My Brother is Married!

We went to New Orleans this past weekend to attend my brother's wedding. He is actually my older brother - 31 - and really caught us off guard with this whole getting married thing. He met Kristin in July when he moved to Shreveport and they started dating in October maybe. They started talking about getting married in early November and got engaged the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I do love my new sister in law. She is really sweet and fun. I told her mom she was my hero for being able to pull off a beautiful wedding in 3 weeks! Lance & Kristin wanted something different than the traditional church wedding, so they decided to have a small wedding at a hotel in New Orleans with mostly family attending.

Nathan and I took the girls and drove most of the day Friday to our friend's house in Baton Rouge. They let us stay the night and we got to meet their adorable little girl also. The next morning we got to New Orleans and walked around for a little while. It was amazing weather, probably almost 80 degrees! We had a little rehearsal dinner that evening and then rehearsal. I also got to see a lot of family who were in town for the wedding. My grandparents and aunt & uncle from Birmingham were there, and some aunts & cousins from Lake Charles. They got to meet Avery & Alexis and help out with them a lot since Nathan and I were both in the wedding.

Kaleigh got to be a flower girl and she was so excited about it. Of course being a 3 year old, the only thing you can predict is that they will be unpredictable! We had the rehearsal Friday night and there was this white paper "carpet" laid out in the aisle. Nathan told Kaleigh to stop running up & down it b/c it was starting to tear. Of course she didn't obey. It turned out not to be the one they were using and we didn't think any more about it. Kaleigh was so cute during practice, meticulously pulling out one petal at a time and taking her sweet time, so we worked on getting a handful of petals and sprinkling them around. Well, the next day during the wedding she came out and started to walk down the aisle. She still seemed to be going pretty slow and some people were starting to laugh, but I couldn't see what she was doing. Kristin's sister next to me who is taller whispered to me "she won't walk on the paper". Kaleigh was sweetly obeying Nathan from the day before, trying to walk in the small space between the paper and the chairs. If she dropped a petal on the white, she even picked it up and moved it to the carpet! When she FINALLY got about 3/4ths of the way, we told her to come here, and she tried to give the basket first to Lance, then to my dad, who was officiating at this point. I finally got it from her and sent her to sit with my mom. She was so good during the rest of the ceremony. I hope to get a video one day and post it. Cute, cute. Well, she'll get another go at it in May.

My Past Week -
Last week was so busy. It always seems like there's that one week in December when everything happens to fall. I can't believe I managed to do so much, and it wasn't even that stressful! Here's what I did, starting with Tuesday:
Tuesday night - ladies class meeting - we ate some really good finger foods and decorated cookies
Thursday night - Women's banquet at church - some more good food and fun fellowship and great singing
Friday - A playdate in the morning, decorating cookies again (sorry no pictures, I brought my camera but it didn't have a card in it) Nathan's work party was at 3:00 where we ate lots of good finger foods and played the dirty santa game. We didn't bring a gift this year b/c we didn't know if we would be there the whole time.


Then, Friday night was our SS christmas party. We ate (again!) and had an ornament exchange. Nathan continued his yearly tradition of putting a picture of himself in an ornament. Someone else brought back one from several years ago which was really funny.





Saturday - helped host a baby shower for our friend Veronica. It was a lot of fun.

Sunday - went to church in the morning (the whole family) and that afternoon and evening we went to Garvan Gardens to see the Christmas lights with a group of friends. We did this last year and it was a lot of fun so we will try to make it a tradition. Amazingly, the weather was great. It rained before & after we were there, but not while we were there. And it was warm, which was nice b/c there were 4 little babies in our group. It was also practically a miracle that we got this group of friends together. I don't think we've all been together this whole year! We laughed a lot and took some fun pictures. It was fun to see the kids really enjoying the lights. Kaleigh loved the gingerbread cottage. Afterwards we all went to On the Border to eat. Surprisingly, this also went well, even with all the kids and babies. Avery and Alexis slept pretty much the whole time and we fed them a couple of times.

This week we don't have so much, but we have to start packing for New Orleans. My brother is getting married there on Sunday. We are leaving Friday and staying with a friend in Baton Rouge Friday night then spending the night in New Orleans Saturday night. I can't believe my brother will be married in less than a week!

Twins FAQ's

We get a lot of the same questions about the twins, so I thought I would do a little update for those of you who we don't see much who might be curious about them.

Q: How are the babies & how much do they weigh now? A: Avery & Alexis are doing great! They have not had any sicknesses and very few problems to speak of. They are gaining weight quickly and as of Friday Alexis was 8lbs,0oz and Avery was 7lbs,15oz.
Q: Can you tell them apart? How? A: Yes, I can tell a little difference in their faces, but our fallback is a birthmark on Alexis' head.
Q: Are you getting any sleep? Actually, we are. They take a bottle around 10:30 and go to sleep after and wake up anywhere from 3:00 to 5:30. They take another bottle and go back to sleep. They actually slept all night until 7:15 the other day! I look forward to that being regular thing.
Q: How is Kaleigh doing with them? A: She's doing great so far. She likes to say "my little baby sisters are soooo sweet". She likes to hold them and help with them. She has actually helped me feed them during the day when I'm by myself with all the kids, but she gets tired of holding the bottle after about 3 minutes.

An Original Bedtime Prayer - by Kaleigh

Dear God,
Thank you for my food. Thank you for my house, and my pink wall. Amen.

