A Cabin in the Woods

One of Marc's co-workers graciously loaned us his cabin outside of Blue Ridge for the weekend. Marc's brother, three of his children, and Marc's parents joined us for a few days to celebrate his parents' 40th wedding anniversary. We've had a fun time exploring the area. These are a couple of pictures of our view. The only down side to staying here is that on the first night the girls slept on an air mattress in the basement, right outside of our room. The whole back side of the house is windows so they woke up bright and early - literally. That wasn't too fun, especially after not getting to bed until about 10:30 the night before. We learned and they slept in the bedroom with me last night and Marc took the air mattress.

Yum! Yum!

We gave Brooke her first taste of watermelon this weekend. It's safe to say she LOVED it. She gnawed on the piece until it was too small for me to safely hold. She had another piece the next day and gobbled it up too.

Macy's 3 Year Pictures

Kayla's 5 Year Pictures

We finally got around to taking some pictures of the girls. We usually take them somewhere each year, but with our new camera we thought we'd see what we could get on our own. The timing of the day wasn't the best, so all of the pictures that turned out were taken in the shade, but I think we got some really cute ones.

4th of July

We had a great evening with the Greggs last night. We (well the guys and kids) played a little volleyball and badminton while Bekah and I played with our cameras.
The kids took turns sliding down the hill in the sled.

More ice-cream sundaes for the kids, but the grown-ups had yummy peach cobbler.

We decided to do our own fireworks this year. The kids had a great time. I promise that Macy had a good time too even if it doesn't look like it.

They lit 4 smaller ones at one time and were dashing out of there before they went off.

The last time Kayla had a sparkler was when this happened.

I made Marc stay right by Macy, but she did really well. We did have one little incident of burning fingers, but he's okay today. Other than that all of the kids had a great time. It was nice to do something a little different.

Green Beans

Her first taste of green beans.
And this is what she thought of them.

3rd of July

We invited a couple of families over for a cook-out and fireworks on the 4th, but found out early on the 3rd that our city was doing the fireworks that night. Why celebrate the 4th of July on the 3rd? Anyway, we wanted to see if our friends could change the cook-out to that night, but it didn't work for the Greggs so we're stretching out our celebration for 2 nights and the girls are super excited to have lots of friends over to play. The Andersons were able to come over and that worked out better since Deidre has to work on the 4th. Our girls LOVE Annie and Ella. You should have seen them rush to clean up the toys before they came over. I asked Deidre if I could borrow her kids more often so that I didn't have to repeat myself 246 times about cleaning up.

Of course the kids wanted another ride in the sled. Mark had the privilege of pulling last night. I think he calculated up about 180 pounds of kids at one time.
The kids loved making ice-cream sundaes. We had caramel, chocolate, whip cream, sprinkles, and even cherries. I think the only thing 3 of them added were sprinkles. Annie made a real sundae out of hers.

We then went and found a spot to watch the fireworks. We ended up right behind some electrical poles and wires, but had a spot with a quick exit. At 10:00 on a Saturday night with young kids that was more important. The girls LOVED playing with the rocks. We have tons of toys that can't entertain them for more than 5 minutes, yet put them in a gravel lot and they could play for an hour.

Brooke's first fireworks. She was so tired, but she did watch them. She didn't even flinch at the noises.

Marc caught the girls a firefly and then it was game-on! Kayla quickly figured out how to catch them and was pretty good at it. Strange coming from the child that just hours earlier that day almost started crying because a bug landed on her arm and tickled her.

We're still learning how to use our camera, so my pictures of the fireworks didn't turn out too well, but that's okay. Tonight the Gregg's are coming over and we're doing our own "fireworks." Should be another fun evening!

End of an Era

For many years I've been a scrapbooker. I have about 5 ounces of creativity in my body, but what I lack in creativity I make up for in sheer desire to preserve memories. I'm a little obsessed with pictures, videos, and making memories. I know one day I will forget many things about my girls being little. It's already hard for me to remember things about Kayla as a baby, but by looking back through my scrapbooks I am transported back in time. Nine years of marriage and three kids later, I just can't keep up. I used to be on top of things and never got more than a month or two behind. Now, however, I am a year behind in both Kayla's and Macy's books, a month behind in Brooke's, and 2 vacations behind in that album. A few months ago I decided I was just going to scrapbook until the girls were 5 and then quit. Now I've decided that this blog is my new scrapbook. I'll catch up with the pictures I have, I will finish Brooke's first year album, and I will keep doing our vacation and Christmas albums, but other than that, I'm done. It's bittersweet, but it's time.

Here are most of the albums I have completed. There are a few upstairs that are being slowly worked on. S-L-O-W-L-Y...

I'm lucky to have an area that I can leave out. The girls don't mess with it and I can pop in the room if I have a little time - which happens rarely. Believe it or not I just cleaned this up!

I've come a long way since my first album of our engagement, but it's full of wonderful memories of my showers, bachelorette night, the rehearsal dinner, and getting ready for the big day.

I have sweet little hand prints and foot prints of each of my babies. These are Kayla's when she was 1 month old.

Wonderful memories of Macy turning 1.

Precious memories of the day Brooke was born.

Not so fun memories of a car accident that I documented for an album I gave Marc on our 5th wedding anniversary.

Special memories of our first home together.

Amazing memories of vacations we have been on. I will probably continue my vacation albums since those only happen a few times a year.

I also have a Christmas album that I add to each year that I will continue. This blog is now my scrapbook, so I am hoping to keep it more updated. Of course that does mean that some of the posts will be things that Marc and I want to remember and some of you may not care to read about, but when I look back on the books (I publish my blog once a year so I have a hard copy of it) I will be transported back in time once again. Back to special memories that I want to always hold dear. And thanks to technology I won't have to remember what I was thinking and doing a year ago in order to update it like my scrapbooks.

Milk Drunk

Feet

I love baby feet. Well, mostly my childrens' baby feet. I love chubby toddler feet. I wish I was a better photographer who could get some good pictures of feet, but I still take pictures. I love watching Brooke's feet just like I enjoyed watching Kayla and Macy's feet. I love watching the toes curl when they are eating, I love watching those little baby hands discover those baby feet. I love seeing those little toes grabbing onto things. I basically just love baby feet!

Could her smile get any bigger??