Father's Day Weekend

I am so far behind in my blogging, that I thought I would be better off to just start where we are now. There hasn't been much that has happened since our fun Florida trip. Well, maybe I just haven't really had the camera out much. I "participated" in a 5k, we have been sick off and on, we had our hardwood floors refinished (dishwasher leak back in November), then our fridge went out, then the fridge repair man damaged the floor in front of the fridge, and I think that gets us to last weekend!

For Father's Day weekend, we went up to Tennessee. My brother, Sampson, his wife, Brittany, and their new baby girl, Phoenix, were in from Utah. We haven't ever met Phoenix before, so it was really nice to see and hold her! The boys seemed to like her, but they were a little cautious around her, too. William kept crawling up to her, reaching out to touch her, and then he would pull his hand away. It was really sweet. And Phoenix was a little doll! She is so sweet!

My brother, Dan, took some great pictures over the weekend with his awesome camera, and here are some of those.

There is a little market close to the river called Rock Island Market. They have some of the best cheeseburgers on the face of the earth. Here are the boys getting their first taste of Market food. (Jonathan is on the left, in the background.) Here is William, who thinks he is starving, which is evident when you notice how much food he is trying to shove in his mouth. Emma and Jonathan With the boys still just crawling, we found it necessary to contain them down at the dock. The little inflatable raft did just the trick! (And just so you know, I am not at all concerned about them not walking yet. Yes, they are 15 months old. But they will do it when they are ready. Once they master walking, I could be in for it.) And then there's Emma. My sweet, sassy, "cool surfer girl," Emma. She loved riding the boogie board behind the jet ski (which was driven v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y!) "Oh Yeah!" She was so excited to be doing such big things. Here is Emma with her cousin, Noah, swimming around under the dock. (If you click on this picture to enlarge it, you can see how blue her eyes are. They are so pretty in this picture.) Emma swimming around...

It was a fun weekend!

PS-Thanks to Dan for all the great pictures!

Florida Trip

Back in the early spring, Aaron was working on a very time demanding client. As he was finishing up the project, he was given the opportunity to take a few days off. We decided to take the kids on a spur-of-the-moment trip to Florida. It was a fun trip (except that William was at the end of a very scary Roseola incident) and nice to go somewhere as a family. We really miss Aaron a lot when he is working so much!

We went to Destin, Florida. It is one of the closest beach towns, about 6 hours away from us. The sand was beautiful, the ocean was cold, and the weather was quite nice.

Jonathan was so cute in his little hat! Emma loved playing in the ocean. She would go out into the water with Aaron, and she would try to get him to further and further out into the ocean. This is the swimsuit she chose for herself this year. She says that it is a cool girl swimsuit. I think she looks like a super cute, surfer girl in it! Jonathan was being so cute that I couldn't stop taking his picture! He just kept giving me the cutest smiles! (William was sitting in my lap the whole time, feeling pretty yucky.) Here are both the boys, in one of the rare moments that William wasn't on my lap! William and Jonathan playing with sand toys. Self-beach-portrait, with William on my lap. (I had to get a picture of myself with some sand in the background!) We went to a restaurant called "Fudpucker's." The food was decent, extremely overpriced, but we had fun anyway! A lot of fun! This restaurant also boasted its live alligators. There was a "pit" in the front of the restaurant, and these were the alligators. Don't know if you can really tell here, but they were babies. Maybe pre-teens. They were all pretty small. So, we went somewhere else to see the big guys!

We went to a place called the "Gulfarium." It was kind of like the aquarium/zoo only with gulf animals. We saw these huge alligators. They were much scarier than the baby ones. But, they hardly moved. We also saw a "multi-species" show, which consisted of a dolphin and a sea lion. They did some pretty cool tricks, like this one (above). The sea lion is holding a fish in its mouth, and the dolphin jumped out of the water to get it! In this trick, the sea lion and the dolphin are kissing. The sea lion could also throw trash in a trash can, which gave the gulfarium trainers a good opportunity to talk about throwing trash in trash cans and not in the ocean. There was a dolphin show we also watched. This dolphin is jumping through a hula hoop. (See the ocean and the pier in the background?) And finally the pier at Fort Walton Beach. People were fishing off the pier and these very large birds were all over the place. This one got so close to Aaron and Emma, so I took their picture with it! (If you look closely, you can see some of these birds standing on the light poles.)

