Happy Birthday Aubrie Marie!

Miss Aubrie Marie is officially 1! Can you believe it, because we can't! Way back when I got pregnant with her and realized her due date was right smack in the middle of summer, I began planning her Hawaiian Luau :) Mike of course thought I was nuts, but how perfect, right?

 These parties are really all for us as Aubrie had her one friend best friend there, Adele. Adele's mom and I were pregnant together with these two sweethearts and our families are great friends. Adele is one week older then Aubrie, they are so sweet together :)

 Our friend who watches the kiddos when I work has son, Jake, who is 6ish years old. He adores Aubrie :) So much so this was his gift to the birthday girl; a balloon that says "Happy Birthday Pretty, Pretty Princess" tied to a rose. Melt. My. Heart :)

 

 Keep the heart melting coming! This is Graham (Adele's brother). He walked right up to Aub's and started serenading her with "Happy Birthday"!!! The whole song! What a great treat :)

 We served chicken, shrimp and steak kabobs with Hawaiian rice, rolls and fruit. A very tasty festive lunch. Of course followed with birthday cake.

Another incredible cake by my friend. It's a pineapple with these beautiful flowers and sand surrounding it! If you look closely to the right and see the red string, its a Leigh! :) 

 This is Jake :) Can you tell he likes her ;) Aubs loved her cake (Did we have any doubts? No not one!)! I'm pretty sure we were picking cake out of her ears later than night ;)

Happy Birthday Aubrie! We feel so blessed to have gotten a whole year with you! You are such a sweet, sassy, princess diva, and gosh do we love you!



Our camera has been broke for a few weeks and so not too many pictures. Mike was the one who finally caved and braved the 2 hour car drive to get the thing fixed. Living in a small town definitely has it's perks but goodness it also has it's negatives when you have to drive so far to the largest city.

 Our sweet and great babysitter has been putting pig tails in Aub's girls hair. OH. MY. WORD. Too cute! :)

Our first outside play set was received today! Got it for a whopping $30 from a friend and it's just perfect.

 

 My favorite part of it is the smiles it brings these two faces :)

Brody has been loving "exploring it" and calling it the "Clubhouse". I think this was one of the only times I caught him actually going down the slide on his bottom ;)

Can you tell who the one with no fear is? Oh my son, he is a monkey I tell you! Aubrie is slowly learning how to climb the ladder, she's so cute as she tries so hard with such dedication :)



Floors and Cousins

We placed new floors in our home! It was a crazy, crazy week but goodness was it all worth it!

 Here is a snap shot of our old flooring in the kitchen. Mike tore this up, the carpet in the living room and hallway and broke up the tile in the foyer.

 As with most house projects, I'm not sure what we were thinking. I imagined it to be no big deal to keep the kiddos here in the house. I saw us going on with our normal lives. About midnight on the second work day after pulling up nails I realized I can't keep the kids in the house!

 So....the next morning after our picnic breakfast the kids and I packed up and drove to Oklahoma City to spend time with the cousins :) Duh!!! Why didn't we do this sooner?! While daddy worked away (now this is the kind of house work I can do ;)

The kid's were in heaven! 

 We love being with the cousins!!

 They even have an Oklahoma City Thunder bathroom!! What??!! This caused for some MAJOR excitement each and every time B had to go potty :) The rule was no shooting hoops until the toilet lid is closed ;) 

 Stayed up late, woke up SUPER early, got to watch TV, can life really get much better for a 2 year old?

 We had a blast while daddy worked away! Hmmm....what other projects can we start on now.. :)

We returned to the most beautiful home we've ever lived in :) Mike did WONDERFUL!!! We love our wood floors, love them, love them, love them! I love only having carpet in the bedrooms. I will never again have carpet in the living areas, never! A huge pet peeve  of mine is shoes on the carpet, I mean huge! Really, I cringe every time I see it and my heart does a tiny heart attack. I still cringe when I see shoes on my floors but the great thing is I can get on my hands and knees and scrub those shoe germs up! :) It's just beautiful :)

Camping! We had a blast! We just went to a cute state park about 15 minutes from our house and planned it to be simple. Simple as in one night, hot dogs for dinner and lunch and warm up pancakes for breakfast :) Couldn't have had a better plan.

 The reason for just a simple overnight is the stage Aubrie is at, crawling. She just doesn't have much fun being confined to a blanket, she wants to be doing what we are doing. So until the chica is walking, we will do over nighter camping adventures close to home ;)

 Brody loves, loves, loves being outside, so of course he was in heaven!

 Trigger kept thinking the blankets we layed down for Aubs were for him :)

 I know this pictures is blurry, but I love the true joy and everyone's face :) I love being with my family and making these great memories with them. We stay up way to late and wake up WAY too early ;)

I'm not sure if we are going through a mid life crisis or what but Mike and I planned a CRAZY camping trip for September. We are heading out to Zion National Park, Arches National Park and Bryce Canyon. Yep, all 4 of us with our camper. Are we crazy?! Surely not, right??

