My sweet Niece...Miss Ava Reese!

My sister had her beautiful baby girl on Saturday night and I was able to be there for the birth and a couple days afterwards! She called us Saturday morning saying she thought she might be in labor and once her contractions started coming five minutes apart and causing some discomfort we decided it was probably the real deal my mom and I took off in a hurry with dad following close behind. We were worried we wouldn't make it in time cause her labor was progressing pretty quickly but after 6 eternal hrs of driving with only two potty breaks and one short stop when my mom got pulled over and given a warning for speeding....we made it in plenty of time to hang out with Linds a couple of hrs before Ava was here! And we were so glad we made it!!!

Here is the beautiful Ava Reese, 8 lbs 14 oz and 21 1/2 inches

She is a cuddly little chunk!

She sleeps so well independently, I hope for Linds she stays like this!

The new mommy with her girl....she is such a natural!

Pretty Ava, we love you!

Last Weekend in Pics and 15 mos update!

We spent some time at Jay's parents last wknd! Friday Jay's parents took us to Rainforest Cafe and Saturday Jay took Jack to the boat show for his birthday and Debbie and I hung out with Josiah till the guys got home. We had a great time with them!

Grandpa Jack showing Josiah the fish in the aquarium!

Love that face!
He was pretty intrigued by "the volcano"!


Checking out the elephants! When we first got there he was a little freaked out by the thundering and all the loud animals, but he quickly warmed up to it and got really excited each time it happened by the end!


We took a ride on a river through the rainforest! It was very foggy...hence the cloudy pics.

He was so mesmerized by the whole experience!

And before we left Josiah got to build an orangutan! As soon as Debbie handed it Josiah to see if it was the one he wanted to build he grabbed it and cuddled up!

After he watched the process of it being stuffed he decided to see which one he wanted to do next...lol!

He loves his orangutan monkey...it was a fun night!

Josiah is very interested in using utensils now and does not want to be fed at all...Mr. Independent...makes for some messy eating!
Debbie (Freckles) and I took Josiah to Chic Fil A for playtime and lunch while the guys were gone. The toddler section of the playground wasn't real captivating to Josiah...he really wanted to climb in the big kid part = mommy squeezed her 5' 8 1/2 self into the playground with him and got a work out maneuvering through such tight spaces while trying to keep him from nose diving out of it.
But despite my efforts, nose dive he did, down the slide spinning around and looking terrified until I caught his hand and slowed him down a little.
All ended well and he wanted to do it again...but mommy diverted him to the toddler area for a little while and when it wasn't working anymore we ate lunch!
Monday Josiah had his 15 month well-visit...only he wasn't well, double ear infections! Bummer! He is being such a trooper as always and is only mildly fussy, he's been pretty happy most of the time. He has lost a little weight since his last visit (which was last week, two wks before that, and two or three before that....all for what I thought were ear infections but weren't...fluid on his ears but no infections). Anyways, all that to say the doc thinks his ears are bothering him enough to mess with his appetite so we are going to an ENT in a few wks and in the meantime we will be working on beefing this boy up!

He is talking up a storm and singing all the time....

Mama, Daddy, hot, please (sounds like tease), uh-oh, done, down, dance, home are the most common but we've heard him say dog, duck, up, more, trees, stick, YaYa on occasion.

He is RUNNING all over and starting to climb on things. He discovered today that he can clasp his hands behind his back and he walked around all day like that as if he was inspecting something.

He blows kisses and waves bye bye...when its his idea...but it happens more frequently now.

He signs all done, please, thank you, and more.

He still drools volumous amounts constantly...back gums are swollen but no sign of any teeth cutting through just yet.

He is almost always happy and loves to laugh, people ask me often if he ever cries...I assure them he does just usually not in social settings cause he gets so happy around people!

He is also very strong willed and independent we are going to have to be the most consistent-on top of it- disciplining parents with that will of his!

He is a rough and tough little boy...the other day at the mall playground a little girl fell hard off a the top of a tunnel he was crawling through right on his head...he just got up and kept on playing!

He is napping once a day now...usually for about 2 hrs and sleeping about 12 hrs at night.

