Sassy Girl

Here are some new pictures of Sara Grace. They are from about a month ago, but I still thought they were "post-worthy". :) I think she looked pretty cute (and sassy) in her fancy dress and fur coat. She's looking a little bashful in this picture, but don't let it fool you--she loved every second of prissing around in this outfit! :)

This picture was taken a few minutes later. It's very classic Sara Grace in more ways than one. She loves to sit in her bouncy seat--which she is MUCH too big for. (We've actually put it up since this picture was taken. The little girl I watch that I still kept it out for is too big for it now, too.) So, aside from sitting quite unladylike in the bouncy seat, check out what she's been caught holding. YEP! One of her favorites--DADDY'S WALLET!!! She loves to go through it. Smart girl! ;)






And, this picture doesn't really go with the others, but I thought it was sweet so I added it on. I caught this picture of the kids the other evening. It was dark outside and all the lights were off in Sara Grace's room except for her Christmas tree lights. I walked by her room and saw Jay and Sara Grace playing with her manger scene so sweetly together. The picture doesn't really do it justice, but seeing the two of them in that soft light playing with the manger scene was just so precious to me. :) (I guess it was a mom moment!)

Cute Little Shepherd

Apparently not everyone is as fond of Sara Grace's SNOT picture as I am. I've had numerous requests to replace it. So, here you go!! :)

Last night Jaybird had his Christmas performance at school. He was a little shepherd and did such a good job. He sang all the songs and did all the motions! I was so proud of him.

This picture is of him right after he got his costume on in his classroom.


This shot is of him on the stage. He's just below the REALLY tall cherubim. As a side note, Autumn (who I've watched since she was 8 weeks old) is on the row below Jaybird and one to our right. She's the middle of the three angels on the front row.

I thought this picture was sweet. It was during Away in a Manger. "The little Lord Jesus lay down His sweet head".....

I think this was Jaybird's favorite song. He was very emphatic about the "GO" part! :)

Silly Sara Grace

Just thought I'd share some of Sara Grace's silliness. This first picture wasn't really her fault. Actually, I kinda felt sorry for her. Poor little girl. She didn't really seem bothered by it! (The joys of motherhood!!)





This video captures a fairly regular occurance in our home. Sara Grace loves to put her blankie over her head and wander around the house. Sometimes she does it to be funny and try to get a laugh out of someone. And sometimes she does just because. This was one of the just because days.....

Fruit of His Labor

About six weeks ago, Jaybird was looking through a magazine of mine and saw an advertisement for Build-a-Bear. He often sees things in magazines or on TV and says he'd like to have it, but this particular day was a little different. On that Build-a-Bear advertisement, he saw a picture of a cheetah and went balistic! He was hopping around, saying, "Mommy, Mommy, I really really really want this. Mommy, REALLY!"

So, not being the kind of mom to just go buy it for him, I told him maybe if he wanted it that bad, he could start doing some jobs and earning some money to buy the cheetah. So, we made him a chart listing his daily jobs (feeding the cat, putting silverware away from the dishwasher/setting the table, making his bed, and watering the plants). We also had a part on the chart marking how much money he had saved. The cheetah's picture was at the end as the final goal.

Long story short, he saved up enough money and after several trips to go "visit" the cheetah at the mall, he finally got to go build his cheetah today. He had a BLAST! He was so excited. He had even earned some extra money and wanted to buy it a shirt or hat or some type of accessory. He ended up picking out a Batman t-shirt. Sooo, his new best friend (as he calls him), is a Batman t-shirt sporting cheetah named Furry.

This afternoon, Sammy had a really great idea. He said that since it was Furry's actual birthday, we should go get a birthday cake for him. So, Jaybird, Furry, and I went up to the grocery store to get a birthday cookie cake. The lady at the bakery/deli section was really nice and even wrote "Happy Birthday Furry" on the cake. She thought it was really cute. When we got home, we put a candle in the cake and sang Happy Birthday to Furry!

Sara Grace anxiously awaited her slice of cookie cake!!

It was a really fun day for us. We were a little silly, I guess, but Jaybird had a great time and it was so fun to see the sheer joy in his eyes as he finally saw his hard work pay off and his goal obtained! :)

Last Soccer Game and Team Party

Jaybird had his last soccer game on Oct. 25. He didn't seem to really enjoying playing that day. It was more like the first game he played where he just ran around in circles and was more concerned with how and where he was running rather than getting the ball and scoring. He has since told us that he doesn't want to play any more soccer right now. He wants to play baseball. And he says maybe he'll do baseball-soccer-baseball-soccer. I guess he means the order he'll play things?? Maybe we'll play spring baseball and fall soccer?? :)

Here's a shot of Jay and his trophy. He was quite proud of it. And, I was impressed they actually provided fairly child friendly trophies. The soccer ball is like a foam material and spins on its axis.

