Happy 6th Birthday Sophia!

My smart, beautiful, kind daughter on the morning of her 6th birthday. She had mini waffles on our special plate. I got to take the day off and go to lunch with her at school that day, cupcakes in tow. Sophia got a kick out of helping me pass out cupcakes to her classmates.

Then, Mimi and Brooks arrived and we all had a big time watching Brooks play car video games, driving cars into walls and flipping them over.

For the first time, we did a party table for our owl-themed party. Note the awesome owl cake by Mimi and the Sophia-chosen cheese puffs, candy and owl suckers.

Sophia and I had fun choosing each of the items!

Sophia was a bit terrified of the candles this year – guess because there were so many! 6! It was so wonderful to have Mimi, Brooks, YayYay, Papa and Miss Natasha join us to celebrate.

Merry Christmas 2011

Will woke up first and surprised us! We had to drag Sophia out of bed and try to keep Will from going downstairs!

Sophia’s side!

Will’s side.

And the present from Santa that got the best reaction?

Will’s pink herbie! We took the kids to see Santa at the Mall the Saturday before Christmas and Will asked him for a pink herbie. A pink herbie????? Sophia asked him for a car track. Check. So when he saw it Christmas morning, he was soooo happy!

We watched Home Alone Christmas night and the kids loved all the slapstick comedy of the robbers. Think this will be one of our family traditions.

We had a wonderful, wonderful Christmas 2011!

Getting Caught Up!

Sooo much has happened since my last post. Let’s see:

We thought we might have to move back to our old house and start the selling process over again. (sigh)

I considered the leave of absence that would be required for me at work if this happened.

We lost sleep. We didn’t eat. We overate. I bit my fingernails off.

We didn’t close on our old house until more than a month later. (sigh)

Then we moved into what we will always affectionately call “Mr. Cooter’s House” – a friend’s house we were able to stay in that was a true blessing to us.

Halloween came and went. The kids still fit into their costumes from last year, so we gave ‘em another go.

We took Sophia’s training wheels off of her bike per her request. (We’ve since put them back on – we’ll try again in the Spring.)

We enjoyed lovely Tennessee Fall days at Mr. Cooter’s House, that was in the nicest neighborhood in a cul de sac.

Then we went to Alabama for Thanksgiving/Christmas and had a blast with our Williams and Busby families.

And before we knew it, it was time to move into our new house!!!! 11/30/11 we moved in. (Would be great if I had a pic of the house, right? Yep, I don’t.)

Seth wrecked the U-Haul, our dining room and garage became a dumping ground for boxes, but we managed to get our Christmas tree up. Thanks to Papa we got all the blinds and curtain rods hung. We were sore and tired. We never ever want to move again.

Then before we knew it, Sophia was out for Winter Break and it was Christmastime! Sadly, this is my only picture of the kids by the tree this year.

We had days and days and days together as a family to spend together.

Next up! The Christmas morning post!