Wild Flowers

Grammy has beautiful wild flowers growing in the woods behind her house. She enjoys showing the girls the pretty flowers and captured some really cute photos, too!

Claire & Anna 2012

When I had Anna's 4 year photos taken, I had Amber sneak in some of Claire by herself and Claire and Anna together! Amber gave me over 80 edited photos, so it was hard to narrow the ones down for the blog. I do have all 80+ photos on Facebook if you're interested in looking at all of them!

So Claire!!

Love this one of Claire!

One of my all time favorite photos of my girls together, if not my favorite ever!

Anna's 4 Year Photos

I adore these photos of my big 4 year old! 

Photos taken by Amber Wing of Ciao Bella Photography

 She got her ridiculously long, dark eyelashes from her daddy (and everything else!).

 I love my dark haired, light eyed girl! 

 Amber is so talented! LOVE this photo of Anna!

Stay 4 years old forever, okay!?!

Jill Bug is ELEVEN!

So hard to believe to my niece, Jillian, turned eleven on March 1st! She's such a sweet girl and we had fun celebrating her over the weekend! 

 My mom made Jillian a swimming pool cake since she's a competitive swimmer. It turned out so cute and she loved it!

Happy Birthday, Jill Bug! We love you bunches!

Great Grandma

I took the girls today to see their Great Grandma McDowell. We've continued our tradition of going over every couple weeks for lunch and spending time hanging out with her. Every time we leave, she thanks us for making time for her and gets teary eyed (which makes me teary!). I don't think she knows that we get more from our time with her than she gets from us. She's taught and continues to teach me so much about life and love and pursuing godly things. She's one of a kind... a true gem!

 Mrs. Hoke is one of my Grandma's closest friends and she happens to live down the hall from my Grandma at Brookhaven. Over the last several months, the girls and I have sort of adopted her as another grandma!! She is the sweetest lady and the girls just love her! She gives them the biggest hugs and CANDY! We look forward to seeing her every time we visit with my Grandma and enjoy taking her little gifts, too! What a lovely 92 year old woman of God. Such a blessing in our lives!

 Mrs Hoke and Claire!

 The girls helping Grandma McDowell with her puzzle (sort of!!!).

Tooth #5

Just a couple cute pictures of Claire & Anna snuggling and reading together! I love these moments... totally unprovoked, just sisters loving each other! And, Claire lost tooth #5 earlier this month. Her two top teeth are FINALLY coming in after 7 months of being missing! 

 The bottom two adult teeth are almost completely in and she lost a tooth next to them!

I don't think I could ever thank God enough for giving me these two and so closely together. I never would've chosen 17 months apart, but honestly, now I think it's perfect! They are the best of friends!

Great Wolf Day 2

I decided not to take many pictures on the 2nd day. I took these at the very beginning and put my camera away (I can get carried away with photo taking! ha!!). We couldn't have asked for a better day of fun!

 When the wolf howls, the big waves come and the girls love the waves! This is one of their favorite areas!

 I recommend going to GWL in the middle of the week. Nobody was there! We pretty much had the place to ourselves and rarely had to wait for anything!

Great Wolf Day 1

As I mentioned earlier, Ben and I surprised Claire & Anna on Valentine's Day with a trip to Great Wolf Lodge. We did the same thing last year and I think they were half way expecting it again his year. They don't forget ANYTHING! We really enjoy going to Great Wolf... such a quick and easy getaway and the girls absolutely love it. In fact, Anna asks at least daily when we're going back (ALL year long!). We needed a little time away as a family and had a wonderful time!

 My wolf pups getting measured! Claire is now 48 inches tall which allows her to ride on every slide! And, she loves those big slides and even goes by herself!

 My tall girl!

 The girls loved "racing" down these slides! Claire won this round!

 Daddy and Claire having fun!

 Love making memories with my family!

 Both girls went across these lily pads so many times!! They were really good and got to the point they didn't need help!

 Always posing!

 Ben and the girls going down the family raft slide! Ben and I counted about 50-60 times that we went down the big slides in two days. That is a LOT of flights of stairs we climbed to get up to the slides. We all got a great work out!

 We stayed in the "Wolf Den" cabin this year!

 Claire got the top bunk and Anna got the bottom! They thought it was GREAT!

 Dinner at the lodge! The food is really good!

 I had to get a photo from behind as the girls were watching the bedtime show/storytime. I am loving their wolf ears and tails! So cute!

 Claire and Violet the Wolf! Anna wanted nothing to do with her!

My Valentines... LOVE 'em! 

Valentine's Day

We had a super fun Valentine's Day! We celebrated over a couple days and this post is a snip-it of our fun!

 On Valentine's morning, I made heart shaped pancakes and we gave the girls a couple small gifts! 

 We wanted Grandma McDowell to feel loved on V Day as well, so we went over to her place for a visit and took her a few gifts. I think we brightened her day!

 Claire had a Valentine's party at preschool where she got to pass out cards to her classmates!

 The girls and I made heart shaped cookies and the girls decorated them!

The girls with their cookies!

And, the most exciting part... Ben surprised the girls with a trip to Great Wold Lodge!!! I'll be blogging about our getaway soon!