Jay's team: Back Row (L-R): Jordan, Will, Jaybird. Front Row (L-R) Lyndsey, Chase, Grant.

Jay and Chase enjoying some air hockey. That's my boy!! :)

Jay had a blast playing in the McDonald's playground with all of his little teammates. It was quite fun to watch him!

Cute (and oh-so-yummy) team cookie cake:

Happy Halloween!

We had a fun time tonight at the Harvest Festival at church. Here are some pictures of the kids. Sammy snapped this one of the kiddos on the porch before we headed over to the church.

Here's a sweet shot of my little ladybug.

And, here's a shot of Sara Grace and her skunky friend, Ellie, checking out Ellie's loot!

Some Sara Grace Pictures

Here are some pictures of Sara Grace from the past few weeks.

This first one is from right after we went to the beach. We had borrowed baby floats from two different people to see which one we'd like to take with us to the beach. This is the one we didn't take, so we had just left it in Sara Grace's room. She LOVED it. I was in the kitchen one day and I heard a squeaking noise I didn't quite recognize. I walked down the hall to find her sitting in the float rocking her baby doll. The float apparently makes a squeaking noise when you bump the head of it.



These next two are from the weekend we went to Sammy's parents' house for Susan's wedding. Poppa was swinging Sara Grace on the front porch. Apparently, that has the same effect at the ocean breeze and the beach chair.

This is Susan's new husband, Lee's, grandfather, Papa, with Sara Grace. He quickly became her friend because he let her push and ride on his walker. She really enjoyed it--and him!

And this last one is one of Sara Grace's newest favorite things to do. It's pretty self explanitory. Just look carefully at what she's putting on.....

Beach Pictures---Finally!

Okay, sorry I've kinda fallen off the face of the earth in the blogging department. Between our trip to the beach and getting Sammy's baby sister married off, we've been quite busy. I'm finally getting around to posting pictures from our trip the beach Sept. 20-27. We went to Panama City Beach. Sammy's aunt was gracious enough to invite us to join her on a trip to her timeshare there and we were thankful she did. We had a wonderful time. The weather was really nice. The wind was coming in from a strange direction the first few days and we had lots of sand blown on us in the beach chairs, but it was still relaxing. Then on Thursday, the jellyfish came in. Big, nasty gray-ish ones. So, we didn't get in the water the last two days, but the wind had died down some and it was still extremely relaxing!

Both kids liked the water a good bit. Jaybird was a little fearless in it when he had his floaties on. Sara Grace liked to splash in it, but didn't want it to be much deeper than and inch or so.

Sara Grace had two big accomplishments while we were there. She started walking some. I think she was intrigued by the new surroundings of the condo. She had taken one or two unassisted steps before then, but took numerous ones while we were on vacation. Never many more than two at a time, but still it was progress! :) She also cut a second tooth--top, front right tooth (for anyone who cares).

One day Sammy decided to turn the kids and I into mermaids. He dug nice little holes and we all hopped in....I wasn't a big fan. :) Sara Grace wasn't too fond of it either, but went along with it quite nicely.

Jaybird loved digging and building in the sand and collecting shells. The man that was in charge of the beach chairs and umbrellas (cabana boy??) even helped Jay "plant a garden" one day--complete with sea oat carrots and squash!

Sara Grace sporting her sunglasses! I thought she looked pretty cute in them!! :)

Sara Grace absolutely LOVED the beach chairs and breeze. She is not one to fall asleep while being held very easily--in fact, it's quite rare. But, just about every day she took a nap laying on me in the beach chair. She fell asleep almost immediately as soon as she got still. One day she even took two naps like that. She was the same way last year when we went to the beach. She was only 3 months old then and I just thought she still liked to sleep a lot. But, apparently the beach breeze has some sort of effect on her. :)

Still to this day, when she sees that pink striped towel that she's laying on, she puts it on the floor and lays down on it and tries to cover herself up with it (all at the same time) and lays there looking completely content. (What drugs did you put in that towel when you made it, Jennifer??)

When the jellyfish moved in on Thursday, Jaybird picked up on my anxiety aobut them and didn't want to let the water touch his feet at all. Granted, there were several of them washing up on the beach. Those were the clear ones. The big gray ones were all in the water--you could see them from our room even. I'm sure there were as many, if not more, clear ones, too. Yuck. This picture is from the morning of our last full day there. Sammy and I took the kids on a morning beach walk. This is Jaybird not letting the water touch his feet. And, to explain the hat---we attended the welcome meeting at the condo at the beginning of the week. They had doorprizes. One of our tickets was pulled and Sammy claimed a giant black and orange witch had--thinking the kids would enjoy it. Jaybird almost fell apart crying. He, aparently, had wanted the blue visor he had seen in the batch of prizes. Thankfully another ticket from our group was pulled and Jaybird was able to get the blue visor. He wore it all week and LOVED it. Why he preferred it sideways--who knows! :)

Here's one of the huge, gross, gray jellyfish. This was the first one that had come in. We had seen it from our room and couldn't tell what it was. I had guessed a turtle. This one started to wash in and a man actually went and grabbed it and pulled it closer to the edge. Of course, I took advantage of the photo opp! :) By Friday, there were tons of them. I counted eight from our room one time just in the area I could see--and that was just the gray ones!

