February Photos

February was a snappy-happy month for us- I'll blame it on the new camera. ;) I may have to go back to posting smaller albums up here more frequently, rather than on a monthly basis now!

we love warm weather!

You'll also note that I've changed the privacy of our photos. You'll now need to create a flickr account and add me as a contact to be able to see our photos. As soon as you add me as a contact, I'll get an email and add you as one of my contacts and then you'll be able to view my private photos.

Sorry to inconvenience you all but it's really easy to set-up a free flickr account, and that way people that may access some of my public photos from my other blogs won't be able to see all of our family's personal photos. I'll be keeping some photos public, but most of the family photos will be private.

If some of you reading are friends of friends or something like that, you can still add me as a contact and send me a flickr message telling me you like to read my blog. As long as I see that you're not some psycho I'll you add you as one of my contacts and you'll be able to see my pics. Easy-peasy.

And trust me, it will be worth it because we all know how cute Gigi is- it's definitely worth a few clicks to set-up a quick account so that you can see all our family photos.

Thanks for understanding.

Now, here are February's photos!
Sign up for flickr and then you can click to view Part 1 and Part 2
(more details on some of these to follow)
and, here are the photos from my BlissDom Conference in Nashville.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Despite everything, I had a great birthday weekend. We spend most of it camping at Mission Bay with my parents, and on my actual birthday, David's parents, Alex & Angelina all came to visit and have dinner with us at Anthony's Fish Grotto downtown. I felt so loved by all the calls, texts, emails, & facebook messages (boy, we sure live in a digital age, huh?), so thank you to everyone.

And, I was overwhelmed to be blessed with an amazing birthday gift, too...

A New Camera!! I am so excited, and so thankful to David, my parents, my in-laws and my grandma!! And I'm also proud of David for being such a savvy shopper and getting an amazing deal (yay for Circuit City going out-of-business!).

It takes amazing pictures. Now I just have to learn how to use it-- luckily I have a willing friend/teacher. Here are a few fun ones from the weekend from the new camera, since my brother was bugging me to post a few. :)

Here are a few "artistic" ones just for fun.

Big blog news coming soon- stay tuned!

Amazing Family Photos

Our extremely talented friends, Danielle & Jared Zacharias of sidebysidevideo.com took these awesome photos of us at one of our family's favorite beaches, Stone Steps. It's in Encinitas right down the street from David's great-aunt's house.


I'm blown away at how cute some of these are. Capturing Gigi like this "on film" is not an easy feat with how crazy our little toddler is these days! There's no way I can pick out my favorites right now so here are just a couple and then I encourage you to enjoy the slideshow below.

Celebrity Look-Alike- Grandparent's Day Edition

Okay, here's one I don't really agree with... but in honor of Grandparent's day I thought I'd post it. My grandma is a big tennis fan, and she always tells us that Andy Roddick reminds her of David (she says it's the hat). What do you think?

And yes, I've got more of these up my sleeve still... :)

Happy Grandparent's Day, to all my awesome grandparents!! Love, Gigi

Labor Day Camping Trip

We had a really fun weekend camping at Golden Gate Canyon State Park, which is only a little over an hour from our house. It was a weekend full of friends, doggies, hiking, and good food.Our friends the Matthews came for Friday night and Saturday, and our friend Tom & his puppies came up for the day on Saturday too. Then on Saturday, our spontaneous friends from HB, the Riedels joined us for the rest of the weekend (a trip they planned the week before!!).We even had a nice thunderstorm on Sunday evening. Gigi passed the time reading while we played Scrabble and snacked.On Monday we went downtown with the Riedels for the Taste of Colorado, and we even found the perfect truck for Alex & Angelina.
View all of the weekend's pictures here:
http://flickr.com/photos/bennettars/sets/72157607092174510/

Does Jake Have a Long Lost Russian Sister?

Since some of you didn't agree with my last celebrity look-alike match-up, here's another.

