We're off again...

This time we're headed to the Outer Banks until Monday. Well, I'm taking the kids today and Will is coming tomorrow afternoon.

Haley and Carlie's mom and dad invited us to their family beach house in Duck. They also invited Addie's family so I'm sure the three girls are going to have an awesome time.

Sophia is so excited to go to the beach. She told me this morning that she can't wait to swim. I mentioned to her that she's going to have a sleep over with her friends and I think she almost peed her pants she was so excited.

Our trip to the zoo

We went to the zoo because I had a free admission ticket and I wanted to buy tickets for the G. family for the twins' birthday gift.

The weather was perfect. Not too hot and there was a nice breeze. We stayed for almost 3 hours and believe me that's hard to do. It's a very small zoo.

Sophia was really excited to see the giraffes, the lions and the elephants.

Sophia posed for some really great pictures for me. Take a look.

Her first word

Lilly has been saying her first word for a few days now! Guess what it is? No, it's not mama or dada or bottle or anything like that! It's Sadie!!!! She says it like DEE, but everytime she sees Sadie she does the sign and says DEE.

She's currently working on mama, but it hasn't actually come out yet.

Sidenote: Sophia's first word was Sadie too! She pronounced it like: ADEE

Pictures from the twins' birthday party

Here they are.

Birthday party

Last Sunday we went to a 2nd birthday party for Jackson and Lola Grace, the G. twins. The party was at My Gym...a place where Sophia has been going to for two years, yet she clung to Will. Sophia was one of the oldest kids at the party too. She was incredibly timid and shy for most of the party. She enjoyed being in the ball pit when nobody else was in it, but the minute she sensed someone else was even thinking about joining her she would start to freak out and get scared. At least she doesn't push anymore. Now she just hides behind our legs and starts to cry as if she's terribly frightened.



Lilly had a blast crawling all over the place and exploring the scene. She really enjoyed this ride on toy for a few minutes before she decided she didn't want to be on it anymore. She didn't care for the ball pit one bit.

Both of the girls had a blast when the bubble machine was turned on and started blowing hundreds of bubbles all over the place. But I think the girls had the most fun before we even left the house because Will was letting them crawl all over him.

I'm having a problem uploading the pictures. Darn!

Two more teeth

Last night I thought I saw a new tooth in Lilly's mouth, but didn't get a good look. This morning I got a great look and she has two new teeth! They look like molars - one on the top and one on the bottom on the right side of her mouth. They are not coming in directly beside the ones she already has. Strange.

I did it! I dressed myself

This morning Sophia completely dressed herself including her underpants and shorts. Usually she puts on shirts and dresses and she does this during her quite time in her bedroom EVERY SINGLE DAY! She's so proud of herself and so am I, but I'm kind of getting tired of hanging up 20 shirts and dresses up EVERY SINGLE DAY! She usually has on three or four new shirts.

She's not tall enough (yet) to reach hangers so she pulls as hard as she can on the bottoms of the shirts until the hangers either break or slip off the rod. I seriously need to buy more hangers for her clothes.

She also wears a princess costume EVERY SINGLE DAY and pretends she's a princess. She loves it. I have a mirror in her play room at her level and she literally stands in front of it to admire herself. I guess I would too if I looked so darn cute EVERY SINGLE DAY!

3 steps

Yes, Lilly took three steps last night. I seriously thought my face was going to crack because I was smiling so hard. She performed her amazing new trick not just once, but about 5 times.

She would take three tiny tiny tiny steps and fall on her butt. As soon as she's done with breakfast I'm going to see if she'll do it again.

Guess what?

Lilly has slept through the night for the past 5 nights. Have we finally reached this major milestone? I really really really hope so!

This is a picture of her sleeping in the jogging stroller. I was able to take her for a run with me and she ended up falling asleep. Adorable.

And check out the size of that thigh! I love to squeeze them.

I still love Lamby the most!

Water, water everywhere

Lilly likes to play in water. She likes to stand up and reach her hand into any toilet she sees. Side note: she also really likes to pick tiny pieces of toilet paper off the roll and throw it into the toilet. Playing in the toilet is gross.

Bath time: when Lilly takes a bath she absolutely refuses to sit still. She immediately stands up and it scares me to death!

At Great Wolf Lodge she really liked it when Will was holding her in the wave pool.

Two packages arrived on the same day.

How fun! Two big boxes arrived for the girls about two weeks ago and I haven't had a chance to post about it yet. Well, I finally uploaded the photos so I can tell you about the squealing fun Sophia and Lilly had opening those boxes.

One box from Grancy and box one from Isabella and Logan, my friend Annie's kids. As you can see from the picture Sophia was staking her claim to the boxes and demanding that Lilly retreat.

Can you say packing peanuts? They were everywhere! This is the second year in a row that Annie sends a box full of packing peanuts! I'm going to have to get her back one of these days.... Sophia was playing "rain" with the peanuts throwing them up in the air and laughing as they fell all around her. She even threw some on Lilly in a loving manner.

