hello blog, it's been awhile

We've been busy :) we moved into our first HOUSE!! (yipee!) SO, the process of puttin gour old place on the market, getting it sold, packing it up, getting the new place ready, moving in, and unpacking has kept us PRETTY tied up. But, we love the new place, and all of us are enjoying the extra space and especially the yard and the back deck (almost the best parts of the house, okay.. definitely the best parts, ha ha!)

But, first, we've got some pictures from Easter (a while back, i know). We had such a fun time this year! Ruby even got to "hunt" for easter eggs :)

IT's getting a LOT harder to get pictures with our little monkey, because she just doesn't like to sit still too often. She keeps herself quite busy :) But, we managed to snap a few on Easter.

She loved the hard boiled colored eggs. She loved them even more when she realized that she could squeeze them in her hand and they would crumble into smithereens ;)

so... our new house :) we're officially ohioans now.

This was taken before we actually moved in, but now the trees in the front yard are in bloom, and the plants in front are green and getting ready to pop with color when the buds open. It's lovely, though.. it's caused Ben to have the worst series of allergy attacks ever. Like, a several week long series. it wasnt' pleasant, but it seems that the third time to the doctor is the charm, and he's finally got some medecine that's helping

Our kitchen:

We painted chalkboard paint on one wall, so we're having lots of fun with that ;) I love to cook (when i'm not exhausted from work or baby-chasing that is) so the extra space is awesome. we're having a good time cooking and baking in here.

So, for inspiration's sake, here's one of my latest favorite concoctions:

I call it Thai Noodles. Here's how i make it:
I use boxed thai noodles in the "Thai Ginger" flavor. Then i cook some chicken strips and mushrooms in garlic and ginger. I cook the noodles in the microwave, and then pour on top of the chicken and mushrooms. Top with cilantro, green onions and chopped peanuts. We love it because it's quick, easy and it tastes really good. almost just like thai take out.

more pictures of the new house and Ruby to come :) Someone's up from their nap, so it's time to sign out.

ruby-doo. people, we have a 1 year old..

that just sounds weird! but.. we do. we've got a toddling, curious, hilarious, mischevious, industrious little girl on our hands. she is into EVERYTHING now. there's almost no stopping her. Except that we're the big people, so we can. and she hates it. we've entered the "if-you-take-it-away-or-make-me-stop-i'll-be-really-really-mad-days". yeah. but, we're learning to work with it, and survive the strong will of our little lady :)
Plus, she is hilarious now. most things become a game very quickly, which we are thoroughly enjoying. IT's incredible to watch her learn things so quickly, and to watch her sense of humor develop, and sometimes a little weird to see what she actually thinks is "funny". She loves to ask what lots of things are now. And has a little vocabulary  of her own with some words in sign language (though she's been doing that for about 4 months now) and some real words (like diaper, doggie, car, something that we think means keys-her main obsession, mama, dada, uh-oh, and her new favorite.. hi).

to say the least. its incredible. and now we know why people have tons of babies. they just make you want more :)

anyway, in life outside of "Ruby-ville", things are good. We've decided to sell our condo, so when we're not playing with Ruby or at work we've been cleaning like mad men, and fixing little things that needed touch-ups or just some maintenance-related attention. We went on the market this week, and our 2nd interested party came through the house tonite. So, we're encouraged by the interest generated, and we're praying for a quick sale. Since, keeping the house perpetually ready for a showing, with a 1 year old in tow is NOT something we're hoping to do for long... (read: put all giant toys in garage, store tiny toys in shelves/bins/bags/wherever we can find a spot, have showing, then remove all giant toys from the garage, and un-pack all small toys from every nook-and-cranny (if you can remember where you stashed them). then, get the call from the realtor and repeat the whole thing). haha..

here are some recent pictures of our little love :)

 

she's into climbing inside of things right now...

 

emigre decided to grow a moustache for the winter, to keep her lip warm.

this one's for you, aunt Sheree:

Ruby's Birthday Album

Whether you've been rocking out to Ruby's birthday album or trying to get one of the tracks out of your head, now you can be an informed listener.  Here is the track list:
1. Hap, Hap, Hap, Happy Birthday-Parry Gripp
2. Ruby Soho - Rancid
3. Peanut Butter Jelly Time - Chip-Man & The Buckwheat Boyz
4. Drop It Like It's Hot - Snoop Dogg & Pharrell Williams
5. The Hampster Dance Song - Hampton the Hampster
6. I Can Sing - Barenaked Ladies
7. Single Ladies - Beyonce
8. Ruby Tuesday - The Rolling Stones
9. Drawing - Bareaked Ladies
10. All Is Love - Karen O and the Kids
11. Clap Your Hands - They Might Be Giants
12. 7 8 9 - Barenaked Ladies
13. I Feel It All - Feist
14. The Ninjas - Barenaked Ladies
15. Gamma Ray - Beck
16. Everybody Dance - Paul McCartney
17. Do You Like Waffles? - Parry Gripp
18. Ruby - Kaiser Chiefs

Album Art Bonus:
You can download the album art below.  To add it to the album in iTunes do the following:

-Save the picture to your computer.
-Select all of the songs in Ruby's Birthday Album in  iTunes and choose File>Get Info
-Check the box for artwork and drag the file into the window.
-Click OK

Let them eat cake...

