Charlotte's First Haircut

Charlotte's hair was getting a little out of hand. She had a strange mullet so long as a baby and at this point we were just so happy for her to finally have some length. But, it was time to let go. So, here's BEFORE

.....and AFTER. I love the result. More full, less scraggly. Super cute.

The Lounging Princess

Speaking of BIRTHdays....

... our family will be celebrating another one in early August!!

Another Birthday Party

Yesterday Lily Kate went our friend, Sy'ana's birthday party at Sweet n Sassy. It started at her house and the big pink limo picked them up and took them there. It was quite a big deal, they got their nails painted, their hair done, and there was even a fashion show.

Kate and Maddie on the runway when we came to pick them up.


I had to get a close up of this hair, this may look better than my hair did at prom.

Happy Birthday PARTY

Sunday the girls had a joint birthday party at Gymnastics Unlimited. It was more than enough fun for everyone. I have heard at least 4 of the dads commenting about having their next birthday party there. We were warning them that they probably didn't allow beer in the foam pit. We had so much fun.

This is the foam pit, hours of fun

The purple castle cake. Lily Kate walked into the kitchen when we were about halfway through putting it together and legitimately started crying. "It doesn't look like a castle at all" She wasn't throwing a fit, she was just disappointed. Talk about a blow to my cake creating confidence. I tried to show her the pictures on line of the steps of making a castle cake and how it wasn't finished yet....then in the bottom corner of the computer screen she saw a princess cake and you know what was next, "I have a better idea, let's have a princess cake." Wow. We stuck with the castle and she was happy in the end. Meltdown avoided, gratefulness restored after a little encouragement.

Maddie & Lily Kate. There were 16 kids at the party and the is the only picture I got with any of them in it because of how active they were and how blurry my shots were. Oh well, it was fun!

One More Quote

At the park today...Lily Kate was playing on the crowded playground. She runs over to me with lots of excitement,

"Mom, that boy over there is handsome"
"WHAT?"
"Yea, his hair is really cool"
"okay, go slide"

I was shocked! I have never heard her say anything like that about a boy! Wow, I didn't see that coming at all. Apparently she likes shaggy surfer boy hair, by the way.

Quotes from today

Charlotte hands me her Ariel doll,
"Mom, can you get her bacon soup?"
"Umm, bacon soup, what's that, babe?"
"Bacon soup, bacon soup for swimmin"
Wow, she's talking about a bathing suit, never heard that one before....

We are still attempting to get the girls to sleep in the same room. Parks was standing outside the door listening to Charlotte singing loudly.
"Girls wanna have fun, girls wanna have FUN. Hey, sissy, you like that one, right, you like it?"
Kate is almost alseep
"Sure, Char, I like it. Go to sleep."
This is what almost every night sounds like. We put them to bed every night around 7/7:30. We have ridden it out until 10:30 one night before we gave up and moved Charlotte back out into her old crib. We need to stay strong, They need to get it sometime.

Tonight we rented a (very lame) kids movie about dolphins following their dreams(?) and we had a picnic in the living room with pizza by the fire, at Lily Kate's request. It was such a fun evening, minus the extremely strange movie. Parks and Charlotte were cuddling on the blanket...

until Parks fell asleep and Charlotte started crawling all over him...


She thought it was hilarious to "get Daddy while he sleepin", just walking on his legs and stomach. He woke up slightly a few times but mostly he was out...

I'm sad this one's blurry because it's my favorite. She loves him so much.

Girlfriends

Friday night Maddie & Ford came over while their parents, Sam & Trevor went on a date. Sam is due with their third very soon so we wanted to treat them to some face time that will be sparse soon. Their daughter, Maddie, is adorable, lively, super well mannered, and one of Lily Kate's personal heros. They had a blast

Snow Day

It started snowing this morning around 7:45 and it lasted about 3 1/2 hours. We only got a couple inches, but it was enough to make the scene look pretty and enough to play in by our standards.

Happy Birthday to Sweet Charlotte!

Saturday was Charlotte's Second birthday. She is trying out her independence in every form: hopping out of her bed, wanting to fasten her own carseat, get out of the car without help, walking alone in the grocery store, and the list goes on. This has been the season of, "No, no, I do it by-self!" She has started to try to negotiate before naps, "Can I just stay up, play a little bit?" She loves to play with Lily Kate, to dress up like a "pincess", to do puzzles, be read to, push her dolls in her stroller, & jump on her "shramp aline". She's a fiery one. She's not as much of a camera poser as Kate is, I can't get her to smile for the camera much, but here are some shots of the day.
I liked this one because one of Charlotte's signature expressions is the cupped hands over her mouth during laughs, when she's suprised, and here when she's saying, "wow". And Kate is showing her her very own Ariel doll that Kate got for her.

