Three Months, Really?

On Monday, our little Emilia was three months old. Can you believe it? She's been changing and growing so much these days, that sometimes she seems older than three months. She's started rolling over, both ways, but I don't think she realizes that she can "get around" that way, yet. So far, she just rolls once and then stops. Soon, though, very soon my days of finding her in the same spot I left her will be over.

She's also been talking, mostly only when it's quiet (not too often) and only when someone is "talking" to her. She really spills her heart to Josiah. I don't know what all she tells him, but every time he talks to her she just jabbers away. It's very cute.

I've got videos to share about all of this, but I have to figure out how to upload videos now that we have a REAL video camera and I'm not feeling up to that challenge right now. Maybe later. I've also got to tell you all about Micah's pet 'cause that's a cute story! But for now, here's Molly's three month pictures...I've got to do some editing to the first two, but they're still worth sharing (thanks, Jen, for the adorable bow!):

And We'll Have Fun, Fun, Fun

(sorry, I guess I've got Beach Boys on the brain)

This past weekend we spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning in Gatlingburg with Karen, Nana, Emily and families celebrating Karen and Bruce's 10 year anniversary. I know, MOST couples go somewhere alone to celebrate, but Karen and Bruce thought it would be more fun if we all got together for a game weekend. I don't know about them, but I definitely had more fun than I would have if they had gone off somewhere just the two of them! :)

We played all kinds of games and took the kids to the pool for awhile (actually, everyone else took the kids to the pool, I stayed with Emilia so she could nap) and we all had a really great weekend. Well, John's weekend may not have been quite so spectacular since he had to get up at the crack of dawn to drive an hour and a half to Oak Ridge to be in attendence at traffic school so that his latest ticket won't get reported to our insurance. :( Poor little speed demon, but other than that I think he had a great weekend!

Bonus stories: Micah just asked me to put his watch on so he could tell time. "I need to be able to tell time, so may you please put my watch on may you please." After I got his watch on him he looked at it and said, "It's 30 pounds." Guess we need to work on telling time a bit so he can at least be using the correct measurements!

Micah: Mommy, if I touch this part of my foot, it hurts.
Me: Well, then don't touch it. (I learned this line of sympathy from my own mom)
Micah: But I want to.
Me: Oh. Ok then.
Micah (smashing his fingers into his foot): See?? It hurts!
Me: Sorry 'bout that.

Finally, here is a picture of Josiah and Micah livin' it up at the cabin in Gatlinburg. You should always begin any great adventure with a nap.

And for some reason that is the only picture I took over the weekend, so I dont have any others to share with you. Oh well.

Holden Beach Slideshow

Stories about Holden Beach:

Our trip started with an 8 hour drive, which with little kids (one of whom is an infant and eats every 2 to 3 hours) and a few technical difficulties turned into a 10 hour trip, but most of it was pleasant, amazingly enough! We got a little worried when we were an hour into the trip and Josiah asked how much farther it was to the beach. John and I looked at each other and said, "Oh boy..." But then I guess he settled in for the long haul because he didn't ask again until we were about an hour away from the beach and when we got there he said it had been a fun car ride, so I guess we can't ask for much more than that with three little kids!

The boys had so much fun in the water on this trip to the beach. Last time we went to the beach, Josiah wouldn't even get his feet wet (Micah has always been willing to run in, even at 18 months). The first day he (Josiah) was still a little hesitant, but after that he was in there jumping waves, splashing, "snorkeling" (sticking his face under with the mask), riding the waves...it was fun watching them both enjoy it all so much. Micah was fearless, as usual. In trying to keep up with Josiah and Justin, he got taken down by a couple of waves, but most of the time, he got right back up, spit out the "yucky" water and kept on going. There were a couple of times when he got a double dose of water and then he came out and sat for a few minutes to recover, but within 5 minutes he was back in the water jumping, splashing and laughing.

Josiah went to play golf one day with his Uncle Paul. When he came back we asked how he did and if he had fun and he said, "I hit the ball hard, but Uncle Paul kept hitting it in the sand."

