January 26...Day 365

Wow...it's day 365, and I didn't even realize it until just now! 365 days (well, minus 2 or 3) worth of pictures...I made it for one whole year! This blog has turned into one of my favorite things. Most days at least, I enjoy taking pictures and trying to find a way to document the day. I am definitely going to continue with the picture a day blog for another year. But I am going to take a few days off first, I think I deserve that! I'm planning to start back up again on Monday, February 1....so check back then for a new year of pictures!

I am so excited that I took this picture today, because I wanted to end the year with a good picture, and I love this one of Audrey and her pretty blue eyes. Though I wish Audrey was smiling, but I suppose I can't have everything I wish for!

See you on Monday!

January 25...Day 364

Audrey was helping Daniel practice his guitar tonight. You can tell she was being very helpful! She was trying to copy what he was doing though; she even wanted to use the pick to strum the strings.

January 24...Day 363

I just had to take a picture because this is such a rare occurrence in our house...Daniel reading a book!!

January 23...Day 362

Tonight we went to Elliot's first birthday party. Happy Birthday Elliot!!

January 22...Day 361

Tonight we had our second book club meeting. We read the book Moloka'i by Alan Brennert, which was a really good book that led to some good discussion. And Heather had a special surprise for us tonight...we got to talk to the author himself! She arranged for him to call us and discuss the book and our questions with him. Crazy!! This is everyone gathered around Heather's phone listening to him talk!

January 21...Day 360

Audrey learned a new word at church last night...bubble. They were playing with bubbles in the nursery, and I guess she just started saying it. It is so cute! I bought some bubbles today, since she seemed to like them so much last night. And she loves them. She gets so excited as soon as she see the bottle. I'm getting ready to post a video of her playing with the bubbles (and saying bubble) on the other blog, so check it out later and see for yourself!

January 20...Day 359

Audrey loves to help with the laundry! She's just not very helpful! She likes to pull all of the clothes out of the basket, and then put all of the clothes back into the basket, and then pull them all out again, and then put them all back in again, and so on! And she is so serious about it. I tried to get her to smile or talk to me or at least look at me, but she was very focused on the task at hand.

January 19...Day 358

Ugh...another late night and no idea what picture to post. I wanted to take a picture of an airplane, because we saw the movie Up in the Air tonight, and it's about airplanes and flying. But I just don't have an airplane sitting around my house, can you believe it?? So here is a book that Audrey just loved today. The book has a puppy hidden on each page that you are supposed to find. I was so impressed, because Audrey was able to point and find most of the puppies in this book today. She's so smart!

By the way, the movie was really good. And now I have another movie checked off of my Oscar "to-see" list. So I've seen at least 3 out of 10 now. I wish they would hurry up and announce what movies are actually nominated. I have a good idea what most of them will be, but it would be much easier to see them all if I knew for sure what they were!!

January 18...Day 357

This is my wallet. THere is nothing too special about the wallet itself, but tonight I am very happy that it is in my possession. Earlier today, at Target, I lost this wallet--somewhere between the checkout counter and my car (I'm pretty sure Audrey threw it out of the cart without me noticing...I'm blaming her for this one!). I didn't realize it was gone until we got back home. I immediately called Target, and someone had already turned it in! Thank goodness!!

January 17...Day 356

Tonight we watched the Golden Globes after small group. It is a lot more enjoyable to watch these awards shows with friends, so I'm grateful that Janessa and Heather (and Amy and Katie who are not pictured) were willing to stick around and watch them with me!

January 16...Day 355

Today we went to the Children's Discovery Museum in Normal, IL. It was such a fun place and a great winter outing! Audrey had so much fun exploring everything. I think her favorite thing was the water play area though. She loved splashing in the water! I don't have a picture that really shows how soaking wet she was when she was done, but you can see the water drops in her hair in this picture. They had smocks for the kids to wear to help keep them dry, but they were all being used when we were there. Good thing I remember to bring a change of clothes!

January 15...Day 354

Audrey was a bundle of fun today! She had a rough spell with some new teeth coming in, and she had a bit of a cold for a while. But she seems to be feeling better now, and happy Audrey is back (until the next teeth come in at least!).

January 14...Day 353

Look at the mess Audrey made today...pulling everything out of the trash! The good news is that she likes to put everything back into the trash as much as she likes pulling everything out. The bad news is that this is not the only mess she made today. The real mess was upstairs in our bedroom and it involved a bottle of liquid foundation. Somehow, while I was standing right next to her, Audrey managed to find the makeup, get the lid off and spill it all over herself and the carpet before I noticed. I really don't understand how all of those things lined up just right to create such a perfect mess. My first instinct was to take a picture (what a great picture of the day that would have been!), but I thought better of it and grabbed a rag to wipe Audrey's hands off instead (but not before she left two handprints on our bedspread!).

P.S. Does anyone know how to get liquid foundation out of carpet?????

P.S.S. To keep you informed of my Oscar movie watch progress, I saw Precious tonight. Wow, what a movie. It was not entertaining and it's not a movie for everyone, but it was definitely worth watching and was very well done...a movie that will stick with me for a long, long time. And now I'm pretty sure I've seen at least 2 of the 10 movies that will be nominated for Best Picture.

