Jennifer Woodbury

It Amazes Me...

Uh Oh from Jennifer Woodbury on Vimeo.

...the things that will keep a toddler amused. Sit down, throw a shoe on the ground, say "uh oh", go pick it up, and repeat. Over and over and over again. If only I was this easily entertained!

Who's That Girl?

You can probably make a good guess based on the retro clothing, but this little girl is none other than me!

My dad was always the family photographer growing up, and there are boxes and boxes of slides that have just been sitting and collecting dust on the shelves for years. Last year, he came up with the idea of scanning all these old slides and turning them into digital files. I thought that sounded like a great idea and was planning to do all the scanning myself...when I realized how frustrating and time consuming that would be. I've scanned regular photos before, and there is always tons of dust and other particles that somehow get into your scan and that you have to clean up manually. The thought of doing that at least 1,000 times did not sound fun. So, instead I sent off the first batch of slides (639 of them!) to this place to let them do the hard work for me, and I just got them back yesterday. It's been so fun to look through them all. Now I'm excited to get the rest of them done (there are still several slide carousels still sitting in my mom's closet).

Here are some more pictures:

I guess I was always an organizational freak! Look at the way I've nicely lined up my crayons and markers at the bottom of the photo!

Little ballerina - I'm the short one, third from the left.

Photographer in training:

This was always a favorite shot of me playing the violin.

Hard at work. Looks like I was born to be a CPA!

I think I'll stop here while I'm still looking cute. If you're lucky, maybe I'll get up the nerve to break out some shots from my awkward stage, which was just made worse by the horrible perms my mom made me get. Don't worry Mom, no "permanent" damage done (was that an awful attempt at a joke or what?). Anyway, apparently I forgot to tell them NOT to scan in those photos!

7 Years and a NYC Recap

Matt and I had a great time in NYC, made it home safely and had a wonderful reunion with Ella, but before I give the details I first have to say HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to...me and Matt! :) We were married exactly 7 years ago today. Wow, where did the time go?

Then:

Now:

Now back to the trip. I flew out to New York on Thursday morning. It was hard to say goodbye to Ella, but actually the anticipation was worse than anything, so by the time I was checking in at the airport I was actually pretty calm about leaving her behind. Matt had already flown in the night before so when I got to the hotel on Thursday night he already had my favorite sandwich waiting for me.

Matt had school on Friday, but I still had a blast without him because I got to meet up with all of my scrapping buddies! We had so much fun together, I just wish we all lived closer so we could do this more often. You can see a great recap of our visit here on Gina's blog complete with photos. We ate lunch, chatted, and took a walk through Central Park on Friday afternoon, then we all went out to dinner at Naples 45. Matt was even able to break away from his studying (he had a final to take the next morning) to join us.

Saturday morning while Matt was taking his final, I went on the double-decker bus tour around the city with the girls (and a couple of husbands too). I can't believe I lived in New York City for two years and never did this before! As those who know me well are aware, when I lived here the bus was my favorite way to get around town, and this was just like the regular bus only better! I would definitely recommend it to anyone visiting New York.

Saturday night Matt and I celebrated our anniversary early by going to dinner at Town. This place was so good. Another definite recommendation if you are in New York and looking for a really nice, trendy place with fabulous food (and who isn't?). After dinner we thought we'd see if we could get last-minute tickets to a show, but we didn't have any luck so we ended up just walking through Times Square. We went into the giant Toys R Us (with the ferris wheel in the middle of it) looking for a little something to bring back to Ella, but I couldn't find anything I really wanted to buy for her that was small enough to fit into my suitcase, so I just decided to just take Ella to the toy store sometime this week and get her something since she's too little to know the difference anyway!

Now to the good part...the reunion with Ella. I actually managed to refrain from calling Matt's parents too often to check up on her and try to just enjoy the time by myself. But by Saturday I was missing her so badly I could hardly stand it! I was actually having visions of her chubby little legs running around the house and her munchkin voice. When we landed back home on Sunday morning, I ran out to the curb to see Ella while Matt stayed at the baggage claim waiting for our bags. I had predicted that Ella would burst into tears when she saw me, but I was happily surprised at her reaction. She saw me and gave me a HUGE smile, started squealing, then looked away and then back at me as if to make sure I was really there.  Then when I got her out of her car seat she gave me a huge hug. Yeah, she definitely melted me right then and there. She behaved wonderfully for her grandparents while we were gone, although I'm pretty sure she wore them out. When Matt and I called to check in Saturday night at about 8 PM (West Coast time), Ella was already asleep, which I expected, but so was Grandma!

Anyway, as much fun as I had it's always so nice to be home and of course I am so happy to be back and snuggling my little girl!

 

Breathe In, Breathe Out

I'm trying not to hyperventilate here because tomorrow morning I leave this adorable little face overnight for the first time, and not just for one night but for three!

Matt will be in New York this weekend for school so I am tagging along and Ella is staying home with Grandma Kathy and Grandpa Beau (Matt's parents). I know Ella is in wonderful hands and will probably not even know I'm gone, but since I've never left her for more than a few hours it will definitely be hard to leave. I am trying to focus on what I'm really looking forward to about this trip though:

• Being able to actually relax on the plane, read some magazines, and eat and drink without worrying about little hands spilling and knocking things over
• Going on an actual date with my husband in New York City
• Shopping, or should I say window shopping, on 5th Ave.
• Finally getting to where Matt spends so much time 
• Eating a Cosi sandwich (smoked turkey with brie and honey mustard....yum!)
• Hanging out with some good friends: Gina, Traci, Kristin, Debbie, Angie & Shanah

Wish me luck, and also the grandparents who will be chasing after my super high energy girl for the next three days!

Take a Seat

Ella has become obsessed lately with sitting in various places. At first it was in normal places that are actually meant for sitting, like her PBK Anywhere Chair or the bench at the park. But now her new favorite place to sit is inside one of the wicker baskets that I use to store her toys:

It's a little strange, but she'll actually sit in there for quite some time just playing, so I'm not going to question it. Lately Ella has also been obsessed with anything circular. For example, she has a shape sorter that has blocks in four different shapes, 3 of which are circles. She will actually dig through all of the shapes in order to find the 3 circles, and then just carry them around with her. Is this some developmental milestone I'm unaware of or is it just plain kookiness? I'm going to guess it's just kookiness. She takes after me in so many other ways, might as well add kooky to the list! Her obsession is not just limited to circles, she also loves anything shaped like a cylinder, such as my tubes of lip gloss. I scrapped a little page about it (credits here):

As far as Ella's whining goes, I bought The Happiest Toddler on the Block and I'm reading it right now. I'll let you know if anything in the book works for Ella. To her credit though, I do have to say she's having a very non-whiny day today. Let's hope it continues!