Thankful Thursday

Today I am thankful for..



..sleepy puppy on vintage bed linens..



..tender puppy paws..





..early afternoon naps :)



..baby Motrin and cold teething rings = happy little Margot



..amazing collection of wooden toys on loan from Mo and Maddy = my new obsession with wooden toys and figuring out a way to get more!







..a yummy lunch including some of Page's venison summer sausage..

..my tiny shower which, when paired with Aveda Rosemerry Mint shampoo from Mom, feels like a luxurious spa..

..a washer/dryer in my apartment..
..a washer/dryer in my apartment..
..a washer/dryer in my apartment..

..two new tires and a full service that makes our little red scootin' car feel like a first class limo..

..a few more days before Stephen is done with school and we can all have breakfast together every morning.. maybe..

..a couple of weeks until we pack up and head to Florida for a nice long relaxing visit!!!

..the fact that I could go on and on with this list :)

Baby Steps

It's the Ada show today... this little lady has been climbing up the steps all day today. She got as far as the 3rd step before I caught her the first time.. then she fell.. no tears.. just got up and crawled right back up again. Tough as nails.



Hi Mommy!



Ada's new favorite place to hang out.



Ada has also spent the last two days pushing a Cheerios box around the house. I taped it today so it doesn't collapse anymore like it does in this clip. Margot likes to join her and sometimes they push the box together but I haven't been able to catch that on tape yet.

Mountain Time

We spent this weekend up in Boone at a cabin in Hound Ears owned/loaned by one of my dad's clients who might as well be part of our family. What a sweet and generous man he is. While we were up there we got to see Jer and Michelle and their girls in their new house. Jeremy and Stephen have been friends since middle school and Michelle is just amazing. You know that feeling where you meet up with old friends and it feels so familiar.. as if time stood still while you were away from eachother.. ? That's how it feels when we see Jer and Michelle. Wonderfully relaxing and just like home.



Here are the babies on the deck of the mountain house. It was cloudy this day but when it is clear there is a perfect view of Grandfather Mountain right over Margot's head.



All eyes on me.



Here is the youngest J&M offspring. The last time you saw her on this blog she wasn't even walking yet!



Ours and theirs...



The new house is really incredible. Makes us so excited to build one of our own one day.



Here is Ada checking out her PJ's in the kitchen while Nana cooks breakfast.






Daddy giving Margot a bath in the kitchen sink.


Sweet Margot playing with her gator.



Sweet/busy Ada trying to climb out of the sink.



Here is my favorite series of photos from this weekend. My brother, John, was in Charlotte this week to take a test for a work certification and he spent the remainder of his time in NC at the mountain house with us. He surprised the girls with two Hungry Caterpiller books, matching puppets that accompanied the books, and a soft Noah's ark with animals inside.



Here are Margot and Uncle John enjoying some story time.



Margot loves her caterpillar puppet.



Meanwhile, Ada studies Nana's pancake technique.



Margot showing Uncle John her early prowess for matching games.

We certainly missed Mariel but we were happy to see John for as long as we were able. What an amazing weekend we had. I wish I had been better with the camera. On Friday, John, Stephen and I all went out for an awesome dinner with Jeremy and Michelle (sans kids) followed by a few hours of pool at a local pool hall (at least if felt like a few hours). Good beer and good conversation can not be beat. Saturday the babies slept until 9 am (?!?!??!?) and we went to J&Ms house for lunch and some visiting then back to the mountain house for a fabulous dinner and visit with Page and Jenny (Dad and Page spent Saturday at a bow hunting tournament and Jenny and Riley drove up to meet Page in Boone and have dinner with us all). Can't believe I didn't break out the camera! I think I end up having so much fun just visiting and being normal that I am afraid bringing out the camera will break the spell. Oh well. It was just a wonderfully relaxing weekend and visit with everyone. The girls were wonderfully flexible with their schedule and to be honest.. it's a little hard to be home right now...

Cousins

My sweet cousin, Christa, and my Aunt Margie came to visit us last week. She was in town from MN and drove all the way from Elkin, kid-less, to come and hang out for a little bit with the girls and yours truly. It was such a sweet visit and I only wished it could have lasted longer.

I think it's particularly amusing when I visit with Christa, now that I have the girls. See, she and I know each and every word to the original Disney's The Parent Trap, by heart, and used to attempt to dress like/be twins whenever we were together as kids. So it's sorta funny that I now have my very own Sharon and Susan :) Christa has her own set of adorable little ones, Maddie and Sam, and though I was happy to get to spend uninterupted time with she and Aunt Margie, I am looking forward to seeing her sweeties the next time she is in town. She is my scheduled parenting mentor/example :)



While we visited, Ada enjoyed entertaining Aunt Margie with her standing and dancing talents.



They almost matched perfectly in their pink outfits.

Thank you guys for coming to see us last week. I know that family time is so precious and I can't tell you how much I appreciated your taking the time to come down our way. Love you both so much :)

Thank you..

...ah hem..  thank you, dear Lord, that you gave me the motherly instinct to check on Ada (who was exploring the living room) at the exact moment that she attempted to swallow the above bracket with nail attached. Thank you Lord that she let me fish around in her mouth until I found said object and didn't try to gulp it down the way Oliver would have done. Just a warning to all you parents out there.. Stephen mounted our TV antenna cable to the baseboard using the above brackets, thinking that would help keep the cord away from the babies reach.. who knew they could pull them out of the wall so easily. We immediately removed each and every bracket right away. Major scary accident averted. 

