Our Holidays

We drove home to Georgia for Thanksgiving this year.  Chris took a few vacation days so that we would have a little over a week to spend with all of our family.  I miss Trenton and living on the mountain, so it was so relaxing to be able to spend several days up there.  The leaves were falling - it is still very green in Florida - and it was so beautiful.  Papaw (Chris' dad) had raked his leaves into a BIG pile a couple of days before we arrived.  The girls took care of those carefully piled leaves almost as soon as we got there! 

 

 

The Monday after we got home from our Thanksgiving trip, I had an OB/GYN appointment to find out whether we were being blessed with another baby girl or our first baby boy.  And...

BOY! YAY!  We are all SO excited!  Baby boy Daffron can't get here soon enough!  There are 3 little girls I know just waiting to love on him!  Less than 16 weeks to go!

 

 

Since we spent so much time at home during Thanksgiving, we had to stay in Orlando for Christmas.  We spent Christmas Eve at aunt Lynn's house, and spent the day together as a family Christmas Day.  A couple of days before Christmas, we made home-made sugar cookies and the girls decorated them with different colored icing and sprinkles. Here is a picture of all of our cookies:

 

 

 During the cookies decorating we had to take a break to make funny faces.  Love my girls!

 

Our Christmas was wonderful - the girls were excited with every gift they received.  We are so very blessed, and I can't wait to see what 2013 brings us!  I'll leave you with a few pictures from our Christmas.

 

 

 

 



 



 

 



 

LIfe is GOOD...

We enjoy life so much and so fast (sometimes) that I forget that I need to blog about it!  So, a few things have happened since the summer...

 

Halle started Kindergarten, and Hannah started the 4th grade.  Halle was so proud that she was going to school.  They both have amazing teachers, and are still enjoying school.  I'm thankful that they both love to learn.

 

Hannah turned 10!  My in-laws drove down for a week visit during Hannah's birthday week, and that made Hannah feel extra special that they were going to be here for her birthday.  Chris' parents, Bill and Brenda, stayed in our camper at a campsite near where we live.  The girls loved getting out of school and heading over to the campsite every afternoon.  They really miss our big backyard we had in Trenton, and they were able to run around and play in the dirt.  I don't think anyone enjoyed the dirt more than Piper did.

 

Back to Hannah's birthday...  She requested Cici's Pizza for her birthday dinner, and she had also already requested her birthday gift.  Hannah had been saving for an iPad for quite a while, and with the birthday money from me and Chris, and grandparents, she finally hit her goal.  I love that she can save towards a goal, keep focused on it, and eventually reach it. 

 

Here she had just take a big bite out of her oversized cupcake.  I can't believe she is 10.  It feels like just a few months ago that we were having her first birthday.  I love this girl more than she'll ever know!

 

Just one more exciting happening to talk about... 

 

Haha, yep, we are adding baby #4 to the Daffron family at or around April 23.  

 

 For any Facebook-ers that read my blog (haha, like all 2 of you, haha) - I'm not really ready to be Facebook outed just yet.  I wanted to get baby on our blog, but I'm having funny feelings about Facebook...not sure why, but just humor me, okay? : )  We will find out sex as soon as we get back from our Thanksgiving vacation, and I'm sure I'll break down and Facebook about it as well as blog about it.  So, in the mean time, just help us pray for that BOY!  : )

 

 

 

Wordless Wednesday...well, almost!

ONE and FIVE!

In late February, Piper turned ONE!  In early March, Halle turned FIVE!  I know this post is a little (or a lot) late, but better late than never, right?  Being that their birthdays are so close together, we try to make sure that we have a separate special day for each.  We don't have all of the kids' friends or their cousins here in Orlando, so we don't do the traditional party.  Mamaw and Papaw (Chris' parents) did come down that week, so it was still exciting for them. 

For Piper's birthday, we let her go through the "her age" toy section to see if anything caught her eye. She roamed and played with almost everything! We ended up just picking out a couple of toys for her, and then we went to pick up her cake.

 



She wasn't really sure what to do with the cake, but once she got going, I think she decided that

she  liked it!

Once she was finished, though, she wanted Daddy to clean off her hands right away.  She didn't like that she could wipe off all of the icing and cake.









Halle requested that for her day we take her to Build-A-Bear to spend some of her birthday money, and she wanted to shop at the mall with what she had left over.  After taking her out to breakfast, we headed to Build-A-Bear.  She choose to build a Hello Kitty, and promptly named her Molly.

Here she is putting Molly's heart inside of her.

She really liked giving her a bath.

She even let big sister in on some of the fun!

It makes me sad that our little girls are growing up so fast, but I'm very proud of them!





