Belated Mother's Day Wishes

Unfortunately the big Mom's Day came and went and I'm getting around to posting this a full week later...I had a wonderful Mother's Day that definitely ended "with a bang".

First, HAPPY BELATED MOTHER'S DAY to all of those wonderful mothers, grandmothers, and aunts in our lives.  We love you all and thought about you all throughout the busy day!  I am SO thrilled and blessed as I celebrated my own 2nd Mother's Day too!

Now to re-cap...Unfortunately, Gary had to fly the night before and didn't get home until 3am...so, rather than having a leisurely family morning, I got up and got the girls ready for church and we headed on our way.  He felt bad and didn't want to completely leave me hanging, so he kindly came to meet us at church.

After church, we met Mamaw and Papaw at a new restaurant for what turned out to be the longest lunch ever.  Apparently the "newness" hasn't worn off yet, and service was terrible...which is bad enough, but add 2 toddlers to the mix and it was a long couple of hours!  Luckily, we were able to spend some time looking at the fish and ducks outside, so that really saved the day!

After lunch, we went home for naps and then headed to our friends Josh and Abby's house for dinner.  The girls were thrilled to get to play with their buddy, Taylor, and we all had a great, relaxing evening...until...just as we were leaving (already late for bedtime, I might add), Makayla took off running actross the living room to tell everyone "bye-bye"...she managed to trip over her own feet and landed straight on her nose on the window sill...after a LOT of lost blood and watching her little nose quickly bruise and swell, we decided that we weren't going to take chances and headed to the ER.  Thankfully, Josh and Abby were able to keep Macy until Mamaw and Papaw were able to step in to pick her up to take her home to bed.  We're so grateful for such supportive friends and family!

It didn't take us long to begin to loathe the ER process as much as everyone else who's always talked about it.  We were there for 3 full hours, had 3 x-rays, and were ready to pull our hair out.  Finally we were able to see the doctor around 11:30, only to hear that at this age, noses are mostly cartilage and it's virtually impossible to break them!  Man, it would have been nice to know that 3 hours earlier!  Makayla was SUCH a trooper, and, of course we were happy to hear that there was nothing to worry about, and extremely happy to finally make it to bed that night! 

Prior to that chaos, the girls and I had a fun day on Saturday.  We started the morning with a jog in the nice cool weather, spent an hour riding around on the golf cart with some friends, then I packed up a picnic lunch to share at the park.  There was a spring festival being held down the street from our house, and I took the girls, not really knowing what to expect.  It was small, but perfect for us!  They had a petting zoo with baby goats, pigs, a big rabbit and duck, and some PRECIOUS baby sheep!  The girls LOVED the animals and could hardly stop pettting them long enough to eat lunch!  After eating a quick bite, we went over to the ponies...knowing how bashful my little ladies are, I didn't expect there to be any chance that they'd ride...much to my surprise, I was able to get Makayla on, as long as I held onto her tight.  After a few rounds, of course, Macy was not to be outdone, so they both rode together for another cycle.  It was so much fun for all 3 of us!  I wouldn't call us cowgirls just yet, but it's so fun seeing how much the girls LOVE animals!

Just before Mother's Day, Gary and the girls threw me an awesome Mickey Mouse birthday party, complete with ice cream cake and balloons!  It was actually a pretty busy night and we didn't get a lot of pics, but I did get one of my 2 favorite party girls!

Spring to May

Life just doesn't seem to settle down for us, and although it's all very positive activity keeping us busy, I'm finally confident to say that I may never catch up on this blog!  However, I don't want to miss anything, so I'll continue to back-track, and hope that at some point I will finally get caught up!
Several weeks ago, the girls were THRILLED to have a visit from their cousin emmy-CATE (emphasis theirs!  :)  On Friday, we all really enjoyed getting to see Emmy, Uncle Nathan, and Aunt Lauren, and the girls got to play and hang with Mamaw and Papaw while the mommies and daddies went for a quiet dinner by the lake!  The girls enjoyed their second sleep-over...with much less sleep than any of them are used to, and we started Saturday bright and early as soon as Macy woke up enough to realize that Emmy Cate was IN HER ROOM!!   HOT DOG!  :)

After everyone got woke up enough, we went to grab breakfast and paid a visit to one of the girls' favorite spots, Lazy 5 Ranch!  After walking around saying "Hi" to the smaller animals, the girls were ecstatic when we put everyone in the car only to see that they didn't even have to sit in their seats, but instead, they were able to sit in the cargo area of my car with each other, Mamaw, Aunt Lauren, and mommy!  We somehow "acquired" 3 full buckets of feed, and the first few minutes of the ride were spent, not looking at the animals, but moving feed from one bucket to another...with just a little bit actually going in the bucket and the rest going in my car...thank God for my cargo mat!  Once they finished counting all of the food pebbles, they realized there were some pretty cool animals outside, and they actually got into throwing food at them...until Macy decided just to dump the rest of the last bucket on the back bumper.  They loved all of the animals, and were far less freaked out by the zebra and llama heads in our car than we were!

