Santa

We went to the mall today and saw Santa. The kids both were so happy to get to see him. It still amazes me that neither one of them is scared and both hopped right up in his lap. Andrew was a little quiet. He was just concentrating on his "list" in his head. He didn't want to forget what to tell Santa he wanted. Audrey was so excited and just kept saying "you're Santa Claus" over and over and hugging him.

Here is last year's picture. They sure have grown.

Christmas Music

Audrey loves Christmas music. We have a Christmas music CD in the car and one in the house and she always request to listen to them. Here she is singing two of her favorites. Away in a Manager and Go Tell it on the Mountain (minus the 1st line). She just started singing and we couldn't get the camera on fast enough. Enjoy!

Happy Halloween!

We had a great Halloween this year. I loved that it was on a Saturday. The kids got all dressed up and we went to the fall festival at our church. Andrew came up with the idea for him to be a builder. He was so excited about this costume. I chose Snow White for Audrey. She's not really into the princesses yet, but she loves her seven dwarf dolls. She chose happy and sneezy to accompany her to the festival.

Snow White ready for the hayride.

The construction zone in our church parking lot made the best backdrop for our builder!

Ready for the festival!

florida

Here are few pictures from our last trip to FL. They both loved getting to swim. They also were able to jump on a cool trampoline, where they were harnessed in and could do flips and jump really high. I love the picture of Audrey. She just looks like she is in having the time of her life.

pjs

The weather has turned cooler and fall is here. Although, I have to agree with Andrew when he said this morning that it felt more like winter than fall. The weather this weekend was pretty cold (for us southerners). There are some benefits to cold nights. Being able to break out the new footed pjs. They were both very excited to wear them last night .

The Weather

(She is singing: "what's the weather like today, like today, like today, what's the weather like today, today it's sunny")

They sing a weather song at Audrey's preschool and she really loves it. I'm thinking she has a future career as a weather girl. I'm sure that would make her granddaddy proud.

To blog or not to blog...

I'm officially giving myself the worst blogger of the month award! Now that the kids are in school, I've got the time, but for some reason I just don't have much to talk about. Imagine that! School is going well. We are almost 5 weeks in and the kids are both loving it. I couldn't ask for a better start for the year. I fretted over our decision to change Audrey's school and have been so thankful for her new class and teachers. It is going so well. We also changed her speech therapist due to scheduling issues and even that has went better than I could have imagined! We updated her speech testing with the new therapist and she has made some progress in some areas since her last eval in March. We've worked so hard on getting her to talk, that now we are having to focus more on improving her listening/understanding skills. I'm hopefully that this area will come along too this year.

Andrew is still loving school. He comes home each day full of "random" information to share with me. Yesterday I asked him who was at his table now. He named off 3 girls. I said "you're the only boy at the table" and he responded in a very serious voice, "Yes, I am surrounded by girls, mom." But don't worry, he loves it. He loves an audience and I think girls provide more of one than his boy peers do.

Other than that, life is well. Cooler temperatures arrived this morning and are a welcomed change! We are looking forward to the fall!

Here's a picture I just pulled out to compare Andrew's first days of school. This is him on his first day of Mother's Day out 4 years ago!

Audrey practicing for school pictures.

The sweetest smiled I got out of her. Too bad her hair didn't cooperate.

More 1st Days

Audrey's first day at her new school was today. It was Andrew's second 1st day (2nd day of school, 1st day with his entire class being there). I think he was more nervous about today than last week. Audrey did great. I pick her up earlier than Andrew because she only goes a half-day and her teacher said she did fine. She was all smiles and ready to go. She went right in her class this morning and was a little clingy at first. But then she sat down in the chairs where they do circle time and a couple of the other kids came and sat down next to her. She said "bye mommy", so I took my cue and quickly left. Here are a few pictires of them before school this morning. As you can see, she wasn't in the best mood. She smiled for several pictures but closed her eyes every time she smiled! She has gotten used to getting up and waiting for an hour or two before breakfast, so having to get up, eat, get dressed, get our hair brushed and out the door quickly isn't her favorite thing. Please excuse the bright reflective light coming off of her backpack. I'm not sure how to edit this in the pictures. But if she is ever crossing a dark street at night, she is all set with her reflective gear.