Molly had a good week, though I'm not real sure she knew we were at the beach. It was WAY too bright out there for her, even with a hat in the tent under the umbrella she still had to keep her eyes closed and she screamed about it. And she hated her sunglasses, so other than a few photo ops, she was inside. I do know she enjoyed all of the attention she got there, though, because she has wanted to be held almost all day today!

The kids made some fun crafts while we were there: bucket hats, sand collages, sand castle cake and every day (almost) they drew a picture of their favorite part of the day on a mural. Here are some of the things they listed as favorites:

Micah: Talking to Justin, jumping waves with Mommy, M&Ms, pretzels and raisins (snack--M&Ms were a favorite every day),

Josiah: Playing golf, building a sandcastle, jumping waves, playing in the tidal pool

Other highlights from the trip include, looking at jellyfish, finding a dead crab, seeing a live crab, taking a bike ride with Aunt Jenny and Daniel (they claim to have had fun on this anyway, though you wouldn't have known it at the time because they complained and/or whined the whole time), painting in their underwear, all getting to sleep in the same room, swapping pillows with Justin (he had a Batman one), digging in the sand with shovels (we had four and of course two were better than the others, so it was REALLY fun getting to dig with those), jumping on the beds that they weren't suppose to be jumping on, being bribed with cookies to smile AGAIN for the family pictures...at 8:30 in the morning, Micah being a sabertooth up and down the stairs, going out at night to find ghost crabs, seeing the turtle tracks where a turtle came on shore to lay her eggs, Justin's mask and snorkel, pancakes for breakfast 3 times in a week, getting slimed with sunscreen AGAIN...oh wait, no that wasn't a favorite, the animal visors from gramma, and just playing with their cousins on the beach (or in the house, or on the porch...)

We had a great time last week. Josiah didn't want to come home. In fact, when we were packing up on Friday he said that he was going to stay, so we didn't need to pack his stuff. We convinced him that we would miss him, so he finally agreed to come home, but I think Micah said it best this morning, "Mommy, some day can we go back to the beach? That was fun."

I'm Alive!

For my few regular blog checkers, I thought I'd let you know I'm still alive. We just spent a fantastic week at the beach and I never had the chance to post...too busy enjoying being a beach bum! I'll do a real post about it later, but first I'll tease you with a few pictures:






Proof that John and I were there, too:



More later...

The Reenactment and the Squirrel

Ahh, the attention span of a 4 year old. And I won't even discuss the 3 year old's attention in this. Don't worry, you'll get the squirrel reference at the end.



And here is a story from yesterday...

Background: Every spring we have many crickets that try to make their home in our basement. Most of them are demolished by our fearless hunter (ha!) Boo-Boo, but every year they try again. This year, John sprayed some bug stuff to keep them out, but all it seems to do is kill them after they come in. So now they come in and die and I find dead crickets all over the basement floor. Apparently the boys had never noticed them before yesterday. When they saw them they thought they were spiders and they were afraid they were poisonous (other than that they don't move you can't tell they're dead) and so would not move until I removed the offensive corpses. Now, to be fair, they are pretty creepy looking crickets. Here's a picture I found on the internet so you can know what I'm talking about:


So, they aren't the most attractive cricket ever. Josiah literally stayed standing in the same spot for at least 10 minutes until I got down there to take care of their little issue (I was in the middle of frosting a cake and didn't want to collect cricket corpses in the middle of it). Anyway, here is what they told me later.

Micah: "I might be a little scared of the crickets because there is one that is the biggest cricket of all the crickets and we call him "The King."

Josiah: "Yeah, and inside there is one that we call "The Queen," but you don't have to worry about her because we stepped on her and she splattered."

Hmm. I guess the title of this should be "The Reenactment, The Squirrel and the Cricket."

P.S. You gotta love being a mom when you hand your 3 year old your drink so he can have some and you watch as he takes a drink, stops, licks off the snot that has run down to his lip and then takes another drink. YUM.