our new swingset!

Ryan and Abby have the best grandparents ever!  They all chipped in and bought us a new swingset!  It was installed today and we love it.  Ryan played out there all afternoon.  We are looking forward to a lot of fun and a lot of playdates and being outside all summer long.  Thanks so much to Grandma, Grandpa, Nana, Pop-Pop, Granddaddy, and Grandma Jo-Ann.  We love you very much and are very thankful for all you do for our family!!

Happy Birthday Maxim!

Happy 3rd Birthday Maxim!!  We spent Maxim's birthday weekend with him & his family in South Carolina.  The best part of the adventure, at least to the three year old boys, was a ride in a big yellow school bus!!  How fun!  We also enjoyed lots of family and spending time together.  In addition to the party, Maxim was baptized at their church on Sunday morning.  It was a wonderful celebration and we were honored to be a part of it.  Happy Birthday Maxim and thanks for letting us share your special day with you!  We love you!

Ryan's new bike

Wow, can you believe my baby is old enough to be riding a bike??  I sure can't!  Ryan got his first real bike last week, thanks to a great deal at the consignment sale.  He's been soo anxious to learn how to ride a bike and he did a great job!  He's had a few pedaling toys so the concept wasn't new and he just took off right away (with training wheels of course).  It was great fun watching his excitement as he rode around the abdandoned neighborhood behind Grandma's house.  Unfortunately it has been cold and rainy since the intial ride, so we haven't gone again, but I'm fairly certain there will be plenty of bike rides this summer!  I'm so proud of you Little Man and I love you!!

my Joy mentor

We are doing a book study with some good friends entitled the Life You've Always Wanted.  It's been a good read and I've picked up a few bits of wisdom to implement in my life.  Thus far my favorite chapter featured Joy and how important & spiritual it is.  I'll try to summarize quickly, without the use of the book or my notes since they are downstairs and I'm lazy and running out of time since the kids are starting to stir.  But basically, Joy is like an unofficial commandment.  There are many, many verses on Joy including the one that has been running through my head for the month since we've read that chapter: the Joy of the Lord is our strength {and of course do it again, do it again!!. :)}   One suggestion for learning to find Joy in life is to team up with a Joy mentor and see if their optimism & happiness can rub off on you.  I thought for a few moments of who might be the happiest person in my life, and then continued a sentence or two before reading that your Joy mentor can be any age.  Duh then, that's my Abby!!  She is the happiest person I have ever met.  She laughs and smiles constantly.  She's had her fair share of struggles and health issues, but that hasn't slowed her down one bit.  In fact, the pediatrician once commented that perhaps because she went through so much, that all the colds and ear infections and eye junk and breathing treatments are a walk in the park to her.  The last time I took her for a sick visit, I felt kind of silly because she was still laughing and smiling - but since she was so stuffy she could hardly breathe and her eye was closed up, I figured I had too!  The pediatrician has also nicknamed her the Happy Wheezer (because of those previously mentioned breathing treatments). 

She is so expressive & Joy-ful in all the little things.  Dancing to any & all music, a walk, a ride in a swing, seeing us open a bag of crackers, watching her brother, bathtime, reading Jingle-Jingle with us.  Bouncing in the car-stroller so high that her bottom comes off the seat & stretches the seatbelt as far as it can go.  Her whole face lights up, her whole body shakes with excitement.  She points and waves and hollars "DA!!"  I love watching her feet when she's happy.  They kick and kick, notice in the swing picture below that they are stuck straight out, tensed with delight!  She has that total pure innocence about her and loves life to the fullest.  I just pray that she will keep this happiness forever and that the world can never take it from her!  Thank you my Baby Girl for showing me how wonderful life is and for modeling a perfect example of Joy!  I love you my sweet Abby!!



busy busy!

Just wanted to say a quick hello to my few & far-between, but much-loved & appreciated blog followers!  This past week has been a great week, but at the same time one of those weeks where I feel like I can hardly keep up there's been so much going on!  While exhausting, it's been fun.  The weather was amazing towards the end of last week and the kids & I enjoyed several playground playdates, yay!  Saturday was filled with friends in the morning and family all afternoon.  Aunt Lolly, Uncle Brian, Aunt Lucinda, Uncle John, cousin Steve, & cousin Howard all converged on Mom & Dad's for the 2011 version of the cousins get-together.  We had a great time visiting with everyone, eating really good food, eating some more really good food, and then eating some more :)  Ryan & Abby loved all the attention and we loved catching up with the extended fam.  We're looking forward to another exciting and super-busy week again, hopefully I can keep current on all our adventures for you!  Love to all and have a great week :)

spring & my new toy

I got a great new camera for Christmas, it's all fancy and sleek and maybe a little too sleek - it doesn't stand up very well on it's own.  And if you know us, well really just me, you know we love to take pictures of ourselves, either with Coleson's extended arm or the camera's timer.  So I bought an awesome gorillapod tripod so that we can all be in the photos again.  It just arrived today, but I've already been having lots of fun with it!  Here's the tripod sitting in the tree, just to see if it could really sit in a tree, and yes it can :)

