Playing Catch-up (Part 2)

Here is the second half of our winter/spring catch-up:)

Laura has been playing soccer this spring. She is on the team with her best bud Colton and they are both so good! There are only about 3 or 4 kids on the team that will actually play, so Laura gets lots of time on the field. She has had 2 games where she has scored 3 goals!
We had a very busy weekend in March when Laura's Nana, Granddad, and Gigi visited on one day and her Mema came the next day:) One of the most exciting things that happened this Spring is that we moved out of the apartment into our new house!! We love the house, the neighborhood, and the community. Our next door neighbors have a little girl almost the exact same age as Laura...so needless to say they are having a great time playing together! When asked what her favorite part of the new house is, Laura almost always answers "I have a pink room!"
We have spent most of the winter and spring at the parks in the area...The following pictures are from a really cool park downtown that we visited with Colton and his little sister Caroline.
A local university has a Farm Day, so we all trekked out to the farm to see the animals and babies. Laura had fun...Mommy went overboard with the hand sanitizer:)So, due to the already long length of this post, I will do the Easter pictures in a separate post. Check back soon!

Playing Catch-up (part 1)...

Since the last blog post, I've been thinking about calling it quits on the blog. The more I think about it, though, the more I realize how much I love looking back through all the pictures and stories of our life with Laura. It is amazing how much she has grown since we started this blog, so I've decided to keep it going:)

So here is a quick preview of what has happened since Thanksgiving...

On December 1st we celebrated our 3rd Family Anniversary. It is so hard to believe it has been 3 years since Laura joined our family...time flies when you are having fun:) Our good friends from Richmond came down for the party and Laura was thrilled to see her friends and show them around our new town!
Shawn, Laura, and I went to see Christmas lights on a hayride. Laura told everyone on the ride at one point that we celebrated Christmas because it was "JESUS' BIRTHDAY!!" We were very proud of her, but also a little embarrassed at her loud proclamation!

We kept busy in December making gingerbread houses...Decorating the apartment for Christmas...
And going to Virginia to visit Nana, Granddad, Gigi, and Auntie...
We all went on a horse drawn carriage ride...
We had a wonderful time, but unfortunately, shortly after this ride, Gigi fell and broke her hip. She spent the rest of our Christmas visit in the hospital so we are short on pictures from this visit. Gigi has since made a full recovery, and after her 3 month stay with my parents in Virginia, she is back home in Missouri doing great!

We were able to visit Nana, Granddad, and Gigi several more times over the winter...here are a few of those pictures.

Dr. Laura checking out Gigi's ears...Dr. Laura...
One visit we were lucky enough to get some snow...
Shawn and Laura went to a Daddy/Daughter dance in February. They started off the night with a dinner date at MissDonalds (the way Laura says McDonalds:). They learned a really neat dance they have dubbed "the flip" and still do it all over the house!

And the last update for Catching up (part 1) is the exciting news that Laura made a new friend this winter! His name is Colton and they are in preschool, church, and AWANA together. I have also become very good friends with his mom, and Shawn and Colton's dad are becoming friends, as well. New friends are very exciting when you are new to an area! We had a really, really, really mild winter here. This last picture is Laura and Colton on a February afternoon riding bikes:)

Check back soon for Catching up (part 2) to see pics of Laura playing soccer, visiting family, our new house (yay!!), and Easter!

Super Busy Fall!

Most of our readers know that we moved from Virginia to North Carolina this fall. Add that to all our activities and we have hardly known if we were coming or going! Enjoy the pictures!

Our first adventure was driving to Missouri over Labor Day Weekend for the annual Car Show. Shawn's dad helped get this show started and this was the 10th anniversary. Behind us is the truck that Shawn's dad started restoring before he passed away.My grandma and Aunt also came up to the show to visit with Laura. They had a good time looking at the old cars.After we got home from Missouri, I took off for Alabama with some girlfriends for a mommy convention. Shawn and the other daddies took the girls to Disney on Ice. Laura was enthralled and is still talking about it 3 months later!

My parents also moved this fall, so we took a trip to visit them. Laura had a great time exploring their new community.
As if we weren't busy enough, Shawn was also training for a Sprint Triathlon. He did a great job and Laura and I had fun cheering for him every step of the way!
Our friends threw us a great going-away party. Laura also had a great time with all her friends.
We ventured out to the North Carolina State Fair the first weekend in our new community. Laura had fun feeding the goats...and always stuck her tongue out when the animals did...so cute!!

Laura really got into helping with the pumpkin carving this year. She even had her own small pumpkin that she cleaned out, picked out the face design, and helped mommy carve. It was a good time!

Laura told me all month that she wanted to be a pumpkin for Halloween. We walked in the store and saw the Strawberry Shortcake costume and that changed her mind for good. She was sure cute:)

Shawn's birthday was a pretty low-key event this year. Laura loves birthdays, though, so she had fun singing "Happy Birthday" over and over and over and over again!

We went back to Missouri for Thanksgiving. Shawn ran the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning with his brother. Laura and I had fun watching.

We also did Christmas while we were in Missouri. The girls were thrilled with their new princess dress-up!

Laura got some really fun toys and had a great time playing with them all with MeMa.

A closing shot of the family (minus the kiddos)! We are modeling our new scarves/sweaters (for the ladies) and T-shirts (for the guys). What a good looking bunch!

As you can see, we have been super duper busy. And our December isn't much calmer. Check back after Christmas for another update!

Summer Vacation!

So I've totally neglected this blog for the last several months. We have been super busy with life and with moving from Virginia to North Carolina! I thought I would just start where I left off...enjoy the vacation pictures from August!

We vacationed at Carolina Beach again this summer. We had a blast last year and decided to try our luck again this year. Laura had an even better time. As she gets older, things like vacation get so much easier on us and so much more fun for her. This is her first view of the ocean this year. She loved running away from the surf!

The first day on the beach, Laura wasn't so sure she liked the sand all over her hands and feet (thus all the buckets filled with water!). It didn't take long, though, for her to decide the sand wasn't so bad and the ocean was even more fun. She and Shawn spent a lot of time playing in the waves...it made mommy a little nervous - but the sound of her infectious laugh convinced me to keep my opinions to myself:)

Laura loved sitting right where the waves came in. She would sit there until she was absolutely covered in sand and then stand up, laugh, and do it again!

We all enjoyed getting dressed up and going out for dinner every night, followed by an evening walk on the beach.Laura was so cool in her sunglasses! She wore them all week and pushed them up on her head (like she sees mommy do) when she got tired of having them resting on her nose. She's too cute for words sometimes!

Shawn took some surf lessons again this year and had great success...unfortunately we didn't really get any good shots of him riding the waves. During one of his surfing breaks, he took Laura out to play in the waves and I got this shot of our future gymnast! Look at that perfect form and pointed toes!

Laura and mommy built a sandcastle one afternoon. It was much harder than you would think...Laura thought the concept of sandcastle building involved building a tower and then immediately knocking it down! It took quite a bit of convincing on my part to get her to believe that you are supposed to build a lot of towers and not knock them over!

We had a wonderful and relaxing time on vacation. We took way too many pictures to show everything we did, but suffice it to say we are already looking forward to Carolina Beach 2012!