After leaving the ranch, we were really short on time so we headed home and PRAYED that the girls would catch a quick nap before we stuffed them into dresses and took them to their first wedding for our cousin, Erin.  Luckily, they were tired enough that they had little choice but to comply, and we had to wake them up to take them to church.  Poor Macy and Makayla were fed a PB&J "lunch" in the car while I pressured them to be careful not to drop jelly on their dresses...for the first time in their lives, they ate like pros!  Once we arrived, we took seats at the back of the church, since I was pretty sure we wouldn't make it through the ceremony...however, I had also brought along a few snacks and books, and aside from a little bit of "quiet chatter", they made it through the full ceremony and did GREAT!  We did cut out the communion part of the service so the girls could get to the lobby where they could expel some energy!  I was so proud of all 3 of them...and, of course, so was Papaw!

After the wedding, we went to the reception at the Statesville Country Club, and the girls LOVED playing with Mamaw, Papaw, Emmy Cate, and many other aunts, uncles, and cousins!  They were thrilled to cheer for the bridal party when they finally made their entrance, and were complete troupers until far past their bed time!  Unfortunately, since it did get kind of late, we left before most of the festivity got under way, but we were happy to share in at least some part of Erin and David's special day!

The next day, we went to church then went for one more quick visit with the family to celebrate Mamaw's birthday.  The girls got ballons and helped Mamaw open her gifts, then sadly said their goodbyes to their cousin, aunt, and uncle!  It was such a fun weekend, and it's so much fun watching the girls bond with their cousins!  We can't wait to see Emmy, Haley, and Noah again next week when we head to Georgia for Emmy's SECOND BIRTHDAY!

Easter, where did you go?

In my last post, I promised to come back with an update on Easter...I fully expected to be able to accomplish that in less than 2 weeks...and I'm proud to say that I did it with more than 48 hours to spare!

As stated before, the girls got to spend just a little bit of time with Aunt Melissa and Uncle Whit, and got AWESOME flower watering cans and garden tools from Aunt Miss for Easter...so adorable!  Along with those guys, Mimi and Papa were in town for the first part of Easter weekend too, and the girls LOVED the attention and became GLUED to Mimi!  Luckily, she was able to accompany us to our first real Easter egg hunt on Saturday morning!  The girls were thrilled to carry their baskets into the park and to show up to find all of their neighborhood friends to play with!  After some time on the Sings and Sides, it was time to see the main man.  As usual, from a distance this bunny looked pretty cool...but, as usual, that's all fine and good until he gets TOO CLOSE!!!  We tried our hardest to get some cutesy Easter shots, but the girls were having none of that!  The bunny was finally able to sneak in a few high-fives, but they did a great job of monitoring his activity so as not to let him get too close!  I've never seen them maintain such a focused attention span!  We did a little bit of egg pickup (couldn't really classify it as hunting), but were quickly bored by that game, and the girls mostly spent the time enjoying their first Tootsie Pop, compliments of the bunny of the hour.  I never realized how STICKY lollipops could be!!  The girls had a great morning, and I was glad that we went, since we almost passed it up due to the early morning rain!

That evening, the girls were very sad to see Mimi and Papa go home, but were EXHAUSTED, so we made it an early evening and prepared for the real bunny visit to come! 

Easter morning came bright and early for all...I had decided the night before that I was way over-due for a run, and thought watching the Easter sunrise as I jog might be an awesome way to start my day...little did I know that the girls had the same idea!  When I realized that they were up and not going back down at 6:15, I felt too guilty to leave them for Gary, so I quickly decided to pack them up and put them in the stroller.  It was a chilly morning, but we bundled up and headed on our way!  While it wasn't the quiet "me and God" time I had expected, it turned out to be an awesome jog...I was able to see the beautiful sunrise over the lake, spend some quiet QT with my babies, and just allow myself time to soak in all that God has provided for me and this wonderful world...and, of course, to think about what he did for me when Easter began.  I am so blessed!

After our run, we came home to wake up Daddy so that we could see what the Easter bunny dropped off.  The girls loved their Easter baskets full of simple goodies, and had a great time playing with thier eggs...then, it hit them...these eggs are filled with something...could it be...CANDY!!!!!  It was funny that the way we realized that they were really onto it was when we found a few Hershey Kisses unwrapped on the floor...turns out, chocolate isn't their favorite and they're pretty partial to gummies!  :)

If this hadn't been enough excitement, the day was just getting started, so we all quickly got ready and headed to church. Our hope was that we could hit another egg hunt right after, but when we picked up the girls from nursery, we quickly knew that it was time for a nap! The girls IMMEDIATELY fell asleep, so we headed to Mamaw's where we met Mamaw, Papaw, Mamaw Eunice, Shawnna, Jonathan, Curtis, Diane, and Barbara for lunch.

We took some photo ops, hunted a few more eggs, filled ourselves full of delicious lunch, and spent some time with family.  After that, we headed home and FINALLY undertook the task of dying the eggs that I boiled 2 days before.  The girls thought this was the coolest thing ever, and were so disappointed when all of the eggs were done!  We hid a few, Daddy ate a few (the girls would have no part in that), threw a few, and cracked a few together...it was pretty entertaining!

It was a beautiful day and by the end, we were ALL beautifully TIRED!