"Daddy home TWO days!"

So after a week of not feeling so well, especially for poor Abby, we were very excited for this past weekend.  Our sweet girl had a cold that turned into an ear infection, conjunctivitis in her eyes, and five days of breathing treatments for a bronchial type cough & wheezing. 

We planned to kick off the weekend with a family movie & pizza night on Friday, but Ryan got a better offer.  He spent the evening with Grandma & Grandpa (after a week of hanging out with a sick sister, he really needed some individiual attention so thank you!).  They had a nice dinner and Ryan helped Grandma pick out "two sweaters, one blue, one red."  Since I hadn't made any dinner plans, Coleson & I still enjoyed a pizza! 

Saturday, Ryan & Coleson had some guy time.  They enjoyed a yummy breakfast at Chickfila and doing manly things at Lowe's and even bought Abby & I presents from Target, thanks boys!  Saturday afternoon we headed to the park to enjoy the sunny, 60 degree weather.  And then Coleson & Ryan washed the cars for us - well, I think Ryan got more water on himself than the car, but hey whatever.  :)  We ended the day with a yummy dinner at Grandma & Grandpa's house. 

After watching the sermon online Saturday night, we had a super lazy Sunday morning (hey, Abby was sick, no sick babies in the nursery, right?!).  We headed to another park Sunday afternoon to hang with Ryan's friend Jake and his family.  We finished with a delicious dinner, compliments of Nana & Pop-Pop this time. 

It was a great weekend enjoying the sunshine and family & friends!  We are looking forward to a great week and a trip to the Chattanooga Aquarium this weekend.  Hope every had a nice end to their Januaries; we are a month closer to summer now, yay!

Hiking the Mall

We had hoped to take the kids hiking today to get out of the house and get some fresh air.  However, despite the sunshine, it was only about 40 degrees and windy, thus we wussed out :)  So we packed up and headed to Discover Mills mall instead.  Being about an hour away, I can't tell you the last time we went there.  We had a great time though! 

We came in through a huge Bass Pro Shops, complete with a stop at the fish tank and a lifesize display featuring two moose.  Once in the mall there were all sorts of adventures to be had.  Ryan and I rode a train through the mall - quite fun actually!  We all rode the merry go round and our fun-loving Abby smiled and cooed the whole time, no surprise there!  Ryan rode a few little cars and stomped around on an interactive floor.  And of course we had to snack on some pretzels.  It's fun being intentional!

Thank you to you too

This picture was taken nearly three years ago at Central Park.  No not nyc, right here in Georgia.  I'm not sure why they call it Central Park, but it's a great park and we love to go when we can.  There's a huge playground, plenty of paved walking that's perfect for pushing strollers, baseball fields, tennis courts, a gym, etc.  I believe this was actually Ryan's first time in a swing.  He's about eight months old in this photo, but most of his younger days were in the cold of winter, so we hadn't been out much yet.

Anyways, now that we are a family of four, I have been updating our picture frames to include Abby.  This is the last pre-Abby picture to be replaced.  I LOVE this photo.  It wasn't planned, it wasn't even our idea, and yet it's one of my favorite photos ever.  A complete stranger at the park approached us and volunteered to take this photo for us.  How cool is that?  So thank you to whoever you are!  Three years later this fluke of a photo is still one of the best! 

Ryan vs Abby

Rewind 2.5 years ....
He weighed in at 17lbs 2 oz and is 28.5 inches - long and lean like his daddy.

And as of today ....
She weighed in at 16lbs 11 oz and is 27.25 inches - not as long but still very lean.

Skinny with big heads (90% for both) ... but that, my dear friends, that is where the similarities end! :)

Dearest Auntie Sarah,

So since you are one of only a handful of people that still follow my blog (shout out to Lindsay & Louie, thanks for the comment the other day!), I figured I could use this venue to tell you my little story.  And besides, anyone that knows you and your dog will likely appreciate it! 

I was at Homegoods the other day and the lady in front of me had apparently returned a dog bed.  It was still sitting on the back counter; it was pretty big and kind of goofy looking with some sort of cheetah/leopard print.  The manager was asking the cashier if there was anything wrong with it.  The cashier said no, it was fine, just that the lady's dog was terrified of it.  The owner had tried all sorts of things, sitting on it and calling the dog, putting treats on the bed, etc, but the dog would just not go anywhere near it.  Hummm, made me think of a dog I know ....  lots of love to you Laia ....

Nine months old (+ 1 day since I'm late posting!)

Abby turned nine months old yesterday!  (I no longer refer to them as birthdays, since Ryan gets all excited about birthday cake!).  Abby is doing great!  She has four teeth now, she got her top two right about Christmas.  She is still our wonderful sleeper - 12 hours at night and usually two or three more hours during the day.  Her eating is slowly progressing.  We've still got a long way to go, but we're focusing and working really hard on it.  In fact this morning she ate a couple of bites of pancake and bananas from my breakfast.  She still uses her fingers to push them all in of course and it's quite a mess!  I'll spare you the details, but she's also taking a bottle now three times a day, we've had a sudden weaning experience :(  But we made it nine months, so I feel good about that.  She loves her bottles and I actually think she drinks more, so that's also good.  She is a crazily fast crawler and is super curious.  She gets into way more stuff than Ryan ever did, so this should be interesting!  I've finally started putting up some of the breakables on my kitchen bookshelf since I just can't get her to leave them alone (Ryan never touched them). 

