Catching Up

I feel like that is all we have been doing around here lately. We have been in and out of town and with me trying to learn how to balance monogramming and running a household, there has been a lot of catch up on! And obviously the blog has taken a back seat for the summer (and part of the the fall). But here are a few highlights from the rest of our summer

The Gaureke's came to visit

We went and visited Danette and her family for spring break, and they were moving back to Viriginia this summer and came to visit us in there two weeks in between leaving Chicago and moving into their new house. Danette also babysat for the Cunningham girls we were were little, so there are quite a few pictures of the four of us growing up.

Here are Dannette's "Tennessee kids" (as she calls me, Tee, Grace Ann, & Molly) with her kids & my kids on the 4th of July. From left to right: Me, Emalyn, Brooke, Grace Ann, Maddie, Molly, Tee & Austin. 

 The girls loving on Bebe.

 My girls adore "Miss Caroline;" Uncle Tee would have a lot of explaining to do to my girls if they ever break up. :)

Maddie with "silly Uncle Tee" as she calls him.

It was Brooke's 7th Birthday while they were here, so the girls went to Divas & Dudes to celebrate.

Maddie getting her "pedicare" as she calls it. 

And getting their finger nails done...

And last but not least they got their hair done. What a special day!

Maddie turned 4!

Hope to post a longer entry in the next few days, but this is at least a sneak peak!

Playing

 The girls had lots of fun having picnics for lunch and doing each others hair! (Notice that Maddie is still wearing her 4 year old crown!)

Weekend with the Bruces
The end of August, we met the Bruces, the Agnews, and the Bernsteins at Katie's parents lake house. It was so nice to get away for a quick trip and get to catch up! Although Emalyn is not the best sleeper when is not in her room at home, so after I let her scream it out for 30 mins, I got her back up thinking she would fall asleep in one of our arms...oh no, I should have known better. She was still going strong at 11:00, running around loving being the center of attention! We put her in bed with us for the night, only for me to totally forget she was laying on top of me when I heard Maddie start crying in the other room. So of course I sat up to go get Maddie, and in the process, rolled Emalyn off of the bed. So at 4 am, I am not sound asleep cozy in my bed  but in the bathroom trying to check Emalyn's pupils to make sure she did have a concussion! Oh, the joys of parenthood!
I will definitely get in a lake but don't love not knowing what is swimming under me. So it was great that they had a pool!

Katie with Will and me and my girls. My girls loved the waterfall. 

 Trekking it down to the lake with daddy.

Always fun to have daddy at the pool!

More to come about starting school and the trip to Disney World soon! 

Summer Days

I think each month I am going to do a better job of updating our blog more often, but then the craziness of life takes over and here I am again with a lot to catch up on! We have had a great summer so far. I have loved spending more time with Maddie, (not that we have not had our moments), but I feel like the summer has given me time to work with her. She has such a kind heart and always wants to be so helpful.

The Zoo
Daddy took a half day from work, and we went to Maddie's favorite place - the zoo!

 And the train was finally open!

Princess Ballet Camp

We started June off with Maddie take a princess dance camp. They ended the week with a performance. 

Note: they were all supposed to have their hands up in the air, Maddie didn't quite know what to do. 

Emalyn just kept staring at Maddie. 

Sweet Auburn Memories

After the week of dance camp, we were off to Auburn for a wedding. 

Her first Toomer's Lemonade!

And this was Chris' favorite picture...of course!

The McCays were so gracious to let us stay at their house with two kids! 

The girls loved playing with their dog Coco...Maddie is dying for a little dog that she can walk on a leash. Bentley just sits down & will not budge when Maddie grabs the leash. :)

On the way down, we stopped through Birmingham to see Emily and Andy, two of our best friends from Auburn, and meet baby Jackson. 

 

Emalyn was in no moody for a picture. But it captures the moment none the less!

And on the way home we stopped through Clanton to get peaches and ice cream. Emalyn knows she should like ice cream, because Maddie loves it, and she screams if you try to take it from her...but she makes a face after every bite!

Playing in the Rain

I had these great plans of going to the pool every afternoon, but it seems like the afternoons that I get my act together to go, it starts to rain. I already had Maddie's bathing suit out, so I figured why not let them have fun. 

Emalyn had more fun playing with the plants I had not planted yet.

 Nights with Uncle Tee

Tee comes and keeps our girls for us once a week for us to go to our small group at church. (I don't think they leave this position on the couch, but whatever works!)

Father's Day

Maddie baked and decorated a cake for Chris for Father's Day, and she let me know we had to put candles on it too!

Girls Night

These were all of my best friends from Harpeth Hall, 5 out of the 7 of us live in Nashville. We go out to dinner for each other birthdays, and in June, Laura & Lauren were both in town to celebrate Neel's birthday. Laura and Neel are both due with baby girls in October, so there will be 7 little ones among us. Looking forward to many more fun times!

