Amelie's Baby Shower

Bonding with her second cousin Emma, who helped plan the shower with her mom Lucy, Ryan's Aunt. Thank you Lucy!

She loved Ivy. She was so happy and content. I think they both were:) Ivy was like, "I can't concentrate on talking to you when I'm holding her!"

One of her many cute gifts. Girls are seriously too much fun to shop for.

Some of my best high school friends: Ivy, Kate, and Tracy. Love you girls, thanks for coming!!!

Me and my mom. My mom has basically been amazing helping with my new family of four. Love you mom, thank you!
The cutest cake my mom got from "Takes the Cake".

Uncle Dennis cooked all our food vegan style. It was soo yummy and pretty too.

Nana Facer is excited to be at her little granddaughters baby shower.

Ollie and his baby

Ollie found his baby in the toy chest and rediscovered his love for her all day. I heard him talking sweetly to something and came out to find him telling his baby "shhh, sleepy time" and getting blankets to tuck her in and snuggle her. He brought her everywhere we went that day. I grabbed my camera and these are totally legit, no-coaching photos. This is exactly the way he treats his real life baby. He is such a sweetheart.

what kind of day are you having?

"It's a two kid day. That's two days in a row", Ryan said tonight. Then I thought about our "one kid days" with Ollie. I guess it's good we have those moments of pure parental happiness and change our minds. But today is definitely a two kid day:)

All About Amelie

well here we are at week 7 day 3 and i can hardly believe how much this little girl is growing. she is really really wanting to talk these days. she takes a big breath and then tries to turn it into a sound and she gets really wiggly and excited at the prospect of being such a big girl. she LOVES oliver. everytime he comes around her, he just wants to snuggle and love her and she gets so smiley. i can tell they are going to be great friends. she has always been really strong and loves to stand up and lift her head all on her own. she is still sleeping great at night, usually just waking up once to eat. she is pretty easy-going except for at night between about 7 to 10 when she has her fussy time. she still hates her car seat but is learning. we're hoping she'll make our drive to utah for thanksgiving bearable:) i've learned that combining the car seat with fussy time is a deadly combination. but actually after about 5 minutes of screaming she's over it and calms down. oliver never let up that fast so we are already hoping for easier sleep training when we cross that bridge. it's pretty amazing to think for 9 months what she'll be like and then before you know it she's here and she's just what we always hoped for. her daddy is especially smitten.

Feeling chubby

I'm pretty sure I heard from everyone that the second time around was harder. I'm thinking I also got amazingly lucky with Oliver and was able to drop the baby weight pretty fast. With Amelie it is a totally different story. Just leave it to a girl. I guess I wasn't expecting to have like 15 pounds to drop at this point and I've never really had to work off that much weight. So lately I have been feeling down about my changed body. Then I realized yesterday how totally ridiculous I'm being. Ok well not totally cause we girls tend to focus whether we like it or not on body image, so I can't completely blame myself. But this job, having babies, is hard. And then you just keep having more and wonder if you're ever going to feel or look the same. Then I had this thought. I don't ever want to feel the same. Having kids changes everything, and thank heavens for that. However I wouldn't mind looking the same to be honest. But instead of focusing on how fast I can lose 15 pounds, I need to focus on gratitude for a healthy body that brought me this amazing baby, a body that through pregnancy and labor, is working well and doing it's job. Frankly my body is pretty amazing and I need to learn to be grateful for it. The weight will come off. Hey, it took 9 months to gain it and it might take 9 to drop it. If I still have a husband that thinks I'm sexy, that's really all that matters. (Oh and as a side note: My amazing daughter slept all night last night. Gratitude Gratitude Gratitude).

A Golden Birthday

superman loves sunsets too

the boys at the pumpkin patch
a view of our house from the beach, it's the white one

the fellas before trick-or-treating. i'm not sure they're really excited.
ryan admiring our most recent project...amelie
sometimes you just need to snuggle at the beachit just wouldn't be halloween without a candy rumage from the parentsthis was what we got to trick-or-treat in. it was perfect weather that night and the neighborhood went all out. we all might have to make this a yearly tradition.the gorgeous sunset from our balcony

this little girl smiles all the time but for some reason it is nearly impossible to get on camera
pete's pumpkin patch in camarillo
we lovelovelove marley

and what a golden birthday it was! turning 27 on the 27th of october was simply the best. my amazing husband has been quite the trickster planning behind the scenes for my bday. it all started monday night when after pumpkin carving at the facer's ryan told me he got a call from work and needed to pick up a shipment of something. strange considering this never happens. but i didn't think much of it other than being slightly annoyed. well he got home and said that he remembered something he wanted to get me for my birthday on the way home and that i needed to close my eyes and come out and see it. so he led me to the front door and said open your eyes and i see standing in front of me one of my best friends mary with her kids, cash and marley. the funny thing is, as i was closing my eyes and walking to the door, i thought to myself, i wonder if mary flew in for my bday...but that was purely wishful thinking cause i really had no idea they had planned that. so anyways mary tells me she is leaving thurs and we have the next few days to have fun. after hanging out with the kids, shopping, and going to the beach, thurs comes too soon and we get in the car to go to the airport. we had been driving for probably 2 minutes when all the sudden i look over and see my husband in a convertible with mary's husband (who was supposed to still be in Boise working). basically i did about 4 double takes and was really confused at why my husband was not at work and more so why he was hanging out with ryan johnson. i look over at mary and i'm like mary, look your husband is here, he's surprised you, and then i notice she's taking pictures of me. so i know this is the real surprise. we pull into a parking lot after the boys and ryan comes over to explain to me that we're going back to where it all started...meaning the beach house in ventura. some of you probably don't know but we actually spent our honeymoon in ventura with all our best friends. this is where ryan first met the johnson's whom he fell in love with, thus the comment, where it all started. i was SO excited and still shell shocked that we were actually spending thurs-tues at the beach house with our best friends. can't get better than that. the best part was looking back on all the lies i had been fed by everyone to pull the whole thing off. i am not an easy person to surprise and quite frankly i've never really liked surprises, but this one was PERFECT. ryan had called the lovejoys even before i had the baby to arrange the house and pitched the idea to the johnson's who went for it without hesitation. ryan said he wanted a birthday surprise that couldn't be beat. man did he out-do himself. i love him.