Feeding Faces...

Hey, It's me.  The little bird.  I am in my favorite spot....my highchair.

Momma, finally decided it was okay to give me finger foods.

 She wants me to LIKE fruit and veggies.

hmmmm.....I'm not so sure about 'em.

You eat 'em first, momma.

Alright, I'll try 'em if you say so.

No BUENO!

Ain't no way you're gonna get me to try those again!
PS-momma wants you to know that she does put clothes on me sometimes...just not while I'm eating!

So, Audrey is eating chopped up tomato in the pictures above.  Obviously, she's not a fan!

Did you know it will be in Audrey's first birthday, SOON?  Really?  The 2 biggest dilemmas I'm facing at this point are 1) Should I have a party?  2) Should I feed her cake?  I really don't want to do either.  I want my daughter to have a special day...but can't we do that as a family? Parties stress me out.  Especially here in NJ where everything is done OVER THE TOP. As for the cake, I know I sound mean, but I don't want her to know that junk food exists.  If she doesn't know it's out there, she won't miss it, right???  Am I the meanest mom ever?

Race Against Human Trafficking

Today, my friend Steph and I ran a 5K to help fight human trafficking (all the proceeds of the race go to a Christian organization that is opening a safe house for victimized teens and women).  I haven't participated in a race since my marathon back in 2006.  So, it was good to hit the open road again!  I was also excited about this run, because a few months ago I asked God to show me how to help stop human trafficking. A little later this race literally dropped in my lap.  Show me what to do next, God!!!

Steph and I before the race

The starting line

All done and feeling good!

I'll race with you ANY time, Steph!! 

What Have You Read?

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES.

Bold those books you've read in their entirety.

Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read only an excerpt.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8  1984-George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott-read to me...that counts..right?

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia- CS Lewis

34 Emma-Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi- Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck~

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville Think I read this in Highschool--HATED IT!

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson BurnettRead to me

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray-read 600 pages and couldn't get any further

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazu Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Read-32

Started-9....Some of the books I've started I will NEVER finish. I began them because I wanted to say I read this whole list.  Then, I realized that some of the reads are rather smarmy.  I only have a few hundred pages of the Lord of Rings left, but have not been able to finish it b/c it is not on my kindle and  Audrey no longer lets me read while feeding her:)

Our Little Bird

Wanna know why I haven't spent much time in my blogger composing chair?  Cause I'm spending it all feeding this little bird in the chair pictured below.  I call her "our little bird" because she squawks like a crow when she's hungry, watches me like a hawk when I'm preparing her food, and opens her mouth WIDE like a little baby bird when anticipating her next bite. She also smacks her lips and says "ahh" after finishing a rather tasty bit o' yogurt (which I realize is not very bird like, but it's sooo, cute!)

FEED ME, MOM!!

 What's new in our life besides Audrey's ever growing repertoire of skills?

1) Joel and I left Audrey with a non-family member for the first time! Yay, us and Yay, Audrey!

2)  I went shopping!  I've been wanting to buy new jeans since about October of 2011.  Then I got pregnant.  Then I had extra baby weight.   Then, I had no time to shop.  So, here I am in the new pair of jeans that I've been waiting over a year for.  I was excited and modeled them for  Joel.  His response-  "Wow, you are going eighties!"   Touche', Joel.

3)  I usually don't post pictures of myself because I NEVER like the way I look.  Then my cousin shared a FB status that stated, "There are no bad pictures.  That's just how your face looks sometimes."  She's probably right.  *sigh*  So, the above picture is a snapshot of what my face looks like sometimes.

4)  Joel hasn't even started school yet and he already has two evening events this week.  ba hum bug.

Well, that's it folks.

Look What My Hubby Won?

An awesome t-shirt from The U Crew.  I must say that this t-shirt looks much better on him, but this photo will have to do.  So, EMU, can I get some points for the next big blog prize by sending some referrals your way?!?  J/K.  Anyway, The U Crew is so cool.  They do fun stuff like blog prizes.  In Jersey, we just post pics of our baby.  Maybe if more people commented we'd give out prizes?

Guess Who?!?

Guess who swung by last weekend?

 Yes...YOU guess...

ha ha...daddy and I like to keep you in suspense...

Let me just hang upside down and then maybe I'll tell ya...

Okay...wait for it....

Uncle Jeremy (and Great Uncle Larry and Karen, sadly not pictured!)

I had so much fun with Uncle Jerry...I decided I wanted to hang out with him ALL night long:)

Wanna know why it's taken me so long to blog about Uncle Jerry's visit?  This here ironing pile.  I'm sure my mother-in-law is gasping in horror right now...my old friends are thinking "yep, that looks about right for Caron" and my new ones are gleeful to see such a big mess at my house.  Let's just say that Audrey is to blame for this monstrosity.  Feel sorry for me....cause I'm feeling very badly for myself!! I hate ironing.  I believe it to be some form of domestic punishment.  I love the guy who wears all these shirts, though:)

Back It Up....

Wait a minute, mom.

You forgot to blog about Oma and Opa's visit

and our trip to NYC when it was unseasonably cold!

and our nap in Central Park!

and daddy's college friend he has not seen in 15 years...

Whew...that long,  run-on sentence tired me out.  I'll have to tell you more about our lives in NJ some other time.

Notes from the author:

1)  We've had a lot of visitors again this summer.  People must really like us or our location:)  I'll choose to think it's US they like.

2)  The picture of Audrey sleeping is the ONLY photo I will ever take while she is not awake.  Yes, she looks so sweet and content while counting sheep, but I work too hard to get her little eye-lids to close!  I don't think I'll ever have the guts to risk waking her just for a photo.  

3)  I don't want school to start for another 9 months.  Joel has more time at home in the summer and I'm not ready to give that up.  

4)  Anyone have some good book suggestions?  I'm in need of a good read.