Back to the Beach

We had lofty goals for an awesome 4th of July weekend at the beach this year…and we did have an awesome day at the beach on Tybee Island with Aunt Miss and Uncle Whit on the Saturday before the big holiday! We got up early (as usual) and, to my surprise, our feet were in the sand by 11am! We let the girls have some “warm up” time, and attempted to hit the waves!

Macy was pretty interested right away…she let Daddy carry her into the surf, and LOVED splashing in the ocean and even blowing bubbles and dunking her face! Makayla wasn’t quite so eager! We tried letting her walk, we tried carrying her, and she was just a little too afraid of the crashing waves. We resorted to spending some time in the sand, and she enjoyed playing for a bit, and then realized just how dirty she was!  

 After continuously asking for “napkins” to get the sand off, I finally just carried her in to the ocean far enough to wash off a bit, and she was less than happy about it…of course she was happy to be clean, so we headed up to the shady area and planted her on a chair where she could stay clean.

Macy finally got out of the water for a while too, and the girls enjoyed a snack on the beach. After a messy snack of cheese puffs, I knew Makayla needed to be washed off and just picked her up and carried her toward the shoreline while explaining that it was time to wash her hands! Amazingly enough, this time she was PERFECTLY content…she let me dip her in to clean up, then LOVED it when I bounced her around and enjoyed the cool water. Macy came back out to play, and all 6 of us were able to enjoy some good times in the waves before time to eat!

We were all kind of tired, and looking forward to some island drinks and seafood…however, unfortunately, lunch was slow and the girls hit their limits, so I had to make a quick exit to the car where they IMMEDIATELY passed out! Fortunately, sitting in the cool car wasn’t so bad for me either, and we were able to end the fun afternoon with a nice long nap!

Aside from the Saturday beach adventures, we had a long trip down on Friday, which began by Makayla getting sick all over the car before we made it to Charlotte. Not to be deterred from our trip, we stopped at the store, grabbed some cleaning supplies, cleaned up and headed on. We successfully made it to downtown Savannah where we met Aunt Miss and planned for some time at the splash pad. The girls had little interest, so we all went and hung out on the deck of Wild Wings while Marley and the girls enjoyed a break from the car.

We had a few more moments of random puking (I’ll spare the details) on Friday, but were pleasantly surprised to see NO signs of sickness all day on Saturday. Unfortunately, Sunday morning was a different story. Makayla got sick enough that we decided that a doctor visit was in order, only to get back to Miss’s house to realize that Gary was starting to feel bad as well. We grabbed some lunch with the family, then quickly packed our bags and headed home. It was a LONG trip, with lots of stops along the way, and I’ll just sum it up by saying that Macy now points to her sand bucket and says – “Macy Sick”…Ugh!!

We did have some good times in Savannah and on Tybee, and were very grateful for our awesome host and hostess…unfortunately, between the timing of our trip and all of the puking, we weren’t able to enjoy a SINGLE firework this year. I’m pretty sure the girls would have been terrified by them anyway, so we will just have to look forward to better success next year!

Back when we sang Happy Birthday to Emmy Cate…

Since I’m SO far behind on this post, I can’t even use it as a chance to give a belated birthday shout out to our sweet niece, Emmy Cate…and, unfortunately, her mom is a much better blogger than I, so she blogged about this months ago...however, I did have some cute pictures of Emmy and the girls (along with a random assortment of farm friends), as well as the other cousins, from when we headed to Atlanta to celebrate her 2nd birthday! (All of the pictures can be viewed in the album here)  Aunt Lauren and Uncle Nathan provided an awesome celebration, complete with a petting zoo in their own back yard…the girls thought it was AWESOME…except for the chickens…Makayla HATED those things! It took them some time to warm up, but before the party was over, they were petting the bunnies, sitting on the pony, and just enjoyed the experience. Ironically, the best part of the party for them was when they let balloons into the air. We still regularly hear about letting balloons go up in the air and constant reference to Emmy Cate’s birthday party!

The weekend was also even more exciting due to the fact that we got to stay at Haley and Noah’s house! Unfortunately, we didn’t arrive until late evening, so we had to hit the bed pretty early on Friday night, but the girls were delighted to wake up to have hours of play time with Haley! They played with balls, played with bubbles, swung and slid on slides, and even jumped on the neighbor’s trampoline…SO MUCH fun! And, of course, loved helping to feed baby Noah!!

Unfortunately, Daddy wasn’t able to make it on the trip, but we had a fun weekend and the girls LOVED getting to spend time with their cousins!

Beach Babes!

As promised, I couldn't skip a re-cap of our awesome weekend at the beach in mid-May!  I had to travel to Raleigh for work...AGAIN...and with "Little Loose" and Uncle Chuck about 30 minutes apart...and about 2.5 hours from Raleigh, we decided to create a full adventure!

