I've had one of those days. You know, the kind where you're ready to crash as soon as the kiddo is in bed. O has her worst cold ever and is horribly crabby (major tears every time I try to put her down) and to top it all off she's been puking like crazy. On me. All over her crib. On the new couch. Couple that with a runny nose and hacking cough and it's all pretty nasty. Poor thing, I wish that I could help her! And then to top it all off my new turquoise scarf somehow ended up in the light laundry load and dyed ALL of my white t-shirts/tank tops/favorite sweater/Olivia's onesies a nasty shade of pale blue. Ugh.

On the up side, I made these totally awesome rhubarb muffins, and after eating one (okay, a few) of them things seem much better! Why rhubarb? Well, I got talked into buying rhubarb at our local farm stand earlier this week, and when I got home I realized that I had no idea what to do with it. So rhubarb muffins it was!



Rhubarb Muffins: (from Simply in Season)
1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup yogurt
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup oil
1 egg, beaten
2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups rhubarb, diced
1/4 cup sugar
1 Tbs butter (melted)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp flour

1. Combine flour through salt thoroughly.
2. In a separate bowl, combine yogurt through vanilla. Stir in dry ingredients just until moistened.
3. Stir in rhubarb. Fill greased muffin tins two-thirds full.
4. Combine sugar, butter, cinnamon, and flour together and sprinkle on top of muffins.
5. Bake at 375F in a preheated oven for 20 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool on wire racks.

Yum.

Because a blog post isn't really a blog post without Olivia in it, here's a shot of her showing off her brand new sandbox. Lucky girl got a new play set and a sandbox for her first birthday!

Blueberries, Standing and Scooting

A mish-mash of things to post. None of them connect, but part of doing this blog is that I'm going to use a lot of it to make some sort of baby book, so I feel like if I don't post these things I won't remember them all :).

We have a berry monster on our hands. Specifically, a blueberry monster. We're having visions of Violet Beauregarde over here. Olivia has developed an obsession with them over the last week, and basically refuses to eat much of anything else. She'll pick at whatever I put on her tray, but as soon as the berries come out they're the only thing that she'll eat. Guess it could be worse, right? (Although I don't even want to tell you what all of this berry eating is doing to her diapers. Gross.)


On a more pleasant note, O is getting stronger at holding herself upright! She still needs to be supported by something, but it's fun to see her up on her feet.

I cannot believe that she's getting so big. 3 weeks to go until her first birthday!

Doug captured this video of Olivia doing what we call her "circle scoot". We like it a lot.


P.S. A non Olivia-related item (shocker, I know). Mom, these are for you :). For anyone who's curious, these are pictures of our Dogwood tree in full bloom. So gorgeous.

Real Men Wear Bjorn's

I'm not sure why, but pretty much everything about this picture makes me laugh.

Two Years & Mother's Day

Two years ago, I married my very best friend.

Happy anniversary, Doug!
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As for the rest of the weekend...

Saturday we went to an M's game. It was the perfect spring baseball weekend - we're finally getting amazing weather! Olivia loves M's games - lots of noise and people to look at!


Sunday Doug made me breakfast for Mother's Day :)

Yes, I know that this isn't the best picture but I wanted to document breakfast.



Then I spent Sunday afternoon working in my garden. Yes, I officially feel like a suburban housewife now that I spend my weekends "working in the garden". Anyhoo, I discovered what happens when I turn my back to Olivia for longer than 10 seconds.

Mmm...dirt...

Took a few photos before heading over to Perry family dinner.
Me and my girl on my first official Mother's Day!


I am pretty convinced that there's nothing cuter than a dad and his daughter.


She's getting so big!

Happy Mothers Day!

Doug and I are both fortunate to be blessed with incredible mothers, and today we celebrate them. We are who we are today because of their unconditional love, guidance, and support.

Although words can never truly express the depth of our gratitude, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We love you.

Play Ball!

Check out O's new favorite game.

(Sorry about the poor video quality, I shot it on my iPhone)

California 4.10

As you figured out from my previous post, Olivia and I took a trip down to So Cal to visit the fam, see friends, and get some sunshine in since apparently we are still have a bit of time to go until summer here in Washington. In an attempt to compensate for previous trips in which I took no photos, I ended up taking over 400. And although I have tried to narrow them down, this post still has a fair number of pics! So here's a few shots of the happenings in the OC...

My mom saved a bunch of my childhood toys, and what survived after the great termite extermination toy meltdown (long story) now belongs to Olivia. She took a liking to My Little Pony and the Fisher Price Radio (both of which, coincidentally, are "back" in the stores. This makes me feel old).


We took a trip over to my friend Erin's house to visit her and her kiddos. Dylan was born just a few weeks after O, so it was pretty funny to watch the two of them interact.

This is the two of them last July.


Here's Dylan now. He's such a doll!


Poor Dylan isn't crawling yet, and was therefore unable to fend off the advances of my overly-aggressive daughter.


Sorry about that, D. I think she likes you.

We also, of course, took a few trips to the park.




The parks in Irvine have sand, which is one of Olivia's favorite things. She's deprived of sand here because all of the parks have wood chips (Don't even get me started about how much I hate wood chips! Splinters. Choking. Just plain gross.).


Obviously, this child is starving.


I know that this isn't 'technically' the best picture, but I like it anyway.


We had some good fun at the various outdoor malls... and filled up on as much pinkberry as we could.

Jealous, Doug?

This is how O rolls. Feet up.


We tried out the carousel at The Spectrum (if you're from OC you know exactly what I'm referring to :)


The Spectrum also has one of those awesome fountains that spit water up from the ground for kids to play in. Olivia, being the water baby that she is, thought that it was pretty fantastic!


One happy kiddo!


Hanging with the grandparents. Hand in mouth, of course!


O also spent a lot of time with her Uncle Craig.




"Aunt" Amy and "Uncle" Geoff stopped by for a visit as well!

Something about that picture reminds me of an awkward family photo, but since it's the only one that I have of the 4 of us I'm posting it anyway.

Geoff obviously thinks she's being cute. What he doesn't realize is that she's actually trying to capture his sunglasses.


I will leave you all with this awesome picture. It's one of the worst pictures I've seen of O, but it makes me laugh!