Weekend with Uncle Justin

Uncle Justin came to visit this weekend. We spent some time at the zoo, and on the playground, and around town, eating out everywhere except for my favorite place, the $1.50 hotdog combo at Sams club...for some reason no one seemed interested in that, weird. Some big things happened while he was in town.

Olivia smiled for the first time, look at her, she is so super cute! (same thing happened with Annie! She smiled for the first time while Justin was visiting her too).

Olivia also spit up on every shirt Justin put on. I think that is just her way of saying I love you. She has probably thrown up on me about 2 dozen times, just last week, so a little spit up on Justin is probably a good thing.

Annie showed us just how crazy she can be. We were hanging out in the basement and she came up and showed us how she had bit her own wrist...hard! So don't mess with her....if she does that kind of stuff to herself, just think what she may do to you...

She did the same thing about 5 hours later. She came up and showed me 2 bite marks that time. I asked her why she did it. Her response was "Go get the camera". I guess she likes to document things as much as I do.

Today we went for a hike around Red Rocks, fun but long, and sunny and hot, and long...longer than Tim let on. He claimed going around the back part of the mountain only added about a quarter of a mile to the total...wrong, more like 2 miles! Oh well, he is always pulling that trick, I should have known better! Here is the group (minus Tim) at the top of the mountain...before the extra 2 miles.

Jump Bunch

Annie is now enrolled in her first somewhat organized activity. I would like to get her into something like soccer, or dance lessons...I don't know, but this group called Jump Bunch comes to her school each Thursday and they spend some time with the kids doing some sort of sports type activity. You think for the amount of money we pay towards tuition that this would be included but it is not to be. So anyways, she has been going for a few weeks now and she gets really excited about it. One week they had a chicken toss, tossing rubber chickens through hoops and catching them. Last week they got to hit some nerf balls off a tee and field a few throws. I only know this because they leave a note saying what they did that day, and it is a good thing because if you ask Annie what they did at Jump Bunch she will say "Ummm...we jumped"

Olivia is one month old!

Olivia is one month old now, and to celebrate, she kept us up until 11 o'clock last night, but then made up for it by sleeping straight through until 5:30! She is definitely more alert than before, and I was hoping she would fall asleep while we were taking her one month photos because I love sleepy naked baby photos, but it wasn't to be. She is losing hair left and right, mainly on the right, but the left side of her head is catching up. Annie is being a wonderful big sister and is very helpful with fetching diapers and then chucking the old ones at the dogs. She is constantly complimenting he sister "O-lib-i-lee-a" by telling her she is both a pretty girl, and a big boy.

Worky worky, Busy Bee!

So some people have asked me how maternity leave is going. It's been pretty good! Olivia sleeps A LOT. During the day she sleeps a lot, I have to wake her up every 3 hours to feed her. Nighttime is unfortunately a different story lately. Oh well...on to bigger and better things. I'm sure you all know that I have been taking photos of Annie every month and have them in a scrapbook that took me hours to make, well for Olivia, I've discovered the wonderful world of digital scrapbooking. I've already got at least 3 pages done, and more if you count the pages I was just fooling around with. So I'm pleased to announce that you can now see what I've been doing while on maternity leave...mainly taking pictures and surfing the web for free downloads and photoshop lessons...anyways, just click the link below and go to the album labeled Olivia's Scrapbook! And I'll add this link to our "links we like" section so check back often and I'm sure there will be more pages to see.

http://picasaweb.google.com/ReyneeandTim

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood...

Yesterday was my first full day all alone with the girls and it turned out great! The weather was supposed to be gorgeous, which it was, it got up to about 80 degrees so I kept Annie home from school and we met our friends Kirstin and Julia at the zoo and had lunch with them too. Not much new at the zoo, but I really think Annie prefers the monkeys to any other animal there. There were a ton of school kids of all ages on field trips so it was a bit more crowded than usual. After lunch we went home and Annie when straight for her nap, no monkey business. After her nap, since it was a pretty windy day, we decided to go up to the park and fly her kite, then home to play on her playground until dinner time. She had behaved like a perfect Annie all morning and afternoon, doing everything I told her she had to and being pretty happy about it. And then Dada came home. It was all downhill from there, tantrums and crying, you name it. I guess she knows that she really has Tim on a short leash and he is wrapped around her little finger pretty tightly...or maybe she thinks he owes her a few for pushing her down the basement stairs earlier in the week, who knows. AfterI told Tim how our day went (and also pointed out that I don't let her push me around) he decided that he is going to be more strict with her...good luck with that Dada!

Quiz answers...

If you are still trying to figure out who is who in the April 2nd post of the baby photos...Annie is the first photo and Olivia is the second.

The Longest Flight of Stairs Ever

I recently read that when you are in a car accident or some similar event, your brain goes into hyper-concentration mode which causes you to perceive time as going by in slow motion. I felt like that happened to me yesterday evening. Tim and the girls were downstairs and I was sitting at the kitchen table. They decided to come up and Annie decided to bring up two of her baby dolls. Well, apparently one of them tripped her on the top stair and she tumbled all the way down to the bottom. It sounded like she hit 30 stairs even though we only have 12 and it also seemed like the fall lasted a lifetime. I jumped up and ran to the stairs to find Annie laying at the bottom with tears streaming down her cheeks. After a thorough check up of all her arms and legs, she said her nose hurt and we administered ice as well as the cure all Popsicle.

Annie enjoying her new swingset

Espionage and Sleepless Nights at the Nuetzel House...

The Nuetzel house was invaded over the weekend...someone broke through our non-existent firewall and took over our dearly beloved computer causing major chaos and me waking up for midnight panic attacks where I worried about the 5000 photos that I have put on the computer but failed to backup. So we took the computer to a bunch of nerds on Monday to try and get it fixed, which they did, no thanks to me calling every other hour (I exaggerate...it was only 4 or 5 times in the two days they had been working on it). And luckily for me, (but more lucky for Tim because I would have made his life miserable for a few months if it turned out badly), they were very good nerds, because everything is back to the way it was before...and I've even backed up the photos from 2006...maybe tomorrow I'll do the rest. What can I say, I don't learn lessons very easily!

I am happy to say that the lack of sleep was really caused by my own brain and not my sweet little Olivia, who is sleeping in 4-5 hour stretches of the night. I feel like a new woman! Hopefully this habit will continue and I didn't just jinks myself!

Anyone wondering if Annie and Olivia look alike?

Try and guess who is who...I suppose it is true what John says about new babies, they all look alike!