Birthday Party Pictures!!

I promised some Party pictures, and here they are...

She decided to really get a hold of it

Sharing with daddy

Ainsley just wanting to share her cake

Just getting started...

The birthday girl and daddy

Water slide Fun! Brayden loves this thing.

The Birthday Girl in her Birthday Outfit

I am still trying to master the art of uploading pictures, I can never seem to get them in the right order, but oh well. A big thanks to my parents for helping with the Party, and also to Jenn who designed Ainsley's birthday attire. All in all I think the birthday party was a big success despite the 103 degree temperature. We had lots of fun and we enjoyed getting to spend a special day with family and friends. There will probably be more birthday pics to come. My sister took some with her camera and I haven't gotten them from her yet. Stay tuned...

I'm still alive

I know that it has been forever since I last posted anything, so here is a run down of what is going on with us.

Well, we moved to Fort Worth, that is definitely the biggest change. Moving is always stressful, but I think that both of us underestimated how stressful it was going to be. We ended up having to make multiple trips and we still couldn't get everything. We started new jobs working for Paladin Prepared, which hasn't gone exactly as planned. I was working part time because I was also staying at home with Ainsley, but now I am not working at all and I am just staying home. I do enjoy getting to spend so much time with my baby girl, but I also wasn't expecting to only have one income, which is definitely a source of stress. So now I am actively searching for another job and hopefully something comes along. Please pray for us.

June is a busy month for us. Me, Ainsley and my grandma, all have June birthdays, and there is also Father's Day. I had a good birthday with family and friends. I'm a whole quarter of a century old (I guess I can't tell Patrick that he is old now, being that we are both 25 now). We had dinner at my parents for my Grandma's birthday and that was nice. Ainsley's birthday was on the 22nd. I can't believe that my big girl is One! We haven't had her party yet, it's going to be Sunday the 28th, and I will post some pictures after that.


Patrick's 1st Father's Day
I wasn't sure if I wanted to tell the whole story that goes along with Patrick's Father's Day present, but I think that its only fitting that I do. So, I wanted to get him something special since it was his 1st Father's Day. I wanted it to be personal in some way, but I also didn't want to get him something cheesy, like a "World's Greatest Dad" shirt. He had been telling me about things that he wanted for weeks, I mean months. But none of those things seemed like good 1st Father's Day presents. So a few weeks ago I was checking my email and I had an advertisement from Big Lots. I looked at the ad and they had this really cute Wagon Wheel Bench. I liked it and I thought that Patrick would too. I decided that me and Ainsley would go and take a look at it before we had lunch with Patrick. We went over to Big Lots and we combed the entire store and I couldn't find it. I was a little disappointed but we didn't have a lot of time so I picked up a few other things and headed for the check out. We got in the car and about that time I saw the bench in the window. I didn't see it originally because it was on the other side of the checkout which is not usually where you find things for sale since by the time you get to that part of the store you should have already paid. I was annoyed because I already had Ainsley in the car and I was backing out. I decided that I would just come back later.

So later that evening I decided to go to a Big Lots which I thought was a little closer and see if they had the bench. I get all the way over there to find that Big Lots is no longer there anymore. I got back to the house and I told my sister where I had been and she informed me that Big Lots didn't close they just moved farther down the street. I decided not to worry about it and I would decide later if I really wanted to get it for him. A couple of days later I decided that I wanted it so I went over to the relocated store and picked it up. Patrick is incredibly nosey and he makes it very difficult to surprise him. So after I bought the bench I decided to take it to our storage unit and hide it in there. This way he wouldn't be asking any questions and I knew that he wouldn't be snooping if he thought that I didn't buy anything. I thought it would be really cool to somehow brand "Happy Father's Day, Love Ainsley" on the back rest of the bench. I remembered that I had a wood burning tool when I was younger and I thought that that would probably work. I went and picked one up at Hobby Lobby and a couple of small pieces of wood to practice on. When I got home I practiced a few times on the wood pieces and it proved to be harder than I thought. It was really hard to get it to look evenly burned and being the perfectionist that I am, I wasn't sure if it was going to work. I left the wood burner sitting out on a shelf so that it could cool down.

Later that evening my mom sees the wood burner and was like "oh, you went and bought one of those burners". Patrick was sitting right there and she knew that all of this was a surprise. I gave her this look, you know the look I'm talking about (the shut up look). She then tried to cover up her flub because Patrick of course starting asking questions. Her response was terrible, but luckily he let it go and didn't ask anymore questions.

Several days later, Patrick and I went to Michael's to get some things to make Ainsley's birthday invitations. We looked around the whole store and I saw some alphabet stamps that attach to the wood burning tool. I knew that if I used the stamps, it would look way better than it I did it free hand. So, I made a mental note that when I was alone I would come back and get the stamps. This story is getting way to long, so I will just say that I did go back and get the stamps and I burned into the bench "Happy Father's Day, Love Ainsley". I completed it the night before Father's Day and I went ahead and gave it to him because I didn't have a way to hide it. Needless to say, He loved it. I was very excited and I was glad that he appreciated all the effort that went into it. Oh, btw, when I was putting it together I had to take it back apart 3 times because I messed up. I can't imagine why I messed up, could have been the tiny pictures and the fact that the instructions where very obviously written in English by a Chinese person.

