Thanksgiving Day

I will admit that in the past I have let some of the craziness of the holidays get to me.  Not this year!  Thanksgiving snuck up on me so fast there was no time to feel the craziness.  We had a truly wonderful Thanksgiving this year! 

Caroline and I woke up early to go cheer on Daddy as he ran in his first even 10k!  He did a great job and beat his goal time!



Mark looks pretty good, even after 6 miles!

We arrived home to find Lindsay and Libby doing some planning for the Black Friday extravaganza.  We may have scored a "new" refrigerator since Lindsay and Brad got a real new one on the big shopping day!

One of the reasons that Thanksgiving seemed so wonderful this year is because everyone had their part in helping out. 



Caroline is getting to be quite the little chef too.  She helped make some chocolate chip cookies before everyone arrived!

We started one new tradition...writing things we are thankful for on our table runner.  We then write our name/year next to it and will pull it out again next year and add to it.  We were trying to write things unique to us or this year (Mom wrote about her Sew Divine business and Mark I wrote about the addition of Baby Libby to our family).
   

We also continued the traditions from Vern's family of doing puzzles together at the holidays.  The whole family took part in the 1000 piece puzzle and completed it in 24 hours.  I will admit that I contributed the fewest pieces.  

Other than that, we just hung out and enjoyed the company of family.  We watched my new favorite cartoon "Sid, the Science Kid." 

 

I'm beginning to consider a tv...

Yea for restful, fun family time!



Sisterly Love!

As a parent, dividing attention between two little girls can be a challenge at times.  I am glad to say that Caroline adores Libby and that makes it a little easier.  She is constantly talking to her, hugging and kissing her.  She says, "smile me" all the time.  Thankfully, Libby returns the love!

Mark's Birthday Weekend

Today is Mark's 39th birthday! We had a great weekend celebrating all of his years. :-)  Most of Mark's birthday weekend consisted of eating his favorite foods.  I know what makes him happy.  :-)  Friday night we had pizza for dinner.  Saturday morning we woke up early and got online so that we could sign up for one of Mark's birthday presents - swim lessons.  The Cobb County parks and recreation offer swim lessons at a reasonable price but they fill up within 5 minutes of registration being opened!  Thankfully, Mark was signed in and ready to go.  He will start his swim lessons in January!  woohoo!  Afterwards we went to Canvas for breakfast.

I think both girls enjoyed it!

After breakfast I told Mark that I needed some "alone time" after being by myself with the girls all week.  He agreed.  My alone time consisted of spending a couple of hours at Lindsay's house preparing for a surprise party!!   Brad and Lindsay were so kind to offer to host a surprise party for Mark at their home.  There is no way that I could have kept it all a secret at our own house.  I dumped stuff at their house all week and they helped me get everything ready. 

Mark knew that we were going on a "date" Saturday night so we had a babysitter come over.  Shortly before we were going to leave I got a phone call from Lindsay saying that they needed more fire wood for the bonfire at the party.  Eeks.  One thing I learned this weekend is that I"m a good liar or secret keeper depending on how you look at it.  :-)  In real life I had asked Mark to build a fire pit that I saw on pinterest and he had said that was a good idea.  For the sake of the surprise party I told him that Lindsay had stolen my idea of the fire pit and had built one in their back yard first and that they needed fire wood.  We left for our date with a few pieces of fire wood in the back seat to drop off at Brad and Lindsay's.  To make a long story short, Mark took a bit of time to make it into the house but when he did, he was very surprised to see all of our Sunday School friends plus a few others.  I think Mark is still in shock over the whole evening.  He keeps telling me that he feels so honored that "everyone came to wish me a happy birthday" as if he doesn't deserve to be loved and appreciated.  I'm really glad he enjoyed it and am super surprised at my secret keeping/lying skills.

We enjoyed one of Mark's favorite meals - taco soup with all the fixings.  I love that as adults we still sometimes enjoy boy tables...

and girl tables!

A few years ago, Katie from Sunday School, nicknamed Mark "cookie monster" and it has stuck.  Lindsay saw some cookie monster cupcakes on pinterest and did a great job making a replica cookie monster cake.  We all enjoyed reading some stories and looking at some old pictures of Mark - mullet, beard, wife beaters and all.  :-)

We had a babysitter for the evening but she brought the girls over to visit for a bit.  Caroline and Mark enjoyed some cookie monster cake together!

and then roasted some marshmellows together.

We had a wonderful night celebrating with friends.  I could not have asked for anything better!

Sunday morning we had breakfast together and opened the last of the presents...a bit of running gear and a new Bible.  Mark had not asked for a Bible but his old one was falling apart.  I was a little worried that he may not want to part with the old one but he gladly took the new one to church so I think it's a keeper.

After church we completed our birthday celebrations by going to Ted's for lunch (where he thought we were going on our date).  We then enjoyed a somewhat lazy afternoon...at least as lazy as can be with two sweet girls who did not want to nap!  :-) 

I'm very thankful for Mark and the sweet husbad that he is to me and even more so for the great Dad that he is to our girls.  I'm looking forward to this year together because we all know once he hits 40, it's all downhill.  :-)

Fall Fun

Mark spent a good bit of time blowing the leaves on Friday night trying to create some order in the yard.  He ended up with a monstrous pile that covered about 1/2 the front yard.  The leaves are plentiful and the girls (Caroline and Reagan) took full advantage!

First Haircut...

and more weekend fun.

Mom and Vern came in to visit this weekend since Mark was out for the week.  We stayed busy and the weekend flew by! 

We played at out new favorite play place, Catch Air, with the girls.

I am so thankful for Mom and Vern.  They literally jumped right in and played with the girls!

Saturday morning we woke up and decided that Caroline needed her first hair cut.  The ends of her curls were frizzy and crazy.  We told her and that her hair looked like the dolls hair below and even she agreed that a trim was needed.  :-)

I was so proud of her.  She sat so still and watched an Elmo video that the lady put on for her.  She acted like a pro while Gigi and I acted crazy taking pictures of her "first haircut."

 We also loved on this munchkin!

Caroline was pretty excited abou the final product!  It's a little shorter than I had wanted but you can't really tell much different in the length since it all curls up anyways!  Since we went to a kid place, the lady was really funny and put sparkles in her hair and gave her "earrings" too!

Halloween

Here are a few pictures from Halloween...

Caroline, loves Miss Becca, who is holding her hand.  She is always asking for Becca to come over and play!

We went to 5 or 6 houses and then came home to pass out candy with Mark.  I think she was confused and in awe of the whole evening.  

Kelsey came over to visit after a bit.  You can see that Disney made a big impact on our Halloween costume choices!

We tried to get a group picture and this was the best that we could get with the late night sugar high.  :-)

Our littlest munchkins didn't look too excited about their flower costumes!

Skype

Vern snapped this picture as we were catching up with Mark on skype this morning.  They say a picture is worth one thousand words and I think this one says a lot...and I'll just leave it at that.  :-)