Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! This is going to hopefully be a quick post but I just wanted to share a few of the things I am thankful for this morning

The love and forgiveness found in Jesus Christ! What an amazing Savior!

My husband who takes such good care of us. He works hard every day and he still comes home and plays with his kids. He is such a good daddy!

My sweet babies. I am so thankful for these two gifts from God. They bring so much joy and work into my life. I don't think I could love them nearly as much if they didn't need me so much and I am so thankful for them!

Good health. So far we are all feeling great. Give us a few hours of over eating and we will see...

My family- I am so excited to have my family together today. We will be spending Thanksgiving day at my parents house with all my siblings and my dads family. It is extra exciting because Dave is home from college! I forget how much I enjoy him and I am so thankful he is home for a couple days. I love my family so much and am looking forward to spending the day with them all.

There are so many more things that I could add to this list but I am going to keep those to myself because I don't think you all want to read about all those other items.

What good is a blog post without a couple pictures :)

We hope you all have a wonderful thanksgiving. We especially wish all our family in Georgia a great one. Wish we lived closer so we could be there with you today.

our little ones

Both William and Allie are getting so big. I see them daily so I don't realize how much they have grown until all of a sudden they are both bigger.

Here a few of the fun things I have noticed about William lately.

I think I have mentioned this one before but He love the moon. If it is out he finds it and if it isn't he notices that it is gone. He loves to tell my mom that the moon is out. He also loves to find the moon in books. It is pretty cute. Nick and he were in the car and Nick was trying to explain to him that it is God's moon and Wills told him that it was his moon and that God's moon was in his Big Picture Story Bible. It took Nick awhile but he finally convinced William that it is God's moon and that the one in the book is just a picture. Now he tells us "there's God's moon."

William's speech continues to develop. This isn't necessarily a development but funny, My sister pointed out to me the other day that he started calling her Rachel not Rach like he use to. I don't know why but it is pretty funny and cute. Aunt Rach-el has been spending more time with us since she goes to school so close to our house, and ultimately, because her boy friend is far away at college. We have been enjoying all the extra time with her.

Another one of Williams favorite things to do right now is sing. He likes to sing very loudly! Not always but especially when he is excited which usually happens on our car rides. He likes to listen to his music in the car and those are the songs he sings. He likes to sing Jesus loves me and the B-I-B-L-E. He also makes up his own songs.

William is very independent at times. He loves to dress himself and pick out his own clothes. This has resulted in several interesting outfits but ultimately it is worth it to let him do it himself. He loves to put on his soccer clothes. He has two shirts with soccer balls on them and several pairs of soccer shorts. He has one white pair that are by far his favorite and he loves to put those on. He also loves to put on his shoes. He get's pretty upset with me when I try to help him put his socks or his shoes on or any of his clothes for that matter. I am enjoying his different stages.

Allie is also getting big. She is so happy and she LOVES to interact. When Nick or I am around she tries really hard to get eye contact to smile at us. She loves her brother and gets really excited when he is around. She loves to laugh especially at her daddy. We went to the Dr. the other day and she is is a big girl. She is in the 90% for height for age and 79% for weight. She weights 14lbs 13.7 ounces and she is 2inches 1.5. She also is grasping her toys really well. She lays on her play mat and grabs her toys and feet. So cute! She is really starting to enjoy her toys and tries to put them all in her mouth.

Here is a picture of them in the bath. I recently started putting her baby bath in the tub because she splashes so much. William asked me if he could take a bath with her. He is so excited to start playing with her. It was very cute. He ask to take baths with her every time I tell him he needs one.

Daddy's birthday trip 2008 Yosemite

We went to Yosemite last weekend to celebrate Nick's birthday. We had a wonderful time even though it rained practically the entire time. The only nice thing about it raining so much was that it kept it a little warmer. We new it was going to be wet so we came prepared which makes a HUGE difference. We made a quick stop at REI and picked up some stuff and then headed on our way. Wills is just like his father and loves the rain so he did great. We brought him three pairs of shoe's, all of which were wet in the first full day, he wore a waterproof jacket and waterproof pants to keep him...well dry enough. Actually other then the bottoms of his pants and his feet he was totally dry. Allie road around in her baby Bjorn attached to mommy practically the whole time (I am seriously loving her Bjorn for anything active.) We bought her a little down onesie "space" suit and a Bjorn cover so she was probably overly warm if anything and I carried an umbrella to keep her dry. She had a great time and she slept fine so that was nice. Mommy and daddy pulled out the rain gear with Gortex shoes and so we all stayed dry.

The first night we showed up at dusk and it was barley sprinkling so we quickly started to get camp set up. I started setting up the tent and Nick worked on getting a fire started (one of his highlights to any camp trip.) Fortunately we were able to have a fire both nights even though it rained practically all night Friday and all day and all night Saturday, the weather took a little break and let us cook dinner and roast s'mores. Our tent held up well and none of our stuff got wet even though the outside of our tent was soaked. Nick and I mentioned several times how thankful we were to have a nice tent that is easy to set up and take down.

We were amazed how much the falls and the river filled up in those couple days of rain. Very impressive. All told we had a great trip and Yosemite, like always, was beautiful and told of the great creation of our God.

William was planning on sleeping in my mummy bag in our tent. He was pretty excited about it when we were at home. The first night when we climbed into our tent he was like "go home sleep in my big bed?" He was pretty upset so he ended up sleeping with me inside my sleeping bag. We borrowed a Coleman from my parents which is as roomy as our bed is when William decides he needs to sleep with us. He didn't sleep that well and kept scooting closer and closer. When Allie woke up to nurse at 3 am we all got up because when I got up to get her he woke up and so we got Nick up to hold him. I didn't sleep that well because Wills was moving all over and I would just sit and listen to the noises and then I would fall asleep and he would wake me up. We both slept better the second night. When Wills and I were going to bed the first night Wills had both his arms around my neck and he spontaneously said "I like You" all I could do was laugh. It was so cute! It cracked me up. He is very fun. When we woke up the next morning he was again sleeping with his arms around my neck holding tight. As I was laying there I though to myself that I love that I am a comfort to my little guy and I know I will miss these days when he is older and he doesn't want to even hug me. I sure love my babies.

We had a great time, and we can't wait to go back, which if it is up to daddy, will be very soon.

Some of the beautiful pictures we captured while we were there. I haven't worked on any of them in photoshop so they are straight our of the Camera. No picture can truly do these sights justice.
The colors were so vibrant because of all the rain. I don't think I have ever seen the granite look better.

Yosemite Falls after several days of rain

This isn't a good picture but I had to include it because these people were walking in front of us and Wills kept passing them and they thought he was the greatest thing. They were from Singapore. He kept going off the path and then they would get ahead of him and he would go sprinting back up to catch up with his "friends".

This was Yosemite falls on Friday when we drove in.


This is on Sunday when we were leaving. Crazy how different the water level is.

I really like this picture and I did a little ps (photo shop) on it

I love how these trees present a grand "entrance gate" to the falls

silly face

He loves to climb on ever rock and tree.

He was sprinting around the rocks.

Such a sweet picture.

Our family

me and Allie getting ready for the family picture

Wills and daddy starting to pack up. We set a tarp up over the bear box our second day so we would have somewhere dry to cook.

Nick did all the cooking while we camped. Amazing how food taste so good when you camp. He cooks on the fire.

Peek-a- boo

Here we are at Glacier Point. You drive up several thousand feet and overlook the valley. Simply Awesome! We were worried it was going to be completely covered with clouds but it was actually very amazing.

Here I am with my babies. Doesn't Allie look funny all snuggled up.

The view from Glacier point.