Quick visit

We made a quick trip to Richmond this Wednesday to visit my older brother Will. He flew in from Texas to be a speaker for the Lenten series my parent's church is putting on. He did such a great job! Here's a picture of us before the service.

A two year old, who will remain un-named, had a rough afternoon, so we ended up coming back late late Wednesday night. We hated that the trip was so short, but we were so happy to just be able to see Will and hear how God has worked in and through him in his military ministry. Powerful story and powerful message...may we all take the challenges in our lives and lay them at God's feet and follow Him.

Par-Tay!

Today Alley went to her first birthday party. The party was for her closest friend from school, Ava. She has been so excited about this party, but she keeps calling it, "my party, my birthday"! Uh-oh...that's cause for some concern! She ended up doing great! We did have to trick her a little during the present opening...we got her to pick up all the wrapping paper and throw it away while Ava was getting into most of her presents. Of course Alley was able to "help" Ava open them so she could get the wrapping paper:) Such a sweet friend! We really enjoyed ourselves this evening. The weather was BEAUTIFUL and Ava's extended family was wonderful and so kind. Ava's grandmother even held Kendall for awhile:) Here are some pictures from our evening:

Alley pre-party hanging out in a box...why do we buy toys??!!

playing the piano in Ava's room...that girl can't stay away from music!

the two peas in a pod playing so nicely

Hilarious picture! I told them both to say cheese and this is what they did!!!

Playing with beads

sweet birthday girl!

Daddy playing along nicely;) He's getting his hair brushed...

Ava running around in the yard enjoying the evening

Alley swinging all by herself!

Hugs

What a fun evening we had! These two girls keep us rolling with laughter and make our lives brighter:)

2 months

What??!! 2 months already?! Time has definitely flown by. Kendall has been such a joy and we have loved every minute we have had with her. Here is a little bit about our growing girl:

• She is filling out her 0-3 month clothes and is finally out of newborn diapers:) We are about to embark on the world of cloth diapers...which is super exciting (I know, I'm weird!) and kinda nerve-racking...laundry everyday!
  
• She has begun to smile a ton
  
• She loves to snuggle and watch the person holding her.
  
• She is a wonderful sleeper. She wakes up once in the middle of the night to feed and pretty much puts herself back to sleep.
  
• We've had some rough episodes of tummy trouble, but hopefully that will begin to clear up soon!
  
• She has very sensitive skin
• She's not a big fan of the swing (exactly opposite of her sister)
• She loves to be perched up on your shoulders - so she can see the world
• She still has blue eyes (unlike her sister who had already changed to brown eyes at this age) - who knows if the blue eyes will last!
  
• She hates, and I mean hates, to have her clothes taken off.
  
• She snorts a lot, which is so cute and funny:)
  

Overall we just adore her and can't get enough of her. Even her big sister can't keep her hands off her (which sometimes can be a problem!). Here are some recent pictures

Finally caught some sweet smiles

grinning ear to ear for Mimi and Papa

Wide-eyed and bushy tailed:)

sisters bonding - Kendall is unsure about all this bonding;)

yikes, it looks like Alley has a death grip on Kendall's neck...

Kisses for Kendall

All smiles from one and freaking out from the other...I guess the fun begins on trying to get both to look at the camera and smile:)

Surprise!

How come it always seems that you find the best photo-ops when you are camera-less??!! Kendall has given us plenty of smiles and cute faces and Alley has done many sweet things to help us with Kendall and has become quite "motherly" towards Kendall. All wonderful opportunities for amazing photos...but, alas, we are camera-less. After weeks of researching cameras, we finally decided on a camera that we thought would fit our family's needs...only to decide it's not the time to purchase it...bummer! In the meantime, we've borrowed my parents camera to catch as many of those "priceless" moments as possible (all the while longing for my own camera - the new one preferably!).

Back to today...I had a really rough day at work - too much to do and not enough time, plenty of people telling me how I need to do my job (thanks but no thanks guys!!), and the prospect of coming home to workers working on our house (people finally showing up to fix our ceiling damage that happened back before Thanksgiving!)...I was not looking forward to coming home either. BUT, I'm glad I did!! Look what was waiting for me at home!!!!!!!

Andy did it again! He searched and searched for the best deal on this camera and found a SWEET deal that he couldn't pass up...alas, my new camera! So, what had been a rough day for me has turned into an exciting one:) I love my husband (of course, for many more reasons than because he bought me the camera;) )!!! I can't wait to try it out...

"Forced Family Fun" Fridays:)

Growing up, my parents started a tradition that later on we affectionately called "triple F". When we lived in Alabama, my parents would gather the family together to have fun without spending any money. In stead of going out to eat, to the movies, to putt-putt, or anything else that cost money, they would gather us around to play board games, write stories or read a book together as a family. That's why we later dubbed it "forced family fun":) But don't let the name fool you, we definitely enjoyed those nights of family bonding! The best part about the evening (in my opinion!) was that we would get a small glass of coke and mom would pop popcorn and "hide" M&M's in it. Of course Will and I would go straight to the bottom of the bowl and eat all the M&M's...(Will always stole all my M&M's...sigh...). This is a treat we never got outside of those triple F nights. What great memories we have of those nights!
So, Andy and I decided to start our own Triple F nights with our growing family. Granted, our girls are much younger than Will and I were, so the tradition has been tweaked for the age of our family members. This Friday night, we popped popcorn, had pizza and watched a Lady and the Tramp II. We weren't sure how Alley was going to do, but she did great! She LOVED the popcorn and pizza and even watched almost all of the movie (only because it was about dogs - that girl loves her animals!!). It was a fun start to a new family tradition...Here are some photos from Triple F...

Alley sharing the popcorn with Daddy while we waited for the pizza to cook

Pausing from eating for a smile:)

The other day we tried to get a picture of Alley holding Kendall...it was kind of funny to watch. Poor Kendall kept tilting over and after a few minutes Alley pushed Kendall away saying "all done":) Good thing I was there to catch Kendall!

Our precious little girl after some tummy time...not her favorite thing - so she got the binkie after she was done...it plum wore her out!

More pictures

As I stated in a past post, our camera has completely died on us...again. So, after going through 3 cameras in 4 years, we decided it was finally time for us to invest in a really nice, quality camera. One of Andy's assistants knows a lot about cameras and has helped us in the process of picking one out that will best suit our needs (and our skill level!). In the meantime, she let us borrow her camera to see if we like that style of camera. Thanks Kele! Here are some pictures from the past week using her camera. I still need work on lighting and stuff, but they came out much better than they would have if I was using our camera!:)

Kendall in her "thinking" mode...hmmm, is it time to eat yet?!

Sweet cheeks taking a little snooze before big sister returns to torture, oh, I mean "help"

Wide eyed and bushy tailed...someone must have rung the dinner bell;)

Thinking again...this is becoming a habit!

the quality of the picture is bad because I was so surprised that she did this that I didn't have time to focus the picture - check out what my 5 week old was doing:)

She's just too cute...this is her tummy time stance - the little frog

A view from the back - all the while she is rocking back and forth, which makes this stance even more hilarious:)

Chatting with us about life

Oh lord, watch out, she's already liking the phone

I love this picture!! How cute are they!! She has eyes only for her daddy (she just puts up with me because I feed her...hehe)