We had a great time. And, one of the parts I am most proud of is: my "bet" with Aaron. We drove past a PacSun outlet, and we decided we could both use a new tshirt or two. Aaron bet me that I couldn't go in and get us both a shirt in under 10 minutes. And, I went in and got us both a shirt in 7 minutes! I win! (Unfortunately, we didn't really wager anything in the bet. But, I did get a new shirt out of it!)

April (the first part)

Well, once again, another month has passed and I am playing catch up with my blog. So here are the highlights from April (well, the first part, anyway)! Jonathan has become quite the little entertainer! During his meal time, he loves to take his bib off and put it on his head. He thinks he is so funny when he does it!

WARNING: If you are easily grossed out (or can't handle looking at baby barf), you may want to scroll past this picture really fast. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

William got really sick one night after eating baby food peas. He and Jonathan were both really tired, and they were crying uncontrollably (while I was trying to clean them up after their dinner). Jonathan had been crying longer, so I took him up to his bed first. (Face it, with twins, sometimes you have to choose one over the other. In instances like this, I choose the one that is more upset.) When I got back to get William, he was hysterical. As I picked him up, I noticed that his stomach was rock hard. I gave him his binky, which he spit out. So I tried to give it back to him, and then he puked. All down the front of my shirt, in my shirt, and all down my back. And on the carpet. And on my jeans. The dark spots on my shirt are where it is in my shirt and is seeping through. Only a mother could love a kid that does that to her...

Easter

This is our only picture from Easter that I am putting on here. Our family pictures from after church look pretty rough. Okay, they are horrible. But, here are Emma and Aaron dyeing Easter eggs. We found some things out after this.

A) Inside the house is probably not a good choice.

B) Wearing white shirts probably isn't a good idea either.

C) When blue easter egg dye spills down the front of cabinets, it will soak EVERYTHING that is in said cabinets.

D) No matter how fast desperate mother tries to clean up blue egg dye, it will seep into the cracks where the cabinet front meets the drawer, and it will stain the inside of the drawers.

E) I love my kid more than my cabinets. I love my kid more than my cabinets. I love my kid more than my cabinets.

F) And finally, I learned that no matter how upset I am, sometimes it is best not to show it.

BRAVES GAME!

I got to go to my first Braves game in April. Aaron was working one night, and no one was using the company tickets, so Aaron and one of his co-workers got the tickets.

Just a little FYI: This is a very, VERY unflattering picture of Aaron. But I look pretty good in it, which is why it is here. It's all about me! The tickets were for Row 8. Well, as you can see, the roof of the Home dugout takes up rows 1-5, so we were really the third row back from the field. It was sweet! Here is a picture of Chipper Jones at bat.

We also took a little trip to Florida, but that will be the next post.

The rest of March and the Boys' Birthday!

If you don't live in the South, then you may not understand much about Spring here. It is so unpredictable. It will be 80 degrees one day, and then 30 the next. And then back again. We had some really nice days in March and we spent our time playing out on the park and taking walks around the neighborhood. I thought it was funny that both boys were chewing on the straps to the stroller. Now, it doesn't seem that funny.

