A little of this, a bit of that

It seems like we have been so busy lately. All in a good way, just really on the go. A few weeks ago, we traveled to Virginia to spend Thanksgiving with my brother and sister in law. What an awesome time we had. It's so nice to have such a close relationship with the two of them. My sister in law Beth and I went to the same college, so there is this sense of camaraderie there. Radford Girls! Jamie and Charlie, brothers, are just Jamie and Charlie, so it works- of course. Anyway, the kids had a wonderful time spending time with family, playing in the leaves, riding horses (thanks Papa Peter and Dammaw for bringing them over) and bowling. Joshy discovered the Wii this trip and was all over it. There is a reason we wont own one. Thanksgiving dinner was lovely. Charlie and Beth tag teamed the whole operation beautifully. We came home glad to be back but sad to leave what felt like our home away from home.

Picking out a tree, Christmas shopping and decorating the house were next on the list of things to do when we got home. Jamie hung the lights on the house, we picked out our tree as a family, and decorated it together. This year was special because it was obvious that the boys enjoyed the decorating part.. George worked surprisingly diligent. He took special care to make sure the ornaments fit just right. Super Cute. Joshy placed the star on top, while Riley admired all the different colored lights. I managed the hooks and Jame took the pictures. A straight up Beaver Cleaver moment. I'll leave out the part where we fought like ---- trying to decide on weather or not we would use LED lights or yellow lights. Merry Christmas! We are enjoying this holiday seasons filled with cookie parties, Christmas get togethers, holiday music, Bible stories, Santa Claus, trains, lights and each other. A few pictures that captured these events.

A bath before the trip to VA. This is a natural pose. They were all watching TV together. I had to get a picture of this.

Fried turkey for this family.

Papa Peter and Damaws horses. They dwarfed the backyard. It was so cool! The neighbors were in awe.

Joshy on Thor

This picture doesnt do justice to how nice this table looked. It was gorgeous.

Those chocolates Uncle Beth gave her eventually made a huge mess. It doesn't take her long.

How cute! I loved watching this.

Riley picked out these glasses while shopping the day after Thanksgiving.

Joshy hangs the star.

Just us

A moment with George this afternoon was surly worth writing down. Each afternoon, before nap time, I lay with Georgy in his bed and read him a story. It's my way of blocking out 20 minutes of alone time with just George and I. (I do the same with the others, just at different times in tune with their specific schedules) He chooses which book he'd like to read and we share a few special moments. At the end of the book I usually rub his back, play with his hair and snuggle a bit. Today, I attempted to get up without the usual snuggle. Not on purpose, I guess I just didn't realize we had started our own special tradition. He grabs me around the waist and says "Wait mommy, we forgot to snuggle." Melting my heart, I lay back down and snuggle. I cherished that snuggle so much today. As another season approaches, I am so thankful for George and his soft little touches that he saves just for our own special time.

