Happy Thanksgiving!

Wow! I have so many pictures and so much to blog about today because we had an absolutely wonderful Thanksgiving week with two of my siblings and their families! My brother Stephen and his wife Rachael and their little Leah came from FL, and my sister Sarah and her husband Dustin along with Wesley and Cooper came from DC for the week. So we had 6 adults and 4 babies 2 and under all under one roof! We had so much fun watching all the babies play together, eating a great Thanksgiving dinner, watching football, doing some Christmas shopping, and just spending time together. Here are some of the MANY pictures we took of the occasion!

The kids loved going to the park together and we caught this classic picture of them on a park bench. Wesley is being so sweet holding Leah's hand whereas Cooper on the other hand is trying to steal Anna Kate's hairbow!



Here's another sweet one of Wesley and Leah playing together.


For Anna Kate's first Thanksgiving she wore her adorable turkey onesie and hairbow made by my friend Christy. I realized a few days before Thanksgiving that she didn't have anything to wear with it though, so I thought I would try my hand at sewing (without a machine, mind you!). It took me a while, but ended up with a decent looking skirt, I think!




Here's Luke being a good host and carving our lovely turkey!


Sarah and Rachael and I all put our efforts together and made all of our family's traditional Thanksgiving side dishes and desserts. Here's a picture of all of our hard work!


And here's Anna Kate ready to dig in to her first Thanksgiving feast!


Somewhere in the midst of all of the Thanksgiving excitement, Wesley got a hold of my camera and decided to hone his photography skills. Here are some of his best efforts:

A self-portrait...


And, his own toes...


Every morning we let the babies lounge around in their jammies for a while because they were just so darn cute!


Saturday, of course, was game day for the Seminoles v. the Gators (aka my sister's school v. my brother's school) and then also the Clemson tigers. Here are the kids ready to cheer on their favorite teams!


And just to get you in the mood for the next big holiday, we took a picture of the whole group of us in front of this lovely Christmas tree!


We sure missed Mom, Dad, and Andy, but we had a wonderful time with you all and hope you'll come again soon!

A couple fun videos

Here are a couple videos so that you can see what Anna Kate has been up to the past few days. She has two new favorite things to do: play telephone and "give loves". Here is a video of each...enjoy!

Visit with friends!

We had a great time this weekend visiting with some friends that we don't get to see too often! When I was in college I had to do lots of observations and practicums at various schools for my education courses. One of my placements was at a preschool where I met a little girl named Grace. I ended up teaching her violin, getting to know her family, and babysitting her and her little brother David on multiple occasions. When Luke and I got married, we asked them to be the flower girl and ring bearer in our wedding. We don't get to see them as often as we'd like now, but every chance we get, we always stop by to spend time with them. It has been so fun to see them interact now with Anna Kate. They sure love playing with her! Here are a couple of pictures that we took this weekend. I can't believe how grown up Grace and David are now!

9 month Dr. visit

Anna Kate had her 9-month check-up today and everything looks good! She had to get two shots and a finger prick, but she did pretty well and calmed right down as soon as it was over and she could snuggle her mommy and daddy! She didn't do quite as well with the "easy" part of the appointment though...like when the doctor had to check her ears. Apparently we have a baby who does not like to sit still and be confined! She did do better when the doctor let her play with her stethoscope.

Here are Anna Kate's stats:
Height: 28.5 inches - 75th percentile
Weight: 20 lbs. 7 oz. - 75th percentile

And here are some pictures of our visit...

In the waiting room...



On the exam table...

9 months old today!

Anna Kate, you are 9 months old today! Three quarters of a year! Every month you just seem more and more grown up. When I started to think through the ways you are changing this month, there were so many! Here are some of the big ones:

~ You now crawl on your hands and knees more than you do your “army crawl” on your belly! You still do the army crawl sometimes (especially when mommy puts you in long pretty dresses and your knees get stuck, but mostly you crawl the right way!

~ You love to feed yourself finger foods. Lately your favorites have been little bits of bread, bananas, or grilled cheese sandwiches!

