Birthday celebrations!

Anna Claire is turning 1 on September 5.  I think back over the past year, and it has been quite a year!  It's definitely been a year full of ups and downs, blessings, and changes!  But, we truly have a lot to celebrate with this sweet girl.  I have spent the past several weeks planning and creating her birthday party.  We were so excited to celebrate, and we had a great time celebrating her this morning.  We had our family and closest friends over and I had ball pit, bubble maker, and sprinkler for the kiddos to run around and play.  The sprinkler wasn't planned, but this weekend just happened to be the hottest of the summer, so you do what you have to do right.  We ended up buying a canopy tent though, and didn't have to turn on the sprinkler. 

Amelia found the sprinkles that fell on the counter after decorating the cookies.  She decided to sneak a few handfuls.

The yummy cupcakes.  They were quite fantastic!

Anna Claire's present.  She loves these chairs, she had claimed Amelia's so now Amelia will get hers back.  The only problem with this one is that her name is too long for the monogram, so I decided to just do initials.  They only capitalized the A, so it says Ace.  I guess that will be her nickname.  Also, I had a cute birthday outfit planned for her, but since we were planning on turning on the sprinkler, I really didn't want to change her a bunch of times, so she just wore her bathing suit.

The ball pit.  The kids really liked it, and my nephew loved it.

The food table.  We had bbq slider sandwiches, mac n cheese, cheese and crackers, fruit salsa and cinnamon tortilla chips, lofthouse sugar cookies, and cupcakes.

The birthday girl finally gets to try cake.  I had high hopes of her and her smash cake.  There was no smashing of this smash cake.  I think she was distracted by all the attention.  she loves to clap, so she just kept smiling and clapping.  It was really cute, but I was disappointed that she did not dive in to the cake.

We took her hand and smashed it in the cake ourselves and she finally ate some. 

We had a great time with our family and friends.  We look forward to many more birthdays with this sweet girl!

Into everything!

Anna Claire's favorite game is to pull everything out of the cabinets/drawers.  It is impossible to keep anything clean, but I allow her to do it because it is the only way I can cook dinner without her screaming and pulling at my leg!

This is her favorite drawer.  There are appliance plugs all over the house!

My little monster!

butterflies

It is very warm outside, so we have been spending a little more of our time in the playroom.  When we were playing tonight, Amelia decided to put her butterfly wings on so of course Anna Claire had to have hers too.

They were so cute running around with their wings!  AC made a mess at dinner, so she was stripped down to her diaper.

Cracker Barrel

Cracker Barrel has always been a favorite, but it is now becoming a weekly habit.  But, the girls love it and will eat there, so it is so worth it!  We went for lunch on Sunday, there was a little wait, so we enjoyed the rocking chairs for a little while.

Is it bad that when I show Amelia this picture she says, Cracker Barrel!  At least they are getting their veggies!

The Band Perry

I have always wanted to go to a concert at the botanical gardens.  Once I found out we were moving back I was researching the line up for the year.  I was so excited to see the Band Perry was playing.  I knew Drew would be willing to go see them.  Friday night was the big show.  My parents kept the girls for us.  I dropped them off before their nap and they brought them back for dinner Saturday night.  It was very strange to have 24 hours without any responsibility.  We were crazy busy though.  We have Anna Claire's 1st birthday party this weekend so we were trying to get some projects completed while we had the chance.  The concert was fun, the weather was perfect, and I would love to go back for another show!

My and Drew.  This is how it started, it ended with him sitting next to Heath.  I told him he would probably have more fun that way, and I was right!

Me and Misty enjoying the show!