He loves bath time, reading, building blocks, balls, brooms, instruments, dancing, peek a boo and chase, pulling out all my tupperware and climbing in the cabinet, his blanket, puppy and lovey, and cereal bars, milk, squash, peas, sweet potatoes, hot dogs, yogurt melts and lots and lots of fruit!

He is 31 1/2 inches tall and weighs 22 lbs 12 oz (a few wks ago it was 23 lbs 7 oz) so we are working on gaining it back with some added butter on veggies and one Pediasure a day.

He is a cuddle bug at nap and bed times.

He is very affectionate, he gives kisses to us, his animals, his books, and he has started playing with my hair when I hold him...so sweet!

He is such a little angel...we love him sooooo much!

Please be praying for NO TUBES! Keep ya posted!

A story and a blessing!

So I just discovered our first crayon on the furniture incident! I bought Josiah his first crayons on Monday(previously he just used markers, pencils, etc. cause that's what we had around). I always put him in his highchair to color in order to keep the coloring contained and except for a few colored pencil markings on the tile from when he drops the pencils this has been a successful feat ...until Monday apparently! After he finished coloring and I got him out of his highchair unbeknownst to me he somehow managed to hold onto the black crayon. I found him still clutching it a just few short minutes later and at a quick sweeping glance determined no creative coloring had been done anywhere. Today as I was on my knees getting a ball out from under the end table I found his lovely artwork...two large black crayon scribbles on the side of the sofa! Thankfully a little incredible and a rag did the trick and it came out easily! I had to chuckle a little knowing this little first won't be the last, especially since Jay and I both had some infamous coloring on walls and furniture incidents as children.

I wanna brag on the leadership in our church for a minute now! Last night Jay and I attended an elder appreciation dinner, it was mainly staff and elders and spouses in attendance. It was such a neat evening. The purpose of the evening was to honor our elders for their Christlike leadership in our church. The staff members had all written some words of appreciation for each elder and named a fruit of the Spirit that they most thought of when thinking about that particular elder. All the words written by each staff member were compiled into one letter and our preacher read them over each elder one by one. Being somewhat new to the church it was so neat to hear more about each elders character and the fruit they were most known for. I was moved to tears just listening to it all...partly because our preacher was choked up and seeing someone else cry is about all it takes for me to start blubbering, but mainly because I was overwhelmed and humbled to be a part of such a loving, encouraging, and unified group of leaders. At the end of the night, Carl (our preacher) described our group as having "miraculous unity even with all our diversity" and one the way home we discussed how this is how God intended it to be in His church. I wish so much this is how it always was in every church body...can you imagine how the gates of hell would be pushed back as a completely unified church made a powerful difference in our communities? That they (the world) would know us by our love...that's my prayer today! I am so very thankful and totally humbled God has allowed us to be a part of His church and that He has faithfully guided us to where we are!

New Years Day at the ZOO!

We had a great New Years Eve and Day this year!

New Years Eve ...

my parents were kind enough to keep Josiah for us so we could go on a date. We had dinner at Outback thanks to my in-laws who gave me a gift card for there at Christmas...it was delish! Then we went to the movies to try and see The Blind Side. We bought our tickets and when we got into the theatre there were no two seats available together in the whole theatre...except for way down in the front...boo! So we got our money back and went to Marble Slab, I got my favorite...sweet cream with strawberries mixed in, in a chocolate and nut dipped cone....mmmm! Then we went to see The Blind Side at a different theatre and it was AWESOME! I definitely want to own that one!

New Years Day was a blast too...we took Josiah to the ZOO!

He was totally into the big animals that were easy to spot... he stared and laughed and talked about them, not that we could understand what he was saying, but as always he sure did have a lot to say.

There were two baby giraffes...one was only 10 months old. Did you know that a newborn giraffe is 6ft tall and weighs 135 lbs?! Crazy!Josiah watched the giraffes very intensely!

He was also quite captivated by this Baboon! This thing was kind of tempramental...he kept coming right up to the fence, staring us in the eyes and bowing up a little!

The zoo had some new lady lions, the male and all the females were out and in plain view so Josiah was pretty intrigued!

