Ava's First Day of Kindergarten

Ava started her first day of kindergarten on August 24 at our great neighborhood elementary school! Here, she and Daddy are walking up the sidewalk toward the school.
This is Ava posing with her good friend, Davis, whose family owns a lake house just up the street from ours. It's great that Ava has a Dallas friend that's also a lake house friend...and they go to school together!
This is Ava's sweet teacher, Mrs. A. We just adore her teacher who is a perfect blend of structure and gentleness. Ava really likes her too!
The kids sit at tables of 4 and Ava was showing us her "spot" where she saw her name.
This is one of the boys in Ava's class showing her how cool the lockers are. They all share a locker with one other student. Ava gets to share with Matthew, her friend since she was 15 months old!

Ava has had a little trouble adjusting to kindergarten over the past 5 weeks, but is starting to get the hang of the new, more intense schedule. She really enjoys everything about school (art class is her favorite), but just doesn't want to go EVERY day. She says she misses her mom and sister. Awww...we miss her too.

I'm so proud of my big girl!

Our third miracle is on it's way!

It's just as much of a miracle the third time around!  We were very surprised to learn of our unexpected blessing in late June.  We expect the arrival of baby number three sometime in late February via a scheduled c-section.  I'm 11 weeks along today and still wrapping my mind around the idea of three little ones running around our house!  I feel truly blessed and perhaps just a tad overwhelmed ;)

Mother's Day Weekend

Boy, do I feel like the luckiest Mommy in the world!  Adam and the girls woke me with breakfast in bed Sunday morning!  I got a sweet card and a beautiful necklace from www.Etsy.com (my favorite online store).  We took these pics of our family in our backyard.

Here are just the girls and me.  I simply cannot believe how big they are getting!

Ava Grace and Elizabeth decided to tackle me in the living room floor and "help" me get into a yoga pose.


Boy was I worn out by Sunday evening!  I thank God daily for each moment I'm given and for my beautiful, happy family.  Words cannot express how blessed I feel.

This and that...

Here are some pics I've taken at random over the past few weeks.  The one above is of Elizabeth putting on "mommy shoes".
Success!  By the way, I cannot help but to put her hair in cute pigtails...I just love it!  I did the same to Ava Grace when she was that little.  Actually, I still do from time to time, when she will allow.
I kept trying to have Elizabeth put the shoes on the correct feet, but she'd reverse them every time.
See, this is how they go, Mommy.
I took this shot of the girls early one morning after they'd just gotten out of bed.  Aren't they adorable?  Ava Grace is always so chipper right out of bed.  Elizabeth needs some personal space and a few minutes to get happy.
Here is Ava Grace painting away on a piece of cardboard she was "reusing".  She loves to reuse objects that would otherwise be thrown away for artwork.  That's my little green girl!
As you can see, there is a tree with red fall leaves on the far left, then Mommy, Daddy, Ava Grace and Eliabeth (the girls have on matching red shoes).
Ava Grace outgrew naps at 4 years old, but occasionally she needs some rest in the afternoons.  I was doing work in the office one day while Elizabeth was sleeping and Ava was reading on the couch listening to "the coffee house" on Sirius FM.  I walked into the room to find her like this.
I guess she was really tired that day.  She slept for over an hour there just like that.  Precious.
Adam has worked so very hard on our yard.  He's planted several rose bushes of different kinds and loves to have the girls help him cut fresh roses.  Elizabeth is practicing her florist skills.
Ava loves to smell the roses and comments how each has it's own fragrance.

Ummmm....smell, Mommy!
Ava proudly shows off a little pink rose.
Here's Elizabeth with a toy magnifying glass trying to figure out how to use it correctly.  She regularly makes me laugh so hard!  

Being Mommy to our two girls is such a tremendous blessing.  I learn something new and wonderful about them on a daily basis and couldn't be a happier Mommy.  

Easter Bunny Visits

The girls woke us at a fairly reasonable hour Easter Sunday morning, around 7:30 a.m.  We went downstairs to find that it had rained all night and was still sprinkling which meant the Easter bunny had hidden the girls eggs indoors!  I explained this to Ava as they walked into the living room to find it scattered with plastic Easter eggs.  Ava started scooping eggs right away and it didn't take Elizabeth long at all to follow suit!
Most of the eggs were in plain sight, but Daddy helped Elizabeth out a bit so that she didn't fall too far behind in the find-the-eggs race!
Ava shows off her basket full of eggs.  I love her wild hair in the mornings.
I pointed out this hiding spot to Elizabeth.
She'd had some practice at her Mother's Day Out program in egg hunting so she already knew to look inside for goodies!  Yes, she's eating chocolate at 7:30 a.m.  Those second children...
The sugar starts to kick in...
These are the baskets from Mommy and Daddy.
Ava shows me the rubber duckies she found in her basket.

It was a little tough peeling the girls away from the Easter basket fun to feed and dress them for church, but we made it happen.

Ava commented and asked questions for days afterward about the exact logistics of how the Easter bunny got inside the house.  My explanation grew pretty elaborate as her little mind cranked on every detail.  I'm wondering how long the Easter bunny is going to hold up in our house...

Because it'll never be this clean again...

Our house was included in a neighborhood home tour this Wednesday, so I decided to document the cleanliness and orderliness that may never be seen again.  This is a shot of our laundry room that leads into the garage (the door on the right).  Check out my new washer and dryer combo!  Adam surprised me when it was delivered a week ago to our house!  It uses only 20% of the water that a regular washer uses!  I can stuff LOTS more in these things too.  Hooray for getting more laundry done at one time!
Another shot of the laundry room looking into the hallway that leads to the informal living area.
Here's the girls shared, Jack-and-Jill bathroom.

This is our upstairs master bathroom.  It's been so nice having our own sinks!
The windows over the tub overlook our backyard.
This is our master bedroom.  The sliding glass doors on the right overlook our backyard and lead out to a tiny deck that is only wide enough so that you can take one step out onto it.  We're planning to save up to expand it so that we can put a couple of chairs and maybe a cafe table out there.

This is the upstairs hall looking from Elizabeth's nursery down toward the door into Ava's bedroom.  Our master bedroom door is out of the picture to the left.
Here's Elizabeth's nursery.

Ava's bedroom is one of the two rooms we've had a chance to paint since we moved in.  The other room is the girls bathroom, which had ugly old wallpaper when we moved in.


This is a picture of the built-in hutch downstairs in the formal dining area.
This is the downstairs guest bathroom.  There's a shower out of the picture on the left.
This is our office.  Yes, it's this organized and clean all the time ;)
Another shot of the office where you can see our vision boards and the cool metal artwork my dad made, on the left.  It's a phoenix flying through a hoop.
Here's our backyard that Adam has been working really hard on.
Adam and Ava are peeking out of the gazebo that's covered in pretty English roses.
Adam knows how much I love snapdragons, so he planted a ton of them in different colors as a surprise.  Isn't he a sweetie?
Here are all of our roses.  They are just beautiful and smell wonderful right now!
Adam and Ava posing for me.
This is the view of the back porch area from the door leading out from the formal living area.
Here's a view looking toward the house.
This is our informal living area with a built-in bar and wine fridge.
Another view of that room looking toward the wall of windows that look into the back yard.
Our kitchen looking from the informal dining area.
The informal dining area that looks into the backyard and back porch.
This sits just behind that table in the informal dining area.  I painted the plates hanging on the wall after my girls stamped their hands on them with paint.
The formal living area.
The formal dining area.  The windows on the left look into the front yard.
This is our entryway.

It was an honor to be asked to participate in the home tour, but I'm sure glad it's over...and I know the rest of my family is too!