superior customer service

i am just waiting until the princess wakes up so i can go over and squeeze my new little nephew and cuddle him but i thought i would write about an experience i had yesterday. i was on my way home from my sister's house when i stopped to get some windex and paper towels. i am going off sugar in january so i thought i would pick up some diet soda for those times i wanted a treat so i don't stray.

first, let me just say that i LOVE cranberry splash sierra mist free. it is so yummy. you can't even tell that it is diet. my husband has been looking for it to get for me for a couple of weeks to no avail. it is only seasonal and we thought it was gone. it didn't stop me from looking though. nothin. so i picked up some diet cola and headed for the checkout. i suddenly decided that i should be drinking water, not cola, even if it is diet, so i put the cola back on an endcap of soda nearby...and there they were, kind of backlit, like a miracle, two cases of the cranberry splash. i picked them up and checked out and went to the car. i was so excited i called my sister on the way home and told her i had a pack for me and a pack for her and she was excited too (we love this stuff, it is like christmas crack, haha). i unload my baby and albertsons bag only to find no cranberry splash.

i had left it in the bottom of the basket. i was so mad. i called the store and the manager offered to go out to the parking lot and look for it (since i couldn't just go buy it somewhere) and he put me on hold...about ten minutes later he came back and told me that he combed the parking lot and asked the bag boys and found nothing. he said if i didn't mind waiting he would check the back stockroom to see if they had anything. i said i didn't mind and he found two cases. this grocery manager was so kind. i told him (and he heard) that i had a fussy baby on my hands and i asked if my husband could pick them up on the way home from work. i told him my husband would be happy to pay for them because it wouldn't be very convenient for him to come home first. this store is not our regular store, but closer to my sister's house. the manager told me (i didn't know he was the manager at this point) he was happy to just give them to my husband, he didn't need to pay for them again or go home to get the receipt. how nice is that? it isn't very often that you get that kind of customer service.

i just called his manager and told him how impressed i was with my shopping experience and with this particular employee because it seems like people often times only relay negative experiences.

here i am, sipping my sugar free cranberry splash...mmm, kindness tastes good.

while i am waiting...

for rachel to call to say that her baby was born, i thought i would write a little post about christmas...even though i really want to post about a new little someone that should be arriving soon. i got a call at one saying she got a call from the hospital to come in to be induced. i am so eager to hold this bundle of joy!!

anyway, christmas was a huge success. i have always loved christmas and having audrey here with us has been the only thing we have wanted for the past two christmases so it made our christmas to share it with her.

we had dinner on christmas eve dinner with my aunt rosemary and uncle kent at their house and then santa came, we read "twas the night before christmas" and opened some presents and everything was delightful. i have a darling picture to post of audrey in a hat that my cousin jennifer knitted for her once it is emailed to me. she looked so cute in it.

we came home and opened up a couple of presents (including new christmas pajamas) and watched "it's a wonderful life" and settled in for a long winter's nap.

dad and audrey let me sleep in until they couldn't take the anticipation anymore and came into wake me up. we went down and turned on some christmas music and helped audrey go through her stocking. it was so cute to watch her as we helped her open all her presents and see which ones she got excited about and the ones where she was unimpressed, haha.

dave spoiled me with a wii fit and a heartrate monitor as well as some fun ipod accessories, some new shoes and slippers and a few other fun things. rachel, jeremy and jj came over for our traditional christmas brunch (deviled egg and ham casserole and sweet rolls, orange rolls are so yummy) and some guitar hero world tour (that is what santa brought for dave).

i wish i had taken more pictures, but i am glad i took a couple at least!

audrey with her loot!


it took a few tries to get the above picture, she was very tired and she does the trick when she is tired of her bumbo. she leans all the way back and pops her stomach up. it makes me very nervous and she is only in that seat when mom or dad is by her side...


she LOVES to watch guitar hero, she makes me laugh so hard. you can see my new slippers in the background :)


she is our little thumb sucker!



she loves her activity gym! thanks ana and grandpa!



all dressed up in her christmas outfit


this one is actually from a few weeks ago when audrey and i were both sick, laying on the couch. i love this picture even though i am in desperate need of chapstick because audrey looks so funny in it. "how much formula did i drink last night?" haha.


this one is from last night when we were tending jj. when his parents came to pick him up he wanted to hold audrey so bad. it is so cute to see how much he loves her.


well those are a few highlights of our celebration. we missed our family members that don't live here and hope they had a wonderful holiday.