As usual, I left for work on Tuesday morning, Gary manned the fort while I was away, but then left on Wednesday to meet me in the [state] Capital city!  I hate traveling away from my little family SOOOO much, so it was very cool to get to see them on Wednesday evening!   We had a fun family night in the hotel ;), then I went to work :( while Gary took the girls to the Children's museum and then met me for lunch.  I went back for a couple of additional hours of duty while he wasted some time at the park, carefully keeping the girls awake until I met them and we were eastward bound...and the girls were fast-asleep before we made it to the highway!

We were originally planning to make our accomodations on Little Loose but had also planned to spend some time visiting with Uncle Chuck and Aunt Nan...after inviting ourselves even for that, Chuck kindly extended the invitation for us to stay at his pad, and we decided that might be better...It was PERFECT!!  We're so lucky to have family like that in such cool places!  :)

We got to Chuck and Nan's around 7, and after a few minutes "breaking in" and meeting the only allowed resident pet, we decided to head out for sushi!  I was a little bit nervous about Macy and Makayla's "table endurance" after such a long day, and they did end up getting a little bit grumpy before we left, but they did pretty darn good considering the circumstances!  We were all exhausted, so we hit the sack as soon as we made it home, and I secretly prayed for the chance to sleep in the next morning...silly me knew that that really wasn't going to happen, so when 6:15 rolled around, I wasn't at all surprised at my wake up call!  The girls and I took a jog around the neighborhood, made a quick jaunt down the boardwalk to catch a glimpse of the ocean, and then hurried home to dodge an impending storm. 

After a lazy morning at the house where we played with some new friends (tree frogs) and tried on some of Aunt Nan's finest jewels, we decided to take a little drive to the boat, stop by to see Uncle Chuck and Aunt Nan's awesome new boat, and grab some lunch in Beaufort.  It was a great day and the girls rolled with the punches like little troopers...but by evening, the shortage of nap time and the crazy schedule kicked in, and they were tired little ladies!  Fortunately that evening my cousin Hillary, along with her husband Matt and their new baby, Myles, came into town as well, and the girls got to say quick hellos before soon heading to bed. 

The next morning, as usual, the girls woke up right on queue and we made another quick jaunt around the hood before heading back to hang around the house to wait on the weather to clear.  The girls LOVED staring at and "playing with" "Baby Myles" and thought they were such good babysitters! :) 

After a late breakfast, the guys decided to go do some boat "stuff" and the girls (+ Myles) headed to the beach!  The girls were fascinated by the shore at first sight!  Macy was quickly ready to rid herself of her shoes and hit the sand, but Makayla quickly decided that the sand wasn't for her, and she would be perfectly fine as long as the flip flops stayed ON! 

The water was still quite cold, and the girls were pretty fearful of it anyway, so we did a little bit of walking around, then plopped on our towels for some fun in the sun.  Silly Mommy forgot all of our sand toys, but the girls were able to keep themselves busy for over an hour before we decided to head home for naps.

After a fairly long nap, we made a trip to a couple of the obligatory beach stores in a vain attempt to find some kind of worthwhile souveniers, and then took a stroll on the beach with Daddy, since he missed the first trip!  It was a nice, breezy afternoon, and the girls really got into watching the surf, running in the sand (although flip flops were still mandatory for Makayla!), and collecting sea shells.  It was a great family trip, but we were happy to have fairly consistent bed times for the girls so that we had a chance to enjoy a couple of amazing fish dinners and great times with the grown ups after dark! 

Sunday we packed up our (huge) load and headed down to check on "Little Loose" one more time before making our LONG journey home.  The girls were champs, but I will say that 6 hours in the car was a lot for ALL of us!  We all look forward to the next chance to see boats, water, sand and sea shells!  Belated thanks to Uncle Chuck (whose name the girls STILL love to say!), Aunt Nan, Hillary, Matt, and "Baby Myles" for sharing their weekend with us!

Roller Coaster Ride

Not a literal roller coaster, but man has it felt like it!

I am well over a month behind in posting an update, and the last blog that I almost finished but hadn't quite posted was a re-cap of our awesome trip to the beach back in the middle of May. I promise to catch everyone up on that, as well as the following weekend's trip to Atlanta to see family and to celebrate Emmy Cate's 2nd birthday. Both of those trips were so much fun, and deserve their own post and pictures, but I finally decided that it was more appropriate to do a full update of our crazy lives SINCE those trips, then back track so that I don't miss anything. Unfortunately, life has been too crazy for a lot of pictures, but we have captured a few fun moments on our phones, so I went ahead and scattered those throughout this update, just to make it a little more interesting!

Silly...

Willies...