This is my attempt at a pink flower cake - at Charlotte's request

Pizza for dinner - another request. "Charlotte, for your birthday dinner, what kind of foo- "Pizza!" before I even finished my question.


This is how she spent most of the meal, one of the reasons why I am thankful for booth seating. Happy birthday Sweet Charlotte!

Christmas Eve

Parks' brother, Myers, his wife Laura, and their sweet Lillian were with us for Christmas. It was really funny, the girls were thrilled to be together. They couldn't sit still at all. We had to keep rounding them back up to keep opening presents b/c they kept leaving to go play dress up. Christmas Eve was a sweet time. We (Parks, really!) made a great fancy dinner. He read the Christmas story to the girls and we talked a bit about Jesus and sang some. The attention spans were short and the excitement level was high. It was fun.

Here are the 3 girls sitting still - a sight!

Parks reading

Goodies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer

Christmas Morning

You'll have to click on this one to enlarge it and get the full effect. Lily Kate is truly a fahionista with her gloves, red cowboy boots, new tutu, & fan. This is really the result of just saying, "hey, let me get a picture of you in your new stuff". This one needs no encouragement :)

The girls each got ride on 4 wheelers from my mom and they were over the moon. Charlotte's is small enough to ride around the house, and she does ride it all around now

Here's Kate on hers

Our precious niece, Lillian, checking out her new Ariel.

Charlotte got this hilarious monkey on a spring that sings and bounces. It was a hit.

I'm always trying to capture the essence of Lily Kate's quick mind and her specific ideas. Also, the way that I am always struggling to keep up :) About an hour after Lily Kate was put to bed she called me in there. She met me at the door holding out a ring sucker. As I walked toward her she started talking. (you have to read this super fast)

"Mom, I just found this ring in my purse and I have already sucked on it some earlier today. I need you to put it in the kitchen. Tomorrow I need to brush my teeth so I can go to some stores with Lilian. Are we going to go to any stores.?"
"Umm...... we'll probably go to the grocery store."
Gasp "That's great, we can get 2 purple balloons, one of me and one for Lillian and we can get 2 white cookies, not the crunchy kind, and one more white cookie for Charlotte, and we can get 1 pink balloon for Charlotte." Another gasp. "We can save the pink and purple balloons and use them for our birthday party in January. Is that a good idea?"...."Mom, is that a good idea?"
"Ummm"

I'm still trying to figure out if we're really going to need to go to the grocery store.... I can never keep up....

Friday was Lily Kate's last day of school before Christmas break. Her class all wore their pajamas. They watched the Charlie Brown Christmas movie and ate cookies and milk. She was delighted!

Daily Lily Kate goes with me to check the mail. Lately it has been more exciting because we've been getting Christmas cards. We keep them in a low bowl on our dinner table and the girls go through them during dinner and we talk about our friends and family. This evening about 20 min after we put Kate to bed she called Parks in and asked him to take a picture of her and her daughter, Sydney, for their Christmas card. Don't hold your breath at the mailbox, consider this your card. Merry Christmas, Love Lily Kate and Sydney.

This last one has no explanation, just a day in the life of having girls!

The Day of the Christmas Program at school

We have been talking about this day for weeks. This morning Parks and Charlotte and I filed into the gym at Lily Kate's school to see the performance. It was just as you would imagine. Mostly uneventful, lots of precious kids staring blankly until they finally found their parents faces, then they would light up and wave frantically. Lily Kate picked her nose a couple times, but other than that she was perfect, she sang loudly, smiled proudly, and blew kisses every once in a while. One awesome kid yelled out in between songs, "hey Mom, when this is over I'm ready to go home, ok?" Mom just smiled and nodded. So cute.

The 5th Annual Ornament Exchange!

There are lots of pictures with this post. Margaret Lee was a wonderful photographer and we got some good ones :)
Grace and me

Shelley & Julie

Trista

Sara & Jenn

Tara & Margaret Lee

If you look closely you can see the fabulous bird on Shaunna's shoulder. It was a favorite and Shaunna took it home.

This is precious, Emily & her husband are in the (lengthy) process of adopting from Ethiopia. The ornament she opened was a tiny globe. It couldn't have been more perfect. There were tears in her eyes as she held it up. We declared anyone who thought about stealing from her as just coldhearted :)

Joanna with her glittery hummingbidr

Suzanne with her jinglebell

Heather with her coveted octopus