Random Shots - July 2009

Vacation posts still on their way, (really the photos are still in the camera, but the posts are all typed up) - in the meantime, here are some shots from July that didn't quite fit in a post, but I really wanted to share...

Sassy Sammie

Auntie Karen and Brenna

Brenna's cute little feet...

Rachel and Avah

Mike and Carli Grace

Stellan

An etsy artist posted a comment to my blog yesterday on the Prayers for Stellan post. Her name is Lexi and she is donating a portion of her proceeds to String of Pearls to help families like Stellan's in their time of need.

I had a chance to check out her website this morning and I have to say, she has some adorable items to choose from! Win Win situation for all of us who like to shop and have been looking for something we can do to help a family that we don't know, but have been praying for every day.

For an update on Stellan, please click on the button on the right side of my blog or here.

Thank you Lexi for letting me know about your site, for what you are doing for all the families that will benefit, and for letting us know how we can help!

Prayers for Stellan

My friend Rachel got me into following a few other blogs for a long time before I ever started this one for our family. One of those blogs was My Charming Kids. This is a wildly popular blog about a family of six somewhere in the northern United States, or the "Frozen Tundra" as she refers to it.

One of the reasons her blog has become so popular and is read all over the world is the story of her youngest child, Stellan, who was diagnosed with heart problems while in utero. Stellan has been struggling for the past several months through good times and bad dealing with his heart problems and today they are going to admit him back to the hospital and try another course of treatment. Should this fail, he will have to go through another surgery. To read Stellan's story you can either click here or link to the blog button on the right side of this site.

This is not someone we know, or a friend of a friend or even anyone I've ever had a conversation with, but her story and her family's patience, devotion, and faith in God through everything are awe inspiring and quite humbling. Please keep the whole family in your thoughts and prayers.

Home

It occurred to me as we were pulling up to our house how your sense of “home” changes through the years. When I was little and we would go away on vacation I would always know we were “home” when I would get the first glimpse of our house from the top of the hill in our neighborhood. When we moved to another state my senior year in high school “home” was when I would see my parents waiting for me at the airport. When Nathan and I fell in love, “home” was coming back to him, and when we started traveling together “home” was our place together.

This trip it hit me the second I saw Sammie; I hadn’t even looked the house, hadn’t noticed the yard or the pile of fence materials in our driveway. I made a beeline for the front door and spotted Sammie through our sidelight running through the kitchen. She had her little strawberry nightgown on and was chasing Grandma around for her cup of water...

Home.

After many big hugs and kisses and several I love you's and I missed you's, I went upstairs and peeked at Brenna sleeping. Tushy up in the air, arm dramatically laying over her eyes as she slept...

Home.

Catching Up

You may have noticed the blog hasn’t been updated in over a week…I was on VACATION!! Nathan and I took our first alone trip since our honeymoon to celebrate our fifth anniversary. Since it always falls on Father’s Day weekend (poor – uncharacteristically so – planning on my part), we’ll probably be celebrating a lot of our anniversaries this way...meaning later or earlier. More posts to follow on the vacation, but in the meantime, here is an update on the girls.

My parents gave us some of their timeshare points for the cruise as an anniversary present, and very generously watched the girls for us as an additional present! Thank you mom and dad, both gifts were absolutely wonderful, and very much appreciated!!

Literally the morning we left, Sammie walked into our room declaring that her throat hurt and she was not feeling well. She was running a fever all day (as we traveled, we received updates from grandma and grandpa), and when she coughed or sneezed she said her throat hurt. She had a few nights of a tough fever, but started to feel better by Saturday, thank goodness! She had a blast while we were gone and we got to talk to her almost every day, being absolutely sure to tell us what a good girl she was being for grandma and grandpa.

Brenna decided what better time to start cutting teeth then when your parents are out of town, your grandparents are babysitting, and your big sister is sick! Her bottom right tooth started poking through over the weekend and her top left seems to be coming next! I had just gotten her back to sleeping through the night before we left, but this has thrown a monkey wrench in to all of that. She also kicked her Army crawl into high gear, and is motoring around the place “bivouac” style very quickly.

