December Days

After Kaitlyn's birthday, we settled in to the Christmas season.  First we put up the tree, haha. I know some of you think I'm crazy for not already having it up but
1. I was busy
2. All I could see was a rainy day confining 12 little kids in my house with the extra hazard/ annoyance of them possibly destroying my tree or some sentimental decoration on said tree.
3. I wanted the focus to be on Kaitlyn's birthday, not Christmas. Especially since we had to cancel her Alabama birthday party last year due to sickness making its rounds in our house/ impossible schedules for the rest of the month.
All of that to say, don't judge me. HAHA.

So anyway, we had a great Christmas season... until we all passed the stomach bug around that is :/  O well, here are the pictures. I know that why the grandparents read all this anyway...

Candy canes were first one the tree. The girls were dying to start decorating but I wasn't ready to set them loose with the real ornaments. I remembered the candy canes and they saved the day... or at least the time until dinner was ready ;)

I just love her :)

And I love my Addison!!

The clustered ornaments made me smile. I have a feeling this will be our last year for this :( Addison really caught on to the fact that they are "supposed to be" spread out all over the tree. I probably should have kept that to myself.

Cutest sisters ever! I was/ am in love with those jammies too. So cute and comfy feeling!

December is all fun and games until (2) someone(s) go for well checks ;) Thankfully Laura, the best nurse ever, came to the rescue with ring pops for both of them. Chick fil a helped them to recover too, haha.

Does it get any cuter than that?

Or sweeter than this one?

Christmas day pictures coming soon!

Kaitlyn's Birthday

Our sweet Kaitlyn turned 2 this December!! She was trying to convince us that she was really turning 3 but we could not be fooled ;)

The birthday girl had a fun filled day but first we started off with cupcakes for breakfast of course!

Just a couple hours later we had lots of friends over for Kaitlyn's special birthday party. She had a Wonder Pets party but she didn't seem to care all that much about the theme ;) 

She did enjoy the cupcakes though! The preschool parents among you should be proud of my handiwork, haha.

The weather was absolutely GORGEOUS so we took full advantage and did pretty much the whole party outside. Everyone had fun, the kids could run around and be crazy to their hearts content and cleanup was a breeze- perfect party!

I adore this picture of Kaitlyn :)

No party is complete without presents is it? Her party must have been extra complete- she made out like a bandit!

All in all it was a great day... I'll bet you'll never guess what she had for dinner that night.

ICE CREAM!!!

Yes, we did try (not too hard) to get her to eat real dinner first but when you look this cute AND it's your birthday, you get the ice cream regardless of the fact that you took one tiny bite of dinner :))

November News

Nanny's visit came to a close on the second day of November. She found a cheap flight out of New Orleans and therefore gave us an excuse to go exploring since none of us had been there.  We started off the day at Cafe Du Monde for beignets. 

A little anxious for "doughnuts" to arrive= not so cooperative for pictures.

In front of the St Louis Cathedral. When I backed away to take this picture (in an attempt to capture the whole building), two guys passed by me "hitting on me". That is an overly nice description for the not so nice things they were saying.  Needless to say we headed back to the main street. Eww.

We were about finished walking around and then we happened upon the French Market. This is probably the best selection of little shops but it was still a small selection. The French Market did offer some amazing food though!

Cajun Cafe at the Market
This place was amazing! The gumbo was by far the best I've ever had AND the prices were great!!

We had a good time walking around and experiencing New Orleans. We were not overly impressed but we were glad to add it to our list of places we've been.

The next two weeks were focused on gearing up for Miss Addison's Pinkalicious Party.  I try to make the girls' birthdays as special as possible on their actual birth day. When I asked Addison what she wanted for her special breakfast, she exclaimed "cupcakes!!" Apparently last year's breakfast was a hit ;)  The cupcake was only the beginning of a fun, all about Addison day.

Cupcakes she wanted, so a cupcake she had!

Addison decided she wanted her party at the park so that's where we had it! She and her friends had a great time but I did a horrible job of capturing the party :/

Play time! Park parties are so easy ;)

Present time! Thank you everyone :)

 Late afternoon on the day of Addison's party, Grammy came! Yay!! The girls were super excited AND Grammy even brought presents! (surprise, surprise- hehe)

Birthday present time!

Although Thanksgiving week comes with plenty of distractions, we managed to still find a fun outing :) It was our first time at the botanical gardens and we had a great time looking around at all the flowers and trees. 

Addison and her BFF, Briana

Grammy and her girls

This water fountain was probably their favorite part ;)

Handprint Turkeys for Thanksgiving!! Too bad we never really finished them, we just have cute hand prints.

They sure had fun though!

Playing a game with Grammy

We had so much fun with Grammy but her trip came and went entirely too quickly! 

It was a fun month but it sure was busy!

October in Review

I don't want to just skip over all the time I've missed so I'm going to try to do a quick series and just give you the highlights.

We drove home for another wedding! We sure have done that quite a few times in our 5.5 years of marriage and Coast Guard life! This time it was for Geoff and Avery Smith's happy day :) I took maybe two pictures of the whole day :/ Gordon was in the wedding and I was just grateful the girls stayed mostly quiet.  They were exhausted by the time we made it to the reception so I had my arms quite full. It was an absolutely gorgeous wedding though and we were thrilled to be able to be there!!

The morning after the wedding, we drove back to Alabama and brought my mom with us!

We had so much fun for over two full weeks! It was the longest my mom has ever gotten to stay and we took full advantage. Here are just a sprinkling of the 945 pictures we took. You only think I'm kidding about the number. I'm not.

We HAD to go back to the "Train Place" as Addison calls it. She loved it again and Kaitlyn loved it this time too!

We also ventured over to Pensacola to watch the Blue Angels and it was SO worth it!! We loved it and the girls did too. Much to my surprise, they had a blast at the museum too and cried when we had to leave!

They loved playing in all the different airplanes!

And using the big guns ;)

I think this might be my favorite picture of Nanny and Kaitlyn to date!

This and the picture of mom and Kaitlyn were both from our night at the fair :)

We love this picture!! This is from our night at Bellingrath Gardens :)

GREAT picture of Mom and the girls at Bellingrath

Our two beautiful trick or treaters :)) We were so happy to have Nanny go with us this year!

Don't be fooled, we went many more places and did plenty more fun things but I had to narrow it down to the best pictures.  I'll be posting more on Facebook soon...