Happy Birthday Ruby! (cake and presents) from Ben Saunders on Vimeo.

we were cracking up at her eating birthday cake! and my favorite part is the "cake dancing" near the end...
more birthday fun to share soon.

Happy Birthday Ruby!

(brace yourself for gratuitous praise and prolific first birthday footage from a very proud mommy)

Today Ruby turned 1. neither of us can believe it. Now that she is walking EVERYWHERE life is different, but it's also tons of fun. Her personality has developed so much in the last 3 months, it's unbelieveable. There is no mistaking what she wants or doesn't want, and she has no trouble deciding which way she feels about it either :) She says "hi" and waves now.. to everyone, which is adorable. And she wants to know what everything is. Her favorite games are 1) opening and closing doors—especially if someone is on the other side, and 2) opening and closing drawers, and exploring what's inside them. Apparently our blue travel toothbrush holder has more value than we ever imagined. She's also developed what we affectionately refer to as her "maniacal laugh", which we both believe comes from the opposite side of the family.

We had lots of fun celebrating her birthday today, it was a pseudo snow day, so she was at home all day, part of the time with mommy, and then later mom and dad switched, and mommy went to work and daddy stayed home with Ruby. But, we had a blast waking her up in the morning, check it out:

Untitled from Ben Saunders on Vimeo.

and, we had a delicious birthday smoothie for breakfast. it's a new favorite. THen we opened a few gifts, and played. Ruby got some really fun looking bath toys from her auntie rachel, uncle chad and cousin Syd, they know she looooooves bath time :) and some sweet sweats from her great gramps and great grams. Ben is SO happy any time he can dress her in sweats :)
Later on in the day there was cake eating as well. We were incredibly proud and dumb-founded at the same time by what we witnessed. it was like it was destiny for ruby and the cake to meet. videos from that soon :)
it was a great day. and even though i've been a little weepy the last few days thinking about how i'm grieving the end of Ruby as a baby, i'm also incredibly grateful for the amazing year that God gifted to us with Ruby. And I'm super-excited for the next year!!! I can't wait to see how she'll surprise us, delight us, challenge us and humor us :)

and the first word is....

Diaper. Yep, that's Ruby-doo's first word. Diaper. she loves to play with the diapers, and try to dismantle them. And the other night she started saying "diaper" while playing with it.. Ben and I could hardly believe it, so we kept repeating it, and she said it over and over!! and AGAIN that next morning :) So, apparently it wasn't a fluke, ha ha.
Ruby has always loved her bath time, but the other night, she got so excited when she heard the water running (meaning it was tubby-time) that she could hardly stand it. So, we got her undressed right there by the tub, so that she could watch it fill up.. she was in heaven. and couldn't WAIT to get in..

role reversal

Ruby recently decided to read to ME at bedtime. and i happily let her :)


reading to mommy from Grace Saunders on Vimeo.

it's here...

we're walking!! here's the proof:


walking!! from Grace Saunders on Vimeo.


we're SO proud of our little Ruby! She took these first steps on New Year's Day. Starting off the year right. I guess that was a good preview for us of what the rest of this year will look like :)

We had a great time over the holidays, even with all of the travelling. We saw grandparents, aunts, uncles, great-grandparents, and cousins too! We celebrated Christmas 3 times, in addition to our 5-year anniversary, AND  New Year's Eve!! (even though Ben and i weret the only ones to see the ball drop) It was definitely a whirlwind.

There is a video in progress, with but we are crazy busy right now, so it's delayed for the time being. Afterall, we've got a first birthday party to plan!!!

Ruby went on her first plane ride too, and she was a champ! Although, on the way home Delta held everyone on the plane, on the tarmack for about 2 hours before they let us leave, and everyone was kind of fried. Ruby did great for THOSE two hours, but then once we took off, it was melt-down city. I guess she was only saying out loud what we were all feeling :)

So, we had fun, but we're glad to be home now :)

Merry Christmas!