Mr. Mugsy

Since we decided to lease our house in Trenton instead of selling it, we haven't yet bought a permanent house here in Orlando.  That causes our weekends to be very free!  At home, if we had a free weekend, it was almost always spent working in the yard or updating something on our house.  Being that we have no house maintenance here, we are constantly looking for things to fill our weekends (if we aren't at the beach).  So, during one of our outings in downtown Orlando, we came across a little dog rescue group called Florida Little Dog Rescue.  It's locally owned and basically they scour the pounds rescuing as many dogs as they can.  Many are hurt and hungry.  They adopt the dogs out of the pounds, fully vet them, and place them in one of their foster homes.  Once in a home, they try to get a feel of the personality of the dog, guide potty training, and give lots of love!  This is where we met Mugsy.

When we all decided to adopt a dog, Chris made the request that we adopt one that actually needed adopting.  When he saw Mr. Mugsy that weekend, he knew that this was our dog.  See, Mr. Musgy has only 3 legs.  He was dropped off at the vet with only 3, so FLDR didn't know any details about how he had lost it.  Halle fell in love immediately.  According to Halle, Mugsy was special.  Like her.  Halle calls her little eye "special", and whenever she sees a child/animal with a disability or just something not "perfect" or ordinary, she refers to the disability or abnormality as special.  This isn't a "special" like she is feeling sorry for anyone; she uses her meaning for "special" to mean a blessing.  She was very excited that Mr. Mugsy was so special, like her.  Yeah, Mugsy was the one for us, and FLDR agreed! 

This was the weekend that we met Mr. Mugsy.  He was talking because he was so excited to have some kids to play with!  As long as our visitations went well (they went fantastically!), we were able to take him home later that day!

He has turned out to be an amazing little dog.  He meshed with our family perfectly.  Even Piper, just learning to walk at that time, didn't phase him.  He loves to lie on the back of the couch, and if he is in our bed, he likes to be under the covers that I have at the foot of our bed.



He loves to ride in the car with us, and he prefers to hang his head out of the window while we are driving.  If he can't do that, he is content to find a lap to lie down in.  He hates for the girls to go outside to play without him.  If they leave, he cries at the door for them.  He is just perfect!

At Beach Playalinda

With us living so close to the beach (about 40 minutes), we go quite often.  Our girls, even Piper, absolutely love everything about the beach, and will play for hours.  Plus, it is very relaxing for me! 

We've tried out several public beaches close to Orlando, and found all of them to be clean and nice, but crowded.  We really wanted to get away from a lot of the crowds, and especially find a beach that you weren't allowed to drive on.  (Mommy's annoying safety issues...)  We ended up finding a stretch of beach called Playalinda.  It is located in a national park, and a little farther out than the beaches we had previously been visiting.  The beach is heavenly!  You can't see anything but green (grass/trees), sand, and water!  No hotels, restaurants, cars, or crazy college kids...it was amazingly un-crowded and had a secluded feeling.  We'll definitely be re-visiting.  The only downside was that they don't allow pets, so poor Mr. Mugsy had to remain at home this trip.  Oh, of course, I took my camera, so here are pictures:

One of the reasons that I love to take them to the beach is that they play so well once we are there.  No fighting, screaming, tantrums, or messes...I love it!

Hannah and Halle made Piper her own little wade pool.  Every time the tide would come in it would fill up her little pool.  Piper played in it for the longest time!

Here are a couple of Piper:

And now Halle:

And my big girl, Hannah...  She loves the beach and ocean the most, I think.  It's hard to capture too many pictures of her because she is so busy playing the whole time.  Here, though, she was relaxing and swimming around on her wakeboard. 

Merry *cough, cough* Christmas!

As most of you know, Santa Clause comes to our house on Christmas Eve morning. He brings one wrapped gift and he fills their stockings. (We don't want to rob our kids of the "Santa" magic, but we also want them to understand the real meaning of Christmas.   We think it just helps the kids remember that it isn't all about gifts.)  This year he brought them a game each, and a lap desk each for the big girls.  Hannah was very happy about her new Sequence game!

Christmas Eve evening we went over to Mr. Frank and Lynn's house to have finger foods and play games.  Dave and Katie were there, too, and we had a good time!  As we were getting ready to leave, Lynn hugged Hannah and said that she felt a little warm.  Sure enough, she was running a fever.  By the time we got back home, Halle was also running a fever.  I medicated them both, and hoped that Piper didn't get sick also.

The girls slept later this Christmas morning than they normally do, I guess mainly because they were sick.  I was a little impatient, but they eventually got up and were ready to open gifts!  Halle was very excited about every gift she opened.

Piper, however, didn't enjoy opening gifts.  She didn't think that ripping the paper off was fun.  The girls and I had to help her open every gift.  Once the paper was torn, though, she was curious as to what was inside.

For the rest of the day, the girls were very content to play with their new things and each other.  We could tell that they still didn't feel good, so we took it easy and had a slow, relaxing day.  I was glad that we didn't have to travel, but I did miss our families. 

Even with the sickness, it was a wonderful Christmas.  We are so blessed.