I'm so behind! We FINALLY got the camper out last week and I have pictures but I haven't figured out how to get them off my phone. So stay tuned, because they are really great :)

 Grandpa's old hair cutting cape has received a new customer! :) It was time for B's summer cut, one which I'm very comfortable giving. Nothing says summer more than a buzz cut on a 2 year old ;)

 I love these pictures above! To the left is Aubrie and the right is Brody when he was Aub's age. They aren't allowed on the dishwasher but once (to get a picture). The funny part is it took B maybe 5 seconds to get the nerve to climb up the dishwasher and it took Aubrie about 10-15 minutes! I absolutely love how different the two are. It definitely keep us on our feet and never knowing what we are doing ;)

Another post, mainly for the adorning Grandmas :)

 Forgive me, I just can't get over how adorable Brody is in his big boy undies! His little bottom is oh my word just too much cuteness!!!! Especially when daddy walks into the room and B yells, "I need to tackle!" So daddy assumes position and B becomes a spider monkey :)

 Then Aubs girls discovered what a puddle was. For the amount of princess she is, I'm shocked how much she LOVED getting wet and muddy :)

Brother eventually joined in on the fun, however, he was a very naked J-Bird which means I can't post those pictures ;)

We are safe from the last two days of horrific tornado outbreaks. With extremely heavy hearts we are thankful to have, yet again, escaped the devastation a tornado brings. The F-4 from yesterday that hit Moore, Oklahoma was 2 hours south of here. We had our shelter (our bathroom) ready for the second day in a row, if the sirens went off. Gosh, the clouds did look scary. I'm trying to write something profound and encouraging but the words aren't coming. It's really even difficult to find words to pray because I just simply don't know what to say. I will say this. In these moments I find the most comfort from opening my Bible and reading. That's it, just reading. There is something so extremely powerful and comforting about having my Bible open and being wrapped up in the words of God Himself! 

Mike's brother lives very close to Moore and they also are safe. Mike is already busy at work figuring out dates to take teams to help with the cleanup.

 

Anyways, Meghan graduated a week ago! My dad, brother and sister were able to make the trek down here :)

We had a fun lunch party afterward for her, complete with this yummy, yummy cake!!

It was really neat, toward the end of the party we all prayed for Meghan and this next adventure in her life.

So Brody ADORES his Uncle Spencer! ADORES! They are inseparable when together :) Above I'm pretty sure Brody is stealing Spence's nose and eating it ;)

We celebrated Mother's Day a few days after. Mike wanted to celebrate the whole day instead of just 1/2 the day with church. He blew my mind as he really did have the whole day planned! We went out for breakfast, then a picnic lunch at the park, an afternoon nap and then a date (just us 2!) to end the day. So fun! This was Aubrie's first picnic and she loved it :)

 We brought leftover cake for dessert and forgot forks. Brody thought it was the coolest thing that we dug in with our hands to eat it ;)

We even got to feed the ducks. For our animal loving boy, this was the greatest thing! He did really well and wasn't even scared one bit. He made me scared with how close he would get to them though.

Have I mentioned how much  I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE being a momma!?? I'm still not sure when I became an adult or why in the world the Lord trusts me enough to raise kiddos, but goodness I LOVE it! :) And we do make pretty cute kids, right?!

10 months!

 10 months!!!! The Girlfriend is 10 months old! In 2 months we will be celebrating her 1st birthday and goodness in one year (I'm sure it will feel like!) Daddy will be walking her down the isle! "Enjoy EVERY second, don't blink, keep snuggling my babies as long as they let me" is what I find myself repeating often times because I look at them and can't get over how quickly life is flying.

 These monthly pics become more and more difficult. This month was the hardest...because....AUBS GIRL IS CRAWLING!!!! Her very last night of being 9 month old she decided to do it :) She's memorized by our house :) Mike and I keep singing the Aladdin song, "A whole new world, a dazzling place I never knew" hehe. This newest accomplishment as brought so much confidence about herself. Not only is she crawling but pulling up on everything :) She's adorable because she continues to be way, super cautious about every move but yet she does what she needs to do :)

 

• Continues to wear size 3 diapers 
• Sleeps from 8pm-8am (is the goal, lately big brother has been known to tickle her awake in their room at 6:45am!!) Then 2, 2 hour naps a day at 10:00am and 2:00 pm
• Eats really whatever we are eating, which makes us eat super healthy ;) Then eats from me 4 times a day.
• Received her first discipline this month. She threw food from her highchair to the ground, deliberately, yea it was really sad :( She definitely does not carry Brody's strong willed personality because she really has never done it again :)
• Is jibber jabbering all the time :)
• Sleeps with Rain the Monkey and Molly the Monkey :)

 Brody painted with water colors over the weekend. What fun! I'm not sure what was more fun though; the water colors or getting to put on an old shirt of daddy's as a paint shirt :) Cute, cute, cute!!!!! He is in for a rude awakening, I think, with his sister being mobile now :)