David & I have really gotten into watching tennis this past year, starting with the Australian Open. Today my favorite player, Dinara Safina, won her quarter finals match in the US Open, so in her honor I wanted to point out how much she looks like a family friend of ours.
In fact her brother is a pro tennis player too, but I think she looks more like my brother's best buddy from HS, Jake.

What do you think?

Yogism + Cute White Shoes

Here's a classic Yogi Berra quote we heard last weekend:

"It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future."

On a totally unrelated note, here are a couple of cute shots of Gigi in her "new" (read: hand-me-down from Keira the neighbor), snazzy, white shoes. She was all dressed up for church in these pics (dress made by Yaya!).

Olympic Swimmer or Graphic Designer?

David, my mom and I are in disbelief at how Alex can be starting his first graphic design job and swimming in Beijing at the same time... see for yourself...

uh, oh...

Just what I need, a new (probably addictive) pastime...

I found an awesome (FREE) place to do digital scrapbooking. It's quick, easy and fun! I may have to incorporate this into my scrapbooking hobby. I don't want to give up hand-scrapbooking for good, but this could easily become my media of choice. If I can figure out how to affordable print these, I'd like to do a combination of digital and hand-scrapbooking.
This is a sample that I just made in about 10 minutes at scrapblog.com.

Feb Photos!

Since the weather has been the biggest adjustment for us here in Colorado, I can honestly say that I have never been happier for March to arrive! Despite the fact that the month tends to be the snowiest of the year in the Denver area,, and the kookiest (with highs in the 70s and 80s and the next day, 30s with snow), it still brings us closer to spring, and warmer weather! I am so tired of wearing long pants and shoes everyday!!
We thankfully are flying to Orlando tomorrow for a much needed respite from the cold and to see some Dodgers spring training games! Be expecting some pictures of the beach, and lots of green foliage when we return!But in the meantime, here are our pictures from the month of February. You'll notice pictures from around the house (including her room- I took those for her baby book), Gigi's 9 month photos that I took of her rather than going to a portrait studio, first bath in the big-girl tub, Gigi's swimming class, and the Zoo among others.
I will mention that we had a great time taking Gigi to the Denver Zoo for the first time- she loved looking at and talking to the animals. I'm not sure if the bigger highlight of the day though was the baby giraffe jumping over the first railing and almost out of the pen (David saw it but the rest of us were inside looking at the other giraffes) or, the monkey who looked like Rafiki doing a back flip- I am dead serious, he did a standing back tuck right there in his exhibit; it was amazing. Wish I could have caught that on video!Click for photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bennettars/sets/72157604001893338/

Joyful January!

Here are our family photos from the month January. Included are some fun pictures from a minor-league hockey game we went to, along with lots of other fun shots. Some of them I have posted in other blog posts, but a lot of them will be new to you. Enjoy!
Gigi goes to the doc for her 9-month appointment a week from today so we will be sure to give you a size update for her then!
In the meantime, Happy Birthday, Dad!
Click here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bennettars/sets/72157603835423217/

Our sassy girl! (thanks to Aunt Carly for the cute shirt.)

Swing Set Girl

Today was a warm one- just over 50 degrees! So we went on a little walk through the "Open Space," starting at a park near our house. We had fun walking on a frozen creek and when we got to the end of the trail, back at the park, we thought we'd let Gigi try out swinging for the first time! She didn't mind it (until the very end), but she did seem a little unsure, and boy did that "baby swing" make her look small! We keep thinking how big she's gotten, but she's actually pretty small still! We'll know for sure how big she is when we go to her Doc in couple of weeks.

Enjoy this little slide show of our outing (click the picture to see it)... extra points to the readers who know the band name! :)

Swing Set Girl 1/26/08

Breanna's Visit

This post is a little delayed, but I wanted to put up a few pics... right after New Year's, my cousin Breanna visited for a few days; we had a lot of fun! We hung out around the house with Gigi, made a yummy Rachael Ray recipe (Bre is going to culinary school after all), watched a couple of old movies, and took the train downtown to walk around. Here are a few of the pics from her visit.

