Easter Weekend 2014

What beautiful weather we have been having in Mississippi finally!  Easter was a little later than normal this year and we were SO glad for the warm weather and sunny days that we could spend outside!  On Good Friday, we were "EGGED" by some of our sweet friends!  Grady and Vera found this note in the mailbox and 12 eggs hidden in the yard as a surprise...

Looking for the special egg...

 Sorry for the blurry camera phone picture...  Thought this was SUCH a neat idea and a great way to remind them about the real meaning of Easter.

On Saturday, we had a special Easter Bunny brunch at the Children's Museum.  Let's just say that TWO family members in the picture below were excited about meeting the bunny, but two were not...their parents had to hold on to them so they wouldn't run away!  ha!

At home, we dyed a few Easter eggs!  Grady was much more into this than last year!

 Grana made us a bunny cake...  so cute!  And yummy, too!  :)

On Sunday after church, we drove to Yazoo to spend the day!  Mom and Dad's azaleas were beautiful and in full bloom!  We decided to take some family pictures...always a fun experience with three dressed-up little kids who just want to change clothes and get dirty!  ha!  We managed to get a few shots in before they shed the Easter outfits!

 In the probably 50-something pictures Susan, Dad, and I took, there was not ONE of all three of them looking at the camera...  OF COURSE!  ha ha

 After lunch, Grady, Vera, and Will were chomping at the bit to hunt some eggs!  (Well, maybe Will wasn't exactly chomping at the bit...but he was SUCH a great little trooper and just wanted to do whatever his big cousins were doing!)  Grady was "Julie Junior" and was a complete egg swiper!

 Vera held her own, though!  Between her and Will, Gradyman will have some competition next year!  ha

 Playing in the bubble machine V. got from the Easter Bunny...

HAPPY EASTER!  Hope you and your family had a great day celebrating that HE IS RISEN!

A Red Letter Day

Today was what my dad says is a "red letter day."  (It means it will go down in history as a fantastic memory!)  Grady had his first ever T-ball game.  (Ok, insert side note here:  If you do not already know what a baseball fanatic I am and always have been, then you may totally be weirded out by how ridiculously ecstatic I was about today's event!  And you may just want to skip over this post...forgive the gushing mom for the large amount of photos that will follow...)  Ok, back to the day:

So I have been waiting for this day for like EVER.  (seriously).  It was supposed to happen last Saturday, but it was rained out.  That was such a great thing because Grady ended up getting sick last Friday afternoon.  My stomach was in absolute knots that my child was going to miss his very first T-ball game because he was sick.  He was upset, too.  When we got the news that the game was cancelled, I think we all breathed a sigh of relief.  And again, whadda you know...it rains this Friday.  But not enough for them to call the games off this week!  YEA!  

So today we played ball!  We pulled out my old baseball CD's from college (yes, Erin, I still have the cd you made me for one of our Hoover trips!!!) and listened to baseball music on our way to the fields (See, I told you I am the biggest goober ever!) 

***Insert another note here...NO, I am not forcing my child to play baseball.  He loves it!  (Thank you, Lord!)  And he liked my music, too.  ha.

Ok, now for some pictures...

warming up before the game...

Look at that arm!  (ha, just kidding!)

Vera sat in her little chair and watched the game so well!  I just KNEW that she would be running around all over the place and I wouldn't get to watch the game...  So surprised to find out that she was into it and pointing at Josh and Grady the whole time.

G-man started the game playing first base (ok, ok, so they don't really have positions, but he made a GREAT first baseman for the first inning!  ha ha!)

 SUPER funny when like 3 or 4 kids ran to the ball and fought over who was going to get it!  ha!

 Daddy giving a little pep talk to Grady and Ethan

 This pic cracks me up...  One little girl had enough and decided to just lay out in the middle of the field and take a rest.  I don't think Josh knew what to do...ha!  Neither did Grady.

 Baby Will at his first game...  He'll be out there on that field pretty soon!  :)

p.s.  Happy Birthday to Aunt SueSue!  SOOO sweet of her to spend part of her day at the ball fields...

 Up to bat...GRADY HAMMER!!!!

 V was a good little cheerleader!

 waiting on third base...

 I think I had more fun than he did!  :)

 Safe to say that Grady had the biggest cheering section of any T-ball player out there today?  ha ha! (ok, ok,...it was the first game.  I promise I won't take 973 pictures next week.)

And I have to share the videos of G-man at the plate and doing some amazing base running... ha!

