Coloring

Caroline is growing up and it's so bittersweet. I'm so happy she's growing and changing and becoming a little girl, but there are moments when I just want to freeze time and have her stay little forever. I miss the baby cuddles and the toothless grins. She is such a blessing to us! She's growing up. Her new favorite activity is sitting at the kitchen table and coloring. She will climb up in the chair (always the same one) and say, "Colors?" It's adorable and heartbreaking at the same time. When did my little baby become big enough to sit at the kitchen table without a booster seat?





I might get in trouble for posting this next pic...but, Uncle Jud doesn't scare me too much.



Yep folks...he's wearing an Auburn hat! I believe his BIL threatened bodily harm if he didn't wear it to the game...

Hold your little ones close tonight--they won't be little for long! Hope you're all well!

Tiny Treasures

Last week Caroline discovered a plastic drawer in her closet that had a bunch of stuffed animals in it. How we wound up with so many stuffed animals, I don't know, but we did, and until now she hasn't shown any interest in them. She unloaded that drawer and played with them for a long time. Her little face was alight with excitement and she would make this little gasp, then laugh, then tell me what each animal was as she pulled them out. They were like tiny little treasures to her! It was adorable!





Oh yeah, and she's been wearing her Elmo backpack around for days. Her friend, Blair gave it to her when we were up in BG. She loves it! It's so cute how much she loves to wear it. I think it's partly because she just likes the backpack, and partly because she LOVES Elmo. She's just started liking Elmo within the last severeal months. Since we canceled our cable, she's been wathcing Sesame Street on PBS. She can sing the theme song to "Elmo's World" and everything. She doesn't get all the words right all the time, but she's got the tune down pat.

Last week I made a super trip to the grocery. I even left Caroline with my parents because I knew I was going to take a few hours going to more than one store. It was one of those trips where we were basically out of everything. I'm usually pretty good at keeping our fridge, pantry, and freezer pretty stocked, but because of some sickness, traveling, and a few other things that have gotten in the way, I hadn't done a good shopping trip in a while. We had been living off my stocks and the occasionally run for milk or eggs for about a month. Anyway, we were down to nothing but ketchup and mayo, so I had to go. When Caroline got home from the grandparents, she noticed I had gone shopping! It was the funniest thing...I was getting her a drink from the fridge and she started jumping, laughing, and pointing at the fresh blueberries. She politely asked for some, so I let her have a snack. About ten minutes after she ate those, she began doing the exact same thing, jumping and laughing, only this time she was pointing to the fruit bowl, excited to see the bananas. I let her have one of those too, when she smiled up at me and said "Pese?" :) I LOVE that she was so excited to see fruit!

Long Weekend

We had a nice long weekend! Friday morning I wasn't feeling great so I was a little concerned about our plans for the weekend, but luckily it didn't seem to carry into the weekend.

On Saturday we drove up North about 2 hours to help Aaron's sister and her husband move into their first house!



Here are the newlyweds in their new home.

Caroline was such a help to her Uncle...ok, maybe more of a hindrance. :)




Their house is really cute and I can't wait to see what all Karen does with it. I'm looking forward to them being closer now. 8 hours was TOO FAR...2 is much better! :)

Monday we had some friends over for a cookout, which turned into a cookin, because it started raining. We had a really good time. I only managed to get one picture, but it's of most of the kiddos eating around our kitchen table. We've got a great group of kids, if I do say so myself! :) Lots of great examples for Caroline!



All in all, a great weekend. Today it's back to our normal routine...but, there is something so peaceful about "normal."

Fun and Friends

We returned home Sunday night after spending a wonderful long weekend with our friends. Four years ago we moved 8 hours from these friends--boy do we miss them! The specialness (is that word?) of our relationship is such that we're able to pick up right where we left off and laugh and love each other the way we always have. It's a tremendous blessing to have such wonderful friends in our life, and we pray we never take them for granted.

We arrived on Thursday to a delicious dinner made by Lauren. We had a great dinner and a fun evening catching up with the couple who set us up for our first date. In college, my childhood friend and her boyfriend set me up with one of his friends---who turned out to be the man I would marry. They also married (obviously) and so we have a lot of memories together. After staying up later than usual, the following day we hung out and then I was able to spend time with other girlfriends, some from college and some from my childhood. We took the kiddos to the park.




Caroline definately doesn't get the concept of feeding the ducks yet. (She threw the entire piece of bread in the water.) She does love watching them though, and she occasionally quacks at them--nonetheless, she stood for a few minutes by the water with the others. I kept having to chase her down though--she wanted to go her own way. (Miss Independent)

Ever since we got the yard toys, Caroline has become a slide maniac. It is definately her favorite part of the playground.





