The Big Race

Carrie made a pinewood derby car for her Awana's Grand Prix last Saturday. This was my first experience with pinewood derby racing and it was SO fun! Mom sketched several options with inspiration from Ethan's Hot Wheels collection and Carrie picked her favorite. She and Dad took her block of wood to her leader's house to have it cut out and then we sanded, sealed, painted, decorated, and clear coated it. Then Ethan absolutely had to have one too! So we did it all again. Ethan's age group raced hot wheels cars instead of the derby cars, but he got to do a test run with his pinewood derby car against Carrie's car and his won! Ethan made it to the semifinals against 15 of the fastest Hot Wheels in Okaloosa County, and while Carrie's car only won it's first heat, it placed 3rd for design. She was so proud of "the first trophy I've ever won in my whole life!" It was a great day!

Some February Photos

Here's a rare sighting of brotherly sisterly love caught unprompted. Love it!


Before Valentine's Day, we shot some photos to use for a card for the grandparents. It took several to get a good smile out of Ethan. Carrie was so easy to photograph when she was that age, she'd have one bad one out of 100! Ethan, on the other hand, is almost impossible! Here are some of the funny ones!

And the one that made it onto the card!
This was pretty funny...

One night after Ethan had gone to bed, I went back to check on him and this is what I found. He's asleep in the bed under all the blankets and he had a zebra, a starfish, a lobster, an orangutan, a chimp, an ape, a rhinoceros, an alligator, a killer whale, and a slinky lined up to guard his door.

And finally, the kids were playing superheroes one Saturday morning and I was afraid Carrie's headbands were not going to survive the excitement, so we made masks!

Ethan went to bed with his mask still on that night! Good times!

The Three Bears

Well, there were times that we wondered if Ethan was ever going to start talking! In the last several weeks, many people have mentioned how much more he's talking - it gets better every day! His pronunciation is so cute. Carrie always pronounced everything perfectly - if not the first time, she'd get it right after one correction. So its been fun to hear all the cute developments of different sound combinations. I especially love how he says, "Me wuv you VeVy much!"

Ethan loves a story book we have that has several of the old favorites like The Three Pigs, The Gingerbread Man, and The Three Bears. One afternoon I heard him reciting the Three Bears to himself so I grabbed the camera and asked him to tell me the story. He loves the wolf in The Three Pigs and Red Riding Hood, so you'll see at the very end that he really wants a wolf to eat somebody at the end of the story! It's a little long, but if you have time, it's really cute.

Part 1


Part 2


One morning while Carrie and I were doing schoolwork, Ethan started counting! In this clip, he's looking at a book that counts ladybugs backwards from 5. On each page you loose a ladybug until the last one flies home. Pretty cute!

January 2009

It is a little shocking each time a realize all over again that our babies are NOT babies anymore! So big...

Look how long her legs are!
And these are some pictures I took of our house right before everyone arrived for our church staff Christmas dinner. We pushed the couches back in the living room and set up two 8ft tables to seat 5 couples. We rolled the island out from the kitchen to the dining room to have more room for people to get drinks and appetiers. I probably went a little overboard with the decorating, but once I got started, I just couldn't stop!

Oh Yeah, Ethan's Birthday!

Now I understand a little better why people with December birthdays always complain about it! It is so hard to really do a birthday right when you have the holidays coming at you in a hurry!
But our little man turned 3 on Dec. 6th and celebrated with a Diego cake.

Bringing in '09

To celebrate New Year's Eve, we had our friends Dustin, Alicia, Allison, Courtney, Emily, and Sydney over for quesadillas, nachos, and cheese dip. The kids watched a movie while the grown ups watched the Yellow Jackets play in the Chic-fil-A Bowl (Dustin is a Tech Grad too!) We had a great night even if Tech lost. We love you guys!

Christmas 2008

We had a really wonderful Christmas holiday in Greenville, SC with Bob's family and even got to stop in Georgia on our way home to see my family! Here's some pics from the trip.

One night all the adults went out for dinner and left the older girls to babysit. This is how we found them when we got home later that night.

Carrie lost her first tooth Christmas Eve! (And the black eye is from playing too rough with the cousins - I think she and Gabe bonked heads! She was looking pretty rough!)

Carrie and Gabe were the first ones ready to go downstairs Christmas morning, but no one goes down until everyone is ready!Now they're all ready! Camera's rolling...

Carrie's stash - she got boots and a ballerian barbie and a magnet set from Santa.

Ethan's stash - He got a tool set and tool box and a cowboy hat, bandana, and lasso (he calls it his 'yasso wope'! He's too cute!

Carrie exclaims in an unbelieveably shrill voice, "I got boots!!!!"

Can you tell she liked them?!

That's cousin Jack McNeil. He and Ethan are very close in age. Its great for them to have a playmate!

The little kids put on a Nativity story for us. Amanda directed and Aunt Katie narrated. Carrie was Mary and Gabe was Joseph. It was precious!

Mary proudly cradling the naked baby Jesus!