So tonight at the dinner table, here was our conversation:

Grady:  Mama, did you have fun at my game?
Me:  Grady...you have NO IDEA!  It made my day.  I will never ever forget today.  I was so proud of you!  To see my you and Daddy out there on the field just made me smile so big!
Grady:  Mama, was that your dream?
Me:  Yeah, Grady...I guess it was one of my dreams.
Grady:  Well then, I guess you better get a new dream.

Ha...

I asked him like 5 times if he wanted to take off his baseball uniform.  He said no.  He wore it until bath time.  He loves it.  I LOVE IT!  Can't wait til next week!  Can't wait for Dudy Noble in 13 years!  (Hey, Grady said I better get a new dream, didn't he???)

Two year old stats for V

We had Vera's two year old check-up this week.  Before I forget to post them, here are her two-year old stats:

weight-- 29 lb. 6 oz. (80th percentile)

height-- 35 in. (80th percentile)

head-- 19 in. (70th percentile)

And here are a few pictures from her party.  I MUST show off the cutest cake ever!  Susan is the best!  Thank you for making Minnie Mouse for sweet V!  :)

Two

Two years ago tomorrow, this little bundle of fire joined our family and changed our hearts and world forever!  When you have only one child, you love that child so much and I wondered how I could love another one as much as I loved Grady...  It's hard to imagine that before it happens, but the moment she arrived, it was instant love at first sight!  She and Grady are SO incredibly different.  Their personalities are night and day and it makes me laugh just about every day, thinking about how opposite they are!

 My sweet small group friends and I are currently reading a wonderful book together called  Praying Circles Around Your Children.  The author hits home when he says that you don't love your children EQUALLY, but rather you love them UNIQUELY as each child is so unique in himself/herself!  How true that is!  And how very unique little Miss Vera Helen is!!!

 She keeps us rolling in laughter all the time!  There is never a dull moment.  Our lives were quiet and calm before she arrived.  But after she got here, things are rather lively and we have to stay on our toes!  I wouldn't trade it for the world.  Grady thinks his sister is hilarious.  He often can be quoted as saying, "That girl cracks me up!"

 She is so smart...(I know, I am biased...  but it's her birthday and I can brag on her today!)  She can count to ten, sing her ABC's, (and a variety of other songs that you can clearly understand the lyrics to as she sings them!)  She is speaking in complete sentences really well and has such an extensive vocabulary that I am blown away every day with new words she will say that I didn't even know she knew!  (Insert side note...I LOVE her teachers and they need so much praise for doing SO much more than just babysitting her at school!  We are so very blessed to have them in her life!)

 She is MISS PRISS 50% of the time and TOM BOY the other half.  She loves her "babies" and Disney Princesses and Minnie Mouse of course!  She parades around the house in her light-up Minnie Mouse shoes that are 4 sizes too big (Thanks, Aunt Sue), 15 bangle bracelets, purse, and cell phone like she is on a shopping spree mission.  And then Grady dumps the cars, trucks, and legos out on the floor and she sheds the girly get-up in 5 seconds and is immediately down in the floor, fighting him over the biggest bulldozer!

 She LOVES animals!  Live ones, pretend ones, ones on TV... I can't wait to take bunny pictures next week and see what she'll do with the bunnies!  She calls most animals by name and the ones she doesn't know, she asks me, "Mama, what's that?"  I'll tell her, "That's a walrus" and she always repeats in such a matter-of-fact way like she knew it anyway, "WALRUS!!!  Oh!"

 The girl likes to eat!  And Eat...  And eat...  Hence the belly!  ha.  But she's not the same kind of eater as Grady-man is.  He is my healthy guy.  She's my meat-and-potatoes girl.  Grady goes for the vegetables first and asks for seconds on them and eats salads like they are candy.  Vera shovels in the meat and potatoes and pushes the veggies off her plate or just squishes them up in her fists.  AGH!

 She's a boss, too.  (Gee, I wonder where on earth that trait came from...???  ha!)  She is QUICK to tell you NO or STOP THAT or tattle tale on her brother or her daddy too!  ha.  Lately, she's started calling Josh by his name instead of Daddy.  Drives him nuts.  She's heard me call him that and she thinks it's funny that it gets on his nerves...

We are so blessed to have this little BIG GIRL in our lives and I look forward to what this year holds for our two-year old! (As Josh chants..."potty-training, potty-training, potty-training!)  What a precious gift from God she is!  Happy birthday, little V!