how about 4?

Thursday and Friday our house was filled with four little girls. My friend's two (incredibly adorable) daughters spent both days with us while she prepared her classroom for school. Emily also spent the night and of course Madelyn was around. It was a full house and I loved it. At one point we were all sitting around the table and I asked Luke, "How about four?" It would be so fun! Thursday night my family came over for dinner and swimming and Friday we had a full house during the day!

Here are a few pictures of the madness:

I think it goes without saying that Madelyn adored all the big girls and followed them all over the house. She spent five-six hours in the pool between the two days and she loved every minute of it.

what good mothers do

What does every good mom do when her 10 month old baby has successfully unraveled half a roll of toilet paper?

Take pictures of course!

Madelyn's been doing this for about a week now. I finally broke her of flushing the toilet 15 times while I am in the shower. So far I have not been very good at discouraging her from playing with the toilet paper. I have a feeling I'm not going to be very good at this whole disciplinarian thing.

a pile of pictures

I tried Madelyn off of her Zantac for two days. She has been off of her Prevacid for three weeks so I thought it was time to give it a shot. I was wrong. Yesterday morning marked day two and Madelyn quit breathing. I was talking to the pool man and she was playing on the floor behind me when it happened. He pointed down at her and I turned around and she looked terrified. Her arms were flailing and she was dark red. She took a gasp before I even got to her but I felt terrible because I know it was only due to the fact that I took her off of her reflux meds. Talk about a royal mommy fail. Needless to say we started her back on the Zantac right then.

She was happy and did really well for the rest of the day. I am thankful for modern medicine and a precious little girl named Madelyn!

she's a climber

Yesterday my friend Denise and her kiddos came out to the house to swim. Madelyn was napping when they arrived but was wide awake and ready to play when they were done swimming. While Denise and I were talking in the kitchen, Madelyn discovered how to climb the stairs.Can we say baby gate? Our house has two sets of stairs; one that goes up and one that goes down. We've had the ones that go down gated for a long time, but had yet to gate the ones that go upstairs. Looks like it's time!

She is actually a pretty good little climber. She made it all the way to the top...
She loved the attention that she was getting all afternoon.
Lately she has really been a ham. She and Luke make silly faces together and every time she does it, we laugh hysterically. I am not sure if this is when they were making there silly faces or if he was mocking her while she was throwing one of her fake fits (yes...she is already throwing fake tantrums...scream, scream, scream then open one eye to see our reaction...someone pray for the teenage years), but either way it's pretty funny.
Her friend of the week is definitely Buzz. They have been inseparable. Whenever Madelyn gets her toys out, Buzz is always first. Poor Violet is feeling neglected.
I love that when Luke plays his guitar, Madelyn always wants to be right in the middle of it. I have a feeling she is going to be musically inclined like her daddy.
Either that, or she will at least have a love for music. All of her favorite toys to beat on are instruments and within the last few weeks she has started to dance when music is playing.
She danced for Gigi and Great Granny on Skype. She also took a step while they were watching too!
She has been standing for a few seconds here and there without holding on but once she notices that she's let go she plops down on her bottom. I am thinking that she will be walking by her birthday?? Yikes!

blessings and babes

The last 5 days have been so jam packed. We've been out of town, busy at church, hanging out with family, helping out friends and on top of that a sweet friend passed away Friday night. She had a long battle with cancer and is now resting and rejoicing at the feet of Jesus. Her name was Martha and her legacy is nothing short of amazing. She had a gentle spirit and loved Jesus. Next to her love for the Lord, her love for her sweet husband was evident in everything that she did. When Luke and I were getting married, she and her husband (along with another sweet couple) wrote Luke and I a card that we put in "our box". It simply said that their prayer for us was that we would have as amazing of a marriage as their 50 years had been so far. They constantly encouraged us. Were excited for us. They rejoiced in our engagement and spoke of how wonderful daily life with your best friend could be. It meant so much to us because the majority of people that we encountered made jokes (or were serious?) about how much of a drag marriage can be. Martha only spoke of how much of a gift it was. We wondered at the time if they would be able to make it to our wedding. At the time, she and her husband were both battling cancer, undergoing treatments and dealing with hair loss and the effects of the disease. We were so blessed to look out in to the crowd and see them. I will never forget as Luke and I drove to Dallas after the wedding and talked about how special it was for them to be there. She was such a blessing, will be missed dearly and I know that her precious husband will have many changes as he adjusts to life without his best friend. Pray for him, will you? I can't imagine life without your spouse of 53 years.

