Buyer's remorse

I probably shouldn't have bought this bag of treats! I've already gone through half the bag in less than a week. Woospies :)

While I was sick with my sinus infection this was the only thing I felt like eating. Now that I'm feeling better maybe I should hide them. Or maybe I should just hurry and eat them to get rid of them?

P.S. Who wants to come over for a season finale party of The Bachelor??

Mardi Gras Mambo

So for Mardi Gras we had a last minute get together with some friends that live a couple of blocks away. My friend Rachel texted me to say happy Mardi Gras and I had totally forgotten about it. I had seen a king cake at a local bakery over the weekend so I thought I'd go grab one and have them over for a little celebration. I had red beans in the crockpot, so it worked out perfectly. They brought some french bread and salad and we were good to go! It's so nice to have friends close by especially during holidays when you miss your family. I feel so lucky to have so many good friends here! Maybe next year I'll be a little more on top of things (and not have a sinus infection) and have ALL our friends over for a Mardi Gras Mambo!
Here are our "decorations" (and notice my lovely tulips I got for Valentine's Day)...

Too bad I forgot to get my camera out again until they were leaving. I did get one shot of Eleanor with her little buddy Hannah. They are only 5 days apart. Eleanor still isn't sure how to smile for the camera, but Hannah's got it down pretty good!

Oh and this post wouldn't be complete without a picture of our half eaten king cake!

Eleanor was pretty excited about all the beads. She was so excited to discover they were still there the next morning!

And to close, here's a flashback to a year ago when we went down to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Oh how I miss my chubby little baby.

Laissez les bon temps rouler! Let the good times roll!

Geaux Saints!!

Here's Eleanor blowing Drew Brees a kiss...

Do I really live here?

Last night we got over a foot of snow! Take a look at the fire hydrant for some perspective. It's funny that when applying to law schools we kind of had a "no snow" policy and here we are at the only law school we applied to that gets snow (and a lot of it)! But we really do love it here, and I wouldn't trade our experiences here for any other place.


Eleanor didn't mind the snow at all! She was excited to help out.

And by help out, I mean eat the snow. Yumm.

Margherita English Muffins

(This one's for you, Emily) So I made a delicious discovery that I thought I'd share. The other day as I was walking through Sam's Club, the English Muffins looked really good to me so I got them. Fast forward to tonight. Andrew has a night class on Tuesdays so he's gone from 7 in the morning until 8 at night, so it's just me and Eleanor all day. Well I decided I'd get creative for dinner and wanted to use my new english muffins. I'm also really loving tomatoes right now so I decided to try out a little tomato basil pizza. Here's what I did... Mix a little E.V.O.O., balsamic vinegar, and minced garlic. Lightly toast the english muffins and spread this mixture on them. Cut up tomatoes (my favorite is campari tomatoes-yummy) and sprinkle salt and pepper on them. Put tomatoes and mozarella cheese on english muffins. Sprinkle basil on top. I'm sure fresh basil would be delicious but I only had the dried kind. Bake at 400 for about 10 minutes. Check out these bad boys. (Don't mind the gingerbread man baking sheet)

Yummy!

I will never eat another Bagel Bite again! These little things were SO good! I actually ate all 4 of them :) Well maybe just 3 1/2 because Eleanor had a couple of bites of one.

And speaking of Eleanor, here's what she looks like these days. She is so cute and so much fun! She is learning so many new things, and it's fun to watch her actually understand things and try and communicate. She "talks" so much but really only knows about 4 or 5 words (Da-da, bye, hi, woah, oh, and I think she says yum and what's this). I can't wait until I can actually understand what she's trying to tell me, because it sounds pretty interesting. Here she is playing with her Princess laptop - She's a better blogger than I am.

And if you haven't already guessed by now with the weird cravings, I'm pregnant! I'm due the beginning of August, so that makes me about 13 weeks. I haven't been sick at all, which I feel really grateful for! I get a little nauseated if I haven't eaten anything in a while, but let's be honest, I've never really been the type to go for long without eating :) I've been super tired, but all things considered it's been pretty easy (knock on wood). We had an ultrasound a couple of weeks ago and everything looks good. We are really grateful and excited to have another sweet baby in our family!

December in a nutshell

Almost two months have passed without a blog post! I was out of town most of December and we lost our camera on our way home so I'm not really much of a blogger without pictures! I'm really bummed that our camera hasn't turned up. We had some really great pictures and videos of Eleanor on Christmas morning and other fun times. How could someone steal a camera after seeing our cute little girl and knowing they were stealing our memories??!!! Anyway, it is what it is. Luckily Andrew's parents and grandparents sent us copies of their pictures they took while we were with them. And I guess I can steal some pictures off of my siblings blogs from our visit with them.

While Andrew was taking finals and working, Eleanor and I went down to New Orleans to visit my mom and little brother(December 8-18). It was so good to be home and my mom treated us like royalty! The only downside to our trip was the rainy weather. Instead of telling you what we did, it's probably more fitting to tell you what we ate!! Drago's, Ted's Frostop, Magazine Street PoBoys, Camellia Grill, Palace Cafe, Canes....fried oysters, crawfish pasta, roast beef poboys, shrimp poboys, chocolate freezies, palace pie, shrimp tchefuncte, bananas foster, creme brulee, crab claws. Mmmm, makes me hungry just thinking about it :) And sadly, I have no pictures of any of these. (But, I do have a few extra pounds to show for it)

We met Andrew in Wilmington, NC to spend Christmas with his family (December 18-27).
Our first night in Wilmington, Eleanor trying to figure everyone out...

