Happy Four Years Tom!!!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Happy Anniversary sweet Tom. This is my attempt at putting together what the last four years has meant to me. You are such a blessing to me. We sure have made some memories these past four years and I look forward to the many memories that are yet to come. I also wanted to post this on our blog so that everyone can see the amazing man that you are! I love you!

Love, Jenni

Lacey Ann is six months old today

Our baby girl is six months old today! Last night all four of us were on the floor and Blake was reading (his way of reading that is) a book. I sat Lacey up and let go. She sat there all by herself like a big girl. She is reaching and grabbing for everything, rolling everywhere, and loves baby food. Happy Half Birthday sweet girl. We love you and are so thankful for the smiles you add to our life each day!

Brother/Sister love

These two really do love each other. Blake is very sweet to Lacey and Lacey just eats up any attention her brother will give her. It is so cute to watch them together. Lacey will be six months this Thursday and it's hard to believe. Time has flown by fast. They are so much fun and bring so much joy to our lives. Blake is a laugh a minute and Lacey is just as cute as can be. I am trying to blog as much as I can but things have been a bit crazy with the hurricane. Blake's school finally got power and he started back today. Things are slowly getting back to normal. Before we know it the holidays will be here!!! I look forward that though. I LOVE the holidays!

We survived the hurricane

I thought I would post and let everyone know that we are doing fine. We evacuated to my parents and avoided the hurricane. The area we live in did get a hard hit but mostly fences, roof damage, trees uprooted etc. It's a mess but nothing like what the coastal counties experienced. There are some homes that have extensive damage. Our house did fine compared to others. We have damage on both sides of the fence and we think our house shifted a bit. We had our power restored within four days and headed back home after that. Things are slowly getting back to normal. There is a lot of work to be done but it will get there. We absolutely love our friends here and it was good to get back and see everyone. Thanks for the phone calls and e-mails. Keep the prayers coming for those who were less fortunate.

Funny book

Blake has a book called "Blue Hat Green Hat". Last night he was reading it with daddy and he thought it was so funny. Each page has animals wearing different colored clothing. At the end of each page there is a chicken wearing the piece of clothing on the wrong part of it's body. For example a shirt or pants are on it's head. Under the chicken it says "oops". So every time Tom would say oops Blake would start cracking up. You will also notice at one point that Blake is saying the color of each shirt....."blue shirt, green shirt, yellow shirt etc" It was too funny and Tom and I could not stop laughing about it.

A Blake day

This picture is of Blake on his first day of school which was yesterday. School is great and he loves it. It's the same school as last spring and summer camps so he had no problems.
I thought I would just paint a picture of what a day in the life of Blake is like. It was a pretty good day as the morning started. His best buddy came over and they had a ton of fun playing together. During lunch however Blake decided he would just throw his peanut butter sandwich on the floor and earn himself some minutes in time-out. After his nap he thought he would see how well his plastic fishing pole could knock picture frames off the end tables. The fishing pole has now become a decoration on the fireplace mantel where he can admire it and reflect on why it was put there in the first place. At dinner tonight he took his entire plate of chicken, pasta, and veggies chips and once again dumped it on the floor. This entitled him to some time in his room until daddy got home (about 20 min). Once his daddy was home I got a "sorry mama" with a little smirk across his face. I was holding Lacey and trying to get him to pick up some of the food and throw it away. As I am trying to stay serious Lacey starts laughing out loud at him which in turn causes Blake to lose focus. He then spent the rest of the evening pretending his stuffed dinosaur was a baby. He was walking around with it over his shoulder while patting his back. He then laid it on Lacey's play mat and acted like he was tickling the dinosaur. He actually does this with Lacey. Then that dinosaur had to kiss the other dinosaur he has. Once that was over, Blake felt that Lacey needed to kiss and have a few moments with the dinosaur. It didn't bother her one bit. Any attention she gets from her brother just makes her day. We ended the day at the bottom of the stairs saying our prayers and daddy thanked Jesus that mommy and Blake had made it through the day. For about half an hour after putting Blake to bed he went over all his ABC's out loud and finally fell asleep. I love my sweet precious boy!!!!!! There is never a dull moment around here.

