Summer Adventures

Life is busy and a bit crazy on our end. These are pictures of our adventures this summer. We had lots of fun going to Utah, taking David and Gabriel to their first trip to New York, watching Gabriel's excitement over his first beach trip and just tubing and having fun on the Potomac River at my parents house. This summer went by too fast, it is almost winter!


Enjoying a beautiful sunset at the beach with my handsome boys.






We took our bikes to the beach and went on a bike ride along the boardwalk.


My wonderful husband and I enjoying great times at the beach






Gabriel LOVED hanging out in his peapod as he watched the waves and played.




I love them so much.






So excited to be at the beach.


Boating at Utah Lake.


Can you see Gabriel drowned in suncreen on his head?


He LOVED all his baby friends, especially his best buddy Jack who is pictured crying while Gabriel has the best time ever, haha.

David with Craig and Darren. The men in the family grew mustaches.


This picture does not speak very well of my hubby. I promise you he is not a child molester.


I love Keith and Joanne so much. This is 4th of July in Yorktown.




The 911 Memorial site in New York


With my beautiful cousin and sister in NY.




David was sad we didn't wake up early on friday to make it on the Today show.


Outside Grand Central Station


This was Gabriel's face the ENTIRE time we were in NY. He's just like his mom, a city guy.




Hello Time Square!




LOVE my little family.


Inside Grand Central Station.


Tubing with my sis on the Potomac.








My hubby and I on my parents boat.


Next post is Gabriel's adventures and our fun times this fall.

Good Bye 6 months

(Didn't like the bday hat)

Gabriel's six month birthday came and went and we are just getting around to blogging. We have completely fallen off the blog band wagon. Things are really busy on this end with school, work, and chasing after Gabriel. On top of it, our main computer died, you know the one with all the pics, so we have had to move everything over to my macbook. So here's to finally updating!

Since our last post Gabriel can now:
-Sit up on his own
-Crawl everywhere
-Stand up on anything
-Hold his own bottle
-Talk all day long (he's always been a talker though)
-Hold his breath!! (Oh no.)
-Eat Rice cereal and veggies ( he loves it, and will let you know if you are not on time to feed him)
-Walk everywhere using his walker
-Tip over our big plant all the time
-Get into any wires or anything that could potentially kill him! (Don't worry we keep a good eye on him)
-Communicate with other kids (he loves other babies and kids, he goes crazy when he sees them)
-Say Mama, and recently started saying Dada (Yes that's right, he said mama at 5 months!)
-Hold his balance while standing unassisted for a few seconds
-And there are so many more things, but those are the main ones

Here are some pictures of my little angel. He gets cuter everyday. He is such a charming baby. The pictures are just random pictures from age 4 months and on.

You know just watching some Tour de France in between my diaper change.


What a fatso!

Just modeling away in these




In his walker. With a seriously guilty face. Perhaps because he tried to eat part of our plant!! Remnants of the leaf are shown above.




Future football star

First airplane trip that he loved and was so great at!



First rice cereal! We could not feed him fast enough!

Hanging with my bud Keaton

Crawling away on my 6 month bday!

Just matching with my dad! How dang cute!

We had a wonderful summer. We have two updates coming up very soon, our summer adventures, and Gabriel's Adventures. Just have to work on getting all the pics on the macbook.

4 Month Gabriel and Father's Day!

Wow...Gabriel is a little over 4 months now! He was born two weeks early at 7lbs 8 oz and 20 1/2 inches long...he is now 14 lbs and 24 inches. He has some thunder thighs on him...so dang cute. My little angel is growing yet he is a little thing compared to his counter parts. :-) I LOVE IT MORE THAN ANYTHING! He is in the 25th percentile for everything. He is perfectly proportionate and is small and cuddly. Good thing...because if he was any bigger I would think he is older than what I already feel like he is.

I feel so fortunate to be able to stay at home with him and witness his growth every day. He learns and does something new every day. Here are some video's and pictures that we have shot in the last few months:

He started flipping over at 10 weeks. By 11 weeks he was flipping both ways. This picture was taken after I left for 30 SECONDS. I couldn't believe he moved that much in just seconds, look at the starting and end location on the picture.

Finding his cute toes!


His first time playing at the playground. He was not sure about the swing. Look at that face!


Those that know Gabriel...know that he is a big time MOONER! Look at those rolls...ahh! :-)

Hanging out with Grandma while mom and dad fish!



He loved his first run with mom!