The box from Grancy had packing paper in it that must have been twenty feet long. Sophia kept pulling and pulling and pulling the paper out of the box.

She thoroughly enjoyed discovering the cute insect puzzles at the very bottom of the box. The very next day we sat down together and I helped her put them together. I was impressed with how many pieces she was able to place on her own.

Take a look at all the photos. They are so adorable and you can almost hear them having fun. At least I can.

We had so much fun!

Great Wolf Lodge was tons of fun for everyone. Sophia enjoyed the wave pool, the outdoor frog slide, the kiddie pool, the lazy river ride, the basketball pool and the outdoor play ground. In that order too.

Will and I enjoyed four of the six water slides. The two we couldn't go on required at least two riders. I had so much fun I told him we need to get a babysitter and go back for another overnight stay.

Lilly liked being held the entire time we were there. She got spoiled in only 24 hours.

I took so many pictures.
Click here to see set 1.

Click here to see set 2.

We're off....

to Great Wolf Lodge water park in Williamsburg for an overnight stay. We're all looking forward to a change of scenery. Hopefully we'll get some great photos to share.

A trip to the WoW Garden

Sophia, Lilly and I met our friends at the Botanical Garden on Tuesday. This was Lilly's first time in the sprinklers. Poor Lilly had to wear a onesie because she was swimming (pun intended) in the one I just bought for her. There was no way she could wear it. And...the water shoes that Sophia wore at this age were also way too big on Lilly so she wore socks instead. She didn't really know what to think of the water at first, but a half hour into it she started to have fun realizing that she was going to have to wear a hat!

Sophia had a great time with her friends Haley and Addie. The three of them were jumping into the sprinklers and running around squealing in delight. When one of them does something the other two immediately join in. We had a picnic lunch together and during lunch Addie ran off to run up the big hill right beside us. Sophia and Haley quickly followed. We had to bribe them to come back and eat the rest of their lunch.

We could tell it was time to wrap it up when the girls decided to get their towels out and "sleep". They thought this was hysterical.

Take a look at all the pictures...

Lilly in tissue paper

Lilly's big birthday bash

OK, I hope this won't be too long. Here goes:

Lilly's birthday party was on Sunday afternoon at 3:00. Luckily it was over by 6, but even though the party was short (or just long enough) it was a long week leading up to it. This is the "before" photo. Lillian wore a cute little Birthday Girl dress. Sophia wore a Big Sister shirt, but as usual, I wasn't able to get a decent photo of the girls in their shirts next to each other.

Will was off work the week leading up to the party and watched the girls for me while I did party preparations. I made most of the food on Saturday. The menu included burgers and hot dogs, capris salad, black bean salsa salad, potato salad, fruit salad, a watermelon tray and a veggie tray and one enormous, delicious, beautiful strawberry "Lilly" cake.



We had about 60 guests. Half were adults and half were kids and small children. They all loved the pinata, side walk chalk, jump ropes, and the scooter that we brought along for entertainment. We were also lucky enough to have a small play area next to our pavilion.

On Saturday I picked up 25 balloons for decorations. I also bought crepe paper and wrapped each post and used matching table covers. On Sunday I opened the back of my minivan and the balloons flew away. All 25 of them. I couldn't believe it. I wanted to cry...but I kept it together!

One of our young neighbor girls took my camera and took all of the photos. Click here to see them. Thank goodness she was taking pictures for me because I was kind of busy talking to everyone. Will and I both had a great time. We hired a babysitter to tend to Sophia and we brought Lilly's high chair so she wouldn't have to be held the entire time.

Speaking of Lilly, this is the "after" photo:

Memorial Day Weekend

Uncle Rob and Christina came for a long weekend and a good time was had by all. They arrived just in time for our Friday night kickball game. We lost the game. Not only did we lose, but Christina was also kicked out of the game. I told her to play my position for an inning and the Ump saw that she didn't have a kickball shirt on and told her she couldn't play without a shirt. That rule has never before been enforced! After the game we went out for pizza with some of the people on our team.

On Saturday we went to the annual Pungo Strawberry Festival for four hours. I know how long we were there because Will was keeping track. I guess when a person is dragged to an event they keep track of time?? Maybe.

Rob and Will played some Corn Hole, Rob won tons of souvenirs, Sophia rode her first carnival rides and we all paid way too much for lemonade and lunch! My search for strawberry pie was met and we had strawberry pie for a few days. I had it built up so much in my head and ultimately it wasn't as good as I anticipated.

Sophia, however, enjoyed her strawberry crunch ice cream bar. She had one at the Strawberry festival and then she ate another one the next day when we went miniature golfing.

We hit the beach on Sunday. It was really windy and we actually got rained on a bit too. The sky looked gorgeous everywhere around us, but directly overhead our spot on the beach was really cloudy. Then we played a round of miniature golf course. Rob won.

On Monday morning Christina and I got pedicures and then in the afternoon the ladies hit the beach again and the guys went to see the new Star Trek movie.

The weekend really flew by and before we knew it Tuesday had arrived and they were leaving. I know Sophia misses them because she's asked when they are coming back.