~ Speaking of food, you have now started to eat mommy and daddy’s grown-up food! It’s kind of nice to just prepare one dinner for all three of us. We had split pea soup and biscuits the other night and you loved it and today you and Mommy had whole wheat pita bread and black bean hummus for lunch!

~ At your last monthly update, you didn’t have any teeth, but now you have four! The first one to come in was your top left “fang”, then your two bottom front teeth, then your top right “fang”! (Your Aunt Sarah said you should have been a vampire for Halloween, but we didn’t listen!)

~ Just yesterday you started to clap your hands and you have been doing it all day! Every time you think something is funny, I see you clapping! You like to keep one hand stationary though, so it’s really more like you’re giving yourself five!

~ This month you finally transitioned from a 3 nap schedule to a 2 nap schedule and it’s going great! It’s nice to not have to plan our days around 3 different naptimes! You usually wake up around 6:45am, then take a nap from 9-10:45 and again from 1:15-3. Then you’re ready to get to bed between 7:30 and 7:45. You are definitely a baby who likes her schedule!

~ You still L-O-V-E to wave hi to people. In fact, sometimes we’ll find you sitting up in your crib waving at your stuffed animals when you wake up from your naps!

~ You also have started to say bye-bye occasionally, but you don’t really do it on command yet!

~ You are finally starting to do better in the nursery at church…in fact, they didn’t have to page me at all yesterday during morning worship or evening worship! I think you’re starting to really like some of your teachers in there, so that helps a lot!

~ Your favorite thing to play with at home is your set of wooden blocks. Actually, your favorite thing to do is watch Mommy or Daddy make towers with the blocks and then knock them over!

~ You have also started to play ball with your Daddy. You have a big rubber ball that you love to play with and you have just started to try to bounce/roll it back to Daddy when he bounces it to you!

~ You are starting to like standing up more and are constantly pulling up on anything you can get your hands on (usually the coffee table). You have also started to take a few steps if I hold both of your hands! I think it will still be a little while though before you’re steady enough to do it by yourself!

~ You have a new absolute favorite song that we simply call “The Farm Song” because we don’t really know the title. We learned it at the library and it’s kind of like Old MacDonald in that each time you sing it you do a different animal with a different animal sound. Anyway, we have been known to sing it for 15-20 minutes straight to keep you from falling asleep in the car before we get home for naps!

~Your other favorite song is one that we made up. Here are the lyrics: “Anna Kate-sy, she’s really great-sy, Anna Baby Kate, she’s so great!”

~ Finally, one of the biggest ways we’ve seen you change this month is how sweet and loving you have become. You have a couple of teddy bears that you are constantly “giving loves” to! You also really like to give your Mommy and Daddy big slobbery kisses! And almost every time I pick you up, you snuggle right down to my shoulder and pat me on the back. So sweet!

Anna Kate, you are so much fun to be around and we feel so blessed that God gave you to us to care for, to nurture, to teach, and to love. You are so precious to us and we love you with all our hearts! Happy ¾ Birthday, sweet girl!

And here are your pictures!

1 month

2 months

3 months

4 months

5 months

6 months

7 months

8 months

9 months

Brushin' my teeth!

Now that Anna Kate has 4 sweet little teeth, we have to start brushing them! She has this great toothbrush that she can hold and that she can't stick too far in her mouth. Perfect! Here she is trying it out for the first time before church today! (Side note: I can't believe how grown up she looks in these pictures! What do you all think?)

"Am I doing this right, Mom?"

"Ok, I think I'm getting the hang of it..."


"This is pretty fun!"

Rainy Day Fun!

One day this week it pretty much rained all day long. We did brave the weather once to go to our library's storytime, but we definitely couldn't do our usual walks or outings to the park, so we had to get creative! Anna Kate was having fun with a pillow down on the carpet, so I thought I would grab a couple more...and here's what happened!

Peekaboo and Bye-Bye!

Anna Kate and I were eating lunch this afternoon and (all on her own) she started to play peekaboo using her bib! Now, she has enjoyed playing peekaboo for quite some time, but all she could do was pull a blanket off of her head if I put it on there. She's never done it by herself before! Also, if you make it to the end of the video, you can hear her say "bye-bye!"