January 13...Day 352

I introduced Audrey to her toothbrush tonight. (I know, you're supposed to brush their gums even before their teeth come in, and we should have started brushing her teeth a long time ago...we're horrible parents for waiting so long to start! But Audrey HATES when you touch her mouth/nose/face, so I've been putting off brushing her teeth because I know she's going to hate it).

The cutest thing happened when I gave her the tooth brush. I said, "Audrey here's your tooth brush. We're going to brush your teeth now." And she took the tooth brush and started to brush her hair! (she loves to brush her hair with her hair brush!). Fortunately I didn't put any toothpaste on tonight. I thought it would be best to get oriented with the toothbrush first before we added anything else...and I think I was right!

I'm sad that I didn't get a picture of her brushing her hair with her toothbrush. By the time I got my camera, Audrey managed to find a pacifier, and the toothbrush wasn't so interesting anymore. I did manage to get her to put her toothbrush in her mouth and I brushed her teeth just the tinest bit to show her what it is for. That was all we attempted tonight...it did not end in screaming, so I consider it a succes.

January 12...Day 351

I got this new camera bag this week with some Christmas money. I'm pretty excited to have a new bag; one big enough to hold my camera, an extra lens, and an external flash and still with room for a few more odds and ends. It's not a huge bag, but it's just the right size for the stuff I have to carry right now.

January 11...Day 350

Last week I noticed that one of Audrey's sleepers was missing. I looked and looked and couldn't find it. I hate losing things, and it was driving me nuts. Then I couldn't find 2 pairs of my sweatpants. Then Daniel couldn't find a pair of sweatpants. And then I couldn't find a sweatshirt. It was like a whole load of laundry just disappeared from our house...how could that happen??

Well, tonight we found that load of clothes. In our dryer. The old dryer. The one that has been sitting out in our backyard for the past 10 days. I guess we were so excited about using our new dryer that we forgot to empty the old one before dumping it in the backyard. At least, we hadn't gotten rid of the dryer yet!

January 10...Day 349

I couldn't get her to stand still long enough to get a cute picture, but Audrey was looking super cute in this little outfit today!

January 9...Day 348

Tonight we rented (500) Days of Summer. I'd say it is very doubtful that this movie will be nominated for an Academy Award (though it is nominated for a Golden Globe), so watching it didn't help me make any progress towards my goal from yesterday's post. But it was a cute little movie; I liked it a lot!

January 8...Day 347

Tonight Daniel and I found a babysitter at the last minute (thanks so much Mike and Breanne!) and decideed to go to a movie. We saw Invictus; it was pretty good. I'm on a mission to see all the Oscar nominated movies this year before our big Oscars party on March 7. The only problem is that 10 movies are nominated this year (instead of the usual 5). The nominees haven't been announced yet, but from what is projected to be nominated--Invictus may be the only one I have seen. How am I going to find the time and the money and the babysitters to see all 10 movies before they leave the theater? Yeah, it's probably not going to happen...but I'm still going to try my best to see as many as possible!

January 7...Day 346

We got a few inches of snow last night, and I thought I would bring some inside today to see if Audrey would like it. She touched it once, ran away and was done with the snow....too cold!! I thought Audrey might like the snow better if we made a snowman. So I made her this snowman in a bowl...she touched it once, ran away and was done with the snowman. She was much more interested in the sprinkles and chocolate chips that I used for his eyes and mouth!

January 6...Day 345

I have been trying for the past couple of days to get a picture of Audrey wearing Daniel's hat, and I finally got one today! She doesn't leave it on her head for more than a second or two, but it's so cute!

January 5...Day 344

I don't really have a good picture for day. But it's cold and I want to go to my warm bed, so this is as good as it gets. These are all the projects that I got to make tonight at a Stampin' Up! demonstrator swap. It was fun to make projects that were already designed for me (it's usually me that has to do the designing!), and it was really nice to have a few hours out of the house, even if I had to venture out in the subzero temps to get there.

January 4...Day 343

It's been a while since I've taken any really good pictures of Audrey, so today I decided to try to get a few. Well, as soon as I started, I remembered why I haven't taken many pictures of her lately...it's nearly impossible to get her to sit still! I was very lucky to get this one, and I'm happy with the way it turned out. Look at her eyes! I didn't even do anything to touch them up...they really are that pretty naturally! =)

January 3...Day 342

This is the new bookshelf I bought yesterday with some Christmas money. I had a bunch of books that were homeless, and that was bothering me. I'm a little sad that this bookshelf is in our dining room. Actually, it's the 2nd bookshelf in our dining room. And my desk is in our dining room. So our dining room is not so much a dining room, as it is an office/library/dining room. Maybe someday I will live in a house big enough to have my own library...but for now my books will have to be content on the 2 bookshelves in the dining room (and on the 3 other bookshelves spread throughout our house). Oh, and did you notice all the extra space on this bookshelf? That's a lot of room for new books!!! =)

January 2...Day 341

I made lasagna for dinner tonight. We never eat a whole pan of lasagna by ourselves, so I decided to invite some friends over to join us for dinner!

January 1...Day 340

We got a new dryer today. Our old one was getting louder and louder each day, and it finally got to the point where I didn't even want to dry clothes anymore because you could hear the dryer running throughout the house. So we went out and got a cheap, new one today. There's nothing exciting or fancy about it...hopefully it will dry our clothes though!