Dancing Machine

Anyone who has been around Blake long enough knows that he loves to dance. I caught him dancing the other day and videoed him without him knowing. Watch the hip action in the beginning. I had Lacey in the b-journ carrier as I was filming and it was all I could do to keep from cracking up! You will see him get down on the floor and stand back up. The song he is dancing to is called "Get Knocked Down...Jump Back Up". It's a dance that we do in JUMP (the childrens ministry I lead at church). There is a part in the dance where we get down on the floor and stand back up :).

Just a few updates on the kids

Lacey is officially rolling over from back to tummy. She tries so hard and when she finally makes it she admires the world from her new view and then quickly realizes she is on her tummy. Since she hates her tummy she starts screaming until you put her on her back. From there it's back to turning over again. She is quite the little talker (not sure who she gets that from)and before bedtime she jabbers away and gives me lots of little sweet giggles. She is just precious!!!

Now for Blake! Well he now thinks he is Superman! I had two boxes of diapers that I came home with from the store the other day. He was standing on them one at a time, counting to seven, jumping off, and then throwing himself on the floor to roll around. I'm not sure why he counts to seven (he can count up to 13) but I told Tom I'm glad he counts to seven because that buys us some time to get to him. We then caught him stacking both boxes on top of each other ON THE COUCH and trying to climb up to the top.

Some of our very good friends just bought a house with a pool. We went yesterday for our first swim there. Up until now Blake has not been that interested in the pool. Well yesterday he changed his mind. Before I knew it he was standing on the edge counting (hence the whole jumping off the diaper boxes) and jumping to me. He had to be holding my hands the whole time but that is fine with me. We'd jump off and then he'd start saying choo-choo. Today we went back again and he actually floated in the water by himself with his floaties. I was so proud of him!!! Lacey even took her first dip in the pool yesterday.

Fun times we are having!

Blake's first soda

So Blake wanted some of Jenni's drink tonight after finishing off most of a chicken fajita taco and a tortilla or two. Thinking he would not like to carbonation in the Sprite, I let him have a sip. You can see from the result I was mistaken. Blake 1, Daddy 0.

Vacation Bible School

It's been a long but fun week. Our church puts on an unbelievable Vacation Bible School (VBS). Since our campus does not have a building yet we did VBS at our main campus. I'm not sure of the numbers but I am thinking there were more than 3,000 kids that attended. The ages were pre-school through 5th grade. Each day consisted of classroom time with a craft (split into ages), then a bible teaching skit/singing put on by staff, and then every VBS student and teacher gathered in the large worship center for what they call the "big show". The big show is amazing and is done by JUMP (the area I volunteer in at our campus). The big show is a skit/dancing performance that follows a story line each day. I danced in the big show last year but this year decided to help in a classroom. I ended up helping my friends in the 4 year old room. I got a crash course in the four year old world. They are precious!!! It was a very exhausting week but worth it to see their smiling faces. I was up at 5:15am every day to get us out the door by 7:30. With traffic it took about 45 min to get to the church and from there it was nonstop until we got home about 2ish. I had a van full every day so it made the drive go by fast. Blake and Lacey stayed in the nursery. Lacey just slept and I was able to break and feed her which was really nice. Blake had his own little version of VBS. They had activities planned every day. He had music daily and each day was a different activity. He saw a clown with a monkey, saw Mr. Incredible, did tumbling tykes, and face painting (well he had his arm painted as I'm sure he wouldn't let them get near his face). The entire VBS theme this year was POW and had a superhero setting to go with it. When I picked up Blake today he had a cape, a mask, a superhero belt and a shield. He didn't want to wear any of it, but when we heard the garage door open tonight, I asked him if he wanted to put his cape on for daddy. Well as you can see in the picture he willingly wanted to show daddy. When Tom walked in Blake said "cape". Too cute! I'm sad that he couldn't tell me about all the fun he had, but I'm excited that as our kids grow they will be experiencing this. It's such an amazing thing and I'm so thankful that I'm in a position to be able to help and be a part of this with them.

Nite nite

I was changing Lacey on the bed and Blake crawled up into bed and said "Nite Nite".

CC pray......

