Happy birthday, dear Weston!

Time has gotten away from me, and I have so much to cover for the months of November and December, but I absolutely wanted to post about our sweet boy's 1st birthday before the year ended.

He turned 1 on December 8th. We had a very small family gathering (us and one set of grands) the night of his b-day and a slightly larger family gathering later that weekend.

His first cake, made by our phenomenal housekeeper, Esmeralda.


Help blowing out the candles.


Lots of pics of cake eating! He loved it!








And he got some help opening presents and playing with his new toys as well.







Happy birthday, sweet boy! We love you so much!

Many blessings

We've joined a wonderful church this year and have truly enjoyed attending and getting to know everyone there. It's the perfect fit for our family and has added so much to our lives, in so many ways.

So, last weekend, the kids and I were baptized. It was a really wonderful day. Beautiful service and ceremony, lots of dear family and friends attending. And one uninvited guest: the seriously aggressive stomach virus that the kids passed along to a lot of our group.

I wish we had more pictures; I am relying on the ones my FIL sent. I spent most of the day busy and also worrying about Reese since she wasn't well. Here's what we've got!








Thank you to everyone who travelled near and far to be with us. And my apologies for any illnesses brought home with you. We love you all!

Cool school party

Super Reesie!












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Halloween fests, part 2

R on her way to school. Fall festival today! So fun.








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Trick or treat, part 1

I love this annual tradition! It is so much fun to meet up with dear friends and their kids at the sorority house and take our kids trick-or-treating from door-to-door. Let's face it, the actual trick-or-treating lasts about 10 minutes tops--they're getting pretty fast at this! But then they always have cookies and candy apples to decorate and lots of the girls come down in costume and are so cute with the kids.

We got there and immediately met up with Monique and Nico. The beautiful ballerina and the sassy Strawberry Shortcake say hello...
(all photos courtesy of Monique--thank you!!!!)


Weston tolerated his cow costume...



Nice cow! love the patting!



The kids are ready to go!



One of the girls brought a cat dressed up as a clown downstairs. Am I remembering incorrectly that we weren't allowed to have pets? Anyway--generally kind of an odd sitch--but awesome when Nico started carrying her around!



Happy Halloween! The holiday weekend begins....

Gymnastic super heroines!

Mommy misunderstood instructions & brought R to class in character. Oops! Oh well. Fun times!


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Snippy milestone

First haircut for our boy! Like the "stylist" said, it's a "little man cut"! He looks so grown up. Sigh.

As you can tell, help was needed....he loved the whole experience. Probably because there was a train table, a Lego table, lots of big boys to marvel at & a car to sit in during the cut!
























And the finished product....a freshly groomed little boy!




He looks so adorable but it's making me a little sad that he's starting to look more little boy than baby boy. Again: sigh.

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Halloween jammies

Getting ready for the week's festivities!






Can you tell W's jams are R's hand me downs? Do they look too girly for my sturdy little guy?

Thank goodness for blogpress & my iPhone. I don't even know where the regular camera is these days....

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Picture day!

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Them woofing vultures

We've been invaded by vultures lately.





They're not very subtle in stalking their prey. Which is usually waffles, scrambled eggs or pasta.





Here's one of them, moving in.


At least we aren't overly worried.




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Get up stand up

Guess who figured out that standing up in the crib is so much fun?









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