**RACHEL UPDATE** just got a text that said that baby will be here about midnight at this rate!! i am SO excited!

the best christmas book ever

today has been a good day. audrey is now five months, hard to believe it. she is such a sweet girl. i met some high school friends for lunch today and she was such a good girl through the whole thing. no one else brought their kids but since daddy had a dental appointment, the babe came with me. she is at an entertaining age right now. she has such a fun sense of humor. she doesn't take her binky much but instead prefers her fingers, doesn't have a particular one she sucks on, just whatever she can get in her mouth...sometimes it is her whole fist, haha. she has a little woodpecker laugh that is so unique and fun. she LOVES television and if it is on she will watch it, she will even strain to turn and watch if her back is facing it. she likes to giggle at her dad. she laughs with me sometimes, but no one can get her laughing the way her dad can. since she was a newborn she has studied everything around her. it is fun to watch her because you can see her taking it all in, observing her surroundings and trying to assimilate. she will not lean her head on anyone's shoulder. she wouldn't even as a newborn, she has to have her head up and be able to see what is going on...you know, be part of the action. she is a sweetheart and i wish i could freeze this moment but since i can't, i try to write down as much as i can about her and take lots of pictures and videotape so i never forget these sweet moments.

it was fun to see my friends today and catch up. it was especially fun to see that a friend of mine who has struggled for years with infertility is pregnant with twins and found out yesterday she is having a boy and a girl. could there be anything more happy? i was choking back tears while talking to her about struggling to conceive because wow, that is familiar to me. after lunch, audrey and i went to the library to pick up a book on hold for me, "the best christmas pageant ever" and can i just say that i love that book. it was one of my favorites as a child and i hadn't read it in years and had all but forgotten about it when it popped into my head on sunday night. it was fun to read it when i put audrey down for a little nap.

it was interesting to think about the christmas story and reflect on mary and how she must have felt.

"But as far as I'm concerned, Mary is always going to look a lot like Imogene Herdman-sort of nervous and bewildered, but ready to clobber anyone who laid a hand on her baby."

i don't know if it is because this is the first time i read this story as an adult or because i am a mother now or the general sappiness i feel during this time of year but i cried all the way through this book. i couldn't help but remember how uncomfortable i was that last month of pregnancy and how anxious i was for the safe arrival of my baby. i remember wanting to be the best mom i could be and give her every advantage. i think of mary feeling tired, hot, uncomfortable, swollen and so in need of a place to rest her head after her travels only to be brought to a barn. i think about my experience when my baby was born, family and friends around us, bringing us food and flowers and two nurses assigned to me at all times to help me when i needed or wanted something...i can't help but think of mary and the humble birth of her Baby. what a woman she must have been to endure all that she did and give birth to the Savior of the world.

i also loved that these children who were the terror of the town would be touched by this story and offer up their own christmas ham (when they don't have two nickels to rub together) as a present for the baby Jesus.

it was fun to read it today. i love christmas movies and books but most are about being a better person, more giving, more loving, etc. or about santa claus. it was a nice change of pace to read a christmas book that made me reflect on the birth of Christ which is what Christmas is really about.

first timer over here

we took audrey to see santa last night for the first time. it was so much fun. we dressed her in her christmas outfit and when we got there santa was out feeding his reindeer so we had forty minutes to kill. we got some chinese food and waited. i was so excited. she gave a big smile when she first sat down but by the time we got a picture she was wondering what was going on. i think the picture is so funny. audrey looks like a little doll, so stiff and proper, haha. the girl taking the pictures asked if they could use the picture they snapped as the display picture. audrey is already a little model. we got home and she just sat and talked and talked. i mentioned to dave that she sure had a lot to say and he said, "of course she does, she just saw santa and is excited to tell us all about it." haha. what a cutie.

