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.





Halloween, Thanksgiving, and then Christmas

For Halloween, we dressed all the girls as a type of bug.  Hannah was a bee, Halle a ladybug, and Piper was a butterfly.  Piper didn't think that the costumes or candy was all that great, but Hannah and Halle were really excited!

Evidently, Baldwin Park (where we live in Orlando) is one of the best places to trick-or-treat as there were kids and adults everywhere.  Some of the bigger houses (and I mean huge) were giving out king size candy bars, and there was a line (yes, I said line) from their front door down the sidewalk at least a block.  After the kids had filled their buckets (it didn't take long), we gave out candy until we ran out and had to turn kids away.  I have never seen anything like that Halloween before.


About a week before Halloween, we bought some small white pumpkins for the girls to carve.  We don't really have a decent outside area here in the apartment to carve big ones, so we went with smalls ones.  It turned out to be brilliant as the girls didn't require as much help cleaning them out or carving them, and they really enjoyed getting to do the majority of the work themselves.  Hannah and Halle were really proud of their work, and Piper seemed to think that her pumpkin (after throughly checking it out) tasted pretty good.



Okay, on to Thanksgiving...

We drove up to Georgia for Thanksgiving and had Thanksgiving dinner at my sister's house.  It was nice to be with everyone again for a while.  It wasn't too cold Thanksgiving Day, so the kids were able to play outside and spread out.  While we were there, Jack and I made Mom an apron with all of the grandkids handprints and names.  It turned out so cute!  I also gave Mom her salt-dough hands that my girls had made for her for Christmas since we aren't going to be traveling back to Georgia for Christmas.  Before we left, Jack had all the kids pile up in front of her tree and she snapped some pictures.  I think it is pretty good considering how many kids we were trying to get calm and happy! 



When we got home from Georgia, I was very eager to get our Christmas decorations out and start decorating for Christmas!  Since we are in an apartment right now, we are using apartment sized trees and things.  I thought that little trees would be boring and disappointing, but I love how they turned out!

So, I guess that's all until Christmas gets here....oh, I can't wait!  I love Christmas time - let the Christmas music begin! 



Happy 9th, Hannah!

Last week, Hannah celebrated her 9th birthday (*sniff*).  Where has all the time gone??  Of course we made some October themed cookies and took them for her to share with her classroom, but other than that, we didn't have any set plans for her birthday weekend.  My aunt and uncle, Ginger and Warren, were in Florida visiting that weekend so we decided just to get all the kids together and let them play.  We all gathered at a resort here in Orlando - The Fountains - and we let the kids swim together for hours.  I think they had really missed each other!  

 

Normally, I give Hannah money for her birthday and we take her shopping on the day that we celebrate her birthday so that she can spend it.  This year she asked that we go ahead and pick out her gifts for her and wrap them.  It was hard!  The older she gets, the harder she is becoming to buy for.  I think I did well, though...at least, I didn't receive any complaints!  Here she is opening her Dork Diaries books.  I think that they were one of her favorite gifts...she reads them constantly!

 

The next day, we gathered at Aunt Lynn and Frank's house.  We celebrated Kristen's birthday, and spent our last day with Warren, Ginger, and the kids before they had to head back to Trenton.  Mr. Frank took all the kids down to the dock and let them all fish, and before it was over, I think every child had caught at least one fish.  They were so happy with themselves! 

I hope that she enjoyed her birthday.  I love that kid so much, and she really is growing up way too fast.

This past weekend, we loaded the girls in the wagon and took a walk to downtown Baldwin.  We had lunch by the lake, and then stopped for some frozen yogurt.  On our way back, we decided to stop and get Piper her very first haircut.  She was so good! This picture was taken right before she was finished. 

I love her new little haircut, it looks so much better!  The lady that cut her hair gave us a cute little certificate with Piper's name and the date.  She also taped some of Piper's cut hair to the certificate.

  The hair cut must have relaxed her, because, on the way back she fell asleep sitting upright in the wagon!  We laid her down into Halle's lap (this thrilled Halle), and we continued walking....but I couldn't help but snap a picture! : )  Love those little faces!!