We have a great tree in our front yard that we've been enjoying checking on this spring.  This one tree has a bird's nest and six cocoons in it!  Ryan loves the cocoons (think The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which was already a bedtime favorite, but then became a speech book so a week's worth of practicing words that included cocoon).  He's always excited to see how they are doing, see how many we can count, and talk about the "beautiful butterflies" growing inside. 

weekend fun

Yay for weekends!  This past weekend was a wonderful and much needed break.  Coleson was out of town two weekends ago and then missed most of last weekend for meetings in Atlanta, Ryan was sick all last week so we couldn't leave this house, and basically this mom was just tired and ready for some family time and relaxing!  Fortunately the weather was beautiful so we were able to have lots of outside time and lots of fun.  Ryan played tennis most all weekend, we'd throw the ball until we went crazy and he'd hit it back.  He's pretty good as long as we throw the ball pretty good :)  Saturday we met up with Auntie Sarah, Uncle Christian, and Maxim at the Road Atlanta track and enjoyed watching the racecars.  Even though Al wasn't racing and thus we didn't get up close to any cars, it was still a huge rush to watch them race.  They were averaging 100 mph!  And of course it was also fun to watch the ones that weren't quite so good get lapped!  This weekend also included Abby's 11month birthday so there's a few cute photos celebrating the day.  Hard to believe she's almost one!  And really hard to believe that Ryan's almost three and a half - doesn't seem like that long ago that we were planning his big day & party. 

 

It's Always Something

Well, we made it probably two weeks without somebody going to the doctor ... this week it's been Ryan's turn.  Poor little guy has a case of croup and is quite pitiful.  He's been coughing since Sunday night, although the seal-like bark is gone now.  He's also had fevers off and on.  So we've missed preschool and speech all week and are going a little stir-crazy.  This afternoon we went to Target just because Mommy had to go somewhere and it seemed like the least likely place for a lot of close interaction & germ-passing.  Plus it's been raining & yucky all week, so the playgrounds aren't a good option anyways.  Oh well!  We've enjoyed lots of time at home and lying on the couch watching tv.  And it's been good for Abby, she's gotten all her meals & bottles on time and two good naps a day! 

Abby has been doing great, knock on wood she's stayed healthy through this.  As fun as croup is not with a three year old, I can't imagine how it would be in an almost-11-month old.  She's soo close to walking, but just hasn't let go yet.  She can stand for a few seconds at a time and is now doing it on her own.  Earlier in the week, I'd have to hold her up and let go when she wasn't paying attention, but now she's actually pulling up to standing and letting go by herself.  She can stand, oh I don't know, maybe five seconds.  She walks with just a finger or two, more for balance & confidence I think.  I have a feeling she'll let go any day now.  I'm actually kind of looking forward to it.  I know walking has its drawbacks, but she's such a fast crawler anyways.  And with the warm weather coming, she needs to be up and walking before we get outside too much.  She already tore holes in the knees of a pair of jeans by crawling around outside last week.  So it's walking or skinned knees this spring! 

It takes a village

You know that old saying, it takes a village to raise a child?  Well I just wanted to take a minute and thank our village, so ....  Thank you!  I know I take my support system for granted far too often, and I'm not very good at this sort of thing, but I want to take a moment to let ya'll know how awesome you are.  Thanks to our extended family of grandparents, aunts, uncles for all you do!  All the loving, babysitting, spoiling, supporting, playing, dinners, gifts.  And I'm blessed with a some good friends too, friends that I know I can call on in a pinch, friends that are there for us anytime.  I love my little family and I love that I have such a wonderful big family to share it with.  Love you guys!

Sugar & Spice

Have I mentioned recently how much I love having one boy, one girl, and being the perfect little family?  Well I do :)  I get to do all the boy things, and now I'm learning all the girl things too.  Bows & headbands are a fun, new adventure for us.  Unfortunately the headbands haven't worked too well for sweet Abby - her head is so big the headbands usually leave a red indention.  And now she can grab them and pull them down around her neck.  But the bows are great, especially since that she's starting to get some real hair.  Yesterday I found some amazing bows that I'd never seen before.  This lady makes all sorts of unique bows with animals and flowers and strawberries and fun stuff.  I'm not sure how practical it will be, but I just couldn't resist this adorable little Easter bunny hair bow.