Family

We mourn the loss of our beloved Papaw who passed this afternoon. We cherish the wonderful memories and rejoice in his life (of 87 years). We are so thankful that our two children had the privilege of knowing him. We leave tomorrow to travel for the funeral. Tonight at dinner Ty said a prayer for papaw and grams. We told him papaw was with Jesus now, in heaven. Ty said "I want to see Jesus too." Daddy replied, "We aren't quite ready for you to see Jesus just yet." We hold close all the precious pictures and memories we have of Ty and Aidan with papaw. He lived a long, wonderful life and we know he is in a glorious place now. However, he will be greatly missed.

Family summer fun

We had a blast on our annual family beach trip. The beach was so much fun, Ty loved looking for shells and Aidan (much like her brother on his first beach trip) wanted to eat the sand. Ty has many beach trips under his belt now, and joined in with mommy's excitement many weeks before we left for our trip. After almost a dozen plane rides for Ty this was the first one that he really enjoyed, and stayed awake for. When we were landing we flew over the ocean, Ty was amazed. Aidan and Ty both loved the pool. Ty was in the pool every morning almost as soon as we got up. Ty and I would be up early (usually at sunrise) while daddy and Aidan slept a little longer. We would go outside to watch some blue's clues, eat a little breakfast, then by the time I got my coffee he was asking for his swimming trunks. If we weren't at the beach Ty was swimming. We will continue to have a busy couple of months with another beach trip planned for Sept, along with two camping trips. Aidan has been army crawling for about 3 weeks now. She is getting really fast. She is up on her hands and knees often so it's only a matter of time before she decides to really get going. Ty is bigger than ever. He is now riding the bike he got last Christmas. He rides it everywhere. Each morning, if the weather is good, I load up Aidan and Bailey and we take a long walk so Ty can ride around the neighborhood. It is so sweet to watch Aidan and Ty together. Ty enjoys so much making Aidan laugh, and he does it with such ease. She adores him and thinks anything he does is just hilarious. We are so blessed.

Busy summer

We love our summer, the pool calls our name about every day. Ty is still our swimmer, he loves to dive under the water. He is swimming small distances, from us to the steps. Aidan has begun to love the water as well. She has so much fun splashing. The first part of our summer has been a lot of parks, pools and family time. We took the kids to their first drive in movie, that was exciting. We were actually in town for the 4th, which is very rare, and enjoyed the towns parade. Afterwards we had friends over for a lot of food, games, and fireworks. We haven't traveled as much as we normally do but that is getting ready to change. Last weekend mommy went away for a short girls weekend and daddy, Ty and Aidan had a blast together. Daddy constructed a big fort that covered the entire living room and half the kitchen. They had such a good time. We leave this weekend to go visit Chad's younger brother/wife and their son (cousin Warner). Then we are on to Granny and Granddad's house. I made the mistake of telling Ty yesterday where we were going this weekend and he has begun to get upset that we aren't loading up the car now to go. We are staying about 5 days and then Ty gets to spend a week with Granny and Granddad, we still aren't quite ready for Aidan to be gone from us yet. We will be making a weekend trip to the mountains to spend with Chad's parents and pick up Ty. We have been doing the potty dance here frequently, Ty is really doing well. He has been very excited lately from doing the BIG poo poo on the potty. Aidan is working on her third tooth so we are chewing on everything. She is taking her time on crawling. But of course why would she hurry that up, she is the crowned princess and enjoys sitting to play while her toys are brought to her :) I am excited for August as well for our family beach trip, it will be Aidan's first trip to the beach and of course Ty is our little beach bum. It should be a blast.

