tgif

i'm so happy friday is finally here. and with it, comes good news! my nephew's feeding tube was finally removed! all along he's been receiving his food from a combination of the bottle and feeding tube and today he passed a feeding test that guaranteed he no longer needed the extra help. this is such a huge step forward and i'm so happy and excited! he looks like a normal, healthy baby without the tubes hooked up to him. just look at the little guy!

on top of the good news of the feeding tube, came results from a brain mri colin had this morning. everything's all clear! it comes as a huge relief to all of us. and now the doctors are even talking about the possibility of releasing him as early as tomorrow afternoon! i hope and pray that everything continues to progress positively. it's time for colin to get out of the hospital and be home where he can be a normal baby. and finally get to meet his big brother!

little baby

jeff and i finally got to go visit our new nephew this weekend. we ended up taking the train into the city and getting lunch at the reading terminal before heading to the hospital. i forgot how much i used to enjoy taking the train into the city for work. it's so much easier to just sit there and zone out rather than deal with traffic and idiotic people on the roads.

it had been a little over two weeks since i saw colin and seeing him on sunday was really wonderful. he seems so much smaller in person. here's some photos i took on sunday.

i finally got to hold him for a couple minutes and he really is the sweetest little guy. he was busy getting comfortable and checking things out. i had him laying on his stomach on my chest and the whole time he was picking his head up and looking up at me and all around. i couldn't believe how strong his neck is already!

things seem to be slowly progressing with him. he was weened off of the oxygen completely and is now only hooked up to a couple monitors and the feeding tube. they're still working out the kinks with his breathing, but hopefully he'll be able to come home soon!

little men

look at this goofball! i've been seeing a lot of this adorable little man lately and it has been a ton of fun! although, i would prefer to be seeing him under different circumstances other than his new baby brother being in the hospital. although still in the hospital, colin is slowly improving day by day. it's going to be so exciting to see tyler interact with colin for the first time. it can't come soon enough!

new new new

look at that. i've managed to put off my update until today. that's probably just the way things are going to be for now. so many things are keeping me busy and i'm finding it harder and harder to get done that i need to get done.

our wedding is quickly approaching and while most of the planning and organizing and purchasing is done, there is still a lot that needs to be finalized. we finally got around to choosing a design for our invitations a month or two ago and i ordered all of the supplies necessary to diy all of the stationary. the package arrived yesterday and i've yet to even open it. i'm very excited about making the invitations because from here on out all it really entails is printing and assembling which i find fun because it lets me work with my hands and it'll be something fun that the future hubs and i can do together. the only thing i'm dreading is the amount of work and time that is going to go into it and the fear of making mistakes. i want everything to go smoothly and without any major problems, but we'll just have to get to it and see what happens. this will be our project / goal for this weekend!

aside from wedding things i've been super busy with one trick zebra orders. in case you have forgotten or don't know anything about one trick zebra, click here or here. it seems as though the baby boom never stops and is perfectly fine by me! i love filling orders for expectant mothers. one trick zebra has really become a passion of mine and has allowed me to try new things and open up my creativity. it's been amazing how much attention one trick zebra has drawn and continues to draw; i never imagined its potential.

we very recently welcomed a brand new baby to the family. my nephew, colin william, was born the first weekend in march. he's been having some health issues and unfortunately is still in the hospital, but he's slowly working through them. i'm continuing to pray and asking other to pray for his health and a speedy recovery so he can finally be home and get to meet his big brother tyler. here's a quick shot of the adorably sweet little man.

he's so cute and very big! i think he's pretty much skipped the newborn size and is ready to wear 0-3 months! i can't wait til he's able to test out some of my new one trick zebra products. now i will have two models for my new line of big boy onesies that i'm developing!

more updates are definitely on the way, just be patient with me as i get back into the swing of blogging.

shame on me

whoa. i can't believe i haven't had a post since august... i knew this would happen! i've had a lot going on in the last few months that has forced me to put this blog on the back burner. actually, i almost forgot all about even having a blog until something made me think of it just a few minutes ago. so here i am, checking in on my lack of activity. and even as i sit here and type this up i'm already thinking about putting off this post until tomorrow. i need to make a major update but i'm too tired to do it now. sooooo bear with me as i get back into the swing of things around here and slowly catch you all up, post by post!

dresses, flowers, honeymoons and baseball

so much has been going on lately that i don't even know where to start with an update. i'll try to keep this short, but i have a feel that it might get a little lengthy, so hang in there.

let's keep this entry to wedding stuff... since i last blogged about the wedding, we were in the midst of shopping for bridesmaids dresses and shoes, deciding on a florist, and trying to fill in other gaps like hotel room blocks and wedding decor. i'm happy to say that the bridesmaids dresses and shoes are all squared away. i was even able to order shoes for myself. this was another big relief for me. the more items we can check off the list, the better! it was really great getting the girls together, with the exception of my maid of honor who happens to live in minnesota. this was the first time they got to meet each other and they all hit it off immediately. this makes me really excited about future events that involve all of us getting together. it's going to make the whole wedding process that much more enjoyable and fun.

after the early morning shopping, jeff and i finally signed with a florist after working out a pretty sweet deal! we honestly had no idea what we were going into when we first started looking for a florist. everything was so open ended and we didn't have much of a vision for the flowers. thank god for angel rose florist in warrington, pa! we brought in some reference shots of what we liked and she was able to help us envision our flowers and what everything would look like together. plus she really pulled together our wedding theme into the flowers. i can't wait to see the finished product!

i wish i could share more details about the wedding planning, but i've decided to keep a lot of things secret. i don't want to give everything away and leave guests with an exact image of what to expect on our wedding day. it's my goal to keep everyone guessing and let them be wowed when they show up to the church and reception venue and see all of the hard work that went into the planning. i've been working my butt off and hearing/watching peoples' reaction is going to be the best payoff.

the other good news in our little world of wedding planning is that we've selected a honeymoon destination. i'm not going to give it away just yet because nothing is set in stone, but it is definitely a location in the caribbean and it is absolutely amazing! we made an appointment with a travel agent almost two weeks ago to get an idea of places we should go. she mentioned this location and i've been looking at photos of the area and reading up on it the last day or so and it just keeps getting better and better. i think we might be stopping by to visit her again this weekend and hopefully book the trip. i'll reveal our destination once it's definite.

other than those couple things we've been working on some reception decor and accessories for the reception portion of the wedding. i'm so lucky that jeff is as involved with the whole wedding process as he is. he's been a big help planning and figuring out the logistics. we've been getting awesome results from bouncing ideas off of each other. it's true what they say, two heads really are better than one! plus it helps that he's been keeping me somewhat sane as we get closer to the big day. only ten months to go!

here's a pic of us from this past weekend. we took sometime out from our busy schedules to attend a williamsport crosscutters game.

and here's some more shots from the game. we had amazing front row seats and got to see all of the action. and to top it off, i got to see my man mickey morandini (phils circa '93) coaching the team. i met mickey back in the day and got a photo with him and my baseball signed. it was very exciting! i'll have to post the photo here so you can all see how excited i was.

the crosscutters kicked butt and won it 5-1.

stay tuned

i've been having a rough time getting motivated to blog. as you can probably tell since my last post was almost 2 weeks ago. a lot of things have been going on and i'm working on gathering my thoughts for an update.