The big news (that many of you know, but a few surprisingly do not) is that we MOVED!!  It's been a month-long process, and I have to say it's been pretty hellacious, for lack of any better terms to describe it.  However, we are FINALLY fully relocated.  I use that term carefully, since that does NOT mean that we're settled in...or even close to finished unpacking...but we are physically living in a new house and a new neighborhood.  We LOVE our new home, and are all very proud of the major remodel that Gary has spent the last 5 months managing.  We have a lot more space, a lot more room to get ourselves organized, and a lot of new "luxuries" (new appliances, showers, flooring, tile, etc).  It is AWESOME!!  Unfortunately, our spacious 3 car garage is still FILLED TO THE GILLS with junk...boxes and boxes of junk.  We may never get them ALL unpacked, but I'm hoping at some point I'll just accept the fact that I've survived without said junk for long enough that I can just throw it away...unfortunately, my inherited "Edna instinct" (thanks, Mamaw Childers), will most likely never let that happen! 

Breakin' in the new digs...before the furniture gets in the way!

We officially started our move on Memorial Day weekend...assuming that the timing was good for Gary to be around and I would be off work.  Little did we know that he'd be "ferrying race traffic" in the helicopter all weekend, and only had one full day at home.  Thanks to my wonderful mother, I had help with the girls all weekend, and, although I almost killed myself, I was able to survive.  My fantastic father put himself to hard labor as well, and between him, Gary, and a couple of helpers, they worked their butts off to move all of our furniture on Memorial Day.  At that point, we THOUGHT we were near the end...almost a full month later, we just carried over the last boxes yesterday...just in time for the renters to move in TOMORROW!  Oh my goodness, what a nightmare!!! 


Thrilled to have Marley over for a play date in the new play house!

Besides that, the weekend after our move, we were thrown for another loop when my mom was knocked over by her dog and ours, only to have her hip broken and land in the hospital for a few days and on a walker for weeks!  She has been in so much pain, and it's been pitiful to watch her suffer with not only the physical discomfort, but the agony of not being able to be there to help us or to really play with her grandchildren!  She's a trooper, of course, and will be back on her feet soon...and boy have I had a chance to appreciate all that she does for us on a regular basis!  (of course, Papaw has stepped up to the plate for all of us, and we've appreciated his help tremendously!)

Chillin in my cozy coupe

If all of this weren't enough, we've (probably more me...) been on an emotional rollercoaster.  Leaving the old 'hood was SO MUCH harder than I thought it would be!  We felt like we had truly outgrown our house there, and, as I said, are SO happy with the new house that we have.  We are supposed to be in an AWESOME neighborhood now (LOTS and LOTS of kids, family stuff, etc), but we LOVED our neighbors at Crown Harbor, and, of course, we were walking distance to the boat, where now it's a 15 minute drive...but, we do still have our friends, we have our boat, and I'm sure that we're going to "bond" with the new neighborhood, it's just a matter of time (which, hopefully we'll have more of now that we're fully moved). 

The emotions flowed much more heavily than I dreamed possible around daycare matters as well...since the new house is about a 20 minutes shorter commute for me to and from Charlotte every day for work, we were quick to start looking for a new daycare that was convenient and "in the way".  We found a place that was recommeded by friends, and we thought, after several visits, that it would be a good fit. Until...the day I picked up the girls for their last day at their old school, I just had this feeling that this wasn't the right thing...I never thought it could be so hard to do something like that for 2 pre-2-year-olds!  Crazy enough, I couldn't stop crying...for days!  I thought it was just my emotion about everything going on at once and everything would settle down...until the first week passed...and I felt worse.  The girls did ok at the new school, but I will say it wasn't an easy week...assuming we all just needed to transition, we waited another week...by the end of that week, I knew we had to "fix" this mess.  I was still a wreck about it, and, for several reasons, I just didn't feel like this was the right place for them to spend their days.  Considering how much guilt I have for working at all, it is EXTREMELY important for me that both us and the girls are HAPPY with their "accomodations".  A quick call to Goddard (where I expected to have to beg our way back in) was easily answered by the awesome director who was THRILLED to make necessary adjustments to work our girls right back in to where they felt at home.  They've been back for a week now, and, even though the drive isn't wonderful, none of us have had ANY doubt that this was the right decision for ALL of us! Taking the girls for their first day back to their old school was probably one of the most fun things I've done in a long time!!

SPECIAL treat!  A ride in the FRONT seat of Daddy's truck!

Whew...It's been crazy, we've had some tough days (emotionally and physically), and I felt, for our own "historical record", I had to provide some level of re-cap.  Although I've been very slack with pictures, we have managed to have a little bit of fun along the way, the girls have come to LOVE the pool, and they have just been wonderful about going with the flow through all of this and enjoying the crazy little adventures that have panned out because of it...and that's a lot to ask for 2 22-month olds!  Things are slowly settling down, though, and we all owe it to each other and ourselves to try to slow down and relax a little...in the end, it's still a beautiful life!!!  :)



Chillin at the pool

Learning to LOVE the boat!

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!