Our Toothless One...

Addie Grace FINALLY lost two teeth. I guess technically, that's not right. She had two teeth pulled. She had a tooth that had been loose for awhile, but wasn't quite ready to come out. After the permanent tooth started to come in behind it, we told her the baby one had to come out. She wouldn't let us touch it, but since she knew that her friend Shelby had pulled one of her own teeth, she was pretty sure that Shelby was qualified to pull hers too. Shelby, however, wanted NO part of that!! Here's Addie Grace trying to get Shelby to pull it.
Since Shelby wouldn't help us out, we were forced to go to the dentist, and she ended up having two pulled! Addie Grace was so excited!

Before she would go to bed that night, she had to leave directions so that the tooth fairy would be able to find her bed in the house. The arrow is pointing directly to her bed. I'm sure that helped the tooth fairly alot!
When we finally got her to go to bed, she got up a couple of times because she was worrying about how the toothfairy would get into the house...it was a long night! The tooth fairy almost went to sleep before she did!

The tooth fairy came and left her 6 shiny gold dollar coins ($5 for her first tooth and $1 for all of the rest) and Addie Grace was a very happy little girl. Later in the day, she started missing her teeth though and she is now in the process of writing a letter to the tooth fairy to ask her to bring one back! : )

Parental Boast Alert...

Chunks of Addie Grace's days are always spent with her drawing. We spend a small fortune on paper for her to perfect her masterpieces all day long. She even has a wall in our foyer with some of her work framed and it makes her so proud!

As most of you (my three blog readers) know, we have started a new school. One of my favorite things about the school is the art class. I LOVE that this week she is learning about Henry Ossawa Tanner and learning how his art was different than Mary Cassatt's work...the artist that we learned about last week. And I LOVE that she has to do a project where she duplicates the style of each artist that we study. One of her projects was to show what she thought Edward of Edward VI as a Child would look like a little older with his family. I love her picture! I think it's great! Her assignment was to color it with oil pastels and she was not happy with how that turned out but I love it!

And one day, we were sitting and just chatting about the ocean and she sat doodling. I looked at her picture when she was done, and look at it! Amazing! (from a completely biased mother!!)
Well, as incredible of a little artist as I think she is, looking through these mother eyes, that's not a new realization for me or the point of this post. My new realization is that I think she has a little brother who is following right along in her footsteps! We were sitting in the living room a couple of weeks ago and Sawyer, who normally sits and scribbles right along side Addie Grace, brought me this. I wasn't even paying attention to him drawing, he was just sitting and doing his own thing. He came over and said, "Look what I did, Mommy! It's you!!"
And look!! IT IS ME!! Maybe not on my best day and with a really exaggerated wrinkle on my forehead (thank you very much, Sawyer!), and bald...but ME, none-the-less!!! This isn't something we've ever worked on or anything! It's just amazing to me!

He also drew this one... (and lest you get giddy thinking that he aged me enough to have a NEW wrinkle on my forehead in just one week, he told me this time that it was my hair!!)

And then he told me that he was going to draw a rainbow...AND HE DID!!
I don't know. Maybe this isn't unusual for a 2 year old (well, 2 1/2 next month), but it's new and unusual for Sawyer and it makes me proud. Mainly, because HE is so proud. He's growing and changing so much and I love watching who he is becoming. He is a joy and I am so ridiculously thankful that he (and she) are mine!!

This is Halloween, Halloween...

(My title is from The Nightmare Before Christmas, in case you're wondering why I wrote Halloween twice...which you probably aren't). : )
Well, I probably just had my last Halloween where I get to choose what Addie Grace and Sawyer dress up like...although, I do have an idea for next year that I want to beg them to do for me, but I'm not going to hold my breath!! This year Sawyer wanted to be Lightning McQueen. Since I had no idea how to pull that off, I had to make other plans. For his third birthday, I'm planning a cowboy party. Since I was going to get him a costume for that, I decided to go ahead and get it and they could just be a cowboy and an Indian! Great idea, huh? Well, no-one shared my enthusiasm. Really, Sawyer didn't protest too much, especially since I let him carry a Lightning McQueen trick-or-treat bag. However, Addie Grace did NOT want to be an Indian, she didn't know what she wanted to be, but she knew that it was NOT an Indian...that would have made things MUCH too easy!! I wasn't going to make her, so I was beginning to get really bummed. The only thing that saved me was a hand-me-down Pocahontas costume!!! I had to do a little work on it, but it was well worth it to me, because you can't beat free!! Thanks, Holly!! And Addie Grace was thrilled! Any costume with the word princess thrown in, and she's good! So, everyone ended up happy! Especially me! Along the lines of free, but not free...I had really been stressing about Sawyer's costume because I really wanted a pair of cowboy boots and a cowboy hat for him, because you CAN'T be a cowboy without cowboy boots and a hat! The problem was, even for used ones, people wanted $15 or $20 bucks for the boots and another $10 or $15 for the hat, which I just didn't want to pay for a Halloween costume!! Well, enter my friend Krista, who just so happened to have a trip planned to Texas to help with her sister's consignment sale! She ended up getting me some boots for THREE DOLLARS and a cowboy hat for THREE DOLLARS! Hooray for Krista! I'm not really sure why I felt the need to mention that. It just made me happy, so I thought I'd let you share in my joy! I'm sure that you are reveling in it.
Anyway, Halloween was a really busy day! Jack came over and spent a few hours with us and then we took them to our friend Sydney's birthday party. After that we went to church for the fall festival, and then we went back to our friends Jill and Bill's to trick-or-treat and to have dinner, and then we went to our friend Krista's for one last special stop! We got home ridiculously late for our kids who have 8:30 bedtimes, but we had fun and we all survived!
Sawyer was so funny! As I'm sure you know, he never really jumps right in and wants to do any activity. He's more of a stand back, get comfy and THEN he'll typically join in. Well, NOT with Halloween! He was all about it! He loved going around and yelling, "trick-or-treat"! He thought it was the best thing in the world that everybody kept giving him candy. He marched right up to every house anxiously awaiting his treat! Even the houses that people dressed up like scary things...a witch in particular...we figured there was no way he was going near those houses. Nope, we were wrong. He made Brian carry him to the first one, but he kept saying, "come on, Daddy. Let's go." He wasn't excited about it, but he was NOT going to miss out on going to get some candy. The second house that we went to where the lady was dressed up like a witch and sitting on her front porch, he looked at her and then said, "Daddy...I WILL go and get the candy". And he reluctantly walked up, grabbed his candy and ran! His bag was bigger than he was, but he would NOT let anyone carry it for him. He was too funny!
And Addie Grace was just thrilled to be able to trick-or-treat with Shelby (one of her favorite people in the world)! It was such a fun day!
Anyway, enough of my jabbering...here are some pictures!