This picture cracks me up. How more pitiful can she look? She has gotten into the stage where everything is "Audrey's or Audrey's turn". She doesn't want me to take the picture becuase it of course is "Audrey's turn". This was right after I said, "No, it's mommy's turn to take the pictures!". I guess you can tell what she thought about that.

Showtime!

We've had these puppets forever and Andrew always wants to do shows but we never really have something for him to get behind. So today we made our own puppet show theatre. Andrew loved it and Audrey even got in on the action. I love this first picture. You can see his little eyes peeking through the curtain, concentrating so hard on the show.

Audrey singing "Old MacDonald had a Lizard".

First Days

You know that line in the movie Rudy. When the coach is finally gonna put Rudy in a game and they ask him if he is ready and he responds with the best line. Something like, "I've been ready for this all my life". (I'm not sure that is the exact quote, I'm sure if Chip were here he could recite it for me and the lines before and after it) That's how I felt about Andrew going to Kindergarten today. He was ready, so ready. So excited about all that awaited him there. New teachers, new friends, a "lunchroom", can you believe it? He had difficulty falling asleep last night because he was just so excited. He must get this from Chip, but I can assure you that I never loved first days of school that much or really anything new or surprising, but that's another post all together. Another one of Andrew's friends started school a few weeks ago and his mom warned me that the first week was rough. Well, their attitudes after they get home from school. She was right. He held it together for about 30 minutes after he got home and then had a melt-down about, well nothing, because I can't even remember what it was now. I sent him to his room for 30 minutes of quiet time and found him passed out 15 minutes later. He was exhausted. This new wake-up and bed time is going to take awhile for him to get used to (and me too!).

How he felt after his first day.

Exhaustion~by the way, can he get anything else in the bed with him?

We also met Audrey's teachers today and she will start on Monday. I looking forward to seeing how she does in her class. Her teacher was asking me questions about her and I was thinking, I think it's better just to wait and see how she does. The things I think she'll struggle with, she'll probably do fine with and then something that I would never think would be an issue will come up. So we'll just wait and see. More pictures to come.

Summertime Fun

It's been awhile since my last post. We have been in FL, AL, and GA for a few weeks visiting family and friends. We had a great time and were able to visit with my sister in-law and nieces from GA for several days. Andrew and Audrey had a great time playing with the cousins. We don't get to see them very often so it was an extra special visit. We spent most of the time in the pool at Chip's parent's house. It is so great for the kids to swim everyday. They never sleep better! Andrew finished swimming lessons the day before we went, but still was not swimming by himself. He had been asking me for a pair of goggles. I kept telling him that once he learned to swim I would get him a pair. His cousins had several pairs and let him borrow some. Almost instantly when he put them on, he started swimming. Once he would finally put his head in the water and leave it in, he just swam. He still needs to work on his strokes (he looks a little like Elaine on Seinfeld dancing, when he tries to do a freestyle stroke) but he is swimming. Audrey enjoyed her time in the water too. She loves to swim and got a little braver this time, jumping off the side of the pool. Here he is bravely swimming across the pool.

Andrew played baseball with Uncle Blake.

We spent a few days of our trip camping with my parents. It was a lot of fun and the weather was nice..not too hot for July. Andrew learned to fish and even caught a few. He kept us laughing by asking when we were going to catch the "keepers".

Fishing!

Swimming in the lake.Andrew pulling Audrey back to the camper after a swim.

We ended our two weeks at the Senkels house in north GA. We had so much fun getting to visit with them for a few days and Chip was able to fly in and meet us. The kids played so well together for 3 days straight. Alicia and Bill surprised me with a yummy cookie cake for my birthday. It was special to celebrate with them because it doesn't seem like a birthday without the Senkels with us. And of course they have to buy at least one cake a year for someone in our family.
We are back home now and getting ready for the school year to start. Andrew and Audrey both start on August 3rd, although Andrew goes next Thursday for his first official day of school. He is really looking forward to getting started. I think I'm ready for him to start too, but I'm sure it will be a little bittersweet.

