80 Years Young

Today we celebrated my Papa’s 80th birthday.  He and his wife, Peggy, hosted a party for all of their friends and family at a manor in downtown Stone Mountain.  For his birthday present, all the cousins pitched in to hire a photographer to capture family pictures.  We had a great time visiting and celebrating our Papa.  Happy birthday Papa!!  We love you!

Becca, Papa, and me


me and Becca
 

Sammy
 

Superstar

Dad, Reese, Mom, me, Sammy, Becca, and Leah
 

The Reesey Bug and me
 

Lance and Reese
 

Becca and Sammy

*all images edited in Picnik

Sammy’s Laughter

Halloween Party

Today we had a Halloween party with some of our friends.  We had a potluck lunch, a bunch of snacks and desserts.  The kids all played outside and we set up a place to take some pictures of them.

I, of course, have way more pictures of Sam than Reese because she is a stinker when I am trying to take pictures.  I was able to get a few cute ones of the two of them though.

Reese’s shirt says “Treat” and Sam’s says “Trick”.  I guess I should have put them in opposite order to say “Trick or Treat”. 

Some of these have bad color but they are super cute so I had to share!

My friend, Jenny, made these super cute cupcakes for the kids to eat.  Reese loved them!

We had so much fun and are so blessed to have such fun friends!!

Berry Patch Farms

While Lance was at a work retreat, my parents and I took the kids to Berry Patch Farms today.  As usual, we tried to get some cute pictures of the kids.  My mom and I both had our cameras so out of the two of us we hoped to be able to get at least one.  We ended up getting a few.

Reese running through the field of pumpkins.

Sam hanging out in the sea of pumpkins.

Reese being a priss while sitting on the pumpkin.

 

And Sammy being cute and sweet!

Trying to get a picture of both of them together proved to be much harder.  Either one was smiling while the other was looking away or neither kid was paying attention.  I actually took two pictures and combined them to get this image.

 

And then I found this one.  How sweet they are!!

11 Months

In all of the chaos of the last week Sam’s eleven month birthday got passed by.  I took him to the doctor on Tuesday for his vaccine and weight check.  He weighed 20 pounds exactly!!  That means he gained about 13 ounces this month!  All that eating in the middle of the night has paid off.  We finally got that stopped during this past month though.  And now he is down to two feedings a day, first thing in the morning and then before he goes to bed.  He is still not walking or even cruising around the furniture.  He will walk with us holding his hands though.  He is silly and loves to laugh.  Sometimes I will just catch him giggling for no reason.  He is still super sweet and is definitely becoming a little more stubborn.  He lets us know his opinion on a lot of things.  He is eating a lot of table foods and if we are eating something he wants, he lets us know.  I can’t believe he will be a year old in less than a month!

My Best Friends Baby!

My best friend growing up had her baby yesterday!

Monday afternoon, as soon as we got home from Charleston, I ran upstairs to shower and headed straight to the hospital.  Adrienne was a week overdue and they started an induction that morning.  I made it to the hospital around 4:00.  She was in pain and labor was slow going.  She was such a champ though!!  I stayed until around 11:00 but knew I had to go home because mommy duty was calling.  I was so sad leaving though because I knew I was going to miss the baby being born.  I kept my phone right next to me the whole night waiting on an update.  They did not know the gender of the baby so I couldn’t wait to find that part out either.

Around 5:30 Tuesday morning I got a text from Adrienne’s sister telling me the baby was here and that it was a BOY!  I was so excited for them and their new arrival. 

Tuesday afternoon I took the kids to Lance’s office right at 5:00 so that I could head over to the hospital and meet my Godson, Owen!  He is so precious!!  At 8 lbs, 10 oz and 21.25”, he is a big boy.  But so tiny!  I love how tiny and sleepy newborn babies are.  I didn’t want to give up my snuggle time with him but Adrienne’s room was packed full of visitors so I had to share.  I am so happy he is finally here and so happy for my sweet friends!

Charleston Wedding

We spent this past weekend in Charleston for one of Lance’s best friend’s wedding.  We drove in Friday and went straight downtown to shop.  We met up with Justin for a minute and then had a quick dinner.  That evening Lance stayed back at the hotel with the kids so that I could attend Erica’s wedding shower.  Erica and Justin live in Hawaii so this was the first time a shower with family and friends could be held.  Erica was the only person I knew at the shower but everyone was very friendly and generous with their gifts.

Saturday morning we were slow going getting up.  We had breakfast at the hotel and then headed downtown to Justin’s parent’s house.  They purchased an older house a couple of years ago and have completely redone it.  It was beautiful.  From their house we headed to the farmers market.  We bought some kettle corn, a chocolate chip cookie, and some lemonade.  All nice healthy stuff!  Reese got to jump in the bounce house and go down the big inflatable slide.

 

Becca got in to town shortly after that and we met her at the hotel. I then met Lance at the rehearsal dinner.  It was a nice relaxing BBQ dinner and we had fun catching up with friends and making new ones!

Sunday morning Becca and I took the kids to the aquarium.  It was nice to get out but the aquarium (obviously) was nothing compared to the Georgia one. 

The first thing we did was the 4-d Happy Feet movie. 