Things in the casa de Saunders have been in typical "holiday-whirlwind" mode :) Crossroads is running the AWAITED show this year, get there. it. is. awesome. And Mae has a cameo in it with a FAN-FREEKING-TASTIC song that she wrote. And there are holiday parties, baby's first christmas, decorating, baking, wrapping, shopping, and general merry-making a plenty. We got our family pictures taken a couple of weeks ago, at Jon Willis' as part of the simple portrait project. We were pretty jazzed about the results:

Hard to believe that in less than one week our Holiday travelling begins. We'll be with the Klinglers on Christmas Eve, and then at our house with Grace's family on Christmas day. We did this last year, and it was great, so we're looking forward to "hosting" again, with our big brunch in the morning, and plenty of time to play with baby on her first Christmas... how the heck is that here already?!?! Then the day after we head to Boston for a week to hang with Ben's family, which will be great too. We're planning on betting on races between Ruby, her cousin Sydney, and the Roomba :)

Hope you're having a great holiday season too!

Ruby the Houdini

Ruby had a little boo-boo on her toe last night, so we put a tiny band-aid on it, and then her Pajamas on, so that she couldn't get at it. When we woke her up this morning, somehow she had removed the band-aid from on her toe inside her pajamas and discarded it in the crib. houdini

This is late...

but, better late than never. A few weekends ago we had a blast celebrating fall, and i only NOW have time to share :)

we went to the pumpkin patch with friends, and saw some farm animals, picked our own pumpkin, and went on a hayride. The highlight was petting baby chicks though.

meet "Pork Chop"

I made an apple crisp, and this is what happens when i make apple crisp from a recipe on the internet: i end up with 3 LARGE pans of it. Apparently the recipe i stumbled upon must have been made for a family of giants.

We carved pumpkins at our annual carving party! SO much fun

Someone got her first pair of shoes. I think they've actually been on her feet for all of about 7 minutes since we got them :)

Ben was out of town last week for work so it was just "Aunt Mae" and i and Ruby. Us girls managed to keep ourselves out of trouble, for the most part... but we SURE DID have fun!! But, ofcourse we were glad when Ben finally got back home. The munchkin gifted him with a GIANT grin when he walked in.

the laughter button...

we finally found it! and boy have we been pressing it. we didn't each much halloween candy this weekend, because this was sweet enough!!! this was the total highlight of our weekend. enjoy!

the laughter button from Grace Saunders on Vimeo.

a collective work of art...

Mae's halloween costume!

why is the weekend always SO short?

we had a great weekend, and ended up getting to spend some time with Grams and Gramps, so Ruby had a great time (minus trying to remove her hat). It finally got chilly here, so we had fun digging out all the hats we got for Ruby. Since we discovered the swing it's been a weekend staple. This weekend we even tried out the slide, it was even better than i remembered ;) Here are some pictures from the weekend. Hope yours was great!

Sunday afternoon

at the park! enjoying the first of the fall weather, and the swings of course.





apparently we weren't the only ones who thought it was a good idea. We passed about 5 other couples/families with photographers on our way out. i guess it was pretty much a perfect day for it :)

crawling and pulling up. all for the remote

Ruby started to crawl! from Grace Saunders on Vimeo.

here she is crawling. like i said, hilarious!! and she's starting to want to pull up on things too. And, yes.. the reward? the remote control. she loves that thing :) we have no idea why.

live vicariously much?

Tonite we bought Ruby these pajamas that we found when we were out, that sport her name on them. Growing up i always wanted to find items that were pre-fabricated with MY NAME, but.. they didn't exist. And every time i'd see some cheesy display of name magnets, name t-shirts, name mugs.. you name it, i'd look for my name. But, nobody was selling pre-fab stuff with my name at that time. So, when i saw these pajamas, i immediately thought of that. And, we had to get them. Also, they're ridiculous-cute, and make her look even more like a kiddo, and less of a baby. Which, i can't decide if i'm alright with or not. ANyway, here they are.



this one is Ruby in the middle of an arm-flapping explosion of happiness:


Work has been a bit overwhelming since we got back into town, so i haven't made much time to update the blog. But, things are good. Ruby continues to grow like a weed. Her biggest recent milestone is that she's crawling now. It's hilarious, and makes me crack up almost every time she does it. It's like watching someone who has limbs with minds of their own attached to them, and they can't figure out really how they work, but they're SO glad that they DO work. We have some video that we'll get up here soon. So, she wants to crawl around and explore everything now, of course. Especially dog toys, and the actual dog. Those two are fast becoming best buddies. Here she's decided to crawl over my leg to get to.. SOMEthing.

it's unclear...

...whether Ben is trying to impart his fashion sense to Ruby here, or just to begin teaching her about which teams she ought to root for. either way it is stinking adorable :)