baby update

Posted by Aaron and Lisa

I am 11 weeks along in the pregnancy and very thankful for a good appointment yesterday. We were able to see the baby via ultrasound, so I thought you might like to see one of the pictures they printed for us!

The baby is only about an inch and a half long!

I have been very hungry for the past two months, and haven't been too nauseated. It's been very similar to the previous pregnancies...the biggest difference is that my waistline is growing A LOT faster this time and I've even started wearing maternity jeans.

Thanks to everyone for being excited with us!

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sneak peek

Posted by Aaron and Lisa

yes, still

Posted by Aaron and Lisa

We still have Christmas bows on the windows of our house. Go ahead, you can judge us.

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cake attack

Posted by Aaron and Lisa

Last weekend I took V to a birthday party for one of her preschool friends at Burger King.

She sat beside her good buddy Tiffany, after almost an hour of pure bliss in the play area.

Then the cake came. She didn't immediately have a fork in front of her, so this was her next logical move.

I couldn't even get her to lift her face for another picture with her friend! She tried, but she just couldn't part with it, so she brought the plate up with her. She's crazy!

I had some more pictures of the kids playing at the party, but they all turned out blurry because they were moving too fast.

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1.23.12 books

Posted by Aaron and Lisa

Books on CD from the library...perfect for rest time!

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family time

Posted by Aaron and Lisa

Last Sunday after naps we took the girls to the Salem Civic Center for the indoor carnival they held for children. We stayed for about an hour or less, but they were thrilled. It's so fun to see them get excited about things! They rode several rides, played a game, and then Vivian got her face painted (she anticipated that the whole time). It was nice to get them out of the house to do something especially for them.

On one of the first rides, Kate looked at me and said, "Take my picture, Mom!" I think she's got the idea about moms and their cameras :)

I think it was the first time that either of them have asked to have their picture taken and then posed. Funny!

(I tried to do a special effect on that picture, if you're thinking it looks strange)

Vivian chose to have a pink butterfly painted on half of her face. She loved it!

We all knew that Kate would do better with just something small painted on her hand :) She was just as happy with that, and the man did it for free thankfully!

Their favorite ride was the merry-go-round!

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we need our bathtub back

Posted by Aaron and Lisa

Kate has always had a significant dislike (understatement!) for taking a shower. Now that our bathroom is being remodeled, our only choice for bathing is the downstairs shower. It has been quite the ordeal as you can see...screams straight out of a horror movie. This particular instance, V was upset about the temperature of the water, so you can hear how fun our nights can be. ha!!
We've figured out some other alternatives...bathing her in the sink, or taking them over to my parents' house to use their tub. But I'm sure you can understand why they've only been getting washed a couple times a week lately :)
You can't see anything but the door because the girls were naked, obviously. And another thing about the video: don't you love how calm and patient Aaron is being with them?! Sigh.

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the golden hour(s)

Posted by Aaron and Lisa

Every once in a while when Kate is taking a nap, I sneak in to look at her for a few minutes. It's a joy to see her still and quiet. It's almost like a subtle refresher for me, to get me ready for the afternoon and evening.

Those couple of hours around 1:30 are a gift of grace for all moms, I know. It's certainly necessary to give us a chance to catch our breath! This 2-year-old is a sweetie but she's also good at sucking all my energy :)

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dad's 60th

Posted by Aaron and Lisa

Last Saturday we threw a party for our Dad's 60th birthday! It was a fun, easy party to prepare and we all enjoyed it so much.

We all met at Mom and Dad's house and started things in the early evening.

The most special thing about the party was the people that joined us. My Dad's mom, brother, and sisters and their spouses all came from North Carolina (actually, almost everyone came from NC! We were so thankful they made the drive for this occasion). Michael takes the prize for coming the farthest...he is living in NYC and caught a bus to Virginia!! We had a good crowd of about 20.

I didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked, but here are some to give you a good idea of how we celebrated.

Stephen and I gathered as many pictures of Dad from the last 60 years as we could. He printed them in B&W and I mounted them in this shadow box frame in the shape of a six and a zero. I had a lot of fun looking through all the pictures...some good laughs and sweet "awwws" there :)

This doubled as a party decoration and a gift for Dad.