His little face looks so curious and excited in this pic, I feel like it says "Dad! Did you see those things?"

The elephants were a big hit too...one of them was getting pretty rough trying to move a large tree branch with his trunk...entertaining!

We asked this guy to take a family picture of us right before we left and just as he tried to take the pic our camera died...turns out he was a big photography guy and he offered to take the pic for us and email it to us...he went above and beyond and enhanced and cropped some of them for us! So kind!

Last but certainly not least...be sure to check out the video below of the monkeys! This was the highlight of the day. I forgot what these monkeys were called Siamung or something...I dunno...but when we were watching the baboon from above we kept hearing these really loud monkey noises and couldn't figure out what it was coming from. We rounded the corner and saw a huge crowd of people standing around this one cage and staring up at these three monkeys and everyone was cracking up. These little monkeys stole the show, they were like egging eachother on it seemed like! Apparantely they are the loudest primates in the world...their call can be heard over a mile away and can last for 20 minutes...and we witnessed the truth behind that fact! The males call out over and over followed by a cry from the female that sounds different. And their throats blow up huge when they make the noise...which is what amplifies the sound so much. Josiah sat in his stroller for about 10 minutes mesmerized by the show...that is a LONG time for him to sit and be interested in something! So if you wanna go see them...supposedly they do this every morning at dawn and then again just before lunch.
Anyways, the video doesn't do it justice cause you can't hear one of the low pitched calls very well or tell how loud it really was but check it out...pretty funny!

Happy New Year Everyone!

Christmas All Around!

We celebrated Christmas for a good solid month this year! Every weekend we had some sort of Christmas celebration, we had a progressive dinner at church one weekend, a staff Christmas party another, a Christmas dinner with our lifegroup...one for us and one where we took food to the homeless in our area, a friends Christmas party, family Christmas with Jay's side of the fam followed by their annual big family Christmas party/reunion and finally the Christmas Eve candlelight service at our church followed by Christmas Eve and Day at my parents house! On top of all that we also celebrated 4 family members birthdays in the month of December! It was a very busy but very fun month!

You might not feel this way after looking at all these pictures...but I didn't really do a great job of capturing it all on film! =( I have lots of certain events and none of others. I have learned I am not the best photographer when I am crazy busy and trying to juggle lots at one time...I guess this is an area of multitasking in which I score an NI (Needs Improvement)!

This was just before we headed out to the Progressive Dinner with church peeps!

This is Josiah's Christmas gift to his grandma's in the making....stationary with his handprints on the front...I made an assembly line in the bathtub for this messy project. He was surprisingly cooperative! Must be cause he loves his YaYa and Freckles so much! INSERT HERE:pics of our family Christmas with Jay's family at Brandon and Brittnie's. All the pics we took are on other people's cameras...we did the videoing. Send me some pics everyone so I can add them!

Josiah's rocking horse...cleverly named "rocket" by Jay...from his Grandpa and Freckles. He is so cute with it...he pets it and kisses it just about as much as he rides it, he also has a fascination with flipping it over!

Josiah and Keller at the family reunion...Keller is a distant cousin of some sort, he and Josiah had a blast playing together at the party. Keller is a little older and had the sharing thing down better than Josiah, he let Josiah draw with him and was very patient when Josiah repeatedly tried to take the pen Keller had even though he had his own...we are working on sharing!

Christmas Eve at my parents

YaYa gave Josiah PJ's...they read "What Santa doesn't bring me Grandma will" This proved very true the next morning! =)

Linds (my preger sis...far right) and cousins Bethany and Kayla! Love these girls!

Christmas PJ's... This pic has been a tradition in our fam for many years now!

Christmas morning...Josiah got things started bright and early!

Discovering some of his gifts! He was super excited about the bubble mower! He later tried to get in his cozy coupe while holding still holding onto the mower.

He pretty much stayed excited all morning!

All the men took him to the park later that day...he looks so proud to be hanging out with the big guys in this pic!

Josiah likes to try and climb back up the slide in order to go down it again!

Jay has been off since Christmas so we've been spending a lot of time playing outside with all of Josiah's new toys!

Stay tuned for the next post: New Years Day at the ZOO!