Non Beach Videos from Beach Trip

I have been requested to put up some new videos/pictures. Haven't had time to sift through all the beach pictures and videos, so here's a few cute "non-beach" ones....

Sara Grace really enjoyed the master bedroom bed because you could see yourself in the mirror of the dresser. Here's a clip of her playing. She says something about her belly button part way through :)

On Wednesday of our trip, the wind was REALLY bad and the sand was blowing all over the place, so we didn't even attempt to go out on the beach. We went bowling and played arcade games. Here's some clips of Jaybird and skee ball. Love the wind up!! :) The second video is pretty funny, too! :)

Deep and Wide

Sara Grace loves to sing Deep and Wide. Of course she's got a typical 16 month old attention span....and vocabulary, so it's never more than a few seconds of "Deep deep deep" and hand movements that resemble the Deep and Wide motions, but it's still pretty cute in my opinion!

Dress Crawl

I thought everyone might like to see a little clip of what we get to see every Sunday (or any day Sara Grace wears a dress). This is what I call her "dress crawl". When she wears dresses they get all up under her knees and make it hard for her to crawl. So, she's modified her crawl when she's wearing a dress....she gets up on her feet and does kind of like a bear crawl. It definitely serves its purpose!

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Jay's First Goal!

Today was Jaybird's second soccer game. The experience was quite different than last week. This week, the team we played was a good bit more timid than our team. It was kind of a reversal of roles from last week. This week it was OUR coach saying "hold up guys, don't score so many goals!". Last week, it was the other team's coach saying that!

Jaybird scored two goals in today's game! We were very proud of him. I just happened to be recording the play that ended up being his very first goal in a game! Yay!

I didn't take nearly as many pictures and videos this week. But, here's a picture that turned out decent from this week. :)

My Mischievous Daughter

I don't remember Jaybird doing things like this. I really don't. Maybe my memory is just failing me....or maybe my daughter really is more mischievous than my son! :)

So, I went to get Sara Grace up from her nap the other day and this is what I found...... No, I did NOT put my child to bed in just her diaper! She had taken all of her clothes off! :) Granted, she was just wearing a spaghetti strap romper that tends to fall off her shoulders anyway, but STILL! I do not ever remember Jaybird taking his clothes off in bed! Thankfully, though, she did not take off the stinky diaper she was wearing! THANKFULLY! :)




And then yesterday...Jaybird and I were in the living room reading a book and I knew Sara Grace had gone in the kitchen, but I didn't think much of it. Then I realize I am hearing a strange sound in the kitchen. Then it hits me what the sound is....I ran into the kitchen to have my suspicion completely verified.....
Yes....that IS a cantelope rind from the trash can.....

The Duck, The Horse, and Two Cats

Here are some more of Sara Grace's animal noises.

The duck "quack, quack, quack".....

The horse "neigh, neigh, neigh".....

And I put two videos of her cat noise because it's a funny little noise that you don't realize is her cat noise unless you know to listen for it. It's kinda like a high pitched "mah" noise. But, it's her version of "meow" and it's always the same for a cat. :) Oh, and for those that don't know, Milky is our cat. :)

Susan's Braves Night

Saturday night we celebrated Susan's upcoming wedding with her lingerie shower at her apartment and bachelorette party at the Braves Game! We had fun even though the Braves didn't win and Susan didn't make the "big screen" (though we tried really hard!)!

A group shot....

The view from our seats....

This was the (hilarious) usher that was stationed next to our seats. He danced like this EVERY time there was music played at the game! He even came and danced with us at one point. He was a hoot!

More Soccer Pictures

Here's some more pictures from Jaybird's first soccer game this past Saturday.....

The team had pictures scheduled for before the game, but it started to rain, so they had to take them after the game...thankfully I was able to dry some of the sweat off of Jaybird's head!

Back Row (L-R): Will, Jordan, Coach Mitch

Front Row (L-R): Grant, Jay, Chase

Jay and Chase walking to pictures

Jay taking a water break with his friend, Will.

Jay outnumbered by the blue team!

Jay and Grant running for the ball.

Coach Mitch giving Jay and Will a pep talk.