Weekend Fun....

We had a very busy weekend with weddings and skating and birthday parties. Friday evening we went to Tiffani and Kenny's wedding in Statesboro. Tiffani is the daughter of Joe's cousin Dana. We have seen Dana's parents since we've been here, but we haven't seen any of the rest of his family so we thought it would be good for us to go. The wedding was short and sweet and the kids had a GREAT time playing outside after the wedding. There was a pond, and pine cones and trees to climb in. Molly even found the bubbles to blow. There was also lots of cake to be eaten and poor miss Molly ate too much! Now we know to really listen to her when she says her belly hurts!



Saturday was filled with a Girl Scouts skating party, a birthday party for a friend of Caroline's and a birthday party for a friend of Nicholas'.... it was go, go, go......


Nicholas' party was at Build a Bear... at first I really thought it was going to be a struggle for him because when he was told what his choices would be he was not happy! Thankfully, once the rest of the little boys picked out their bears, Nicholas was more than happy to follow along with the rest of the group and make a choice without complaining.. Below is the bear he picked. He named him "Batman" as he was hoping to buy the batman costume for him. He picked out a race car driver's outfit instead... Today he asked me if I would make him some PJ's for Batman.. this is what i came up with since I didn't have a pattern...

And since I was making clothes for him, Caroline asked me to make a dress for her doll, Abby. I still need to hem the bottom and it needs a little touch up here and there, but not bad again for not having a pattern and for my first time :) I really am enjoying my sewing machine and getting creative. Sadly it is a little time consuming... aaahhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!

update to crafty...

Here's Caroline in her dress... she wore it to school on Friday but I forgot the "spaghetti strap rule" and even though she had a tank top on underneath she still had to keep her sweater on all day... oops!!!!!

Getting Crafty....

A friend of ours gave Nicholas some Steeler pants and Molly this cute little outfit... both of which she made.... it got me really anxious to get my sewing machine working and to start getting a little crafty.....

And since I was thinking along the lines of being crafty... I made play-doh. SO SIMPLE!! What have I been thinking all these years. The kids really wanted to play and I knew it would keep them happy for a while, but all the play-doh we had was dried up.... uh-oh! So I looked up a recipe (gotta love google!) and whipped up a batch of pink and blue play-doh!!!

Barb came over last week and this was my first attempt at making something wearable. I was originally making this for Molly, but it didn't quiet fit right. It fits better on Caroline but it's too short to be just a dress. She loved wearing it and even wanted to wear it again the next day...

My first attempt at making matching dresses for the girls. We have a wedding to go to and I was really wanting to finish these just in case I wanted the girls to wear them.... still not sure if they will wear them or not, but the didn't turn out too bad. . Molly wasn't very happy when she tried hers on....

This is Caroline's. She was asleep when I finished it, so I don't have pictures of her in it yet. I'm looking forward to finding some more fun fabric for sun dresses for the girls...

St. Patrick's Day

We got in the Irish spirit around the house today. The kids had so much fun dressing in green and enjoying lots of green food :)

Caroline was eating a green pancake on her way out the door to catch the bus....


Nicholas had a big parade at school. It was a total sea of green. His class had on leprachaun hats and beards.. so cute!


While we were gone the little leprachauns came and made a mess at our house!


And left us some treats behind!

And for dinner we had Shepard's Pie... mmmmm :)

Family Fun...

We went down to the Savannah River today and walked along the canal. Caroline figured out how to ride her bike yesterday without training wheels. It was awesome to see her pedaling along the path! GO CAROLINE!!!

Cloverleaf Duathalon

Yesterday morning we got up bright and early and went to do a race. The local YMCA had their 2nd annual Cloverleaf Duathalon. It was a 2 mile run, 10 mile bike, 2 mile run. Niether Joe, nor I had really been doing any training for this race, but thought it would be fun to do something athletic together. I had been running on the treadmill and doing spinning classes a couple times a week, but it has been 6 years + since I have actually riden more than a few minutes on my bike. We were able to drop the kids off at the Y and go to the race without worrying about them. (They had a blast!) The weather cooperated and I think we finished the race in under 1:30. It will hopefully be the first of many events for us to come :)

Getting the gear ready....


Finishing the first 2 miles....


Just finished the bike.... my legs felt like JELLO!


And crossing the final finish line! I was SO happy to be done!!!

Even though it was hard, it sure was fun!!!!

yummy!!!

