The Great Smoky Mountains

For the third year in a row, my mother has planned a long weekend winter girl's trip (plus children). The children enjoyed the last mountain trip {2 years ago} so much that we decided to go back. The highlight of the trip was the train ride on Saturday.

I love this picture of McKendree and Roper on the train ride 2 years ago...so sweet...looking back at baby Ro with his chubby cheeks makes me so happy that before long I will have another precious baby boy!!



Here are some of the pictures from our trip this year...









Mason's favorite movie of all time is the Polar Express, for us it's not just a Christmas movie, we watch it year-round. He loved meeting the conductor that was dressed and mustached like the one from the movie, and he especially enjoyed getting his ticket punched! He kept the ticket in his hand all day.




I also love this picture from two years ago...


...I tried (unsuccessfully) to re-create it:


On our way to the mountains we were due for a bathroom/stretch break when we got to Cherokee, so we decided to take in an Indian show in a random parking lot. I'm glad my mom was with us because I kept thinking that she was going to have to do CPR on this poor Indian! But the children were impressed and got to do some dancing of their own...





Bebe with her grandsons & niece & nephew...


It was a great trip! My mom insists that we will have another trip next year, and by that time we will have added three more children to the group since Kelli, Michelle & I are all pregnant!

Excuses, excuses

Actually, I would like to think I have good reasons for being absent from my blog...not just empty excuses. I'm pretty far behind, so here I offer a quick re-cap of what's been going on around here.

I headed down to Charleston a few weeks ago with Tara & Sally for some much-needed girl's time. While there, I picked up an Easter basket for baby D. I thought it was very close to the size of Mason & Roper's baskets, but turns out it is slightly larger. I guess the baby is already getting spoiled. :)



When I was writing out the check to the lady that made the basket, I commented to her that I recognized her name and I was sure she also made the last basket I bought (which would have been Roper's Easter basket). I checked when I got home...puzzling...

Roper's basket...



Duncan's basket...



Moving on...two weekends ago the boys and I headed up to the NC/TN mountains for a long weekend with my mom, aunt, sister-in-law and all the children. That trip deserves a post of its own...pictures to come.

Some of my closest friends were very sweet and generous to host a shower for me & Duncan with a group of my local girlfriends. I felt pretty spoiled to have a shower for my 3rd baby boy...but goodness I got some CUTE things and I'm so thankful to have friends that love my children so much!

In between the trips & partying, I've been doing my best to get the nursery in order. The closet was full of my off-season/non-maternity clothes, which I weeded and re-located. The dresser was full of random stuff which had to be purged, since it is now M&R's dresser. I got distracted inspired by all the cleaning/weeding/purging and tackled our upstairs linen closet, which was an absolute mess. I had seen a suggestion on Pinterest to store sheets in their pillowcases.



Genius! No more searching through the closet for the matching set of sheets and pillowcases! Admittedly, mine don't look as nice and neat as those pictured, since I'm still mastering the art of folding a fitted sheet. So my stacks are a little lumpier, but nonetheless, its a good change and I highly recommend this system!

In the process of cleaning out the nursery closet, dresser, linen closet, my closet (to make room for stuff from the nursery closet), I filled up 9 big trashbags for a LICS donation. That felt good!

This past weekend we made the most progress on baby D's room...but I still have a few finishing touches before it is picture/blog worthy. :)

And here I am at 34+ weeks pregnant, and I keep reminding myself that M&R were both born at 37 weeks, which seems way too soon for Duncan to make his arrival! With all 3 of my pregnancies I have felt like the first half DRAGS and then the second half FLIES by! The clock is ticking...

Happy New Year!

I'm just getting around to posting pictures of our New Year's beach trip...which at this point seems like it was about a month ago! We spend every New Years with our good friends the Maryanskis...this was our 8th year in a row so I guess you could call it a tradition!

This year we celebrated with a beautiful weekend in Ocean Isle Beach...the weather was amazing and felt more like May than late December. It was very relaxing...except when Roper and Leah were tormenting each other! Those two are like oil and water. We all joked that they will probably end up having crushes on each other one day!

