandmom's vanity for our computer.  But first it needed a facelift!

Here is a before pic

After a few coats of stain.  What a difference!  Now, I just need to apply a final coat of polyurethane and pick out some cute drawer pulls. The grand total for the refurbished desk about $20.

We did learn one important lesson through this.  It is better to sand by hand instead of using a power sander when staining.  The power sander left some marks that we couldn't sand out.  I think the dark stain and poly will cover it, but if you are doing any refinishing skip the power tools and do it the old fashioned way.  It was actually no harder to do it by hand especially considering how heavy that sander was.

We are also replacing my futon from college with some beautiful Victorian chairs.  We never purchased pieces to go with our sofa because our first apartment was so tiny and our couch was so huge no other seating would fit.  Right now we are using my futon which is covered in some pretty fabric but we have really been wanting to replace it with some chairs (more grown up).  Again we lucked up with some pretty antique chairs from "Grandmom's Attic."  So I am learning to reupholster

Here is a before shot of the chairs.  They have potential right!

 

Here are some pictures of the deconstruction.

Notice the cup sitting on the stool.  That is full of upholstery tacks that I had to pry out with needle-nose pliers.  I think there were about a thousand and I am only done with one chair.

Now I have to pick out fabric, respring the chair, and replace the horsehair and cotton with new foam and batting.

We took a break from all that working to bribe Sterling to walk.  We both had a fist full of goldfish, but he had to walk to us to get one.

Now on to what you have been waiting for:  Easter Pictures!

We had a great day at Alex's parents house Easter afternoon.  We have actually been going to the Vaughns' for Easter lunch way before Alex and I were ever a "thing."  Sterling had so much fun with cousins, grandparents, and aunts and uncles.  He actually did a lot of walking and has been choosing to walk much more ever since!