Our babies and summer fun

I appoligize for taking such a long break between our last entry. I had some surgery which kept me down for a little while. Nana (my mom) and Aunt Angel (my sister) came into town to take care of the kids and the house. The kids were spoiled as usual. Their cousin Brayden came with Aunt Angel and they had a blast together. We have such cute pictures of the three of them. It's been a little hard on Ty and Aidan. Mommy hasn't been able to hold them for a while and it's hard when things are not normal around the house. I've recovered pretty well now and we have been having a lot of summer fun. Aidan had her first trip down to the pool last Saturday. She was unsure about it at first but began to splash and play and really enjoy it. Ty was the dare devil as usual diving under the water. He swam from daddy over to the steps, it seem he is getting better and better at swimming. He likes to swim under the water. We have made many frequent trips to the splash pad. Ty loves running through the water with his friends, Aidan just loves being outside watching her crazy brother. We have been enjoying our family bbq out back and we love having picnics outside for lunch. We just love being outside in the summer. We are having vbs at church this week. It's been busy but it's been such a good week. Ty loves going and singing all his bible songs. The toddlers sit up front so when we are up there he gets involved much more often with Mr. Paul, which he loves. We have a lot of trips planned for this month along with a fun party here for the 4th of July. We love summer time.

Our babies

Aidan is getting so big now. She is sitting up by herself and is beginning to scoot across the floor on her stomach. She has two teeth coming through on the bottom now, so she is chewing on everything. She is our happy little girl. In the mornings she never wakes up crying, she just talks sweetly and has such a precious smile when she sees either me or Chad. She adores Ty and laughs at anything he does. She is not a fan of baby food but is beginning to tolerate sweet potatoes. She really is not a fan of the fruit, bananas she hates. She is not a big eater but she has gotten better over the last couple of weeks. She loves bouncing, and gets pretty airborne in her bounce seat. It's so hard to believe that she will be 6 months in a few weeks. She, however, is still wearing 3 month clothes. Our little petite girl. Ty is still such a sweet big brother and is very gentle with Aidan. Just within the last month the only sign of jealousy has been that he would like to be a baby. He wants us to hold him like a baby and he has mentioned wanting a bottle. Once we are holding him like a baby it is usually short lived. He is just too active to sit that still for too long. He continues to amaze us with the things he says and remembers. You can not say anything with him not remembering what you are saying. Example: We were driving out of town to go take care of my best friend in the hospital (due to pregnancy complications) I was talking on the phone to my sister about going to wash Lisa's hair. Later that afternoon Ty said to me, "you wash Aunt Lisa's hair". He just listens to everything and remembers it. Another cute thing he is doing now is shaking hands with people he meets. While the weather is still cold outside we walk in the mall before it opens each morning, and Ty usually doesn't want to ride in the stroller so he gets his excercise with me. One morning we were walking and this elderly couple was walking past us. Ty went up very calmly to them, stuck out his hand shook the man's hand then the women's and said "how you doing today". I think he made their week. They were so impressed with him. We can't believe how big our babies are getting, time goes by so quickly.

Mother's Day

I can't even begin to express how blessed I am. Mother's day was wonderful. Chad got up with Aidan and Ty. They made chocolate chip pancakes and coffee for me and brought me breakfast in bed. Ty, Aidan and daddy went out shopping and Ty picked out the card from he and Aidan to me. He also picked out a present for me all by himself. I got a very sweet doggy card and an orange squishy ball. It even lights up when you squeeze it. It was so sweet of him to pick out his most favorite thing for me. I have been sharing my present with Ty. The afternoon was wonderful, after worship we got some wonderful lunch and then home to spend it together. I had my mother here visiting that weekend. It's not that often I get to spend mother's day with my mom here, it was so nice. It was such an amazing weekend. I am so blessed to be a mother, and I love every minute of it.

Cabin trip

We took a trip to the mountains to stay in a cabin with Chad's younger brother, his wife and their son. We had such a wonderful time. We have the sweetest pictures of all the cousins together -Ty, Aidan and Warner. We enjoyed steaks on the grill every night. We took the kids to the aquarium on Saturday. Ty loved seeing the big sharks and all the funny looking fish. Soon Warner and Aidan will love it just as much. Warner loved giving Aidan lots of sweet kisses and Ty was so sweet with Warner, reading him books and helping him touch the pages with soft fur on it. It was such a relaxing weekend, we are hoping to do it again soon.