Birthdays X 2

The last week of February is full of birthday fun as we celebrate both Katie and Bree's day they entered this world. :)


We kicked off all the birthday fun on Katie's birthday. She turned 8 years old. I still have a hard time thinking I have an 8 year old.

I got her birthday doughnuts from Dunkin Doughnuts. they were the only doughnut place around that would spell out Happy Birthday....but what I failed to understand was that the DD employees could actual spell. They spelled it Hapry Birthdiy...no joke.

 Bree wanted to wake Katie up and give her the present she got her. So she skipped into her room bright and early and screamed Happy Birthday!!!....and then jumped on to her bed and pushed her present straight up to her sleepy face. :)

 After she woke up she got to come out and see her misspelled doughnuts(that by the way were completely gross, I'll stick with Krispy Kreme from now on).

 She opened a few cards and one gift from us....it is always a special bday outfit for them to wear that day. I can't believe how grown up she look here.

 All dressed up and ready for school. She is so beautiful!

 After school we let her open the rest of her gifts. Out of everything she got this was what she was MOST excited to get. Not sure if you have see the commercials for Hot Buns. Every time this commercial is on she ask if she can have that and I always tell her that if I can find it in the stores I'll get it one day for her but I refuse to order it off TV. So the day I was out shopping for bday presents I happened to stroll through the as seen on TV isle in Walmart and there it was. I had to laugh and had to buy it for as I knew she would be very excited.....and I was right. It actually works really well and it makes her hair all curly when she takes it out.

 After presents, we packed up the car and we headed up to my parents for the weekend. Since we just recently moved we didn't have much time to plan parties here so we decided to have bday celebration at my parents with all our family. Except for Katie's 1st birthday we haven't all been able to celebrate their together since.

I got the girls some birthday swag to wear out and about on Saturday

 We headed over to Leapin' Lizzards for them to play for awhile, but it was super crowded so after about 2 hours the girls were ready to leave. We all headed over to Uncle Kevin and Aunt Brandy's house to hang out. Aunt Brandy showing the girls how to play mouse trap.

 We let Katie pick dinner since we didn't get to go out on her actual birthday. She picked Mellow Mushroom....Yum, Yum!!! While we waited we snapped a few family photos with the birthday girls.

 As we were leaving Katie asked me to take her picture with the life size transformer Optimus Prime. She cracks me up on these ideas she gets in her head. Never a dull moment with her. :)

 Back at Nana and Papaws house we had cake and presents. The girls were actually at mom and dad's the weekend before (the perk of now living closer) so Mom took them over to the bakery to let them pick out the cake they wanted.

Katie has been big into wanting to ride horses lately so I guess this is why she picked hers.

 Bree went with the Barbie cake.

 Had to get one family photo of us. :)

 Time to blow out candles and make a wish

 The girls are very blessed to have so many who love them and want to give them gifts on their birthdays. They definitely will never want for anything. They both did well taking turns opening gifts. After each one Bree would run up to the person who gave her the gifts and hug them and say thank you. :)

 Even though they got great gifts I believe this one took the cake. Papaw made both the girls baby doll beds for their dolls they got for Christmas. The beds are awesome and my mom made the bedding for them. The girls LOVE them.

 Even with all the excitement of celebrating birthdays that weekend we still had one more day to party. Breanna's actual birthday was on Tuesday so we had to still make it special, because you only turn 6 once!

Katie did the same thing to Bree on her birthday. She went in to her room first thing and screamed Happy Birthday and then gave her the present she got for her. She picked out Lamby and Stuffy from Doc McStuffins, one of Bree's favorites.

 This time around we did birthday doughnuts from Krispy Kreme....much better, even though they didn't spell happy birthday. My cutie little 6 year old. She was so dang excited to be turning 6 that she kept skipping and singing "I am 6 years old, I am 6 years old"

 Bree opened her cards and one present from us, which was also her birthday outfit. She wanted a pink jean jacket and she looks darn cute in it too. :)

 After school we let her open the gifts from us. She wanted all baby stuff. She is obsessed with playing with babies.

 Then we let her pick her place to eat for dinner and CEC was the pick. Since it was a Tuesday night we practically had the place to ourselves which is how I like it. :)

Beautiful Birthday Girl!!!

 Me and my birthday girl!

 Daddy with his girls!

Whew!!!! I am tired again writing this all out. This week every year is always so busy trying to make their day just a little more special than the others. Even thought it can wear ya out, I wouldn't change it. I love these two little girls more than anything else. I am grateful and thankful that God chose me and granted me the privilege of being their Momma. My prayer to Him is always that I am raising them and encouraging them to become who He wants them to be and not who Chris and I think they should be. I see more of Him in their lives each year and how they are becoming two girls who love God and Jesus with all their hearts. I am look forward to many more years of being their Mom and watching them grow.