Needless to say, my folks had their hands full and were ready for a vacation themselves when we returned, but they did a great job and the girls had a good time!

Sammie got to wait up for us to come home and was SO excited when she saw us! She hopped back and forth between our laps the rest of the evening before finally passing out on daddy’s lap, happy as a clam to have us home! Today when I took her to daycare she had a little bit of a rough time, first asking if daddy had left on vacation again (since he’d already left for work before she woke up) and next by making me promise I was picking her up from school tonight after “work, not vacation”.

Brenna was asleep when we got home, but since she’s back to getting up at night she woke up around 1:30 and I went in to settle her down and cuddle her. I sing to her every night before bed (poor girl I know…) so I started singing to her as she laid her head on my shoulder and her eyes popped open and she pushed off my chest to look at my face. She put her little hand on my cheek and got the biggest smile on her face; made me tear up it was so sweet. Then I spent the next two hours trying to get her back to sleep because she thought it was play time! The next morning she practically tossed herself out of my arms to get to Daddy when she saw him.

Yeah, I think the girls missed us, what a wonderful feeling!

Genetics

Genetics are a very interesting thing. I’m not so sure after having two children that I really buy into this whole dominant/recessive theory. Take our family for instance.

Nathan = Blond hair, blue eyes
Me = Brown hair, green eyes
Sammie = Blond hair, blue eyes
Brenna = Blond hair, blue eyes

Now granted, I was well aware that since we both have recessive genes for eyes, it was a toss-up as to whether or not the girls would get my eye color, but I was POSITIVE that at least one of them would get my dark hair, after all, it is a dominant trait, right?

Wrong…

Just look at all this beautiful blond hair…

And these gorgeous blue eyes…


And while Sammie does bear more of a resemblance to me, only with Nathan’s coloring, Brenna is all Nathan…

Yep, my girls got their daddy’s genes alright, and I love it! Look at these two beautiful little Daddy’s girls…

Worn Out

After our very full Fourth of July we were all a little tired…

Sitting Up

My aunt told me this great story years ago, and every time I think of it, I can’t stop laughing (of course, bear in mind that it is all in the delivery and she presents the story way better than I ever could). My uncle is a great skier, and every year they take a week long (at least) trip to Lake Tahoe where they gamble and shop, but my uncle mostly skis. After a while, my aunt decided she should learn how to ski too so they could enjoy it together. My uncle decided the best thing would be a ski instructor, and he hired one.

The ski instructor met with my aunt, and told her the first and most important thing to learn was how to get up after you fall. Seems reasonable enough, right? So he pushed her down. She then spent the next (insert an insane amount of time here) trying to get back up on her skis. I remember there being tears and remarks about some little punk five-year-olds skiing by without a care in the world really ticking her off. Eventually though, she found her way upright again and proudly stood, defiant, in front of her teacher (who had gone and got a cup of coffee in the meantime).

What happened next? He pushed her over again. My aunt took the skis off and walked away. She has never skied since, and is perfectly happy to have my uncle ski by his lonesome.

For some reason, this story comes to mind while I watch Brenna struggle to get to a sitting position, or topple over when we put her in one. While I am in no huge hurry to have Brenna reach the milestones of full-on crawling or walking, one that I am extremely anxious for her to reach is sitting up unassisted.

As I mentioned in her six-month update, Brenna is up there in the percentiles of her size, and with my short little arms and stubby little legs, hauling her around in a pumpkin seat is no fun. That said, I cannot wait for her to sit up unassisted so that I can change her pumpkin seat into a convertible, REAR-FACING, car seat. The only reason I still use the pumpkin seat is so that when I go to the store, I can just leave her in there since she can’t use the basket yet. The only problem will be then, where do I put Sammie? We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it…

This being my goal, I work with her on sitting up a lot, and she’s getting close, although she is currently very amused by falling over, which is not helping the motivation at all. We tried to sit her with Carli Grace on the Fourth, but Carli, an expert at sitting up unassisted for some time now and wanting to help her friend learn too, seemed to take on the ski instructor’s training beliefs…

Tickle Torture

We all have our various forms of tickle torture we use on our kiddos big and small, Jeremy likes to utilize the "beard and kisses" combo...

