make new friends AND keep the old

We had the extreme privilege of welcoming J's longest-known friend and his fine family into our home. Dr. Matt is...well, clearly, a doctor. But he's not just any doctor. He is a missionary doctor serving with his family in Niger, a physical healer who prays that God can use him to spiritually heal people, too.

We sat around with him and his amazing wife and listened to just what they do--and, let me tell you, it's incredible. For just a tiny small glimpse into their life, you can watch this video:

Anyway! This post is about keeping the old friends (ie: Dr. Matt) and making new ones. The new friendships were formed between our children. Cutie Face still talks about her time with them and it was over two weeks ago. (...just maybe the shenanigans illustrated below might give you a clue why she still talks about her new friends!)

(please excuse very poor quality--iPhone pics only)

after dinner at a local pizzeria (cut short when the electricity went out--they wouldn't let us dine in darkness with only the "exit" light to illuminate our food), the kids took a bath (no nude pictures on this blog--sorry :) and then went crazy!

  "I" ran the kids all over the house in the cozy coupe

i think they would have stayed on there forever if we hadn't

rounded them up for a Bible story reading

In the morning (post-pancakes and syrup), the kids were at it again

this time with baby Cutie Cakes!

 she thought it was awesome to be included with the big kids!

 at least...i think...

eek! what are you thinking!?! stop taking pictures and SAVE me!

Then we decided to be one of about 5 families to brave the cold weather (legitimately cold, not just Hotlanta cold) and visit the zoo. Those petting zoo animals need love regardless of the temperature!

We had so much fun together and hope to see you guys again soon!

*note: Baby A not pictured--hopefully she'll make an appearance the next time around!

Falling Water Baby

We're here

That phrase may seem like a small, inconsequential thing to you but to 2 tired twins, each mommies to 2 (very) tired girls aged 2 and under, it is HUGE

3 (or was it 4?) stops and 12 hours later (in what usually is a 9-hour car ride) we arrived, sweaty, exhausted, and smelling like pee (well, not us but one daughter...ahem...Cutie Face...and the whole van).

We were thrilled! 

We cannot praise God enough for His hedge of protection, safety and saneness around us.

To celebrate, we went swimming twice...

and Cutie Cakes seemed to love it the most. 

Side Note: When Big C was 6-months old (February '09) she went to Florida with us and we taught her how to "jump" in:

so we couldn't deny Cutie Cakes

She was an instant pro and wiggled her little bum right off the side into my waiting arms.

the twin captured it all on video after she'd been at it for 5 minutes or so. 

priceless! Hopefully we'll get some better close-ups of her HUGE grin tomorrow!

Jungle Boogie

Ahhh the life of a toddler...and so called "dance parties" 

One video is 10 seconds

the other video is 80 seconds

the joys these girls bring us is unreal

How to make a Cutie Face laugh

I am going to just start posting from today and go backward. Hope I don't confuse y'all too much!

Be prepared for at least three updates (and sorry to all my email subscribers...that could get annoying...)

As you can probably tell by the copious pics on this blog, I take thousands of pictures of Cutie Face. I mean seriously, i snap at least 100 a day (but then I delete all but 10).

Unfortunately, though, I've realized that they don't capture how hilarious she is...especially because of all the facial expressions she makes. She is SO expressive.

I finally captured a 6-second video of one of her expressions. Hopefully I'll get more video footage of her crazy antics and incorporate them into blog posts...but for now, here is what i have:



and, as a side note, this video made Cutie Face literally SQUEAL with laughter every time she saw it (and that would be "a-GIN, a-GIN" and "a-GIN"). I hope I can take a video of her watching herself because that is even funnier than this video (which, now that i've watched it, is probably only funny to her parents...hope I'm not boring you :)

Busy day and its only 1/2 over!

The ironic thing about my grandpa's passing is that we now have more time to do "normal" things. Of course, we will be planning Grandpa's memorial service and making a video for it (which will most definitely take a lot of time!) but we are now somewhat "free" to go throughout our day.

We all woke up at 4:30 AM when we heard the news and, unfortunately, no one, including the babies, could go back to sleep.

To pass the time before they were able to go back down for a nap, the twin and I took the kiddos to the putt putt this morning (no...we didn't play a round with them--we took them to see the safari animals on the course).

clearly, they're thrilled


she learned how to make an elephant noise.


she says, "brrrrmph" So cute!


Now we're working on the hippo noise

Monkey wants to know--do YOU know what noise a hippo makes? Because we certainly don't!

After a nap, the twin took Little R to Whole Foods while Monkey (or cutie face or Baby C...i can't decide what to call her!) and I went for a fun swim in the pool--she LOVES swimming and we've swum every day this week right after her nap and before lunch. Its good timing...sadly, no pictures as i'm the one playing with her in the pool but we hope to get some soon because her bathing suit is SO cute :)

After lunch, we took the cousins to a playground in Florida. The one oversight is that there were NO TREES or even any artificial shade so the swings and the play equipment was quite hot. Monkey didn't mind, though, and loved getting a ride on the babyswing:



They are now back down for their second nap and I think I might join them!

Monkey kisses

I have so many pictures that i take and then think, "oh this will make a fun post!" and then...well, as you know, that "fun post" never materializes.

So, instead of procrastinating, i'm just going to jump straight in and post a video that Baby C and i took for her Uncle Noah yesterday.

Maybe this will be motivation to start posting away! :-o

Darth Vader strikes again

Back on April 22nd, I posted a video of Baby C doing her Darth Vader impression. It wasn't her best shot because, when i finally remember to videotape, she usually gets too excited about the camera and starts pointing at it instead of "growling" like Darth Vader.

Not the case today, oh no...Baby C was very excited to verbalize her impressions today and have me mimic them back to her...I really hope you'll watch the video--it had me laughing throughout while filming!