ok, ok one more food picture....

sorry, but this photo just cracks me up. i had to share.

many updates

well....it's almost september already. many things are happening in the o'malley household.... each day with aubrey is a new adventure. i realize the question of the moment is "is she crawling yet?" our answer..... no, she has decided to skip crawling all together and go directly into training for the marines. our child is a pro at push-ups, you know the "manly style"... up on the toes, arms at 90 degree angle. i know. she's buff. she rocks.



aubrey has also decided that baby food is, well, for babies... and she wants whatever we've got instead.... eggs, pasta, chicken, bread.....daddy's sweet potato. today she tried KFC a gearhart family favorite. (ah, welcome to the family little one. now you just need to acquire a taste for swedish fish by the handful and "uh-oh spaghetti-o's" (matt thinks they are disgusting.)

in just a few short weeks we head to oregon to spend time with matt's sister's family.... aubrey will meet her cousin maddy for the first time.

i am sure that we will come back with many photos of the two little girls together. we are so excited to see and spend time with rob, teri & maddy! little nervous about the 6 hour plane ride with a 9 month old.... but i am sure we will do fine. our luck though she will be crawling by then and i will have to chase her down the aisle. (already had to drag her out from under a pew at church...and that was just with her rolling.)

well, i think that is all for now. hope the long post made up for the many days with no updates.
happy summer everyone. enjoy it....fall is upon us soon.

sorry for the delay...

i know we haven't blogged much lately. the end of summer is getting a little insane. here is a cute photo to hold you over until we can write in more detail about what has been going on here.

shhhhh....the baby is sleeeeeeepppiiing.

i LOVE being a parent! last night was hilarious... at least i thought so. at about 11:30 matt and i snuck downstairs to go to bed. i always check on aubrey one more time before i settle in. i walked up to her bed and the little angel was completly sideways laying from left to right in her crib. not only that...but she was on her belly with her arms and legs stretched out between the rungs in the crib. it was so funny and cute. i would have left her the way she was, but being a mom, i had to mess with it... she was uncovered and it gets absolutely freezing downstairs because of the air conditioning. i called matt to come and take a look at her, then proceded to pull one of her blankets out from underneath her in order to put it on her.... matt was growling at me the whole time "you are going to wake her up". needless to say she started to squirm. it was all down hill from there.... matt and i hit the ground. there we were, two grown adults cowering next to a crib. matt's whispering, "hit the light, hit the light" i am crouching on the floor covering my mouth and nose with my hands, trying not to laugh out loud. we managed to right the baby in her crib, cover her up and get off to bed without to much more drama.

matt looked at me as we climbed into bed, "your fired!"
all i said was...."you can't fire me, i gave birth to her."

ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz.

welcome to the islands mon....

...or rather welcome back.
we are very happy to have my parents back on dry land after a cruise catastrophe returning from a vacation to celebrate their 25th anniversary.

most times when you hear about things on the news, you think to yourself... hmmm, oh that's a shame....or glad no one i know was on that flight/boat/etc.

this time, they were.

we thought na na and pop pop would enjoy a little hello from their "little island girl".
smile mom and dad.... we are happy to have you both safe and HOME.
no more cruises for a while, ok?

aaaaaaghhh!

aubrey's latest thing is that she has started to screech whenever something is not exactly how she thinks it should be... ie "you took the paper away from me"... "this toy doesn't fit all the way into my mouth" ..."yogurt and puffs are way better than your damn oatmeal" ... "why can't i chew on mommies shoes/keys/cell phone?"... and "i'm bored and no, i am not tired"

isn't parenting fun.

The Very Young at Heart

today we celebrated my grandmom's 80th birthday. what an amazing woman and i love her dearly. for over 20 years she has lived not 5 miles from the house that i grew up in. she was the person i could always count on to pick me up from school if it was raining.... she would let 5 middle schoolers cram in the back of her sundance and give them all rides home. she would spend hours teaching me a craft skill....knitting, cross stitch, quilting....even though she knew i had the attention span of an 8 year old (because i was an 8 year old) and i would never finish it. she would cut the fronts off of all the cards that she received so that i could cut them apart and make pretty pictures with them. she let me touch every bell in her bell collection (most grandmoms wouldn't let you do that). she let me dress her in an afghan and tell her that she was the shepherd in my make believe christmas play (i was mary. pop-pop was joseph. oscar the dog was a sheep.) she made sure that i KNEW how much she loved me. i cannot imagine life without her. happy birthday GiGi!

finally caught it on camera

we may have mentioned to some of you aubrey's little morning routine. we have finally caught it on film. every morning she gets up at around 7:00 and i feed her. when she is all done she lays back across my legs, throws her head and arms back, stares at matt and let's me rub her tummy for a couple of minutes.... it's quite cute and very funny.... thought you would enjoy seeing her look of contentment. ;o)

...i don't care what you say

...the real reason for our blog. to inform you how darn cute our kid is!

the other night aubrey decided that she would take a nap at 6:30 at night, therefore she also decided that she was not tired AT ALL until about 10:00. this is what she looked like at 9:45.

we were staring at her saying "go to bed."

she was laughing at us.