And the reason it seems so long ago is that as soon as we got home from the beach on New Year's Day, Graem packed up and headed to Orlando for a full week. His trip was primarily for work, but when the Gamecocks were selected for the Capital One Bowl, he extended his trip on the front end by a couple of nights so he could make it to the game. I'm so glad he got to go to the game, but I will be honest and say it might have been the longest week of my life!

Graem used to travel all the time for work, so when this trip came up, I thought "no big deal, I'm an old pro at this." HA. It was a little different this time...
I'm 7 months pregnant.
I have a 4 year old and a 2 year old.
It is really exhausting to get two young boys fed, bathed & ready for bed by 8:00 by yourself when you are 7 months pregnant.
We just recently moved the 2 year old to a "big boy" bed and he is still learning that he can't get out of bed 56 times after we put him down...extending bedtime from our normal 8:00 to as late as 9:30.
He is also still learning that 5:30 AM is not an appropriate time to come downstairs or start jumping on his brother's bed, screaming "Wake up, Bubba! Wake up, Bubba!"
It is really hard to get my 7-months pregnant self and two young boys dressed, fed & out the door in the morning without the help of Graem. Thank goodness I did not have to do this every day {at least the "out the door" part...I did manage to make sure we were all fed & dressed each day}.
All three of us were fighting colds {and exhaustion} last week.

So...I spent most of the week in survival mode and I have never been happier to see my husband than when we picked him up from the airport on Friday night! It is funny how a little perspective can make you appreciate someone even more than you already did!

Okay, on to the pictures from the beach...


The progression of these next two pictures cracks me up. Baby Allyson is such a content little chunk, particularly when she is eating...








It is so funny how Mason can be so much like his Daddy. He loves to be on a mission...and his mission during this walk was to collect as many sticks as possible.




I had some fun with these pictures I took with my iPhone...thanks to Heidi for recommending the BeFunky app...after tinkering with my pictures it let me upload them directly to my Flickr account!



Our angels making sand angels...






One of the neatest things about Ocean Isle is that it faces south, unlike most of the beaches on our coast. Which means it gets a beautiful sunset on the western side of the island...

Litchfield

I mentioned in my post yesterday that we spent the weekend at the beach...my Aunt Ruth let us use her brand new condo at Litchfield and we had such a relaxing mini-vacation. October is a great time to go to the beach...I could hardly believe it, but people were actually swimming in the pools and the ocean!

We took lots of walks/bike rides...


...hunted alligators...


...enjoyed the scenery...






...had races on the beach...






...and I did my best to ensure that we left Aunt Ruth's beautiful condo with brand new furniture exactly like we found it, which was difficult considering we had pizza for lunch one day, ribs for supper one night, and 2 messy children, that look like this after eating toast with jelly:



After the Carolina *victory* on Saturday, we headed back to the beach for a bike ride on the sand during low tide. Once we got there, the boys quickly lost interest in their bikes and were fascinated by the tide pool left behind during low tide. You can see the progression in the following pictures how putting their feet in the water turned into running around, which turned into jumping in, which was followed with rolling around in the water. At some point Roper took off his shirt. :)













When we were at the beach in August, Graem took Mason to the go cart track and had some tickets leftover, so we rode up to MB to race go carts. I'm still not sure if this was for Graem's entertainment or the boys'??









This was our first trip to Litchfield as a family and it brought back many wonderful memories of vacationing there when I was growing up. My grandparents had a condo at Litchfield so we went there often...I can remember walking on the beach with my grandmother looking for shells...visiting my grandmother's friend from college at Debordieu...sitting on the beach at night with my grandfather watching a meteor shower...and watching the Atlanta Braves on tv with my grandfather. It is a very special place and none of us wanted to leave. We are very thankful that we will get to go back often! Thank you, Aunt Ruth!

Fishy Kisses

There are moments when I realize that God truly knew what he was doing when he gave me two little boys (not that I ever doubted it). Things that other mothers might find gross don't even phase me!

In case the pictures don't speak for themselves, Mason & Roper were picking up each mud minnow (our bait fish) out of the bait cooler & then giving them kisses. Fish need love too. :)