First family bike ride with David hauling Gabriel. HE LOVED IT.

1st Father's day!

SUPERDAD!

David got to celebrate his first father's day just a few days ago. For father's day Gabriel got him a sweet card and a SUPERMAN shirt...because Gabriel totally admires him and thinks he is just like Superman. :-) David is such an amazing dad. I always knew he was going to be a great dad, but I have to say he has totally exceeded my expectations. He is such a proud dad too. He brags about Gabriel all the time and has even challenged his buddies to wrestling matches with their babies when we go back to Utah. What makes him such a great dad in my opinion?
He is always willing to change a diaper, to watch him while mom is in school, to clean up after his messes, to make him laugh, to play with him, to be at his doctor's appointments, to teach him new things and more importantly because he will do ANYTHING for him. I know that he is committed to being a great example for him every step of the way. I know he will always help me to run a peaceful and loving home. Happy father's day to David and all our friends who are dad's!

Updates Galoreeeee!

Wow, a month without updating our dear blog. So much has happened!!! Many things were celebrated and i'll just have to briefly blog about them. I promise...after this entry I will update our blog weekly.

First Mothers Day!!
My first mothers day was so wonderful. I kept forgetting that I was being celebrated this mother's day. I kept wanting to cater to my mom and everyone else kept reminding me...you're a mother too! David and Gabriel were quite the sweethearts on Mama's day. David cooked me a nice breakfast and Gabriel got me a super cute card ;-). In the card, David translated what Gabriel wanted me to know on my first mothers day. It was so sweet. I got some beautiful flowers, my favorite, as well as a calla lily plant. We planted it in our garden to commemorate my first year as a mom. I also got a super sweet card from my husband...inside he wrote some really nice things...among them he said "being called mom is a title that fits you so well and one I know you will always cherish". Such poignant words, and after I read it, I realized that his observations of me as a mother and the fact that it's a title I'll always cherish were SO TRUE. Being Gabriel's mother means everything to me. Which reminds me...dang I am soooo lucky to have the two sweetest men in my life (hopefully we'll have more sons too).

Yes yes...property of mom!

25th Birthday!!

I'm getting old. Twenty-five sounds so dang old to me. But at the very least...I am one year wiser now! My 25th birthday was perfect. We celebrated it Durrant style... sweet and low key. I got some pretty nice gifts. I got my running stroller ( I just had to throw some heavy hints around the house) and also a perfect hybrid-road bike. It's a cross between a road bike and mountain bike, but it has more road bike elements. I'm so excited to go cycling. I also got money to buy Gabriel a bike trailer, so I can haul him around. I also got a peapod...which is more a present for Gabriel (but also for me...because it gives me peace of mind) so he can hang out with us at the beach, park or when we go fishing.

We dined at Kobe's Japanese Steakhouse for my bday. Love habachi and my birthday cheesecake!

Later we came home and had the cake that my sister made me! It was so funny...it said "You passed the little hill".

Love my new running stroller and hybrid bike. The red bag you see is another present (more for Gabriel, but it makes me happy) it's a PeaPod! I'm so excited to use it at the park and beach for Gabriel.

David turns 30!
Ok...if I thought 25 was old....30 is like elderly! Ha ha. My old man is becoming an OLD MAN. I cooked him a nice breakfast for his birthday...and let him go off any sort of diaper duty. I did everything that day...and he enjoyed it. :-) He loves getting spoiled. We had lunch at a super delicious Chinese buffet in the west end. His birthday dinner consisted of Salmon, scallops, garlic spinach and mushrooms on Rice. We had a great time as a family celebrating the old man's 30th birthday.

We celebrated my mom's and david's birthday together at Olive Garden.

On his actual birthday...we went on a picnic to the park! I went bike riding too. It was great to throw the football around with Dave and play an assortment of games.

I got him some nice shirts and a bike for his birthday. He loves his new mountain bike!

Well those are the updates that relate to David and I. Our next update is on our sweet Gabriel.

One Year later...One Year Happier

I apologize it's been so long...but I'm seriously not an internet person since my little one arrived. I just love spending all my time with Gabriel, and I'm neglecting the blog and other sites.

Anyhow...there are a lot of fun updates.