Happenings & pictures


We've had a busy couple of weeks. Last weekend we went camping - well, not really. We did go out to DeGray with Nathan's family. Timothy and Kayla got engaged! Timothy had organized a party out at the campsite with both families after he proposed.




We had a good Thanksgiving with our family. A lot to be thankful for this year...









Yesterday we went to the football game. You know the one I mean. My dad had some tickets and he let us have them. We knew that way at least one of us would leave happy. It was a really good game either way. I was just glad when it was over. It had gotten so cold out there. It was fun though, except I always seem to end up sitting in front of an obnoxious fan. This time it was a very unladylike woman who was screaming about everything and calling the refs names, etc. It wasn't enough just to cheer for the Hogs, she had to badmouth LSU every time they were on the field. I was pretty quiet the whole time, just because it would not surprise me if she poured coke in my seat or something (which happened to us 4 years ago).

Family Pictures

Getting a good family picture is not going to be quite as easy as it used to be (and it was never easy!) But the experience is always a good memory in and of itself. Avery and Alexis were more than 4 weeks old and we realized that we didn't have any pictures yet of our whole family together, so we had a little photo shoot. Here goes. . .

This one was okay, except for Nathan's "I'm not ready" look, Alexis's "no pictures please" pose, and Kaleigh's "I'm still talking" thing. Oh, and the angle that makes our legs look really out of proportion.







Kaleigh mid sneeze. No need to elaborate.








After many other outtakes...
We finally got one we like, still not exactly perfect, but that will probably be the theme in our family for a while.

Living Again!
I got to go to Bunko for the 1st time in months. It happened to be costume bunko so I borrowed a dress from Kristen and went as a Chinese geisha. Everyone looked so cute.
I even won a prize for best overall costume.








On Sunday, Kaleigh went to Maddie's Pinkalicious birthday party. It was such a cute theme for a little girl. They got to paint ceramic cupcakes and decorate real cupcakes, color, and eat snacks. Kaleigh was so funny because she was still picking at her snacks long after everyone else had finished.









Okay, so our family doesn't officially celebrate Halloween, but we did have a lot of activities. Thursday night Nathan and I took Kaleigh to a free festival in Benton. They had little carnival games, inflatables, free funnel cakes, and a concert by Sean Michel. We had a good time, but my night was made when I ran into the girl who does storytime at the Benton library. She didn't know what had become of us since I've been on bed rest, and was excited to hear about the babies, but I was excited to hear that she is pregnant with twins!

Friday, Kaleigh went to the nursing home for lunch to visit with GG and they also had a little carnival. Of course all the residents enjoyed seeing Kaleigh. GG looked so cute as Little Bo Peep with sheep all around her.

That evening we dressed up our two little pumpkins and took our little strawberry trick or treating around the neighborhood. Kaleigh was such a little diva riding in her wagon then walking a few feet to ring the doorbell and get some candy.

After that we went to GSFest where Kaleigh got to ride the train and go down the inflatable slide a few times. I would have liked to ride some rides but didn't feel like standing in the long lines. So funny as a parent that your idea of fun is just centered around whether your child is having a good time. Kaleigh had the most fun playing on the playground that she can play on any time! Go figure.

This was random, but on the way out we ran into these two friends, and I thought it was funny that we are all Shelley, Shelli, and Shelly so we had to take a picture.

Well, alot has happened since we posted on this blog. In case I've been really out of touch with you, we had our babies. Avery and Alexis came on October 1st. They came home from the hospital last Friday, October 17th. They are doing really well. The 15th also happened to be Kaleigh's birthday and we had a little party for her on Saturday. So, here are some pictures of the babies and Kaleigh at Playtime Pizza on her actual birthday with her "best friend Maddie" and then her luau party on Saturday.

Kaleigh, Kaleigh & more Kaleigh

Our friends Andy & Liz recently moved to Little Rock from Magnolia. Liz has been doing photography and recently got a new digital camera so she offered to do a photo shoot of Kaleigh. I know this is a lot of pictures, but there were over 300 so trust me, I definitely narrowed them down. It looked like they both had a lot of fun as well as Nana, who assisted. Thanks Liz! If you want some pictures of your kids, I can tell you how to get in touch with her.

This will be my "catch-up" blog... I'll break it up into several so be sure & scroll down to catch everything.

Kaleigh is having fun at VBS this week - they did such a great job of decorating for the kids!

Father's Day at the Traveler's Game

Random Pictures from fun events...

Trip to Missouri in May - We went to visit family. Nathan didn't get to come, but we had a good time and Kaleigh really enjoyed playing with her cousins.

Our newest baby pictures! We went into the Doctor's office today very scared b/c of some things that happened yesterday, but the babies looked great. They were measuring just right and the best news was that the Doctor said there was a membrane separating the babies, which would mean no worry over cord entanglement! We weren't too surprised since we've been praying for that specific thing. I'm 12 weeks now. Isn't it amazing how well formed they already are?

A Trip to the Zoo

Our church organized a trip to the zoo for preschoolers & a parent, and we had a really good time. The one animal that Kaleigh kept talking about wanting to see was the lion, but I think her favorite thing was feeding the fish. I have to say, she still wasn't super impressed with the animals and was more interested in eating the cheerios I smuggled in, but I know she had fun because she keeps talking about going back.