Father's Day was great! We had a nice lunch here at my parents and that evening we went over to Plano and had dinner with Patrick's parents. It was fun.

Ainsley
Ainsley is now talking so much. Most of it is jibber jabber, but she does say quite a few words (Mama, Dada, Daddy, Thank you, tree, sit, uh oh, bed, baby). She loves her daddy. She is constantly talking about daddy, its very cute.

I am going to try to stay caught up and keep you informed of whats going on with us, since I am staying at home now. But I'm not making any promises. Also, pictures will be coming soon, I have to upload them from my camera. Love to all.

-Steph

Updates

Our big girl pushing her giraffe in her stroller

Pretty girl in the Bluebonnets





Boston and Ainsley at the Borg Egg Hunt

Happy Easter everyone, I hope everyone had a great Easter. We had a really good one. We went to see Patrick's parents and then we went and saw my family. It was a great 4-day weekend. Everyone enjoyed getting to see Ainsley. She is getting so big, she's almost 10 months now. It did make me sad that she doesn't know our families and was scared at first of all the unfamiliar faces. When we went to my parents and everyone came over on Easter Sunday, Ainsley was a little overwhelmed and she cried a lot more than she normally does. I'm not used to her acting like that, but then I realized that she is only ever around me and Patrick and her babysitter's and we are all familiar to her.

The weekend before Easter Ainsley and I went up to Fort Worth for the 1st Annual Borg family Easter Egg Hunt and Lauren's baby shower. We had a great time riding the train and getting to see everyone, including baby Lyla and baby Beckham, who were only 10 days old and 3 weeks old at the time. Me, Ainsley and my mom went to Super Target saturday night and we ran into my sister and Boston. It was so cute as we were walking around the store Jenn and I were pushing our carts right next to each other and Boston and Ainsley were just talking to each other. It was super cute. The next day we went to Lauren's baby shower. She got lots of wonderful things for baby Lily, who we expect to arrive later this week.

I know that I am jumping around with the order that all these things happened, but I am just typing them as I think. When we saw our families at Easter it was the first time that we had seen them in a while, and it got me thinking about how I really don't want Ainsley to grow up with out knowing her family. When I was growing up my grandparents were a constant in my life, and I want that for Ainsley. I want her to know her grandparents and great grandparents and her cousins. Boston and Ainsley are only 4 and half months aparts, what an awesome thing it would be for them to grow up together. On that note we have made a big decision to think about moving to Fort Worth. My family is there and Patrick's family is only an hour away in Plano. We have some plans in the works and we are trying to get all the details worked out so that we can move forward. I feel like this is an awesome opportunity for our family and I am nervous but very excited about it. We will be very sad to leave Conroe, because it is where our life is and where we had our baby girl. We will also miss all of our wonderful friends. I'll keep you updated on when all of this is going to take place. Please pray for our family as we prepare for this big change in our lives. By the way, our Ainsley bug, is getting so big she is now standing up by herself without pulling up onto something. She'll probably be walking before we know it.

Sick...

Our big girl

Ainsley and the little piggy
At Boston's party

Boston and Ainsley looking at the chicks

First haircut

she's already driving




It's been a rough week in the Houlihan house, each of us have been feeling bad. Its as if as soon as one starts feeling better the other one starts feeling bad. We are very excited because we are supposed to take Ainsley to the Houston livestock show and rodeo tomorrow. We are still not sure if we are going to be able to go because I started feeling really bad yesterday afternoon and I've been in bed all day today. I really hope that I am feeling better tomorrow. I am anxious to see how she reacts to all the animals. She has really started to gibber jabber lately, she is now saying "Da Da" all the time and occasionally she will say "Ma Ma". She is such a happy baby she's always talking and smiling, we are very blessed. She has begun to pull herself up. I think she is still very surprised when she does it. Sometimes she tries to use "non stationary" objects to try and pull up on and it doesn't turn out good. We've had a few bumps on the head lately. That's all for now, I think I'm going to go back to sleep and hopefully get to feeling better.

I wanted to share some recent pictures, so the ones above are from her first haircut, Boston's birthday party, and a picture of her looking like a big girl with daddy.

Time flies...

Christmas morning

Too many sweet potatoes made my nose orange

My happy Girl

My little Ainsleybug driving her car

Just a few photos from christmas and the first few weeks of 2009.

So I looked at my blog tonight and realized its been way too long since my last post. One of my main reasons for keeping this blog was to post photos to share with our friends and family, but it has become increasingly hard for me to upload photos to the blog. I'm not sure what the problem is but it will take a really long time for my to try and upload just a few photos and I usually only have a limited amount of time to write and post a blog. Anyways...enough excuses.