Ryan is a great big brother.  It was a wee bit rough when she first started crawling and getting into his toys.  But I guess he's realized that she's pretty fun to have around and to play with.  I also think it helped that Abby got a bunch of new toys for Christmas - now they can play with her toys, versus Ryan thinking they were all his (which in a way they were, he knew all the baby toys used to be his).  He loves to crawl along with her and bring her all sorts of toys and update me on where she is & what she's doing.  He also enjoys holding her and wanted to be in all her nine month pictures with her. 

I love my babies!

 

Happy Nine Month Birthday Abby!  (I can still type birthday since Ryan can't read yet! - actually he does recognize his name and Abby's name)

Being a silly camera hog! But Mommy will never say no to taking pictures :)

 

 

winter storm 2011

First of all, I always think it's hilarious that each snow gets its own name.  But that's our sensational media for you.  So here we are in the midst of winter storm 2011.  I also learned a new term from the news that I think fits me perfectly.  They were talking about all the "porch pictures" that everyone was sending in - you know the ones where you open the back door, lean out and take a picture, then open the front door, lean out and take another picture.  Yup, I'm guilty.  I ain't getting out there in that nastiness unless I have to! 

 

So here's one of my porch pictures - Hard to believe the roads and driveways and sidewalks were all covered.

 

Ryan loves the snow, so we try to be good parents by sucking it up and going outside with him occasionally :)

Ryan and Daddy did a great job of shoveling our driveway. Thanks guys!

 

The sweetest little Snow Angel ever!

So here we are on day four of the storm, hoping it will melt away soon!  The sun is finally out today so that should help, although it would be even better if temperatures would rise above freezing!  We've missed a whole week of preschool and speech, and we are about to drive each other crazy.  Coleson has been able to make it to work the last two days, but the kids and I haven't been out yet.  Coleson and Ryan did shovel my side of the driveway last night though, so we're headed out to lunch when Abby wakes up from her nap.  Yay for getting out!  Stay warm everyone!

I'm that Mom!

I'm not sure exactly why, but I've been looking forward to this day for a long time.  Ryan had has first Christmas program today!  I get to be that Mom that posts silly, blurry pictures of a bunch of mismatched, unruly 2 and 3 year olds dressed as Angels and thinks it's the best thing ever!  I don't know why I see this as such a milestone, but it was a great day, and I had a blast being the mom of a preschooler who was performing the most beautiful version of Jingle Bells possible. :)  I was so sad when school got cancelled a couple of weeks ago and I thought the play was history, darn snow and ice!  But the show must go on, better late than never!  So without further ado, here are the much coveted (post) Christmas Pageant pictures:

The Angels all ready to go and getting in line to walk to the Sanctuary

 

A little hard to tell, but that's Ryan over there on the left side

 

My Sweet Angel!

(next to the girl in pink who flat out refused to put on her costume!)

 

Yay for Daddy coming to the play and party!  Ryan was so happy to have him there to hear him sing.  In fact as we were leaving he said "I like having Daddy at school." I reminded him that I was there too, to which he said "I no like having Mommy there, I like having Daddy at school."  :( :(  Darn Daddies get all the credit when they come to the cool stuff, but us Mommies get taken for granted, eh?  Sad day, but I'm not taking it too personally, just being grateful for the special bond Ryan and his Daddy have. 

failed resolutions

So it's the sixth day of the New Year; how are your resolutions going?  I don't know if it qualifies as a resolution or not, but I decided that I was going to do one of those take-a-picture every day type of thing for 2011.  I love my pictures, so it sounded like a great idea.  Now I'd have a legitimate excuse to take even more pictures.  And while I have taken a whole lot already, I did not take one yesterday.  And on Monday, I took a random picture when I normally wouldn't have, just to say I took one.  So I'm giving up on the one-a-day picture taking goal.  I like to think it's not because I failed, but because I consciously chose to quit.  You see, I take too many pictures as it is.  I know this and I will admit it.  So the last thing I need is to feel like I need to take even more.  If anything, I need to be taking fewer pictures.  (insert an "Amen" from my hubby here)  :)  Too many pictures not only distract me from enjoying the moments as they happen, but they can be overwhelming too.  When I have too many pictures of an event, I find it hard to pick out and appreciate the best ones.  So I'm also working on being better about deleting not-so-good pictures as I upload them and only keeping and posting the best ones.  Thus, I think I will break my resolution and see how it goes.  Don't you worry, I'll still take bunches of photos this year and still be the unofficial photographer when we all hang out.  I'm just going to try to be better about taking just a couple of pictures and then putting away the camera.  And now that I have such a cool and TINY camera, it'll be real easy to keep it hidden away in my pocket.  So good luck, or in my case maybe not, with your resolutions!  Happy New Year's everyone!

Thank you

To the Good Samaritan at Chick-fil-a this afternoon, Thank you!!  Obviously I don't know you and you'll never read this, but thank you nonetheless!  Apparently Abby's gingerbread dolly had fallen out of the car when we got there and I didn't realize it.  When we were done, we all piled back in the car, trying to dodge raindrops.  As I was settling in to turn on the car, I looked up and there was the gingerbread dolly sitting on the windshield with her arm stuck under the wiperblade.  While it was such a simple act, I am very grateful for the kindness of the person who found her and went out of his or her way to make sure we got her back.  Thank you!  It makes me all warm and fuzzy to witness firsthand the goodness of people.  :)  I know in reality Abby is not nearly as attached to the dolly as I think she is, honestly she probably doesn't even know or care, but I am still very happy to have her back!