Our Temparoray Pad

While are house is being built we are living at an apartment. We were able to find a 3 bedroom partially furnished apartment, which was wonderful as we didn't want to have to move furniture. We only had to bring some of the basics, towels, bedding, kitchen stuff and toys.  So I thought I share are lovely living space for the next 5 months. :)

The apartment is almost 1500 square feet which is pretty big for an apartment, at least I think so. Most of the temporary ones we have been given during our moves are much smaller so we are thankful that they we were able to find one with a little more room.

Here is Katie's room 

 Bree's room

 Our eat in kitchen...I actually love the island, more space when cooking.

 Our room

 Living room and sun room(aka my office and Samson's room)

The girls have done really well in the apartment, they think it is great living her. More of an adventure for them, but hopefully they will appreciate our house even more when we move in there. :) We are on the 2nd floor so we have people above us. I call them Stomper 1 and Stomper 2, the lady LOVES to where heals and you can hear them and the guy sounds like a heard of elephants when he walks, but in the grand scheme of thinks it is not that bad. It doesn't really disturb us and in all honestly...I hate to think of what our neighbors below think of my two stompers. I am all the telling Katie and Bree stop running or hopping.


And our last family member has also adjusted well. The first week was a little rough will all the new sounds going on and he couldn't look at the door or windows very easily. He kept walking around whining, so I finally pulled up the blinds in a couple of the rooms and he could hop up and look out, that seemed to make him much happier. He also lays on our bed most of the day and can look at the window. I know one thing for sure....I will be glad to have a fenced yard to let him out to potty. Walking him every time he has to do his business is not fun, especially when it is cold or raining and when he takes FOREVER to find a place to poop. But we love him just the same :)

Daddy/Daughter Dance

 The Saturday before Valentines, our local library has a Daddy/Daughter dance. The week after we moved here the girls and I were at the library and they saw the advertisement for it. Katie looked at me and said "do you think Daddy would take us", she has the biggest grin on her face. So I took a picture of the sign and texted it to Chris and said "hint, hint". That night when he got home for work...he asked his girls to go on a date with him. I wish I had a picture of their little faces when he asked them.

As with any date you want to look your best, so we did hair....I curled both girls hair and within 20 minutes of curling it almost all of it had fallen out. The don't have my hair, that's for sure.

 We painted nails as well.

 I love her big smile.

 All dolled up and waiting for their Daddy

 Chris brought them both flowers. Bree looked at them and said "why did ya give me these". LOL I told here any guy worth going on a date with will bring you flowers. :)

 Getting ready to leave. They were going to dinner at Ruby Tuesdays and then off to dance the night away.

Chris accidentally left his phone at the apartment so he didn't get any photos of them at the dance :( But they had a blast. Chris said there were almost 700 people there and that he only got ditched once or twice by the girls to go hang with their friends. :) I think this will be a traditional thing each year for them!

See Ya Later and New Beginnings

As most of you know already we are on the move again.....hopefully for the last time (Lord willing). We are moving back to Lexington SC, so it is nice to go back to an area that we have lived before and know. I can say I am a little excited about being back in a big town and not have to drive so far for a Walmart or Target trip. :) Plus it is nice to have more than 3 options for eating out!

We made our move to our temporary apartment while our house is being built. We moved last weekend, but before we left we had a farewell cookout with our neighbors. I have to say out of all the places we have lived, here we have had the BEST neighbors ever! They have become great friends and their kiddos have been wonderful friends to our girls.

Me and my girl Amy....we spent many of evenings and weekends hanging outside chatting away while the kids play. She could always entertain me with her stories from work. :) 

 The rest of the gang hanging out by the bonfire.

 Our chefs for the evening Brock and Jason...well Jason said he was just supervising and he did it so well.

 Little Jordan....chowing down on something. :)

 Some of the girls friends...Ellie and Mariah.

 Roasting marshmallows and making s'mores. We actually had wonderful weather all week but on Saturday it decided to turn cold, well cold for the beach is was like 40. :)

 Before we left out for Lexington we stopped by Christina and Jason's house to say good by. Christina has been my running buddy for the past 6 months or so and I am gonna miss having her to keep me going. :) They have two of the cutest little girls Alexy and Amelia. The girls had to have a photo opt with Alexy before we left. I love that they are like stair steps in height.