double trouble trail run...in the rain

we did it. no yacking to speak of. didn't finish to badly either. the trail was wet...sloppy, slippery and a little congested in some places but all in all, a GREAT DAY!

tomorrow we run

i am going to throw up....
you know that nervous energy you have when you are, well...nervous.

yeah, i have that. it also can be that sudden urge to pee when you are about to do something. like for example stand with a bunch of people you don't know and submit yourself to 9.33 miles of trail running.

i am not so nervous about competing. i know i won't come anywhere near winning. i guess i am just scared to NOT FINISH. i mean, i know i trained for this...but, what if.... i get a little sloppy when i am tired and i don't pick up my feet as much. what if i fall, what if i totally yack on that big hill. what if....

well...i am just glad that i can run, that i have gotten to spend time with matt training, that it is something that we can do together, that even if i do yack....it's ok, at least i tried.

...i'll let you all know how it goes. till then.....enjoy the picture of happy feet.

Creative Arts Camp @ Old Mill

Tomorrow is our last night at Old Mill Bible Camp. Matt and I got to be a part of a very special event this year. BACC , Old Mill and CFC (our home church) teamed up to put on a Creative Arts Camp. It began on Monday night with each of the kids choosing a team... Drumming, Step, Dance, Drama, Basketball and Art. They spent the week designing their costumes and working on routines that they came up with. Tomorrow night they will perform their routines for the other campers and counselors. We are SO EXCITED to see what they will do! It has been awesome to see these kid's get excited about something and feel that their contribution to a team is important. I cannot wait till tomorrow night!

that brand new role of DAD

a father's day post...

you may or may not know the full story of the "o'malley clan".
the long and short of it is that i fell for matt immediately...and in true matt o'malley style, my wonderful husband took a little while to come around.

basically i decided this was it, he was the one i wanted and no one was going to tell me otherwise...i dug my feet in and, well, the rest is history. although i may not advize other young women (and my daughter) to do it the same way... i have never regretted anything.
i saw the way this man prayed, the way he worshipped the Lord, the way his friends and others respected him and i said "that is the kind of man that i want to lead my family"
and now he is....
matt jumped into the role of daddy with two feet.

every time i watch aubrey and matt together i realize how lucky i am to be married to this man. she has a smile for him that she has for no one else. she lights up when i say that "daddy's home".... and she has rewarded all matt's hard work with a hearty "da-da-da-da" as her first mumblings.

MATT, you are an amazing man.
HAPPY FATHERS DAY!

a day in the life

when your six months old there's not a whole lot to get upset about... hungry, tired, unclean, or frustrated. frustration usually arises when things just aren't working like we imagined. most of the time it involves somehow getting something in you're mouth... a toy, the pacifier, PAPER, or in this case your toe. with a little practice aubrey seems to be getting the toe thing down.

4 years.

sounds like a long time... doesn't it?
it feel like it was yesterday that I met melissa, and that was more that 4 years ago. now at the risk of sounding cliche I will say without a doubt that I love my wife more today than the day that I married her... she is so amazing to me, and I am so proud to have her. so here are some "memory lane" photo's of my sweetheart... she still seems so aloof... doesnt she?

try not to blink...

tomorrow, aubrey will be six months old. cannot believe that our little girl is getting so big. every morning i pick her up out of her crib she seems a little heavier, a little longer, a little more vocal, a little more coordinated. i find myself looking at her and wondering "when did she start doing that." just wanted to take a trip down memory lane (click for larger view).....enjoy

december 8th, 2006

and now...

NOT UNDER CONSTRUCTION!

please excuse our mess while we remodel.
NEVERMIND
maybe we will flex our creative muscles some other time...
to much to do, can't stay up till all hours to mess with html crap.
can however stay up till all hours to rewatch lost and find more "clues".

jacuzzi?

fun times.

this is my favorite picture from the mountains this past weekend.

we took aubrey to the mountains for the first time! it was so much fun to spend time together as a family relaxing and porchin' (verb: the act of sitting on the porch). we went to eaglesmere and walked around town a little (it's a very small town). we had icecream at the sweet shoppe & even let aubrey try a taste (of course she liked it, it's icecream for goodness sakes!).

on monday we went hiking at rickett's glenn...

it's a beach thing...

excited for the future.

as my little girls feet touched the sand for the first time that is how i felt. part of me says " i can't wait until we can walk together and play on the beach... me and my little girl. the truth of the matter is... is that this is all going way too fast. i remember my wedding day... standing next to phil as our guest were being seated..."out of the woods" by Nickel Creek was playing and the sun was beginning to go down... the air was beginning to get a bit of a chill (just like the weather that we have been having lately) ...and in that twilight with amazing music I was in another world. I knew then that time would go too fast... that this moment would soon end. Phil, who has stood with many men and shared these sort of times with them put his arm on my shoulder and said "suck it all in... take it in... remember this." that magical moment and especially the short time that followed is embedded in my memory forever... I can still see the glow of my brides gown when she first came into view.
my point is that there are now more and more moments in my life that i need to hear a voice beside me saying "suck it all in... take it in..." so this is me and my little girl on the beach.