The World's Best Babysitter

Just a shout out to the world's best babysitter (and more to come soon on Tripp's birthday party)! We love you Sally!

Hand-me-downs

My mom keeps pulling out my old dresses and handing them down for Lily to wear. Of course Lily refuses to smile, let alone even look at the camera. I still got a few sweet shots to at least document her wearing them.

And not to be left out, there's this handsome boy

So thankful for these two!

Christ is Risen!

He is risen, indeed! What a glorious thing to be able to celebrate! We have been reading through the Jesus Storybook Bible with Tripp (if you do not have it, you need to get it. right away!). I can not read the chapters on the crucifixion and resurrection with out tearing up. It is also a pretty awesome thing to get to read it with Tripp and watch and listen as he tries to understand and grasp what it means to be loved with a "never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever" (to quote from the Storybook Bible) by God. While Christmas is a pretty great holiday to celebrate with kids, I am pretty sure Easter is my favorite. Answering questions like "what does it mean that Jesus's body broke for me?" and "well, why do we not have lamb's blood to put on our door cause I love God?" will never get old. And although Santa is pretty cool, we made sure the Easter bunny did a good job with the eggs and Easter baskets! I also loved watching Tripp help his sister find eggs and watching Lily totally get what she was supposed to do after finding a few eggs with Tripp's help.

We attempted to get some good ones of the kiddies together, but that did not really happen. Oh well, that is why we will need to get some professional ones done soon (hint, hint Katy :) ). 

Happy Easter everyone!!

The hardest part of the year

I am pretty sure that the time of mid-January till the beginning of April is pretty much the worst. Ok, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but not really. It is cold, dreary, sometimes snowy, sometimes just miserable, and really nothing to look forward to. We have had some hard times- disappointments for Nelson and work stuff, news that my job is a little bit in jeopardy (not because I slack off or anything but because my job is grant funded and when that money runs out and if we do not get anymore in...), family health troubles, etc. But tomorrow is April 1st, and I feel like things are already looking better! In the mean time though, we have managed to stay busy and not get into too much trouble. Well, most of us anyway. One thing that kept us busy was my desire to redecorate our room. See, when we decided to take our house off the market, Lily kinda needed a place to sleep. So the kiddies now share our old bedroom (the bigger of the two) and we moved into Tripp's old room. They love it (and I actually can not imagine when the day will come and they will have to be separated because of gender) but I was feeling a little weird sleeping in a very blue room that just did not feel like our space. It felt more like "we just threw everything into this room and have ignored it for almost a year" and that is not really the atmosphere you want your bedroom to have. So thanks to Target, Ace hardware, a sewing machine saga, and my dad who babysat both kiddies solo while we did some serious painting, we now have a fully re-done bedroom (and it was all done on the cheap).

So here's the before (complete with a small child):

And the after (small child is not awake):

Of course you have to say you like it a lot better in the after, cause otherwise, all my hard work would be for naught!!
As for other house projects, we have a new fence going up! I absolutely can not wait for it to be done! It was another decision that we made a while back once we decided to stay- we wanted our backyard to be more useable. We are on a corner and without a fenced in yard, there is no way it would be safe for the kids. Then when we got Padme, we knew we had to get the fence. So it is being built as we speak. Hopefully it will be finished sometime this week, and we can start working on our new backyard space!

So we got a dog

                                         

So you know how I said one of my goals for 2013 was to get a dog, well get a dog we did. After a lot of searching, endless phone calls to my mother-in-law (who is pretty much the world's most knowledgeable dog person) we settled on this sweet little dog who was rescued from an attic in East St. Louis where she was locked up with her puppies. She had mange, heart worm and was otherwise not taken care of. The rescue organization got her, and she went pretty much immediately into a foster home (probably the number one reason we chose this organization- they are home based and so you can kinda get an idea of what the dog is actually like). She went through some crazy heart worm treatments, got lots of love from them, and then was delivered to us this past Friday. She already has us all smitten! Tripp has declared that she loves him the best, which is totally fine by me!

Her details:

Name: Padme (pronouced Pad-may) It's from Star Wars- one of the princesses

Size: about 40/45 lbs, her back is about at my mid calf and her head comes up to my knee.

Breed: Rottweiler/Hound mix- her body is more Rottweiler and her tail is docked, her face/ears remind me more of a hound

Temperament: Sweetest ever! She just hangs out with us all day. And that's about all! We take her for good, long walks to wear her out and then she just kinda chills all day!

Obedience: So far, she knows sit, stay, and down. She is house trained, doesn't really bark, does well on a leash. Could probably use a little more work on that though. Once she gets cleared of heart worms, she will hopefully become my running partner!!

So basically, she is the best ever. If you live in St. Louis, she has a brother up for adoption- he seems pretty awesome as well!

What a Weekend!

Last weekend we had an awesome (although admittedly sometimes crazy) trip to Birmingham. It involved meeting my best friend's boyfriend, dinner with our families to celebrate her 30th birthday, a half marathon, a surprise birthday party for my friend and then regular just hanging out time with my brother and sister-in-law. Both kids decided to not do the best job sleeping so we had some occasional extra crankiness on our hands. But the fun sure outweighed that! 

Great dinner Saturday night, complete with a totally tacky fake singing birthday cake and then followed by a real one with trick candles.

A little Sunday morning jog through Birmingham

I am still a little bitter that Courtney beat me- but hey, that's the story of our childhood- she is pretty much better at everything!

Second party for her (this time a surprise one with all her friends). I must say, I did a pretty great job getting her out of her own house and back to her own house for the party. It only involved a few lies (like "oh my goodness, we gotta go- Lily is throwing up all over the place!")

Sweet Lily and Uncle James. Tripp has a hard time sharing his Uncle with anyone else, but Lily was able to sneak a few snuggles in with him.

Can't wait to be back- hopefully sometime soon!!

15 month old Lily

Lily Billy (as her cousin and brother call her) is 15 months old! She is super fun to be with, babbles all the time and is constantly trying to figure all of life out! She does happen to have a scream that is unparalleled so that can make for some stressful moments. But thankfully, the older she gets and the more she can do, that screaming happens a little less frequently. We had a great visit with the doctor and got her updated stats:

Length: 32 1/4 inches (92%)
Weight: 25 lbs, 3.4 ozs (89%)
Head Circ: 19 in (97%)

We love you Lily and love watching you grow up!