I told Brian to make them smile, so he started acting like a monkey. Instead of smiling at him, Addie Grace decided to join in on the imitation. Sawyer was unimpressed with his father's antics and found a different activity to entertain himself, and I think Jack was telling him that his lame imitation and all of these pictures were making him want to cry.
silly cousins...
I don't know what they are doing here...it just makes me smile.


Some of my very favorite girls at Sydney's birthday party...


And here's sweet Sydney! I'm so sad that this picture turned out blurry. I still love it of her!

Sawyer giving a friend a gentle nudge while trick-or-treating so that he could get to the candy...

Lastly, here's Sawyer wrestling with his heavy trick-or-treat bag while not wanting anyone else to carry it. I don't know why I'm posting this...I just like to hear his little feet clicking along in his cowboy boots and hearing him grunt and huff trying to carry his bag. I also like his grunty, angst-ridden protest of Brian trying to carry his bag. What I don't love? My loud, nasally, country voice. Sorry.
Hope you had a great Halloween, too!

Too short of a visit...

We went to Nashville the weekend before Halloween and had such a great time! It's always so great just to visit with our family and friends. We got to sleep late, go out to eat with friends, and just spend time with my family!
Our friends, Jeff and Julie, have an incredible pumpkin patch/farm, Honeysuckle Hill, that we try to go to every year. They always let us come out when no-one else is there and take pictures and just play without having to fight with all of the crowds. We always have so much fun and we appreciate them so much!
We got to Nashville on Thursday and we were planning on going to the farm on Friday morning. Unfortunately, when we got up it was raining, so the kids were very disappointed thinking that we weren't going to be able to go. Here's a little video of Sawyer trying to coax some better weather...


I guess it worked! When we got there, the weather was beautiful!!

Sawyer and Addie Grace weren't really in the mood for pictures (big surprise), but I was able to get a few pretty good ones. More importantly, we just had a great time!!

This was one of the only few pictures that I got of my mom (and none of my dad!) over the weekend. I have two babies who think that their Nana is grand!!

Can't wait til we get to go again, soon!

aaah, fall...

Well, I wasn't going to do this post, just because I'm lazy like that. However, I'm feeling the need to stay a little more current with my blog, JUST IN CASE my sweet husband wants to surprise me with getting my blog bound into a book (hint, hint). Our friend, Chris just did it for his wife Debbie for her birthday and even though I read her blog regularly, I loved looking through her book. Such a great idea! So, hang on blog readers! You are about to get lots and lots of posts from me! (Probably. Well, maybe).
Anyway, fall. I love it! We have had such a great fall. We've done so many fun things. One day, we celebrated fall all day long. We got up and made pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, then we made pumpkin pie playdough, then we went on a walk through the woods and picked leaves and came home and pressed them in wax paper, we made caramel apples, carved jack-o-lanterns, and then finished our night watching It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. It was such a fun day, a l-o-n-g day, but still, so much fun.
Here are some of our pictures from our day...

a leaf fight...

look how pretty the leaves were!

on our walk through the woods, Addie Grace asked me to take their picture on this stump. I didn't WANT to, but I obliged her.

As we were walking along, Addie Grace had stopped. I turned around and when she finished, I asked her what she was doing. She said she wanted to stop and thank God for all of the beautiful leaves that He painted for her! So sweet! She makes my heart swell!


making the playdough...
and Sawyer "helping" to make the pumpkin, chocolate chip muffins...

Happy Fall!!!