 Katie also had one last sleep over with her BFF Kelsey. The last week we were in town she was gone to Disneyworld. They both made me and Kelsey's mom tear up when they were saying good bye. I gave them both a picture frame with a picture of them in it so they could keep in their rooms. These two girls were meant to be friends that's for sure...they are like two peas in a pod.

After all of the emotional good-byes we drove over to Lexington to get settled. The girls have been at their new school now for a little over a week. Here is the school. They have great teachers and they seem to really love it and have made friends fast...never doubted that they would though.

This is a picture of our land we are building on....can't you just imagine the house. hehe :) So, not much to look at now, but the just finished pouring the foundation and will start framing either this week or next. So excited to see it start coming together and can't wait to move in.

We have also visited a church here that we like, going to go back next week. The girls loved all the stuff they had for kids. That is a big plus for them. As always in each move we know the Lord has lead to where we are at for a reason so we are just waiting for Him to guide to where we need to be. Stayed tuned for more post on the house as it progresses. :)

Wrapping Up 2012!

Trying to catch back up again on my blog. Since my last one 2 months ago here are some of the things going on. Now that we are getting back to somewhat of a normal routine again....hopefully my blog will stay updated more. But no promises. :) 

 

Last blog I has just ran the Battleship half marathon. My friend Christina and I trained for this race. She was unable to run it so since we worked so hard together to train we decided that 2 weeks after the battleship half we would run a half together on Camp Lejune. They have free half's you can sign up to run each month. There just happened to be one right after the battleship one. So we sign up and finally got to run a half together. What we didn't know is that it would be completely full of hills. By the last 2 miles our legs were hurting so bad but we knew if we stopped to walk we wouldn't be able to start running again, so we just kept pushing through thinking of anything to keep our mind off the pain. I am so glad we got to run it together. She has been a great running buddy and now that we are moving I will miss her bunches!!!!

 

 When we got back from the race, Chris and my girls along with Christina's husband and their two girls came to see us finish. They made a sign and brought us flowers. It was FREEZING cold on this day but they braved it to show us some love

 Little Bree has started to lose teeth. She had her bottom 2 come out and now 2 more are loose. She has the cuties smile now and sounds so cute when she talks.

 School stuff that happened. We had Science and Math night for Kindergartners. We had something in each of the class that we had to do as a family. In her classroom they were building shapes with spaghetti and marshmallows and we had to see how high we could go. I have to say this was very challenging but Chris' engineering degree came in handy. :)

 Katie and her class worked on a science project. They all had to do research, test, take pictures and design their presentation. Katie and another classmate where picked to present their project to all the other 2nd grade classes. She did a great job, so proud of her!

So other things going on during the month of December, we found our temporary apartment to live in until our house in SC is built. This is our new place. It has been awhile since we did apartment living but for 6 months I am sure we can handle it. The apartments have lots of extras, one in particular that the girls are excited about. It has a movie theater room you can reserve and watch your own movies on a big screen with movie theater seating. They can't wait for us to have a movie night.

 And of course Christmas was in the mix of all the other things going on. Can you tell that they were excited....they couldn't keep their hands off the presents. :)

 Christmas Eve we went to Christmas Eve service at our church. Nana and Papaw were here as well and got to join us.

 Santa made his stop...I guess the girls were good this year.

 The girls had a great Christmas and got all they asked for. The one item that Chris and I bought them that we didn't even play on was Rock Band. We saw it in a store that had them on clearance. We thought they would like it and it turned out to be the gift they play with the most. It has beginner levels for the guitar and drums so it makes it super easy for them to play. We have had lots of fun jammin' as a family.

My Christmas gift and I was so excited to get it!!!! Garmin watch for my running. It is basically a computer on my wrist and does way more than I really need it to, but I love it!

 

For New Years we headed to Georgia to see Chris' side of the family. We went out with his brother and wife for New Year's Eve. This is honestly the first time since we have had kids that we have stayed up for the new year. I remember why now...because going to bed at 1am and kids get up at 7am is no fun. But it was fun to hang out and ring in the new year with my love. 

It is hard to believe that we are already in 2013 as I make this post. Starting 2012 I started training for my first half marathon, thinking that would be the one and only one I ran....I never thought I would have ran 3 halfs by the end of the year and possibly some in 2013.:)  We had lots of new things happening in the end of 2012 with our upcoming move to SC and lots of new things happening in 2013. As always, we are blessed to have the family we do and the life we live. God has allowed us to know some amazing people in all the places we have lived. I have many friends that I would not have had otherwise if it wasn't for Him. I am looking forward to move to SC to see what He has in store for us there and how He will use us to further his kingdom. I pray for blessings and love for all of you in 2013.