Even through the closenes and blurriness of this pic, you can see her happy and excited face. She basically landed right on top of me since I was right at the bottom of the slide trying to get this pic. She came down faster than I expected!



Just chillin'.



Driving the school bus. (We're going to frame this one for Poppy!)







This slide was her Everest and she climbed it many, many times and LOVED every minute of it. I was nervous about her climbing it and followed her the first time, but she was great at it, the little monkey. She did, however, almost fall head first off it a few times while coming down the slide, but one of us caught her each time before she could hurt herself. She loved it though and kept going back for more! She has no fear.



By this picture, Caroline was getting whiney and tired and didn't want to sit still. Neither did Mason, so Blair just held onto their heads for us! :)



Last, but not least, a pic of the girls and me. If not for these ladies, who knows how I would have turned out. Along with parents who loved me and taught me to love the Lord, these four girls helped keep me balanced through elementary, middle, and high school. From left to right you've got: Caroline and me, Lauren and Logan, Ashley, Katie and Blair (Blair is Lauren's oldest) and Becca and Abbey. I love each of these girls dearly and in a different way than any of my other friends. When you've gone through as much as we have and know each other as well as we do, well a bond forms like no other. We're more spread out now (although I'm the only one in a different state) but, we love each other. I can count on them, and they can count on me, no matter how many miles are between us. I know you'll all read this at some point, so girlsssss, know that I love you!

Hopefully Nikki will post some pics from Sunday, because I didn't have my camera out so I can't share pics of us with the Dew's and the Rubel's. So, Nikki, POST PICS! :)

We had a great weekend--one of the best we've had in a long time. I don't think we've laughed that much or that hard in a long time and it's refreshing to the spirit to laugh like we did all weekend long.

We're home now, and tired!

(Blogger isn't letting me spell check and it's late...try not to look too closely at my spelling!)

Yard Toys

I just have one question for all of you out there in blogging land. Where did August go? I've just about let this month pass by with only one post. I don't know when we got to the end of August, but school is back in session, the weather isn't really changing, but I feel we're just on the brink of semi-cooler temperatures, and we're about to enter my favorite time of year.

Caroline was recently the recipient of some hand-me-down yard toys. She loves to play outside (much to my chagrin, I'm more of an indoor girl) and she loves her new-to-her toys.



(We already had the swing set.)







I hope all of you and your families are well and not to sad to be saying goodbye to summer!

Philippians 1:3

Visitor

We had a visitor this past weekend. One of Aaron's college roommates, groomsmen, and good friend, "Uncle Cram" came to see us. He recently moved about two hours from us, and this was the first of we hope, many visits. He had met Caroline the day she was born, he drove late into the night to get here in time for her birth, and he got to see her again when she was about four months old. We hadn't been able to get together since she was little, so we were excited for him to see her again. (We were happy to see him too...:) )

She really took a liking to him and had a blast!



He and Aaron have always had a good time joking around and they have more inside jokes than two people should have. I'm not exactly sure how this all came about, but it was decided that Cram was going to eat this monster burger at a local restaurant. It was the biggest hamburger I've ever seen in real life. It looked disgusting.



I'm not sure how, but he really did eat the entire thing all by himself. I have to admit, it made me a little sick to watch it, but he seemed to enjoy it!



What a weekend we had!

First Haircut

Friday night we hung out with our friends, the Hinson's. Deborah was a hair stylist before becoming a stay-at-home mom, so we'd been planning all along for her to cut Caroline's hair for the first time. I've been saying she needed a cut for about 6 months, but I always talked myself out of it. It had started to bother her and she was always pushing it out of her face, and since her daddy had affectionately nicknamed her "shaggy" I finally gave in.



This is the before shot. She had a bit of a mullet. Her hair is curly in the back, but it was actually pretty long. When it was wet, it was much longer than it looked like. So, it had become a bit mullet like.





She did not like having her hair cut, although she didn't cry. She just kept turning her head to get away from the scissors and she was very wiggly. Deborah would comb her hair down to cut it and she would push it back. We finally got it done though!



It looks basically the same, just evened up and not so shaggy. Her curls are still in tact, in fact, I think her hair it a bit curlier now. All in all, not the horrible, emotional experience I was expecting. I know it helped that Deborah was the one cutting it---we laughed and had a good time.

I guess it's too much to ask that her hair remain cute and baby like forever? She's growing up so fast!