    

That was a bust!  Both kids cried through out it.  Luckily we were the only ones in there.  Our favorite exhibit was the otters.  They were super playful and it was their feeding time right after we walked up.  We also got to see the big tank of fish being fed by two divers.  That was fun too.  The diver would swim right up to the glass and then open a water bottle type thing full of food.  The fish would swarm all around him gobbling it up.  We then headed back to the hotel for naps!  We all took a much needed nap while Lance spent the afternoon getting ready with Justin.  Then it was wedding time. 

The wedding was in a beautiful garden that was hidden between buildings.  Walking down the street you would have no idea it was there.  I, again, met Lance at the wedding.  I left a little early because I was afraid I would have a hard time finding a parking spot since parking is only on the street.  I lucked out and found a great spot so I took my time walking to the garden and then was there a little early.  

Charleston has some of the most beautiful gates.

Justin’s dad was amazing the whole weekend.  If you didn’t know better you would have thought he was the wedding planner! Ha! He was full of details, answers, ideas, etc. I tried to put Lance’s corsage on and it was flopping all around.  John put it on perfectly!

Justin and Erica were so calm all weekend.

Every thing was so simple but so beautiful. 

The ceremony was under this big beautiful tree. 

Erica and Justin met when they were both stationed in Arizona.  He was an Apache pilot in the Army and she is a Blackhawk pilot.  He has since left the Army and moved to Hawaii where Erica is stationed. 

They left the ceremony in a horse-drawn carriage and went around town getting some pictures made. 

The reception was a nice seated dinner after a cocktail hour.  We did not bring the camera with us to dinner because we did not want to have to keep up with it.  It was a very fun reception and we got to let our hair down a little bit.  Our before-kids-selves had a chance to make an appearance for a few hours.  But once the reception was over we knew that even though the party was going to continue downtown our with-kids-selves needed to head back to the hotel.  Our kids wake up early whether we come back at a decent time or an early morning time.  And we were hoping to head out early the next morning.

Monday morning we slept in later than we thought we would.  We were finally getting everyone in the car around 8:45 and pulling out around 9:00.  About 30 minutes out we stopped to get breakfast and Lance realized he did not have his wallet.  We dug through everything in the car, called the hotel to have them check our room, and called Becca to look through her car (since I had driven it the night before).  Luckily it was in Becca’s car!!  That was the longest 30 minutes of the whole weekend.  We were finally headed home around 10:30 and didn’t have too many problems after that.

Pictures

I took the kids to get their pictures made at Portrait Innovations today.  I never had Reese’s three year old pictures made and I figured Sam is going to need his one year old pictures made soon so we did them both today.  It didn’t go so great. Sam was not interested in smiling or being happy for that matter.  But some how I still walked out of there spending around $60 (sorry honey!).  Reese was really sweet with Sam.  She tried all she could to get him to smile and be happy.

This is as good as it gets…

Fall is Here!!

But Reese has no clothes! Oh my, I felt so bad getting her ready this morning.  Today she is wearing some clothes that I bought for her back in the spring.  I HAVE to go buy her some fall clothes today.  It was so chilly this morning. I don’t know how I let October get here without buying her anything.  I have been looking around but I swear all of the little girls clothes are ugly!  The 80’s style dresses and shirts are the worst.  I am pretty sure I would not have even worn these clothes in the 80’s.  They all look like Halloween costumes.  Hopefully I will be able to find some great clothes for her today!

Could it be?

Last night I noticed that the ninth and tenth teeth that Sam is cutting are his one year molars.  We noticed them cutting on the outsides of the gums a week or so ago but now they have finally cut the inside of the gums too.  I am wondering if his fever was from those teeth moving in more.  I don’t know!  We have never had much of a problem (fever-wise) with him cutting teeth.

Us Lately

Friday afternoon Sam’s fever finally broke and he started feeling better.  We still never figured out what was wrong with him but he was pitiful.

Reese had gymnastics on Friday.  Her new thing is that when ever she falls down or gets “hurt” she wants a band-aid.  Miss Beth always caves and gives her one.  I told her on Friday that if she kept getting band-aids they were going to start charging her a nickel for each one.  She didn’t like that idea so hopefully she will stop getting “hurt”.

We had planned to go to a pumpkin patch on Saturday but since Sam had been sick I decided to stay home with him.  Lance took Reese to Cagle’s Dairy Farm and pumpkin patch with Matt, Maddie, and Jocelyn.  This is the same place I took Reese last year before Sam was born.  They had a great time!

They got to jump on the big jumping pillow.

Go through a corn maze.

There were signs that had questions that helped you figure out which way to go in the maze.

Lance tried to get a picture of the girls but they were not interested in it.

And apparently Reese wasn’t interested in getting her picture made at all.

 

They also rode on the hayride.

And saw the cows herded by the dog.

Reese actually petted one of the calves. 

 

While they were out Sam and I had our own special day.  We went shopping for a little while and then he took a nap.

Saturday night Lance and I went out to celebrate one of our friends birthday.  We all went to dinner at Tuscany and then back to their house for dessert.  We had a GREAT night visiting with friends!

 

So far we have had a lazy Sunday.  Maybe I will go take a nap to complete the laziness!