Friday, July 27, 2012

3 years. Yes, already.

My sweet girl, not even a trace of baby about her. Well, that’s not true, she still likes to snuggle and be rocked before bed - something we are not taking for granted and definitely not ready to give up. And she will always be my baby and James’ baby and her ZZ’s baby and her Gammie and Papa’s baby and her Poo-Pa’s baby, a fact which she often reminds us of. But, she’s lost all the baby fat, she’s potty trained (!!), she’s in a toddler bed and she has very clear opinions on anything and everything around her. She can throw a tantrum like no one else, get so frustrated and angry that she can’t speak and fight a nap or bed time like a trained professional, but makes up for all of it with infinite hugs, kisses and countless declarations of her love for us.
We had her 3 year doctor’s appointment a few days after her birthday, she did freak out when the doctor started examining her (Strange man wanting to touch you and you aren’t ok with it? Fine with me.) but she did eventually warm up to him, an iPhone may have been involved, and we learned that she speaks well for her age and she’s right on track with everything she’s supposed to be doing. She was in the 90th percentile for height at 38 ¾” and in the 50th percentile for weight at 32.4 lbs. so basically she’s long and lean. I’m going to go ahead and claim that she gets that from me, she still looks exactly like James so I have to take what I can get.
We celebrated her birthday with a rainbow themed party, complete with bounce house. The day of her party she was clingy and whined constantly and only wanted James and I, the two busiest people. She had 2 grandmas, a grandpa, an Aunt and an Uncle who would have loved to hold her but they would not do, they couldn’t even look at her or she would burst into tears. Thankfully I’ve gotten better about delegating so I was able to spend some time just sitting on the couch enjoying the snuggles. About the time everyone started showing up she wanted to take a nap, it was only 11 a.m. We figured she must not be feeling well so we decided to give her some just in case Tylenol, which we rarely do, and that did the trick. By the time we were ready to cut the cake she was back to her normal, giggly, smiling happy self.
I could go on and on for days about all the funny things she says and her developing personality but I’ll stop here and leave you with pictures from her birthday weekend.
From June 27, 2012
From June 27, 2012
All the kids holding hands.
From June 27, 2012
Testing out the bounce house before all her friends arrived, in an old shirt.
From June 27, 2012
Not happy.
From June 27, 2012
All smiles!
From June 27, 2012
From June 27, 2012
From June 27, 2012
Food, decorations, CAKE!
From June 27, 2012
From June 27, 2012
From June 27, 2012
From June 27, 2012
Presents!
From June 27, 2012
From June 27, 2012
From June 27, 2012
From June 27, 2012
Cute cousins being scared by the monster (aka Daddy/Uncle James).
From June 27, 2012

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Catching up...

Wow, I'm really far behind here so I'll just post the past 2 1/2 months together. We are so terrible about not bringing the camera with us anymore since we always have our phones so lots of iPhone pics headed your way.

Easter...

We did an indoor egg hunt before church, you can see that she quickly threw her collecting bag aside when she spied her basket.
From June 27, 2012
Two Ariels!
From June 27, 2012
Checking out her bracelets
From June 27, 2012
From June 27, 2012
M & M's for breakfast, why not?
From June 27, 2012
Then it was off to church where Grumpy McGrumperson was not in the mood for photos.
From June 27, 2012
From June 27, 2012
Then we probably bribed her with something, I can't remember.
From June 27, 2012
From June 27, 2012
From June 27, 2012
And we never got around to dying eggs pre-Easter so we did so between church and dinner.
From June 27, 2012
From June 27, 2012

Let's see, we also attended our nephew's 2nd birthday party, it's so fun to watch Savannah with her cousins.
From June 27, 2012
From June 27, 2012

Gammie & Papa came to visit for James' birthday.
From June 27, 2012
From June 27, 2012

Savannah and I went on vacation with ZZ and Aunt Brandi, Uncle Craig and Fisher.  James hates the beach so he elected not to go, while we were gone he surprised us by renovating Savannah's bathroom! I need to take pictures because it looks absolutely amazing!!
From June 27, 2012
From June 27, 2012
Kids finger painting.
From captiva
From captiva
The best pic we could get of them together.
From captiva
We also attended Alexandra's birthday party at the beach which was really fun, I think it might have even made James into a fan of the beach...probably not but he's willing to go since it's one of Savannah's favorite places.
From June 27, 2012

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Letter W

We started our letter crafts on July 25, 2011 and I had no idea it would take me almost a year to finish the entire alphabet, if we can finish the last 3 letters even a day before the year is up then I'll be happy.

Also, I'm a terrible blogger and part of the problem has been finding a good place to store photos online. I'm out of free storage on Google and Flickr and I don't want to upload everything to Facebook, so if anyone has any suggestions for online photo storage, I'm all ears.

Without further ado, we made a watermelon for W.  She loved making this, she's very into helping with everything these days which is very cute but that also means everything takes a little longer. 


We were going to do another craft but time got away from me, such is life.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

MuckRuckus

Somehow I convinced James to join me in the MuckRuckus (formerly known as the Mud Run) this year, I had been really excited about it since November and I thought he was too...boy was I wrong! The morning of the race we get in the car to drive there and he goes to put the location in the GPS, I was confused because the course was about 3 miles from our old house, then I realized he was typing in "HELL" - you'll be happy to know that the good folks at Garmin can't provide directions to hell.
We had 4 other friends join us on our team for the race and while the course wasn't nearly as challenging as it was last year, we certainly had a lot of fun. And I'm happy to report that after we had the six muddy miles behind us, James admitted to having a fantastic time and said he would do it again.
Many, many thanks to our friends and family who supported us with donations!





Thursday, April 12, 2012

Letter V

A long time ago, we made a volcano for the letter V.
I was super excited to make this craft really amazing, like science project amazing but after I realized how involved it was, well I lost the excitement. I like to do things using materials I have on hand, I don't want to have to go shopping for them. All the recipes for the actual volcano that I found required copious amounts of salt and flour, yes we did have salt and flour but I know that the next time I needed those particular ingredients to say, bake a cake, that I would have forgotten to pick them up at the store and I would have been really irritated that I used them all up making a volcano.
Anyway, we were out shopping one day and stopped by Hobby Lobby for something and we just happened to wander past an aisle that had two things we needed, a miniature volcano thing and glow in the dark stars. The stars were necessary because the previous owners left a few glow in the dark stars on the ceiling in our bedroom and Savannah is fascinated by them so she obviously needed stars as well.
So, we got the volcano and we were once again super excited, neither James or I had ever made a volcano as part of a science class or science experiment, at least not that we could remember, so we were prepared to be amazed. We got it all set up and followed the very vague instructions only to be sorely disappointed. I think we were both expecting nothing less than a Mr. Wizard level explosion with "lava" shooting into the air and all we got was a little bubbling over. Maybe we did something wrong or maybe we just set our expectations a little too high.
At the very least Savannah was impressed and that's most important.
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