Things have been going well for us. Ainsley and I recently went to Fort Worth for Boston's birthday party. It was a lot of fun and I'm pretty sure that Ainsley's party won't be quite as nice but I will try to make it great. On that same note, Ainsley is 8 months old today! I can't believe that my baby girl is getting so big. There is a good chance that she outweighs Boston by at least a little bit. He only weighs 21 lbs. She definitely weighs at least that much. She started crawling on her hands and knees this past Wednesday. She has been pretty mobile, but she would just roll around or turn herself in circles on her belly. I only thought that she was mobile before, now I have to get up and few seconds to keep her from getting into something. Its a whole different ball game now. We will be buying a baby gate in the very near future to at least keep her out of the kitchen.

Another big thing...

We are looking to buy our first house. It's exciting, and overwhelming and scary all at the same time. I am the type of person that likes to be fully informed and educated on something before I embark on it, because I don't want to feel like I don't know what I am doing. Buying a house is a big deal and I am trying to educate myself the best I can with the help of my parents and the Internet. I never thought that I would be looking to buy a house at the age of 24, but it just seems like the next step that we are supposed to take. Patrick is currently looking for a new job and that is why we are looking for a house. When he does finally leave this job we will have to move. We are just getting started in the home buying process and I am very excited about it. Hopefully we will find exactly what we are looking for.

I will try to post more photos soon. We love you and miss you all.

Its been a while...

Well...for those one you who thought that I forgot that I had a blog, I didn't. I've just been extremely busy with work, and baby and home. I do a brief update and let you know whats been happening with us.

October:
Back in October we went up to Fort Worth to see my Aunt Denise who came down from MN. It was the first time she got to meet Ainsley and Patrick. My Aunt Debbie was also there from CA and we got to have a great fellowship with family. It was the first time that both of my Aunts got to meet the babies (Boston and Ainsley). Oh, and Ainsley rolled over for the first time, very exciting. We also took a trip to a pumpkin patch and that was lots of fun.

November:
What can I say, November is kind of a blur. Its a busy month in our family, lots of birthdays and anniversaries. Patrick and I took our first real vacation as husband and wife for our Anniversary on the 16th. It was my first time leaving Ainsley over night and it was very difficult for me even though I knew she was in good hands. Thank you to Justin and Rachel and my mom and mimaw for watching her for us. We went to New Orleans on our trip. We went to Harrah's casino and did a little gambling, we went to the aquarium and Imax, we went on a ghost tour of the french quarter and we ate lots of good food. The ghost tour was by far my favorite thing. I definitely recommend it to anyone going to New Orleans. There are several different tours of different areas of the city. Oh, we also went on a swamp tour, which was also fun.
Thanksgiving was great. We went to my parents house this year. It was a very busy few days, but it was fun. Me, my mom and my sister did some black Friday shopping and got some really great deals. We also took the kids to have some Christmas pictures made. They did so well, very photogenic children we all have.

December:
Well...so far its just been busy busy busy. I'm overwhelmed at work because of course everything I've been working on is due by the end of the year (lots of pressure :S). Ainsley just got her first 2 teeth. They showed up last Wedneday. I can't believe my baby already has teeth. She is getting so big. She now weighs in a 17lbs and 7 oz. I think she now looks more like Patrick. Her hair is getting so long and we might need to get it trimmed soon. Its started to get in her eyes.

Thats all I can think of right now and I will try to post more often.

I'm Back

Ainsley trying on her new party dress

Cousins at the pumpkin patch

little caterpillar

Mommy's little penguin

I know it has been awhile since I last posted, but life has been crazy and busy. We had a hurricane which I am sure everyone knows about. It was very scary and I have decided that I don't need to experience anymore. Next time we will definitely be going to Fort Worth. We are all fine and the house was okay too. We did have a tree on the house, but it didn't do any damage to the roof. Life has been busy but everything is going well. I have been having these dizzy spells for months now and I was recently diagnosed with and severe imbalance of my balance system. Which basically means my inner ear isn't working like its supposed to. My left inner ear works at 100%, but my right inner ear only works at 50%. I have to go to vestibular rehab where I have to train my brain to ignore the signal from my right inner ear and only accept the signals from my left inner ear.



Ainsley is doing very well. She is getting so big. She's getting chubby little legs and cheeks. We got her Halloween costume last night and we couldn't decide so we got two. One is a little caterpillar and the other is a penguin. They are so cute. You can kinda tell from the pictures above that she was kinda thinking "What are you guys doing to me?"


This past weekend me and Ainsley went to Fort Worth for Brayden's 4th birthday party. Ainsley got to wear her cute little party dress probably for the first and last time, because it was a little snug. But it looked so cute. We also took all three cousins to the Dallas Arboretum where they have a pumpkin patch.



We're all doing well. I just wanted to update everyone since I have been MIA for a little while. I will post more soon. We are going to take Ainsley to the pumpkin patch this weekend so check back for updates on that.