2014 in Review (Part 2)

July

Fourth of July.


The girls met Aubie.


Raye took her first dip in the swimming pool (she did actually like it...she was just starting to get tired by the time we got a photo).


We got family pictures taken.


More trips to the zoo.


Shannon turned 40.


August

The girls got their hair cut in a salon for the first time.


We moved back across the ocean.


We moved into a new apartment.


I started to can some tomatoes (ok, about 40 kilos all together).


September

We went camping with some friends.


We got some cool care packages.


Noel got some weird bite or infection that really stressed me out for a few days.


We got to see some beautiful sunrises from our living room window.


Raye got a hangnail that got infected so spent the better part of the next month with a sock on her hand.


The girls supported Auburn in style every Saturday.


October

Raye started to eat some solids.


We took a bus trip through the mountains to Georgia.


We spent two weeks exploring Tbilisi.


We did some Halloween and fall crafts.




November

It snowed. And snowed again. And snowed again.


We had a fall party and all dressed up.


Shannon took a trip out of town and I used my down time in the evenings to make an Advent calendar.


We bought a waffle iron from someone who had moved and started to have waffles instead of pizza for dinner on family nights.


We put up our Christmas tree on Thanksgiving and ate turkey on Saturday (a bit of a reversal from what people usually do in the States).


December

Christmas crafts and playdoh.




It snowed some more.


Noel turned three.


I baked pumpkin bread and five kinds of cookies and we distributed them to our neighbors.


Christmas!


We had a surprise party for a friend here and did jamberry manicures. I'm not a fan.


And then it was New Year's Eve but it was so foggy I couldn't get any good pictures. And just like that it was 2015.

2014 in Review (Part 1)

This last year I haven't been in the blogosphere much. But we still had a lot happen. So, to catch you up in case you missed something (i.e. if you don't know us in person and see us and talk to us frequently)...

January

We drove from our temporary residence in North Carolina to Virginia and visited with my brother a bit, eating at Chic-fil-A (where Shannon forgot his coat since the weather was so nice) and going to the Virginia Aquarium.


The girls went to their first movie in the theater (Frozen).


Lane turned four.


We found out we were having our third girl.


February

My mom took Lane to the circus for her birthday (and I took Noel).


The South got a ton of snow.


The girls played with their cousins a lot.


We went to a "farm" where you can pet and feed animals (and I'm talking giraffes and buffalos kind-of-animals, not normal petting zoo animals like goats and pigs).





March

We took the girls to the Greensboro Children's Museum.


We went to the Gulf with Shannon's mom and stepdad (and Lane was sick most of the trip).




Cracker Barrel!


We moved into a new temporary house in Birmingham.


April

The girls went on their first Easter egg hunt.


I had a baby shower for Raye.


We introduced the girls to the Birmingham Zoo.


The girls dyed Easter eggs and fell in love with hunting them in the backyard.


My whole body felt like cankles.


May

We served Raye her eviction notice and she entered the world.


My mom came to visit us in Birmingham.


We went to the zoo. Two or three times, I think.


Memorial Day.


We spent time at a friend's swimming pool about five minutes from where we were staying.


June

We met my dad, stepmom, brother, and sister's family in Gatlinburg.


We visited the aquarium there.


After my family left, Shannon's dad and stepmom and our niece drove up from Birmingham. We went to Dollywood.


I had surgery on my left wrist for tendonitis.


Raye and I went to Texas to visit a good friend of mine.

8 Months Old

Dear Raye,

On my 35th birthday you turned eight months old. It's always hard to believe that you're already as old as you are. It seems like you were born yesterday. And it seems like a lifetime ago, too, if I'm honest. It's been a long year. =)



This month has been a fun one. You have started army crawling and are pretty fast at it. You've gotten up on all fours and gone forward a "step" or two, but you always drop to your belly to go faster and just army crawl wherever you want to go. I don't think it helps you any that we don't have many carpets and you slide on the floors when wearing pants, which you usually do since, hey, it's winter. But you can get wherever you want to go. You've also started climbing a bit, or pulling yourself onto things. You can get all the way on the girls' small trampoline, into Noel's bed, or pull yourself up to sitting on your knees. You can sit for long periods of time and never fall anymore, but can scoot yourself forward from a sitting position until you're on your belly so you can crawl places.



This month you also started to eat more foods. I still don't have tons of time to cook for you, but you usually eat scrambled eggs and yogurt for breakfast, some oatmeal mixed with applesauce and some squash for lunch, and some of a banana and something else for dinner. And thrown in the day will be some other food that I've prepared for the rest of us (carrots, potatoes, rice, etc.) or some other soft fruit that we have on hand. Your diet is limited but you don't seem to care. You've also started to feed yourself some, but honestly most of it ends up on the floor. You prefer to use your left hand right now, too, to feed yourself.



You're still sleeping well, love your sisters, love to be tickled, love being sung to and danced with, and love to chew on things. You're a great baby, and I love you and am so thankful for you.

Love,
Mommy

And Then She Was Three (2nd time around)

The Umizoomi cake I made for her.

Three weeks ago today Noel turned three years old. I took the day off of language class and spent the day making birthday pancakes and a pot of soup, cleaning up a bit, and decorating for her Team Umizoomi "party" (aka: people come over for dinner and cake). We spent the morning slowly opening her birthday gifts and Skyping/Facetiming with some of her grandparents. It was a fun day.

The first present Noel opened was a huge lollipop that Lane bought her with money she earned washing our windows.

She got some plastic dinosaurs and safari animals,

Tinkerbell accessories and a fun skirt (Lane got some wings, too),

And Bristle Blocks, the game Hoot, Owl, Hoot, and The Water Hole by Graeme Base. I'm sure she got other things too that I can't remember right now, too.

I spent her nap time hanging balloons and streamers and shapes on the wall. Lane put Umizoomi stickers on the dessert plates for me. Later that evening some friends came over and we had chicken noodle soup for dinner and tackled the monster-sized cake. (I don't seem to have a very good idea of how much cake to actually make and seem to always make twice as much as we can possibly eat.)

Thoughout the day I asked Noel the birthday questions that we begin when our kids turn three. She refused to answer some of them and others I had to solicit an answer for. So some of these are surely not right, but it was fun to hear her answers anyways!

1. Your favorite color is pink.

2. Your favorite toy is Lambie.
3. Your favorite fruit is pear.
4. Your favorite TV show is Mickey Mouse.
5. Your favorite movie is Madagascar.
6. Your favorite thing to wear is a costume.
7. Your favorite animal is "little baby calves."
8. Your favorite song is "B-I-N-G-O."
9. Your favorite book is Brown Bear, Brown Bear.
10. Your best friend is Lane.
11. Your favorite snack is grapes.
12. Your favorite drink is juice.
13. Your favorite breakfast is O's.
14. Your favorite lunch is grilled cheese .
15. Your favorite dinner is chicken noodle soup.
16. Your favorite game is The Sneaky Snacky Squirrel.
17. Your favorite thing to play outside is a bouncy ball.
18. You don't know what your favorite holiday is.
19. At night you sleep with Raffie, Bunny, and Blankie .
20. You don't know what you want to be when you grow up.

And just like that my middle girl is three.