Sweet Emalyn

You think she see me hold the phone to my ear with my shoulder? :) She is in such a fun new stage right now. She has more words than I can count now, which I am so thankful for because at her 15 month appoint she just barely had enough words! Girlfriend is nonstop jibber jabber now. Not always understandable, but she knows what she is saying. She loves playing peek-a-boo, and often peers around the banister to the stairs and says "see you." She loves talking on the telephone or "ello"  as she calls it and loves her baby dolls. She went to Mothers Day Out this summer for the first time and held on to her Bitty Baby the whole day. They said the only time she set it down was to eat lunch. She was going to make sure that if mama was going to leave her that baby wasn't going to leave too. :) And her new favorite thing to do is "lellow" which means color. They have gone through my whole stack of printer paper but have had a lot of fun. (I have a lot of "art projects" to sort through once school starts back - Maddie will not let me through anything away!)

Maddie Lu

This was one morning before she went to Dragon Camp at school. She was wearing her camp t-shirt, and I let her wear her hair in a pony tail for the first time. She was so excited! I remember when she was 18 months, and everyone kept telling me it gets easier when they turn 4. And all I could think is that is 2 1/2 years away! But we are finally there. She is so fun to take with me to run errands.  While Emalyn was at MDO, she and I had Mommy & Maddie days. She got to choose what she wanted us to do, so we did everything from go to the zoo to get "pedicares" (as she calls them) to bake cakes to a have special lunch dates. We are loving not having a schedule this summer!  

Skip to My Lu

I always have a project going and here is my latest: www.skiptomyluembroidery.blogspot.com. From the time I got my embroidery machine, I thought it would be fun to have a little side business. But with the addition of the second baby, there was no extra time in my day. Now that Maddie will be in school 4 days a week next year and Emalyn at Mothers Day Out one day, I am finally starting it up. 

My girls had a lot of fun playing with all the fabrics as I was mocking all my appliques up. 

 As you can tell my house was already messy enough, so whats about 50 more pieces of fabric out in the middle of the floor?  :) But they were entertained for quite awhile.  

 Making Emalyn go "night-night" is Maddie's new favorite game to play. 

Sisters

Wow..can't believe it has been over a month since I have posted! I have long post coming about this summer but wanted to post this quickly first. I knew as soon as we found out Emalyn was a girl, I was thankful that Maddie was going to have sister. But there was no way I could have imagined how sweet it would be watching them play together or how many giggles could come from two little girls. They have so much fun playing together, and as Maddie says "she adores me" - they both adore each other.  They have their own names for each other. Emalyn calls Maddie "Sissy" and Maddie calls Emalyn "Littles." Maddie spent the night with my mom last week, and Emalyn must have asked us 50 times, "where's sissy?" Only for Chris or I one to answer "shes at Bebe's", then 30 secs later "where's sissy?" 

This was them playing dress up yesterday.

Pretending to go "night-night" in Maddie's bed. Maddie cannot wait until Emalyn is big enough to sleep in the big girl bed with her. Until then, she loves tucking Emalyn in and pretending they are going back to sleep. Emalyn just plays along.

Doing each other's hair

 I ran downstairs for a second to check on something, and I heard them laughing as I was coming back up the stairs. Maddie had put Emalyn in her baby's doll pack n play and then hopped in herself. Its amazing what little things can be so entertaining!

I was making dinner a few weeks ago, and I heard them cracking up in Emalyn's room. I grabbed the camera and headed in there to see what they were doing. Here's a little clip:

Who knew hiding under a rug could be so much fun!

And this is this morning watching TV

I'm so thankful for my two sweet little girls! 

"Bacadas"

As soon as I heard the Cicadas were coming, all I could think was about my sweet Maddie who is screams when she sees a tiny ant inside the house. For those of you who do not have Cicadas in your area, they come out of the ground every 13 years,  and they are everywhere! Chris read somewhere that there can be 1.5 million per acre, which means there half a million in our yard alone. I knew I had to start preparing Maddie, but I wanted to wait as long as we could. They were supposed to come out on May 10th, so the day before I began talking to her about them. We started talking about that they are big bugs that cannot hurt you. They cannot see, so they will probably fly into you. But they cannot sting you (which I later found out was not true - not that it matter to her b/c she screams so loud when one even gets near her that it would not have a chance to sting her). 

But there was another problem, they were ALL over her swing set & all of her outdoor toys for that matter. 

This was day one; we would wipe them off every afternoon and by the next morning the fort would be covered again. The squirrels and birds are having a hey day eating them. We have watch a squirrel climbing all over Maddie's swing set each morning eating them.

Not only are the bugs everywhere, but they come out of their shells and then leave their shells attached to a tree or in this case Maddie swing set. So it became very clear that if we were going to be able to play outside at all for the next 6 weeks, we had to get Maddie something that she could wipe the "bacadas" off with. 

We made a Target run to find a "bacada brush." And the one dollar aisle came to our rescue again! 

 

 There are holes all of my yard from them coming out of the ground. 

 All over the new tree we just planted! 

 This was all of the shells underneath a tree at the end of week1 (there are double or triple that amount now). Not to mention, now all the dead ones are starting to decay and our backyard smelling like there is a dead animal.

At the beginning I thought okay we can handle this, but I will say I am sick of them now. They screech at you when they feel the vibrations of you coming close, which makes working in the yard really interesting. I can hear their "chirping" from inside my house (with all the doors and windows closed). They fly in your car! I am looking forward to end of June, which should hopefully be cicada free.