She looks like she just hates it, right??

Sammie's First Sparklers

This was the first year that we let Sammie have sparklers. We still weren’t convinced she was ready, but she was careful with them and we stood right next to her the whole time, keeping her away from the other children.

At first she was a little scared and shocked:

But then she got the hang of it:

Teamwork

You know the great thing about our friends?

Scratch that: You know one of the many great things about our friends? Teamwork.

Nathan started out with just a couple of kids and a box of sparklers...

Then word spread that there was some guy giving out sparklers…

And more showed up…

Pretty soon a mob had formed…

And Nathan was in serious need of reinforcements…

Cue Ben and a second lighter...

Teamwork!

Amongst the long, long list of wonderful qualities this group of people possesses, teamwork is up pretty high as one of my favorites.

Little Patriot

As mentioned, Brenna’s new hair bows came in. And wouldn’t you know it – Sammie was jealous. This shouldn’t be a shock, but it was, because it was a first, and over something that Sammie really doesn’t care too much about – hair accessories. The sad little tears that sprang from her eyes when she discovered those bows were just for Brenna sent me flying to the store on Friday night for something equally as cute and adorable for her…

How’d I do?

The “do” of course only lasted a short time before the water slide was whipped out and her whole ensemble was replaced with her swim suit. She did get back into the dress later though, and spent a good part of the evening running around waving this American Flag and dancing to the music; our little patriot.

To me, children waving flags and sparklers in honor of our country’s Independence Day is the very picture of the holiday. Thank you to all the troops overseas and at home, serving at any point in the past, present, or future; providing us with the freedoms we enjoy every day.

Happy Birthday America!

Brenna's First Fourth of July

Brenna had a busy day. First we had brunch with Mamaw and Scott…

After nap time we headed over to Mike and Rachel’s annual block party, where she chilled on the couch for a little while contemplating all this hoopla…


Then she practiced sitting up, with Carli Grace trying to show her how it is done….

And falling down…

She ate her dress a little bit…

And generally just cracked herself up the whole time, although Carli Grace seemed to think she wasn't that funny after all…

Due to buckets of rain being dumped on our heads the whole day, there were no fireworks for her to see before bed time, but I’m sure she will get much more out of it next year!

The Fence

Construction on the fence has begun. It would seem that we selected the hottest weekend so far this year to start, but in any case, Nathan and my dad labored in the heat all last weekend to being the installation.

Apparently the fence we selected is not the easiest to work with. It is a bracket system, which means that instead of being able to dig the holes in a day or two and put all the posts in and then come back to install the panels, they have to do them one at time. Hmm…thought we did better research than this, but they are making it work, and it is looking great.

The Fourth was the second weekend of construction, however with the rain and taking the very important time to enjoy the holiday weekend, they only worked on it one day. It will be so nice when it is all done though!

Proud Papas

Nathan, Mike, and Jeremy have been close friends since middle school. They have seen each other through adolescence, girl friends, really questionable hairstyles, getting out of high school and into the real world, moving, getting married, and finally, becoming fathers. Mike was the first, followed by Nathan, and Jeremy was the last one to become a dad.

All three of these guys had babies (ok, so their wives did all the work) within three weeks of each other. Not only that, they all had girls. Mike had Carli Grace, Jeremy had Avah, and Nathan had Brenna. All three girls were complete and total “mini-me’s” of their daddies at birth. Avah was the first to start looking like her mommy, Carli Grace and Brenna are holding out for who wins the Daddy Lookalike contest the longest.

Pictured in order: Mike and Carli Grace, Nathan and Brenna, Jeremy and Avah