The last month or so we have started praying with Blake before bed. We all (including Lacey now that she goes to bed at the same time Blake does) sit at the bottom of the stairs. We say ok let's pray and he folds his hands. We ask him who he wants to pray for and he usually says mama, dada, and whoever else pops in his head. Last night I said do you want to pray for dada and he firmly said NO, melmo (melmo means Elmo). HA!

Tonight however was so precious. We were sitting at the bottom of the stairs and I had Lacey in my lap. Blake likes to sit in between Tom and I. He made it clear that he wanted to pray for himself tonight and then looked at Lacey and said "CC pray" and he grabbed her little hands and put them together. Tom and I just melted.

Happy TWO to Blake!

Happy TWO year old birthday to Blake!!!! Last weekend Blake turned TWO!!! You hear people say the terrible twos but you really don't know what that is until you have a child turn two. I would like to call it the terrible/joyful twos! For as much headache he can give us, he can give us even more love and laughs! He loves the word no and mine. We taught him the word share but as his daddy says Blake just uses it as a nicer way to say mine. He'll take something away from someone and say share as he is doing it. Blake is a character and a mess! However we LOVE our monkey and love the spice he adds to our lives. His new thing lately is to loudly call for me over and over again. Mama, mama, mama, mama....I then say yes Blake and he just gives me this blank stare. This goes on all day long at home, in the car, you name it. I have to giggle when daddy comes home and he does the same to him. He loves his ABC's and has recently taking a liking to numbers. Still the ABC's are his favorite. Anywhere he sees letters he has to call them out. Lacey was sitting in her bumbo at the table the other day and Blake was eating. Each piece of food he picked up, he would show it to her and say "mine CC" and then eat it. Then the sweet side comes out when he hears her cry. He'll say "ok CC, ok" as he is patting her.

Blake makes us laugh everyday. The two year old year is going to be interesting I am sure but as we have already been experiencing it will be full of laughs and surprises. Mommy and Daddy love you so much monkey!!!!

Bitter-sweet at 3.5 months

Time is flying by quickly. It seems much faster than with Blake. It's been a bitter-sweet week for us. Lacey is now sleeping in her crib at night. Something I was too scared to do with Blake until he was six months, and then it was another month of sleeping in the guest room. I guess that is what they call a "first time mom". I wasn't planning to move her this soon but she is a light sleeper and just does so much better in her crib. She's been sleeping through the night (praise the Lord) for sometime now so it really just made sense. Today I started moving all her things up to her room and out of our room. Yes it's nice to have our room back but it went by so fast. For now we are content with our two blessings and more than likely are done having babies. I leave the "more than likely" in there just in case but in my mind this is our last so I find myself embracing each moment even more. She is a sweet one. Good eater, good sleeper and just a content little baby. Don't get me wrong we have our typical baby moments but I really can't complain. She has a sweet personality and is all girl. I mean I'm sure the bows and girly outfits I dress her in add to that but her mannerism is prissy and I just love it. This week Blake was in camp so Lacey and I did grocery shopping together. Both days we went she woke up right when we got there. I was so nervous because it was nap time. Sweet thing though stayed awake and content through the whole trip. She blessed me as she just kept her eyes fixated on me the whole time while every so often giving me angel smiles.





She loves her brother and always wants to see what he is doing. She is not a hold me over the shoulder baby, she wants to be facing out and not missing a thing. Blake has done well with having a sister. We are still trying to teach him gentle, but you can tell he loves her. He calls her "CC". Not sissy, but CC. I think he got that from LaCEY. It's very cute! Lacey sure seems to watch EVERY move he makes. I'm sure this will be good and bad for the future :).

Welcome to our family blog

Welcome to our family blog. This has been on my long list of things to do for quite some time now. As I am just barely starting to dig into the blogging world I am realizing there is so much I can do with a blog. I'm really bad about writing things down but am at my computer several times a day so I figured a blog would be a great tool for me. Hopefully as this blog develops so will my talents and knowledge. Thankfully Tom can help in this too and I know he will add some very special touches. What would take me hours he can do in minutes. I'm doing this for our kids, friends, and family. I thought it would be a great way to keep in touch. I also thought this would be great especially for you grandparents so that we can share with you all the "little things" that happen on a day to day basis. Expect daily posts (there is usually always something funny that Blake has done at least once a day), pictures, video, and more. ENJOY!!!!