Happy birthday (late) to my beautiful and lovely sister, Laura. She requested some pictures to brighten her day. I hope these do. :)
Before our trip, AM picked up the phrase "working hard". Namely, she told me that she cleaned the house and was working hard. In actuality, we were having our house cleaned and she was eating lunch and watching our wonderful housecleaner, Magda. Here, before I got the camera out, when she was slurping her noodles, she told me she was working hard.
Here are some pics from at home. These I took of her today. I walked by her with the camera while she was eating lunch (the mark on her forehead was from chocolate chip cookie making earlier in the day). She requested that I take the pictures and so I did. In this order.
And now our littlest explorer. She full fledged crawling and into everything!

Love you, Ra-Ra.
My father asked for pictures of the girls on Father's Day, but we've been so busy chasing after the girls, I've only gotten them up now. So sorry Daddy! Here they are. Happy Father's Day to all you Daddies out there - we love you much!!

Often Anne Marie or Ellie will do something that makes me think, "I ought to blog about that", and I'll even go so far as start to compose in my head what I will say. But more often than not (quite a bit more often actually), I don't feel like I can simply blog my thought. I would have to "catch up" by uploading the hundreds of photos I've let 'lie around" for a few months and then provide entries for them, before I can get to my original blogging idea. Well, you can imagine (and see evidence of) how this ends up working for me. My M.O.: I blog a large amount of photos and entries, feel caught up, even blog some more over the next few days or even weeks and then I fall behind. Then you don't hear from me for months - case in point: E's almost 9 months and I've yet to put up her 7 month photos. Well, today, I'm just going to make this entry about one adorable thing Anne Marie just said and hope I can "catch up" over the weekend.
She just requested some chicken nuggets and that worked for me so I was preparing them. I had cut them and was going to transfer them from the hot microwave plate to her plastic plate. Before I did though, I put a dollop of ketchup on the side of her plate. When she saw it she said, "Oh, beautiful, Mommy!" My wonderfully sweet daughter thinks I'm a terrific ketchup artist! How much better does it get?
Since I knew that a post without pictures might be a severe disappointment to many, I uploaded these two from our zoo trip this morning. I took over 100 pics, so as soon as I can "catch up" - you'll see the rest. Enjoy.

Anne Marie loves to run, especially up and down "hills". She found this "hill" on the playground at the zoo.
Ellie has taken a liking to this babydoll and will chew her hands, poke her eyes, and very lovingly bestow kisses to her forehead.

My own dear mother requested a picture of the girls in their matching dresses - that is, she requested that they be brought straight up to Tennessee to see her, but if that was not available, a picture would do.
I love you Mother! As well as all the wonderful mothers in my life. I thank you for your execellent friendship, care, and love. I could never be who I am without you all. I thank God for each of you (and all your precious children).
Well - I'm running a few weeks behind, but when is that not the case? We had a lovely Easter, even though we missed our family. We decided to stay here since we'd be heading to a family wedding the very next weekend. It turned out to be very relaxing and, after a beautiful service at church, we were at no loss for food since we met up with several friends (at Katie Jane's house as you can tell from the video) and stuffed ourselves silly.
I indulged my crafting obsessions and made the girl's dresses this year. I made up the patterns, but later found a pattern that is very close to what I did, so I could have saved myself the trouble, but, oh well, we'll chalk it up to a learning experience. As you will see, Anne Marie's dress ended up being more like a size 5T rather than 3 or 4T - but I guess she'll just be able to wear it next year too. Overall, I was very happy with how they turned out.



The Easter playgroup party was chaos as usual, but even more so for me it seemed. Ellie wouldn't sleep and Anne Marie has a breakdown as soon as we entered the house. Her genius mother had let her carry the basket with the eggs loaded up for the hunt, into the house. I had also not had the forethought to put extra eggs in there for her to be able to keep after having to surrender the hiding eggs. That was her first meltdown, to be followed by several more that day. After lunch she couldn't hold it together at all, and when she gets like that she just needs some alone time. I put her in the car for a minute. I asked her if she wanted to go back in to play, and she said no, she just wanted to sit in her carseat. So I went in to gather our things and for some reason, I handed her the Easter basket right as I left her in the car thinking she could play with the eggs and stickers. I came back out to find her COVERED in chocolate. Needless to say, she was then having a much better day. I was so shocked when I got back to the car and saw it all over her, that I ran and cleaned her before I got a picture of it. Too bad. But here's a video of her "hunting for eggs" (sorry for the bad videography) followed by a video of what she really enjoyed at the Easter Egg Hunt.