My Baby Blues

Joshua James, my first born. My first child. My very first precious gift from God. What I did to deserve him I will never know. He truly is everything I expected in a boy and much, much more. Today he turns 5 years old. I'm just in awe of where the time went and why I'm so sad to see him grow up. The older he becomes, the more charming he is. Why would I not be thrilled about seeing him at 25? And I am, but I am so sad. I want my first baby boy to stay small and innocent forever. It's selfish, but I want him to be mine and mine only. It's a love to deep and special to give to anyone else. Even though I hear the whisper.....No, he belongs to me. The One who created him. The One who mapped out his life. And I Love him just as much, but more. Joshua is just so special, for more reasons than to list in a blog, but I'm going to give it the ol' college try. First, he was the typical "book" baby. He met each mile stone just like the books recorded. He slept perfectly, had a huge appetite, sucked his thumb, didn't like loud noise, loved to be rocked....with white noise, in a dark bathroom. Okay maybe that wasn't by the books. He walked at the right time, talked on cue, had a strong love for books and music. To me, especially looking back, he was/is so unique. When Joshua was told he was going to be a big brother, it didn't phase him. He tried to test the waters, but really quickly realized that George was here to stay. And after that, he was fine. He accepted George and turns out, he hasn't found a companion more accommodating or willing to wrestle on demand. As Joshy grew bigger, so did his obsessions. It started with the beach. Starting at the ripe age of 6 months, Josh and I played at the beach. It didn't take long for Jamie and I to notice how interesting it was that he seemed to study the waves. Even now, he spends most of his time watching the waves, commenting on the change of tides, and just watching. Next was the flag. He adored the American flag. He could not of made his very conservative father more proud. He pointed each one out, sang the Star Spangled Banner by heart at 2 1/2, knew the pledge of allegiance verse by verse, the Fourth of July was his favorite holiday. He adored flags. Next came trains. Not as long a love as flags, nonetheless, trains became pretty cool. And so what did Jamie and I do? We introduced him to Thomas. We forked out the money for each Thomas the Train character, even contemplated a train table, only to watch the trend shift to cars. The Disney movie changed our family. Josh became a fan at 3 and early 4 of Lightening McQueen, Mater, The King, Chicks Hicks and the rest of the other Cars characters. Once again we fed his love by buying his favorite cars and watching he and George replay the movie on our living room floor. Racing the cars back and forth. Jamie recognized this as an opportunity to introduce Josh into his own weird love for Nascar. Joshua ate it up. He loved the real life aspect of Nascar. He studied the cars, listened to the commentary and mimicked it once again on our living room floor.Only this time, he created his race track on our braided rug so he could pretend it was a real track. Nascar, as hard as this is to admit, is pretty popular in our home. So as I've watched my first born son grow from a chubby baby into a little boy, birthday themes have changed, clothes sizes have gotten bigger, song choices more mature and language more grown up but what has stayed the same is his most precious disposition when he is trying to be sweet or funny. the way he uses his "det" to rub his nose and mouth while sucking his thumb. The way he holds his cup to the side when he drinks. How he uses his hands to describe something really important he is trying to say. The way he still thinks Jamie and I are the most incredible people on the planet. His love for his brother and now his baby sister. And his sweet baby blues. I can't imagine what I did to deserve this precious little gift 5 years ago today. I pray that as he continues to grow that he will become a boy, a teenager, a young man that loves God, loves his family and experiences life to the fullest. I am so excited to see what the next five years has in store for Joshua.

What a weekend

I always dread this time of year, although for a handful of reasons it is the best season here in Wilmington, Im still always bummed that winter is fast approaching. I am a summer kind of girl. My kids are summer kids, and the hubby is a warm weather junkie also. This summer has been different though. For the first time in roughly 8 years, I've spent this summer without KJ. It's really sucked. Today I was reminded of how much I miss her. Today was one of those days where because we knew our time was limited at the beach, we'd spend as much time at the water as we could. Especially on such a gorgeous day like today. Well, I went.....it was nice. Really great to be with my family, but not the same. Blah, Blah, Blah.... Sorry I dont know where that came from. I'm listening to sad, girly music. My original post was intended to share our awesome weekend in Raleigh together. Not complain about how much I miss, miss,miss, miss KJ. Back on track. This past weekend the Bentley's and us drove to my parent's house in Raleigh to meet up so we could see our favorite comedian Brian Regan. We truly invaded my parent's house with Chris, KJ, their two kids, Jamie, me, our three kids and our dog Kidd. It was chaos. Marvelous chaos. We pulled in around 6pm on Friday, dropped ALL the kiddies with my folks and walked out the door at 6:30 to drive to Durham. Laughed our buns off at the show, went out afterward for dinner/apps and drinks and came home around 12:30am. It was a fun, fun time. We always have such a great time together. It's just wonderful to see Jamie and Chris talk, laugh, share their thoughts together. I just love their friendship. Kinda reminds me of how KJ and I are. Saturday was spent watching the kids play. Remembering temperaments, idiosyncrasies, listening to how much language had been learned, or not learned when any one of them was falling to the ground throwing a fit. It was so good to see how well they got along, falling right back into the swing of things. KJ and I managed a trip to Target, alone with no children. That was really fun. Came home and geared up ourselves as well as our children for a Virginia Tech - Miami game. Turnout was victory. Bathed the children, put them to bed and spent another night of much needed quality time together. Really one of the best weekends I've had in a long time. All the times we've spent together seem so taken for granted when this past weekend was so cherished. Take a look why.