With Grandma Kohler (Andrew's grandma)...

Santa's workshop at the mall...

Riding the carousel (I don't think she quite got the Mary Poppins correlation)...

Andrew's parents have a time share the week of Christmas in the Outer Banks so we drove up there on Sunday afternoon. It's about a five hour drive and Eleanor was a trooper. We just plugged in some Mary Poppins, and she was good to go!
On our first day there we got a tree and decorated for Christmas...

Stocking were hung by the window with care (scotch tape)...

Luckily there is a Sonic there so we were able to get our fix!

I let her open a present the first day we were at the beach so she'd have something to play with...
Breakfast with the whole gang - Andrew's grandparents, Andrew's sister Jessica and her husband Terence, Andrew's dad (grandpa Doug), Andrew, Me, Eleanor, Andrew's mom (nana)...

Eleanor discovered someone's can of Nesquik powder in one of the kitchen cabinets and got into it before anyone noticed...

Here she is reenacting it...

We had our Christmas Eve lunch on the beach...

It was pretty chilly, so we opted to eat inside.

Eleanor loved Christmas morning and watching everyone open their presents, and opening all of her presents, too! Her favorite was waving around all her new clothes that Nana and Grandma Kohler gave her.

We flew back to Ohio on Sunday, December 27th. My mom, my little brother and my 3 siblings at BYU (who flew into New Orleans the day I left, and I actually got to see them in the Atlanta airport where we all had layovers!) drove up to Cincinnati to spend New Year's with my sister that lives there. So (siblings) Freddie, Laura, Amy, Jacob, (nephew and neices) Ethan, Grace, and Sophie, drove up to see us and stay with us for one night.
Here they are loading up for their trip to see us...

They made it!!

It was one big sleepover! My mom wanted them back after one night because she didn't want them driving in the snow. Well when they left I got really sad! So as soon as Andrew came home from work we headed down to Cincinnati and spent New Years (December 30-Jan 2) with the rest of my family (except Emily who's out in Cali, we missed you!!!).
We rang in the new year by playing a game of Phase 10...

Also, Laura has an awesome camera so she did some photo shoots of all the kids. (I wish we had gotten a shot with all of us)

Janey Boo...

Sophie-licious...

Grace Face...

Ethan aka nikky noodle...

El-adorable...


We had an awesome December and are so glad we were able to spend so much time with our families!

Happy Holidays

Since Eleanor and I will be gone for most of December, we wanted to get a jump start on Christmas decorations so we put up our Christmas tree last weekend. When we lived in Washington Andrew's grandparents gave us their old artificial tree and some lights. I wasn't so sure about having a fake tree because we always had a real one growing up, but I have to tell you I think I'm sold on the idea. It actually turned out really nice. Eleanor really enjoyed putting it up. Her favorite part...the candy canes. She doesn't even pull off any of the ornaments, the candy canes are the only thing that have caught her eye.

Andrew hard at work.

The finished product.

We still need a tree topper and a tree skirt. Maybe after Christmas I'll hunt for some on clearance.

Eleanor is the official collector and sharer of candy canes.

For Thanksgiving Andrew's parents came to visit. Andrew has a cousin up in Cleveland so we went up there on Thanksgiving day. We had a yummy meal and they had more pies than I've ever seen for dessert. Eleanor was more interested in playing with their little dog than eating pie. Dogs are her new fascination. When we go on walks and she hears a dog bark she always perks up, points, and mumbles something like "what's that?" in a cute little whisper. Our neighbors also have some dogs and she stares at them out of the window all the time. She even tries to make a barking sound but it sounds more like quacking. It's so fun to watch her learn and grow and see what things catch her interest. I think we all know it wasn't me that taught her to like dogs!

On Friday we visited a local mansion that decorates their house and grounds for Christmas. It was so pretty. (Too bad I couldn't take any pictures inside so I could steal some of their decorating ideas one day)


Andrew's parents

Inside the conservatory. (The names of all the parts of the house reminded me of playing Clue)

Here we are in front of a Santa sculpture. I got Eleanor to say HO HO HO once, but she won't do it again.

In other news, Eleanor is a little bit of a TV bug. At least 2 or 3 times a day she'll bring me the Mary Poppins DVD case and try and get me over to the TV with her. We usually just watch it in the morning right when she wakes up. It's a good way for us all to ease into the day :) Don't worry though, we don't watch the whole thing in one sitting. We start at Spoonful of Sugar and she'll watch it for about 20 minutes and then find something else to do. Then later in the day we'll just pick up where we left off. :) She really gets into "Step in Time" and does a funny little dance. Here she is in her element.

(I know, I know, not the best parenting technique, but it works for us)

Other exciting news, Eleanor's crib got recalled. We brought it back to the store and got a $200 credit. Woohoo! We picked out a new one and they were having a special that if you spent more than 100 bucks you got a big stuffed animal for free. Needless to say, our new crib cost more than $100 so we are now the proud owners of a big stuffed puppy dog! Eleanor loves it!


And we love Eleanor!