Yummy coffee at Maui Wowi.

Our state capitol.

Matching chapstick!

On the train ride home.

Gigi's new "car" from Breanna's family.

A fun look...

David likes to sometimes put pictures on his work computer's desktop to show something he has to look forward in the coming month, or sometimes he just likes to put a cute picture of Gigi there to look at. :) So I made him this tabblo which is like a collage of sorts, representing the things coming up in February and March-- Valentine's Day & my birthday (I guess that's more for me to look forward too- heehee), Our trip to Florida for the Dodgers' Spring Training, and visits from the Dears and David's Aunt Jann!

See my Tabblo>

White Christmas

We had a fabulous Christmas week with almost all of our family here visiting! We did lots of fun stuff like touring the Coors Brewery, seeing the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, going to an Avalanche game, a day at the mountains to ski/snowboard/hang out, watching sports & good Christmas movies, eating lots of good food, sledding, shoveling snow, making snow ice cream (no joke!!), etc.The whole gang- according to Gigi: Uncle Paul, Reuben, Aunt Stacey, Papa, Yaya, Peter, Granpa, Granny, Mommy, Daddy, Me, Aunt Carly, Unc A, & Tia.

We even had a white Christmas! In fact, it snowed all day long-- more than it has snowed on December 25th in over 100 years! It was beautiful! Our friends the Stopniks came over for Christmas dinner and we enjoyed the Honey-Baked Ham that my Aunt Laurel & Uncle Joe sent us (thanks!). It was a little crowded (i.e. kids' "picnic" on the kitchen floor for dinner) but totally worth it.Gigi enjoyed her first Christmas-- doing a little paper-ripping on her gifts and best of all, hanging out with her grandparents, aunts, uncles & cousins!!
We are so grateful for our family and for their trip out here; we had a great time.

I hope you enjoy looking at all our December photos (most of them are from the week when everyone was here- but they also include cookie-making with the Stoppies & hanging out with some old college friends here in CO)! Click here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bennettars/sets/72157603591473096/

November Pics!

I got home yesterday from California... Sorry for the delay but here the rest of our November in Colorado photos. I will post the California ones soon, and I haven't forgotten about that video I mentioned... now that I'm home, I can get back to work on it!
Click here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bennettars/sets/72157603434247977/

Our first "real" fall!

Gigi shares Daddy's Mountain Dew while watching the World Series (just kidding! Although she did like holding on to the can!).

With October finished, we are now finally understanding the true meaning of "fall"- as there are leaves everywhere! On one day, our neighbor spent a while cleaning up all the leaves in his yard and then within a couple of hours, the yard was full again after a few gusts of wind! It has been really pretty though. We've only had that one day of snow (scroll down for pictures if you never saw them), and the weather has been really up and down, some days never get out of the 40s and then yesterday it was in the 70s!

Here are the pictures from October here in Colorado. Included are our pictures from the NL Wildcard Tiebreaker game we went to, our snow day, visiting my friend Sharla, along with many cute shots of Gigi and the October birthdays here- David's, Blair's, and Brooke's.

Click here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bennettars/sets/72157602911346386/

5 months

It's hard to believe that Gianna is 5 months old already! She's almost sitting up by herself these days and she really wants to crawl, although right now she's only able to "swim" on her tummy. Here are a few recent pictures of our sweet little girl.

September Recap

September was a big month for all of us! I've posted the rest of this month's pictures in 2 sets: first, our California pictures, up until we left, and second, our first set of pictures in Colorado!
Also, for your entertainment, here's a funny video of Gigi in her new toy. She has joined the ranks with the others her age who love this fun bundle of "over-stimulation," as our friends the Avilas referred to it.


Part 1: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bennettars/sets/72157602220816897/
Part 2: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bennettars/sets/72157602214005808/

Summer's End

This summer has flown by like usual. We had a really fun first summer with Gigi. Here are the rest of our pictures from August and a cute little video of one of Gigi's new tricks (with Auntie Rena).
August photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bennettars/sets/72157601887035811/