I mean..... the smiles

Meme

Playing Uno

Eating ribs during the game

Two precious babes

Tech took it out of Jamie and Chris
(sorry guys, had to post one of the whole gang)

Sarah Elizabeth and Riley

Where is Grace?

Good-bye Bentley's. We'll miss you!

Perfect Pairs

There is something special about these pairs!

B&E turned Birthday

Something really cool happened to our family this week. Our laptop came back.
I've got to preface this entry with a bit of background information. A few Tuesdays ago, maybe 3, I pulled into my driveway and noticed my dog standing on my front porch. In my head, I thought about how unusual this was for 2 reasons...1) I normally dont leave Kidd outside when I am not home, and 2) I vividly remember having to drag his old hind into the house b/c it was so stinkin' hot. Not thinking much of this at the time, I leave the kids in the car while I grab all of our junk, unlock the door and then head back out to help them out of carseats and inside. As I'm pushing the door open, it takes about 30 seconds for me to realize someone has broken into our house. The glass from the back door has been shattered and is all over the family room and the TV is gone. This is all I notice or care to notice as I turn around get back into my car, and call the police. Lots more unfolds, but for time sake I'll spare all the details. The cops and my hubby take care of all the nity gritty while I retreat to a friends house down the street to spare the children all the destruction to the house. After a long afternoon, I come home to find things turned upside down literally. Movie style unbelieveable. The only rooms not taken apart drawer by drawer, cabnet by cabnet, were the kids rooms. Every single item in my house sifted through, turned over, taken, or thrown on the floor. It was hard to see. Through it all though, Jamie and I felt this sense of peace. I know that sounds "Yea, right" but it is true. We weren't scared, didn't feel violated (although we did wash a ton of sheets, underwear, bathing suits.....) we just walked from room to room cleaning as much as we could so that our kids wouldn't know or sense anythng bad had happened. Occasionally, Jamie and I would hug, ask one another if he/she was okay, then be on to the next task. In all, we recognized that all we had lost was "stuff." Our family was safe and we could have cared less about anything else. Except, our laptop. One of the first things Jamie said to me when the police arrived and were searching the house was "We've just lost all of our pictures." They even took our hard drive that had the backups to our pictures. The videos of each childs birth. First days of school, first steps, first feedings, and the list goes on. So we really mourned this aspect of the robbery. We had hope though. We believed that we might get our pictures back, as far fetched as it seemed, we did think we might. A week or so goes by our hope dwindles a tad, we visit Costco and some other stores pricing laptops and cameras, video recorders, new televisions. We go on vacation and come back to find a card on our door from the police officer who was on our case. He says they have found the couple who broke into our home and they think they have recovered our LAPTOP! The one with all the pictures. Indeed they had. Jamie walks in the front door, home from work, not having said a word about having my laptop in his possession, with the birth of Riley playing on the screen. Prayers answered????? You bet. We sat together watching all the videos of the day our kids were born, silly pics of each one of them. The pictures you dont send to anyone, but cherish more than you can imagine. And we're so thankful. A little wowed too. Wowed that our cries were met with the goodness of trusting in our hope. This laptop has been my little reminder of that. Really pretty cool.

Although our camera is gone, the day before the break in, I uploaded the pictures from George's 3rd birthday. I am so glad about that. Upon request we spent the day at the beach with friends and family. We played in the surf, ate pizza and chocolate covered pretzels. Here are a few pics.

His new crocs.

The number 3 pinata.

After pizza and chocolate covered pretzels. Upon request of course.