Weekend Fun

We decided to continue Audrey's birthday celebration and make a quick trip over to TN for the weekend. We purchased season passes to Dollywood last Thanksgiving when we were there and wanted to see if it was possible to drive over and back in one weekend, without being too exhausted. We drove to TN Friday after Chip got off work and got to our hotel about 11pm. It's funny to me that now I think a 6 hours drive is so short. One quick stop for dinner and gas and then we were there. After years of taking those 13 hour trips to FL, 6 hours is GREAT! The kids do great in the car. Between eating, watching movies, and listening to their favorite CDs, they do fine. The only problem with the drive was that we didn't get to sleep until about midnight. Which is about 2 hours late for Audrey, who didn't nap in the car. Andrew slept for a couple of hours after dinner. I laid down in the bed with her and she just had the giggles. Here we all four are in one room trying to fall asleep without any white noise (oops, I forgot the travel fan!) and she couldn't stop laughing. It would get really quite and then she would just scream out some random sound and crack up. Of course, Andrew found this quite amusing. I finally had to sit with her on the couch until she calmed down and fell asleep. We spent most of Saturday at Dollywood. We really like it there. They have a lot of rides for the little kids and they have great shows for them too. It wasn't too crowded but it was hot. I'm thinking I couldn't do it any later in the summer. After an early bedtime Saturday night, we decided to go back to Dollywood Sunday morning to ride a few more things that we didn't have a chance to on Saturday. After that we picked up lunch and drove back. It wasn't too bad. I think Chip and I were more exhausted last night than the kids.

The first ride of the day. It doesn't go up too high and only drops them a little at a time, so the little kids can ride it. Audrey liked it but it scared her at first, she didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

They saw several characters in the park.

Ready for fun!

Riding the scrambler...this was his favorite ride! It was fun, but didn't compare to the old snowman at Miracle Strip...in my opinion!

One of her favorite rides...driving the cars.

Watching a magic show.

Ready for the train ride.

We sat up close to the engine this trip and the whistle was really loud. Every time it blew it would scare Audrey and she held on to Andrew's leg.

We were up for a walk at the seminary the other day and I took a few pictures of the kids. Andrew is showing off his muscles in his new sleeveless shirt he picked out recently. The first one of Audrey is what she did when I asked her to sit on a bench for a picture. Can we say "attitude". When we got to the gazebo she climbed up on the seat and said "time for pictures".

Birthday girl!

Yesterday was Audrey's 3rd birthday! I'm still in denial. How can she be 3??? Oh, it was a little bittersweet. I'm glad that she getting so big and learning so much, but I'm sad to see our baby turning 3! That seems so old! I really forget how big she is until I look back at her past birthdays. Here are a few pictures from her birthdays and from yesterday. They had their end of the year party at school and she wore her birthday dress. Elmo Live was what we did for her birthday, so we just had a little party here for her last night. She had a good time and enjoyed opening her presents. She kept saying "no ma'am" as she tore the paper and looking at me for approval. I kept having to remind her that it was okay to tear that paper. I guess that's a little confusing when she always told not to tear up paper. We had pizza, cupcakes, and watched a movie. Tonight, she had a cupcake for dessert and said "happy birthday, okay" after I gave it to her. She wanted us to sing, again. So of course we did!
Happy 3rd Birthday Audrey! We love you!

Birthday 2006!

Birthday 2007!

Birthday 2008!

Birthday 2009~I'm 3!!

Trying to get those 3 fingers out!


I tried to get some pics outside after school. This is what she did for most of the time. Try and get me to chase her!

So excited after we sang happy birthday!
Andrew trying to get in a picture.

Enjoying her cupcake.

Andrew reading her the card he picked out

It took everything Andrew had to not rip all the gifts open. Audrey went "too slow" for him.

After all the fun...movie night. Watching her new Word World video.