We went to the funeral visitation last night and after wards we went to dinner with friends. Madelyn was so good during the visitation and at dinner despite the fact that it was past her bed time.
She is so precious.

Madelyn and Kolson, Nathan and Jenna's youngest, is four months older than Madelyn so they love to interact.

They had fun exchanging growls and pinches and giggling at each other.

Days like yesterday remind me how thankful I am for the blessings in life and the babes that make every day fun.

kindergarten here she comes...

Not this little girl. She has a few years before we have to think about kindergarten for Miss Madelyn.

We may have to work on putting puzzles together instead of eating them before she is ready for school.

But Sunday afternoon Rachel and I tagged along as my mom took Emily shopping for school clothes. I am in such disbelief that my oldest niece starts school in just a few weeks.

She loves to shop and is quite the little diva so we all had a really good time.

I was laughing hysterically at Rachel's face as Emily was showing her a sparkly tank top from the Children's Place that looked like it belonged on someone in a night club. At first Emily was saying how cute it was, but thankfully when she saw Rachel's reaction she changed her mind. Ha! You have to love positive peer pressure!

We all laughed so hard as Rachel and I had flashbacks to the days when Mom took us back-to-school shopping.

I am pretty sure she is set and will be the best dressed little girl in school!

I am so proud of that little girl and cannot wait to watch her excel in school. She is so bright and outgoing and a delight to be around. Time flies. I know that soon enough Madelyn will be the one that is about to start her school career...oh my word.

I am so glad that I was able to tag along for such a fun experience and share in Emily's special day.

SEC: Student Evangelism Conference

Friday morning Madelyn was so funny when she was eating her breakfast. It was as if she couldn't decide what she wanted to eat first. She kept stuffing her wagon wheel (disturbing name for a kid's snack) and her bottle in her mouth at the same time.

It was pretty funny and I had to laugh every time I saw her do it.

At about lunch time my mom came over to spend the night with Madelyn while Luke and I took a group of students to the Student Evangelism Conference in Frisco. There were 22 of us in all. We had a great group!

One of the highlights for me...getting to see David Crowder in concert. Luke and I used to go see Crowder all the time in high school and college but haven't in a couple of years. I need to dig out one of our pictures with him and scan it. He's a pretty goofy looking guy, but we look like such youngens in the pictures too.

It was such a refreshing time of worship.

The Skit Guys were there and I was laughing so hard that my stomach hurt.

Another highlight of the trip, these girls and I played an awesome prank on Luke. I think this is the first time in seven years that I have been able to pull off a prank and really fool him. It was awesome. We scared him. He screamed like a girl. We laughed so hard.

After a few hours of sleep we made it back to the convention center for day two of the SEC.

It was so great to be able to go with the student ministry and have my arms free. Saturday morning I was talking to a woman who had a baby with her that looked to be about Madelyn's age. It really made me miss my girl. She was telling me that if the baby didn't come then her daughter couldn't have come. I assumed her daughter was a sponsor or a youth pastor's wife and maybe she didn't want to leave her or was breastfeeding. I was wrong. Her daughter was a student. A 13 year old student. Their story was nothing short of amazing, but my heart sank as she told me how she became pregnant at just 12 years old and had her baby three days after becoming a teenager. Being a mom is the most amazing feeling in the world, but I cannot imagine being a child who is mom to a child. I loved getting to talk to the Grandma and each day since, I have felt this urge to pray for them.

By mid morning I was so anxious to get home to Madelyn. We didn't make it to the house until nearly 6pm and she was asleep when I got there.

I wanted to snatch her up so bad but she was enjoying cuddling with her Aunt Rachel (who made it home from Egypt the day before). She had a great time with Grandma! When she finally woke up, she kept waving "bye-bye" to me. It's OK, I know that was code for, "I love you with all my heart Mommy and I missed you so much!"