Here's some February catch-up. We spent some time in Kingsport while Andy had a business trip and then stayed on to celebrate Rachel's - dare I say it - 50th birthday.


And here is a set of Ellie's around-the-house pictures.
Enjoy.
I'm working on getting my pictures and blog updated. I know the extended family is getting restless.
Click here for Ellie's 6 month pictures (yes, I know she's 7 months today). Here's to getting 7 months pictures up before May 10th.
You'll be happy to know that I have taken many pictures, just not had time to post/blog. We've got alot going on - not the least of which is potty training. I'm currently really wondering if it's really worth it (bad day) - if I just don't do anything, won't she eventually use the potty? Feel free to post a comment with your two cents.

After school, I let Anne Marie run through the puddles in our driveway while I unloaded the groceries. She soon discovered the puddle beside our driveway was quite muddy and that, of course, only added to the fun. For those who might worry that Anne Marie isn't allowed to get dirty enough, here's evidence to the contrary!
She had been playing for a little while when I took this "before" picture:

And this is how it all went down:
Pretty soon after this it was naptime, so, after I sprayed her off with the hose, it was off to a bath (even more fun!) and into bed. She was so tired, she didn't even want me to read a book to her. I went to hand her a paci for reading time and she put it right back in her crib and then asked to be put in as well. She went to sleep about 2:10 and is still down at 5:10! So much fun will wear a girl out!
**Note: Amazingly enough, no clothes seem to be too injured in the making of this video.
Ellie in the Glasses.



Anne Marie doesn't want to wear the glasses or have her picture taken and lets Mommy know it.
I think I'm up to date with Pictures!!
Eleanor's Baptism Weekend and her Five Month Photo Shoot are up!
I still have alot I want to blog about - but those are just my ramblings and will be saved for another day... let's be honest, the pictures are what you come for! Enjoy!
Now - off to get ready for my Birthday Date!
I often sit Eleanor in Anne Marie's armchair while I get Anne Marie ready for nap. While we read stories now, it's easier to put Anne Marie next to Eleanor and I sit on the floor with the book and read to them both. When I set Anne Marie down today she said "Two Girls". It was such a neat moment - yes - my two girls! - and she was so proud of herself when I got excited about her remark. She has started talking and figuring things out so much lately. While these skills have also been accompanied by more frustration and tantrums, it's still amazing to see her growing.
Today is my birthday - so I've declared it a day of indulgence. After Anne Marie's breakfast, we watch the Winnie-The-Pooh movie. Then I put coats over PJs and slippers (for all three of us) and we went to Micky-D's for a biscuit and cinnamon roll for mommy, then ran a couple drive-thru errands and came home to play. Then Anne Marie had an hour of quiet time, while Ellie and Mommy napped. After that, we watched Cars while we ate lunch and Mommy tried to recover from only an hour of nap (I don't really power nap well). Now the girls are napping and (I know Andy probably won't like this) but I bet we'll watch another movie before the girls go to bed. I'm really looking forward to this weekend though. TWO DATES! Whoo hoo. Dinner with Andy tonight and then a wine tasting tomorrow. Should be fun!
Here's an attempt at my first video post... we'll see how it goes. With my new camera (thanks Mom and Dad!!!!), I'll hopefully have lots more video of our everyday life. I think there was an ulterior motive in my birthday gift!! Oh well - can't blame those grandparents for wanting to see more of these two darlings!
OK - I finally threw together some Four Month Photo Shoot Picture of Eleanor! I'm only about 35 days late!
I'm still working on Five Month and Baptism Posts for Eleanor...

OK, so obviously I've been slacking. The excuses are all the same as usual and who knows if there is even anyone out there who is still checking our blog. For those who might be, I wanted to make sure you knew I uploaded a bunch of pictures. Here are some links:

Around the House in January Set
I still have Ellie's 4 month pictures to post (and I'm only 5 days to her 5 month anniversary!) - so hopefully I'll do that soon. I also have a huge list of things to blog about that I want to get to. Someday. :)