weekend update

our weekend was pretty chill, but we had fun.

saturday morning we were going to make some breakfast but we were out of eggs so we decided to do a quick mcdonalds run. haha, it turned out to be not so quick though. what should have been a twenty minute trip both ways was over an hour. it was snowing and i have never seen a line that long at mcdonalds. it was fun though and good to get out together.

after that dave went to help his sister move some tables and chairs and then we wrapped some presents, cleaned the house and in the evening we got a pizza and watched "the dark knight" on dvd. it was fun to see it again.

sunday morning we got up and i got ready and got audrey ready and then i prepared a game of "name that christmas tune" for the family christmas party. it was brunch at maria's house and it was so fun. thanks for the idea rachel and laura. rachel suggested it to me but got the idea from laura. it was a hit. we also played christmas memory and christmas bingo.

today audrey ate pears mixed with a tablespoon of rice and she loved it. she has cried in the past when we have tried to feed her food but she just gets so hungry so we tried again today. she loved them. she really seemed to "get it" by the end and was opening her mouth when she saw the spoon. i think eating with a spoon is so unfamiliar to her but the taste was not. she has had pear juice in her bottle from time to time in the past so i think that might have helped her a bit.

dave bought a gingerbread house kit at the store for us to decorate for family night since we didn't get to take our house from thanksgiving home from virginia and i am getting more excited for christmas by the day.

o christmas tree, o christmas tree

i had such a great day on monday and i am just blogging about it now. life is especially busy in december, isn't it? i was hanging out with audrey and i got a call from dave asking if i would like to go and see the lights at thanksgiving point when he got home from work. i was so excited because it was snowing for the first time this month and i was ready for all things christmas. he also said that i couldn't meet him at the door when he got home but i had to wait until he came upstairs. again, it is december, so i didn't think much of it. he came home and walked upstairs and asked where audrey was. she was napping and had been asleep for two hours so he went to wake her up. he said audrey had something special to give me and they went downstairs and brought up a box. before dave pulled out the present, he told me that this gift was from audrey. he had (with some prompting from audrey i am told) this woman make this ceramic tree for me from the same mold that the tree that my mom, nana and aunt rosemary had when i was growing up. i have always loved this tree. it reminds me of christmas as a child and i am excited that audrey will have the same decoration as she grows up. it was so sweet. it made me cry (in a good way). we went and got hot chocolate at sev and went to look at the lights. it was such a great day and i have been so excited for christmas since.

two years later...

two years ago today we lost our little angel. i will never forget that day. i look over at our christmas tree and i see the little "angel of the heart" ornament and it is a figurine of a little girl holding a heart. we didn't know last year that the little baby in my tummy was a little girl yet but we both felt like it was a little girl we lost. dave and i talked about it a bit today and he really feels like it was audrey and it wasn't her time yet. i am so grateful to be audrey's mother. i love her so much. when i think back to two years ago when i had an ultrasound and we saw no heartbeat tears stream down my face. that was such a painful time for dave and i, such a hard christmas for us...but the tears now are tears of gratitude and tears of love. i am so grateful to my husband. he will never know how much i love him because it is impossible for me to express. i have no words that could ever express my feelings accurately. he was and is such a support to me in my time of sorrow as well as in my time of joy...so many nights he would just hold me as i cried myself to sleep. this year i am not as excited for christmas as i usually am. i think partly because i was so excited for thanksgiving to see my family and show dave washington dc and partly because what we have wanted most for christmas the last two years we received in july of this year. i get to be with audrey every day. i get to see her smile and hold her close. she makes every day special for me. today when i feel a little sad remembering the sadness and pain that began on this day, i will hold my baby girl a little tighter and be grateful that i have a husband that loves me and stand by my side to anchor me through the tough times.