I can't believe that I boo-hooed like I did over the boys turning one, and then waited till just now to post pictures of their birthday! We went up to Tennessee to celebrate, since Craig and Jaime were in McMinnville, and my parents were there, too. We went out to eat at our favorite Mexican restaurant, and the waiters really seemed to like the boys. They brought this mini-sombrero over to let them try it on. William seemed to like it pretty well.... Jonathan... not so much! My mom and I stayed up till 2:30 am making the boys cake. (Well, more like just decorating the cake.) I bought the cake already made and iced (the bottom layer) so that I didn't have to mess with that. Then, I bought more icing, had it tinted, and then finished decorating the cake myself. Emma and I saw a cake like this one someone else's blog, and Emma wanted baby brothers to have one like it. (If she didn't want them to have one like it so bad, I probably would have just had the bakery finish decorating it.) She wanted to be sure that I put plenty of "bull rushes" on it. Isn't she sweet? Here it is again in case you need a closer look. Feel free to tell me how cute it is. It is the first cake I have ever decorated. I made the boys each their own "smash" cake. William seemed to know what was coming and dug right in. He really liked it. Jonathan didn't seem to sure about the whole thing. (And I thought they would go nuts and demolish these cakes, which is why they are in the buff.) William again. I am sure he was thinking, "Mmmm, cake." Jonathan must have been thinking, "What is this? Why is everyone staring at me?" He never did do much with the cake. I think I actually let all the kids eat this one. Which was fine. Leave the good buttercream frosting for me!

It was a nice little birthday for the boys. We enjoyed the time that we got to spend with our family that came.

March

Ugh, I am so behind on my blogging. Things have been really crazy around here, and they are finally starting to calm down, so back to the blog!

Anyway, here is the rundown from March (or at least the pictures that I have downloaded to the computer). The first Sunday of March, we had a snowstorm. Wait, after living in Utah, this really only qualified as a light dusting. This was the only snow accumulation we had all winter. And I have to say, I am not very sad about that! The house and yard. On a side note, we got out of church an hour early this day. You know, because of the snow. Emma and Aaron built a "snowfriend" that Emma called, Fred. He was as tall as she was and lasted about three days. (Notice all the grassy spots in the yard from building him!) This was three weeks after our snow. I got the boys these little swings from a friend (who was going to sell them in a consignment sale) for $5. For both of them. The boys LOVE them!

William

Jonathan

March for Babies

You may have just noticed that I added a March for Babies sponsor thing to my blog. Aaron and I are walking the March of Dimes on April 25. This is walk that I wanted to do last year, after the boys were born, but it is a 5 mile walk and I couldn't exactly do it only a month after having them. So, we are going to walk this year! If you find that you can, or would like to help us in our goal, you can donate by clicking on the link on my page.

If times are a little tough for your family, and you don't have extra money to spare, consider this: My local grocery store chain (Publix) is also taking donations for the March of Dimes. If your local store is also taking donations, and you can spare an extra dollar on your next shopping trip, consider giving to the March of Dimes. If you need a reason to give, just think of us.

Like I said, I know that things are financially hard for a lot of people right now. I just wanted to put our cause out there.

Love, Haley, William and Jonathan

One year ago, today

One year ago, to the day, we brought the boys home from the hospital, after an 8 day stay in the NICU. They were both less than 5 pounds when they came home. It was a rainy, spring day here in Georgia. Aaron got off work and came to the hospital to meet me and get the boys. Driving home, in the rain and heavy Friday traffic was the longest car ride of my life! I panicked with every single little noise they made (or didn't make) on the way home.They were so tiny in their little carseats. I had to buy one new one (since we only had 1 to begin with) but when they did their "car seat test" to make sure they could stand a ride home, the nurses informed me that the car seat we used with Emma wouldn't cut it. The straps didn't tighten down enough. (On a side note, the boys no longer use the head support, and their straps are in the top strap slot now.) I remember when Aaron and I got the boys out and laid them on this blanket. I was so nervous! I felt so overwhelmed. I remember Aaron and I looking at each other and feeling happy to have them home, but terrified wondering if I could take care of them!

I still can't believe how tiny they were.....

You may see another post or two like this in the coming weeks. This is really a tender time for me, and I have a lot of feelings that are resurfacing. I just kind of need to get them out.