Happy Spring from a Cute Chick!

Each new day brings more sunshine - longer days and warmer temperatures! Us Withrows can't wait to get the summer started, we are looking forward to an awesome Alaskan summer! :) Hope you all are enjoying spring, wherever you may be.

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Yesterday was my birthday! :) Every Friday the corvette club picks a local restaurant to have dinner. Last night, Outback was chosen - yummy! We decided to join the group and Jeremy coordinated with club friends Dave and Margo and the restaurant to surprise me with a cake! I LOVE cake, I could eat it for every meal of every day. So, this surprise was especially sweet and loving! Thanks babe! :)


Look at these two cutie-pies! Miss Jillian looks so grown!! She ate too much frosting and was up most of the night. Super-fun. She also loves cake and frosting and everything sweet. She gets that from me.

Happy Easter!!!

Happy Easter! Hope everyone had a fun Easter weekend!! Miss Jillian had a very busy weekend, starting with attending her first Birthday party on Saturday. Mr. Zach turned one yesterday and his family celebrated with a friend party on Saturday afternoon. There were lots of kids and Jillian had a blast playing with everyone. She has no fear, a couple times she walked up to the bigger kids and took their toys away. We are still working on the sharing thing. The Easter bunny visited Jillian Sunday morning and she had fun opening her presents before church. Then Jeremy and I went to church and Jillian played in the nursery. The church we go to is HUGE with thousands of members, they have different nurseries for almost every age. Jillian was in the 12-18 month group. After the service, it took us a bit to get back to the room and when we arrived there was a line of parents picking up their kids. We could see Jillian standing at the gate looking for her mommy and daddy - it was so cute! We think they must have wore her out because we came home and she slept for 3 hours!! Joy, Josh and Luke came over in the afternoon to visit, play x-box and eat ham. Yummy! :) All in all, it was a wonderful first (technically, second) Easter for Jillian.

Kindermusik

Last Wednesday Zach, Jillian, and I met Zach's mom to attend a music class - Kindermusik. (I hope I'm spelling that correctly.) We had a great time! I brought the camera thinking I would be able to take all kinds of pictures....we were so busy that I was only able to get one shot at the very end. We had so much fun that we plan on going again this week! :)

Spring Sun

The weather has been so lovely in Alaska lately - warm and sunny! On Wednesday we got about 3 inches of snow, but it melted the next day. We are enjoying spring! We have a window in the front of our house that looks out on the street. Jillian likes to stand on the windowsill and wave hello or good-bye. She likes to watch over the neighborhood and see whats going on. BUT, she needs one of us to hold her up to get a good view. One afternoon, she knocked over the air purifier and pushed it over to the window. She was able to get a good view all on her own. I thought her creativity was adorable and had to capture the moment.

Busy Baby Returns

The other morning Jillian woke up full of energy! She crawled through the house and left her mark in each room. She emptied out kitchen cabinets, my dresser drawers, and spread books all over the floor in our bedroom - all before getting dressed for the day! I had to take pictures to document the whirlwind we call daughter. Her nose is still a little runny, but her energy has(thankfully) returned. I believe that she is feeling better and she is eating more too! I still think that when this is completely over, that we'll take her in to the Dr's to have her ears checked. I want to feel secure that she isn't suffering, when I called the Dr. last week his nurse told me that sometimes kids will have ear infections with no symptoms!!!! Then I read that if a parent got ear infections as a baby, oftentimes their baby will also get ear infections. Jeremy's mom said that he got ear infections after colds. Hmmm, we'll see and keep ya'll updated! :)

One More of the 4-Legged Baby.....

OK, I had to add this one. Jeremy made Athena a few signs to wear. On the back of one, I wrote super beast - because that is what she is!!!! He took a picture of her wearing it and sent it to me at the Guard this weekend. I love it! She looks huge (super-sized lab!) and is sitting so still! What great posture. :)

Our Other Baby

I just finished the most wonderful book - Marley and Me-Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog, written by John Grogan. This book was a gift from my sweet husband - Thank-you Jeremy! This book is all about Grogan's dog Marley, a yellow lab, who was quite ill-behaved and still a cherished member of their family. I wanted to share some pics of our sometimes ill-behaved and much loved member of our family, black lab - Athena Isis! We adopted Athena from Wetland Retriever Lab Rescue when she was about 8 weeks old in October of 2003. She was an adorable puppy and has grown into a beautiful dog. She will be 3 years old on August 8th. She is most certainly a mix-breed dog, but she looks all lab.

Athena is watching the ducks at Connor's Bog here in Anchorage - a very fun place to go run and swim off some of that extra energy. (I wish I could bottle her energy for me!) Jeremy and Athena love to play fetch-the-stick.....and sometimes Athena even brings the stick back to Jeremy.

I love this picture....Athena had been with us maybe 2 weeks. She was so little as a baby! (She was so little that she could come and go through the cat door to the garage! Very cute!) I had just come home from shopping where I found this great tub for Halloween candy. (This was before I learned that not too many kids go door-to-door in our neighborhood and normally one bag of candy will be too much. Thanks Josh and Luke for always visiting us! You both always make my night!) I brought the tub upstairs and Athena jumped right in for a perfect photo opportunity! You can see in the background a bucket of cleaning supplies....in the beginning this bucket was always near-by for puppy accidents. :)

This is Athena during her first Christmas - look how big she has gotten! This is only 2 1/2 months after the picture of her in the Halloween tub!!!!!!! She is chewing on her Christmas present from my sister Katie. I think this bone might have lasted 2-3 hours.....yep, 3 hours tops. She is wearing the Christmas collar she got at the doggie Christmas party we attended. It was a lot of fun and very crazy!

I enrolled Athena in puppy obedience classes...so far we have taken 3 classes and Athena knows the basics. She is also great at going through tunnels and hopping over hurdles. My next goal is to take a class on agility or maybe flyball. She'd be great. The first teacher we had is a wonderful lady who LOVES dogs, she has 4 herself and also trains and rescues many others. Her students used to get together at a local ball field and play - we called it puppy park. It was a blast - Athena loved getting together with all the other dogs and playing. It was also a safe place for my runner, the field is fenced with a gate. After Jillian was born, we took a family trip to the ball field so that Athena could get some play time with us. This is a great picture of Athena chasing the ball. The municipality has started fining folks $50-100 if they catch you there with your dog off leash. Its too bad, especially considering not one of our off-leash dog parks are completely fenced-in.

Athena the mountain climber! Here she is on top of Flat Top! On this day, I was at home sick as a dog (hee! hee!) - I was pregnant and just beginning to learn how this baby would rock my world. Jeremy took our out-of-state visitors (cousin Brian and wife Rochelle) hiking to get a great view of our lovely city.

Athena is wild - she can be destructive when left alone, is a crazy-jumper (initially) around visitors, she will run away at the first opportunity to explore, she has selective hearing when we issue commands, and when we're not looking she will sleep on the furniture. She is not the perfect, most well-behaved pooch. But as I write this blog, Athena is laying at my feet. She is loyal and loving. I remember being 3 months pregnant and so sick of being sick. I came home from work crying and only Athena was there to greet me. She got on the bed with me and just sat there and listened to my woe-is-me's, then she laid her head in my lap and stayed with me until I fell asleep. She is not perfect, but she is family and we love her. Athena, you enrich our lives and we are better for loving you!