.. and now for some adorable pictures that need no explanation..

Good Night :)

Glad Hands

Here is Margot demonstrating her clapping capabilities. Only 9 months old and already on the road to being a rhythm genius. Add that to her sweet dance moves and we might have to spring for some hip hop classes sooner than we thought... or maybe MKD can just come down here and give them a tutorial...? 

Corn bread and pinto beans for dinner tonight on this chilly Sunday. Can't get much more southern than that.. I refuse to prepare collards.. ick. Turnip greens yes.. chard absolutely.. collards.. just not a fan. 

The other weekend when I was filling out Mother's Day cards.. I couldn't help but start thinking about my handwriting - which is pretty atrocious by the way. When I was in HS I worked as a pharmacy tech (at that point in my life I was planning to attend pharmacy school) and I used to joke that I should be getting my MD instead of my PharmD since I already had the handwriting thing down. Ha. The proverbial "they" say that a person's handwriting says a lot about who they are as a person. I have long wondered what mine said about me. 

When I was in elementary school, I learned a couple of different styles of penmanship - whose titles elude me at the moment. I remember hating the way they looked. Everything had a little tail on it. This was supposed to make it more natural to transition to cursive. It did and I did a year or so later but I still didn't feel like my handwriting came naturally. It felt forced. Soon I started hanging out with a neighborhood girl I thought was super cool and her mother had a very stylized way of writing. She made her a's look like typed a's.. sorta like this ---> a 

I started trying to write like she did. It took me forever but I told myself I was just being normal. I continued to try to write this way for awhile (not in my school work of course where I was supposed to use cursive) and eventually gave it up because it was too hard and sort of embarrassing to be so obviously copying someone else's handwriting while attempting to pass it off as your own. I continued with my sloppy sub-par cursive for awhile and also went through several other phases and varying styles of printing. Nothing really stuck. In HS, out of necessity, I just went with my handwriting the way it was. I didn't have time to think about how it looked or what it said about me while I was struggling to keep up with all the note taking in my AP classes. I did, however, re-copy notes if people wanted to borrow them because I was the only one who could really read them. This continued right on into college.. I mean do you know how embarrassing it is to be a girl and have terrible handwriting? Especially since I am almost compulsively neat in every other aspect of daily life. Anyway, I finally just gave up trying to have neat handwriting, or even distinctive handwriting around the time I met Stephen. It just was what it was, a sort of printing/cursive blend that I am completely unable to to keep in a straight line across an unlined page. Once we moved up north I really felt like I took true ownership of my scrawl. I still recopied my own post-it notes occasionally but I was ok with that.. still am actually. As I wrote out my greetings to the mothers in my life, I was pleased to see the letters being formed on the page had a regular pattern and each "g" had the same sort of tail. It's nothing close to textbook and it's not even very original but it's mine and I am pleased with it's representation of my thoughts. I suppose I have settled into my self at last.

Best Day Ever

Today was so fabulous and not only  because we were out and about most of the day. This is how we found Ada when we went to get the girls up from their morning nap.. standing all by herself!!!! She got herself all the way up to standing for the very first time alone :) We snatched her up (after taking lots and lots of pictures) and sang her praises while she grinned and giggled. Precious. 

Ada wasn't the only one performing feats of brilliance today. When Margot woke up this morning she was particularly chipper. While I was changing her diaper I realized that she needed her finger nails trimmed. I always sing to them when I do this to distract them and keep them from yanking their fingers away. I was singing "If You're Happy and You Know It" and suddenly Margot just started clapping her hands! I thought maybe it was just a one time thing but she has been doing it all day and not only that, but if you ask her to clap and clap in demonstration she does it right away with a big smile! Need to get some pictures/video of this I know :) She claps while you are carrying her she stops crawling to sit up and clap.. it is the cutest thing ever. 

Today we went to the Farmer's Market in the morning after breakfast, then went for coffee downtown and walked around an art show thingy that was in the streets nearby.. babies were in the Ergos which are AMAZING by the way.. they both fell asleep all cuddled up against us. We met a couple that had triplets about the same age as our girls and we all hid from the rain under an awning for a few minutes and had a nice visit. Can not imagine having 3 at once..... Jenni :)

After the girls woke up from their afternoon nap we gave them snack and then headed back out to see a collaborative installation in the old Raleigh Water Works building which was fabulous. One of Stephen's students met us there and ended up coming back home with us and we grilled out for dinner and had a wonderful visit. Now we are watching a movie and enjoying a second Klondike bar. Yum. What a delightfully adventurous day it has been. 

Capsized

Going..

..going..

..gone.

Thankful Thursday

Brushing our "teef"

It is Thursday and I am thankful for...

... my sweet Uncle Gavin who is the only dentist who has ever touched my teeth, and who sent a dental care package with the adorable baby tooth brushes you see the girls using above.

... my fabulous husband who put "Bride Wars" on our Netflix and said I can keep it as long as I want.

... my friends Pam and Diana for watching the girls today so I could go grocery shopping.

... the lady who came to my door today and gave me a flier for a community meeting.. in which we will discuss plans for a community garden!!!!!

... homemade bread.