1 Year Anniversary!!! April 25, 2009
A year came and went and David and I had the best anniversary ever. It's so funny that we had a baby before we even got to celebrate our first anniversary! I would not have it any other way.
So we decided to celebrate our one year anniversary with a trip to our favorite place, the mountains! We headed up to Shenandoah and toured Luray Caverns with our little one. Luray Caverns was a beautiful site to visit and we had such a great time there. We took so many pictures and shot so many videos...great memories. After Luray, we drove through skyline drive, and went hiking. We had an awesome time hiking with Gabriel. You can tell that he is going to be outdoorsy like both his parents. He loved looking around and enjoyed the entire hike.

Outside of the Caverns

The pond inside the caverns actually creates a mirror image of the isotope formations

Don't the formations look like eggs!

Starting our hike

During our amazing hike.



And here is the top of our cake that we saved for our one year anniversary. It was some good eating!! Too bad I forgot to get David in the face, like I did for our wedding.

Here are a few funny photos from our wedding...I suppose they showcase all the happiness. ;-)

Parting the bushes for me!


We sure are living life La Vie En Rose (Click to hear our wedding song and best song ever).

In love

He loves to jam his hand into his mouth. He is now 2 mths!

Gabriel has been such an immense blessing in our lives. I cannot begin to express how in love I am with him. Him and his dad are my absolute angels. Everything he does is just so cute...from spitting up, to pooping, to smiling and giggling. It's funny how babies can do no wrong. I love taking care of him. I feel like he is growing up too fast. I love holding him, and talking to him. Watching his face light up to a smile, and then a bigger smile just melts my heart. He loves to giggle and talk and talk. We think he might be a chatterbox. So far the verdict in our home is that he has most of my personality. My parents say that I loved to talk when I was a baby. So far it's looking like Gabriel might be the same way. He also has my frown. It's so funny. He just seems to have a go- getter type personality. While he is such an angel, he is also full of mischief in his face! I always know when he's going to try to pee when I'm changing him. He gets this smirk... like "i'm getting back at you for this or that", and sure enough you see his huge stream in the air. It lands everywhere. It just cracks us up. He's got all sorts of sides to him, he is stubborn, mildly dramatic, happy, sweet, mischievous, but most of all he is just so sweet and loving. He loves to cuddle with you and to infect you with all the love he came to this earth with. It's so strange that as a mother, you have a feeling as to how they are going to turn out in life. I'm so interested to see if he really will turn out the way I think. After all, something I've learned is that a person's personality is constant all through life. Characteristics can change here and there, but their personality is set from the time they are a baby.

I just love Gabriel so much. When I look into his eyes I can see so much of life in him. It's like I can see all that he will go through. I see so much vulnerability in his stare, it makes me both happy and sad. It makes me happy because I know he is in a state of perfect innocence. However, his vulnerability makes me sad because I know that he can be so easily harmed, without any defense. Luckily though, he is surrounded by so much love! It comforts me and brings a big smile to both Gabriel and I. He knows he is immensely loved.

On another note...he already tries to walk! He has been doing it for the longest time. If you just hold some of his weight, he will take steps and it's incredible how he has the coordination to do that. He started doing that like 3-4 weeks ago. He constantly kicks his legs and tries to move like there is somewhere he needs to be! It so funny. I walked when I was 8 months, and maybe he will too! It's amazing how babies are a reflection of their parents. To know that David and I created this perfect little thing just blows my mind. We love him so much and he certainly makes our life fun. I feel so privileged that Gabriel picked us to be his parents, all the way from heaven. He must have known that I needed a little ball of love like him! He is definitely heaven sent.

Below are some pictures of what we've been up to:

I love this picture of David and Gabriel.


David blessed Gabriel at our church this past Sunday. He did a good job. :) Gabriel wore a white collared shirt with a black tie, a gray vest and black pants. He looked so handsome. For some reason, all he wanted to do the first half of that day was sleep! So we didn't get any pics of him awake. But check out his belly hanging out above! So funny.


I love cuddling with him. I could do it all day.

See his eyes! So vulnerable.

Mischievous!

My sweet angel!

Loving Laughing & Talking

(Please excuse the drool on his bib! Haha)

Gabriel started smiling a lot at about 5 weeks. He loves it when we talk to him or sing. Getting his diaper changed is also an enjoyable time for him. Here are some pictures from a few weeks ago.

He is 7 weeks now, and is learning to talk to us a ton. He has the cutest voice. He is still a really good baby. He has been a great sleeper from the very beginning, he sleeps from about 9pm to 4 am, and then again when David gets up in the morning, around 6-7am. He is a great sleeper, and we are so happy about that! We will post more pictures and videos soon!