Erin Carroll made this cake for us...perfect! She used the colors from his airplane (we also matched the plates/balloons/etc. to these colors). The design is from the tail of the plane, and she used some delicious marshmallow fondant in addition to the regular icing. There were lots of comments on the cake, as is usual for her cakes!

Stephen blew up some of Dad's old school pictures to use as a decoration above one of the food tables.

Stephen used all of the pictures he had scanned to make a DVD slideshow. We used this to get the party started. After we watched this once or twice through, we began with dinner.

The young girls were really into the slideshow! Cute! In the middle is our cousin's little girl, Hannah. She is 6 and precious...I was so glad that V and K got to spend time with her last weekend.

The rest of us were glued to the pictures, too. It was a fun way to start the party.

I know my Dad was really happy that Granny came up from Lucama to be there!

Chris and Lynn are my Grandma's neighbors and long-time friends from Raleigh. It was nice to get to know them better and party with them.

Michael and our cousin Amy

Sisters! Aunt Julie and Aunt Stella

The cake table with a view of the invitation

The birthday man and his firstborn

We put these chalk decals on the walls around the room for people to write on. In addition to this acrostic, we had one that said, "5 things we love about Larry" and one that said, "5 birthday wishes."

Kate was in and out of Papa's arms the whole night. Of course she wanted to be in on the present-opening!

The main gift for the birthday was this group of envelopes: "60 years of memories." Over the past two months (but actually most people sent theirs in during the last two weeks!), I've been collecting written memories that people have of Dad from the last 60 years. The response was great...he had everyone from family to old friends to employees to fellow battery distributors to send in a note. Lots of them were sent in the mail handwritten, but we had some emails, too. Everyone wrote a specific memory that they have of doing something with Dad or something that he did...it was so much fun putting them all together! It was a great project for me!

I split them up into separate airmail envelopes and numbered each of them, up to 60.

During the party, we passed out all the envelopes to everyone who was there, and we each read them out loud to Dad, one by one, in order. It was a cool experience for us to all do it together. We were able to really celebrate him and his past as a family!

After that, we cut the cake and hung out some more. It was very relaxing and enjoyable.

Thanks for taking the time to look through these pictures from the party! And thanks to everyone who came...it meant so much to us all, especially to Dad.

Happy 60th birthday, Dad!

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jenga!

Posted by Aaron and Lisa

New Year's Eve 2011

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1.9.12 goodbye, bathroom

Posted by Aaron and Lisa

We started a bathroom remodel today. Well, to rephrase that, Wayne started a bathroom remodel for us today. We are anticipating a new, clean bathroom in about 6 weeks. In the next few days, if anyone can find some cool bathroom ideas on Pinterest, let me know! Or if you can think of some "must-haves" for designing your own bathroom, please email me.

They are ripping the tub out now (which he found out is the original tub from 1939!), and little Kate Kate is sleeping right through it, in the next room over. Gotta love a good sleeper :)

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1.8.12 my grocery helpers

Posted by Aaron and Lisa

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Christmas 2011

Posted by Aaron and Lisa

Wow, I'm so late in sharing these pictures with you, but I still wanted to get them on here for us to look back on later!
We had a great Christmas. Our holiday season was the smoothest one so far with the babies because they are old enough to go with the flow more and are also so much fun!
The weekend before Christmas we were in NC for Aaron's family party. We really enjoyed spending so much time with them. The first pictures from the album below come from that day. About halfway through the album, it switches to all the pictures from Christmas Eve at my parents' house. We had some guests that day, as you'll see, and it was a very relaxing time for all of us!

I only took a few pictures on my phone from Christmas Day. We got up that Sunday morning and had a normal routine because we were going to church, but after naps we opened a few gifts together and spent the rest of the afternoon and night just hanging out and playing!

We got the girls a puppet theater, so Aaron put on a show for them right away. They were thrilled about it and have a lot of fun with this gift.

Aaron went shopping for them and got this gun. They didn't like being shot at (of course!) but they thought it was funny to find a target and shoot at it :)

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