Our week in Review

I am behind, the story of my life!  So, I am just going to sum up the past week in 1 blog.  We stayed pretty busy last week.  Monday, I got a text from our good friends, Audra and Hunter, from Greenville.  They were headed home from Nashville and wanted us to meet for dinner.  I tried to take them to the yummy Vinegar Jims, but unfortunately they were closed on Mondays.  So, we went to another restaurant called Brendalay Grill.  It was ok, but no Vinegar Jims.  Hopefully they will want to come again and we can try it out then.  Tuesday, we met one of my old friends and her little ones at a park and caught up.  Wednesday was beautiful, we had to get out, so we met our friends at the zoo.  I think it is mating season for the monkeys.  They were going crazy yelling and jumping around, but it made a good show for the kids.  (no actual mating!)  Thursday, we had some friends come to play.  The neighborhood kiddos decided to come play too!  It was a little crazy at our house!  Friday, mimi, pop, and uncle matt came to visit for the day.  Drew and I finally got our licenses changed back to Tennessee and had a little date night.  We just went to dinner.  But, it was really nice to eat a meal without distractions!  Saturday, our neighborhood had a back to school celebration.  Our neighbors behind us rented a water slide and several people grilled and smoked some yummy food.  We were able to meet a lot of our neighbors and the girls had so much fun playing with all of the kids.  We love our new neighborhood.  There are a lot of young families and everyone seems to enjoy hanging out with each other!  We planned on heading to the music on the square after the party, but we stayed longer than we expected, and it was bedtime and we were exhausted!  Maybe we will make it next month.  We didn't take a single picture at the party.  We were too busy chasing the little ones around for that!

water park

Yesterday, Drew and I took the girls to the Collierville water park.  It has been kind of steamy outside so we thought we would do something to cool off.  It turned out to be rainy and not so hot that day, but we still had a good time.  The girls had a blast!  I was the only momma out there running around with her kiddos.  I'm sure I looked crazy, but it didn't matter, I just wanted them to have a good time!  Amelia was a lot less timid, but I think she would have liked to have had some friends with her.  She made me run through everything with her, and Anna Claire was happy just to sit in a puddle and splash around.  I will add pictures another time.  We took them all with Drew's phone.

sweet n sassy

I took Amelia to get her first real haircut at this cute little girls salon in Memphis.  I'm not sure what Amelia thought of the experience, she doesn't always show a lot of emotion.  She sat like such a big girl in the chair.  She didn't cut much off, but I really didn't want her too.  You really can't tell she got it cut.  But, we had a fun time anyhow.  We bought sister a little treat she didn't get to come with us.

 

Anna Claire climbing the stairs in her fairy wings her sister picked out for her.  Now they can wear their wings together!

11 months

Anna Claire turned 5 months old today!  I cannot believe that it is time to start planning her birthday party.  This has been the fastest, craziest year of my life.  Hopefully it will slow down a little bit.  She is becoming the sweetest, funniest little girl.  She cracks me and Amelia up all the time without even trying!  She loves to give hugs and kisses.  She is eating all table food and her formula.  We are hoping that the end is near with the formula!  She has 3 teeth, but is working on 2 more.  She is at 2-3 naps per day, depending on how good the 2 are.  Unfortunately Amelia likes to wake her up from her naps, so sometimes they aren't as good as we would like.  She loves to be outside.  She is my little tornado.  She can't stand for anything to be where it actually belongs, so she is constantly pulling everything and anything out of it's place.  She wants to be a big girl so bad.  Will only eat if she can feed it to herself (except for yogurt and ice cream).  She is definitely a feisty little thing and is not shy about letting you know what she wants.  I love my sweet little girl to pieces and am so thankful for each moment I get to spend with her!

I don't have a single good picture of her wearing her 11 months sticker.  She never stops moving.  If she is awake, she is on the go.  She is pretty independent though, so I am ok with it.

 

speckles

My child is very observant!  She sees everything and notices everything!  She has 3 freckles (speckles).  The first freckle was on her leg and first came up several months ago.  She was so cute, she says, I have a speckle.  Took me a while to figure out what she was talking about, but she has the cutest little freckle on her leg.  Well a few weeks ago she found another on her arm.  I went to get her from her nap and she says, I have 2 speckles.  I can see her being a such a good little nurse one day because she misses nothing! 

Redbirds

It is so nice living in a big city (or near) again!  Drew was given free tickets to a redbirds game for Thursday night, so we thought why not.  If the girls are awful, we will just leave.  At least it is free!  We had a great time!  The weather was perfect and we all loved our snacks and munching on each other's snacks.  Anna Claire started getting fussy around 8:30 so we just walked around.  It worked out great.  I was a little disappointed that they didn't do the chicken dance.  I had really worked Amelia up for that, but we still enjoyed ourselves!

I'm not sure if she was a fan of the cotton candy or not, but she ate it.  I really think she wanted my ice cream.

The girls had the most fun running around in the courtyard before we left.