The yummiest package arrived from Grandpa Paul... We received a little early Easter surprise filled with Oranges, Grapefruits, Pecans and three amazing granny smith apples covered in caramel and then dipped in white chocolate... YUM!!!! We of course could not hold back till Easter and have enjoyed every single bite!!













Good luck biting into that Caroline! If she could have gotten her mouth around it, I'm sure she would have :)



Goofballs!!!!

THANK YOU PAUL!!! It was a delicious surprise!!!!!

Nana's visit

Here's just a few more pictures from Nana's visit. We had a tea party all set up for Caroline and the kids one day when she came home from school. All the kids thought it was fun to sit and have snacks with Caroline's fancy tea cups.

We collected a bunch of shells while we were at the beach and got some stuff to make garden bricks. Caroline and Nicholas always enjoy doing "projects" with Nana. This is one they will hopefully be able to remember for a long time.

Caroline had a fun competition at school. Each of the kids got a paper duck to decorate and then each class voted for their favorite from their class. Then the winner of the class got to decorate a 3-d duck to have voted on in the whole school. Caroline chose "Fancy Nancy" for her duck and she won for her class. Nana and I had fun trying to help her decorate. She pretty much told us where she wanted things and we went crazy with the hot glue gun. Quite the project for a kindergartner to take on, and only reminds me that this is just the beginning!!! AAAHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Edisto Beach, SC

We got back this afternoon just in time to watch the US vs. Canada Gold Medal hockey game. Sadly the US got silver.... on to our beach visit....

Nana came into town earlier this week and Joe needed a weekend home alone to study... so... the kids and Nana and I all went to the beach. The weather did not cooperate as greatly as we had hoped, but it never rained... it sure was COLD though. You'll see in the pics that we are all bundled up.

We arrived Friday night and went straight to the beach. The tide was just starting to go out and there were lots of shells to look at. Caroline was in HEAVEN! That child LOVES to collect things so the beach was right up her alley! We were lucky enough to see a couple dolphins jumping around the rough waves... we probably would have seen more if it wasn't so cold!





I took Nicholas and Molly back to the room to cook dinner while Caroline and Nana stayed at the beach and watch the sunset...

Saturday morning we got up and went to the indoor pool and the kids swam for a little bit. They were anxious to get back to the beach. We bundled up again and went back... man, was it cold though!!! Would have been so much more fun it was warmer!

Nicholas and his "hershey" crab shell helmut...

Nana and her babes......

First Tee...

Caroline and her Girl Scout friends all got to go to First Tee of Augusta and experience golf. Caroline has never played, or had a lesson, so it was fun to see if it peaked her interest or not. The girls all got a quick lesson and then we got to join some official First Tee members and go out on the 6 hole golf course and play a mini best-ball round of golf. Caroline was the only lefty out there and a couple times she got confused trying to imitate the other girls. She enjoyed herself and said she would play again. First Tee starts at age 8... guess we have a couple years to wait. But maybe we'll go back an dhit some balls again soon.

Trains....

We got up kind of early on Saturday morning and after a night of snow we drove to Chattanooga, TN to go see Joe's dad. This is what the road looked like through much of Georgia....

We arrived at the Railroad Museum just in time to jump on a quick train ride. This was the Engine that took a couple passenger cars up and down the rails that we went on.


Getting ready to go.....

Aunt Katie, Uncle Lee, and little Henry came up from Birmingham and got to the train just before us and just in time to join us on the little ride....

"CHEESE"

Little Engineer.......


Joe, Grandpa, & Nicholas all got to go up in the engine on the way back... super cool!!!

After the train ride and a quick bite to eat, we went off to the Tennessee Aquarium. Caroline took a ton of pictures of the animals... one of her favorite things to do :)

This is Molly towards the end of the day. We found a bench next to one of the large tanks of fish and she decided she was going to take a nap. She laid down, used my jacket as a blanket, and chilled out for a few minutes....

After the Aquarium we went back to our hotel and Joe took the kids swimming. I cooked up a quick batch of spaghetti and we all got to enjoy hanging out for a little bit longer before Katie, Henry and Lee had to head home.

The next morning, Grandpa came and joined us for breakfast before we headed back to the Aquarium again...

The kids were watching the snow flakes falling outside....

The butterfly exhibit at the Aquarium...

We had a great, quick visit with Grandpa. It was fun for the kids to see the trains and get an idea of what Grandpa does. It took us just over 3 hours to get there, so hopefully we'll be able to go back for another quick visit before he goes back to Colorado for the summer...