The girl likes to eat....

Gracie is going on 13 weeks now. Most babies start cereal, veggies, and fruit at about 6 months. Well, not my kids!! Both of the boys were ready to eat well before then. Since they were such big babies I always had the doctor's approval to go ahead and start on cereal. Gracie is no exception to this. She has been ready to eat since day 1. It was the doctor's idea to start the cereal a few weeks ago. We have done that for a while so we decided to give her some bananas mixed in with her cereal last night. She loved it! She was laughing and cooing as she ate. At times she would fuss at me if I was not feeding it to her. She felt like such a big girl. And she is...She weighs over 15 lbs now. She is in equal proportion with her height so eat on!!!!

Happy Valentine's Day

We kicked off our Valentine's Day celebration by decorating cookies on Saturday with our Sunday school class. We do this every year and of course the kids love it. They get to decorate heart shaped cookies with as much frosting, candy and sprinkles as they want. They put alot of time and work into their creations. I think they ate too many cookies as they decorated though, because they have not asked for one cookie since we got home. The cookies will probably hit the trash today! :)
When the kids got up Sunday morning they had a Valentine's Day surprise from Mom and Dad. The boys got candy and a color blast project and Gracie got a new toy for her highchair.
Valentine's night the boys went to sleep over with Gram and Grampie since there is no school Monday due to President's Day. Tim and I stayed at home with Gracie and had a date night in. It was tooo cold to go anywhere plus we felt lazy. I left Tim in charge of dinner. ( Brave, I know!) He did a great job! He got take out from O'Charley's. He got us both a pecan chicken salad, which we both LOVE, and 2 desserts! YUM! We ate,relaxed and watched the Olympics together. It was better than a night out!
Happy Valentine's Day!!!!

Valentine's outfit from Grandmommy!

Tim helping the kids decorate cookies

Valentine's Day surprises!

Alot has changed around here...

"Every good and perfect gift comes from above." James 1:17

It has been a LONG time since I last blogged. Our life has changed so much since then. I am sad that I did not keep all of the little moments that I have probably already forgotten about written down. However, I have lots of family and friends who have great memories so I am sure it is all out there somewhere.

As most everyone knows (since I talk about it ALL OF THE TIME) we adopted a baby girl! Her name is Gracie Lauren and she has brought so much joy to our lives in just the short 11 weeks she has been here. (OK, I am crying as I am typing this!) We love this little gift from GOD so much. I still don't know what we did to deserve such a blessing, but I am not going to keep looking for answers, I am just going to accept this precious gift. It is a long story about how she came to be. We have all that in paperwork, stories, emails, pictures and in our hearts to share with her one day when the time comes. She will know that she was ALWAYS loved, even before time. What an awesome story she already has written for her!!!

I can't catch up on everything that I have missed since I stopped blogging so I am just going to go forward from here.

I have to keep the blog private now so please sign in and check the blog out when you can. Feel free to leave comments as I print this blog and save it as a scrapbook for my kids.

Puppies everywhere!

We have been dog sitting for my parents over the past 5 days. They have 2 yorkies and a cocker spaniel. We offered to dog sit while they went to Boston to visit some of the family. Things here have been crazy to say the least. The boys have had so much fun helping take care of the "babies." The 2 little ones are really just like toddlers. They are always 1 step behind you, eat every so often, and wake you up in the middle of the night to potty. Of course, our dog does the same, so it was nothing to add 3 more to the mix. We had friends come over and cook out one night and the dogs even joined us around the fire pit for ghost stories. We had lots of fun with them, but we take them home tonight. I know Gram will be happy to see them. Tim and I leave for the beach tomorrow so the boys will be staying over at Gram's for a few days. She gets to take care of my babies now!

So Blessed

So I wanted to do a picture review of everything that we have missed since my last "real" blog entry months ago. It was taking so long to upload pictures that I decided to just start fresh right where we are now!
We have had a great summer so far. We have been to the beach, spent a week at VBS, had a visit from my older brother Jason, My parents celebrated their 25th anniversary, had several play dates, and enjoyed countless hours at the pool with friends.
I was giving the boys their bath tonight and it hit me right in the face how BLESSED I AM! God is SO good to me that I can't even begin to understand why! I am usually aware of the blessings that God has given me but it made me tear up tonight thinking about them. It isn't just one certain thing, it is all the little things that I probably overlook everyday. I LOVE my family SO much it hurts. My boys are amazing! I take for granted how precious they are. Why would I be so fortunate to have 2 healthy, smart, cute, funny little boys running around my house? Yes, I have days or moments when it just seems like they are more than I can handle, but those moments are quickly lost when I hear them laugh or they snuggle up to me. I can't believe that Joshua is already 6 years old and Dylan is 3. Do I really have babies anymore? I guess I have children! Wow. I look forward to the things that are to come for my boys. Even though it makes me sad they are growing up, I love the age they are at right now. Such "Big Boy" things going on. I thank God so much for blessing me and choosing me to be the Mom to these 2 wonderful boys! I know that I am so blessed to also have a great husband helping me raise our boys. I love you Tim, Joshua, and Dylan. And I thank you God for giving me what I don't deserve!

Long Time No Post

Wow! It has been such a long time since I last posted anything. What is my problem?! A little thing called FaceBook! I have spent so much time on there catching up with friends and posting pictures that I am always out of "computer time" by the time I am done. Shame on me!!! Most of my friends and family are on Facebook so I assume most are caught up on our daily events. Two problems with that are
1. Not everyone that reads my blog is on Facebook
2. I can't print off FaceBook and save it for the boys to read later in their life.
So the guilt has gotten to me and I am back!

Bruster's Ice cream...

is the best! We stopped by Bruster's after school for a quick snack before running some errands. Joshua and Dylan got the kid's dinosaur sundae. I was good and didn't get anything...of course I had a couple bites of Dylan's though!