happy birthday!

I am so thankful for my husband. He is an amazing man and father.
Happy Birthday Pete!!!

easter

 i love easter. the opportunity to celebrate our risen God. the reminder of how much i love and appreciate our church. time with family. good food. and the silly fun of all the egg hunts.

 we headed to pete's parents after church, our norm, and prepared for a lot of easter treats and fun.

these two were so silly. they were trying to be patient while waiting for the eggs to be hidden.

 then they were off!

 we do a very "fair" hunt where we hide an equal number of eggs for each kiddo and they hunt for their color.

this is the boys checking their loot.

 we then made an attempt at family photos.

 and grabbed a pic of all the kiddos...we also had pete's cousin and her cute little guys for lunch and the hunt.

 last, but not least we dug into the desserts and sang a little happy birthday to our big eight year old.

he is risen indeed!

eight

it hurts me to say that my sweet first born is eight today. how did this happen?

we looked through his baby book tonight and it felt like yesterday that we were holding our little man for the first time. i love this big guy and am so thankful for all the things he has taught me over the last eight years.

happy birthday Wilson!

we love you

our carnival party

 Last weekend we threw both boys a combined Carnival birthday party.

After last year I decided that I would push hard to combine their parties this year because they really like the same things and I felt like I had thrown the same party twice.

A few months ago I ran across a blog post about a carnival themed wedding and fell in love with the carnival theme...i love a theme. It seemed age appropriate and I was hopeful that we could do an outdoor party with homemade games and lots of fun carnival detail.

I got carnival tickets that the kids won for every game they played. old fashioned soda bottles with adorable striped straws. mp and i made oreo pops. craig popped corn and we had individual popcorn bags. we also had fruit skewers and hot dogs.

we were lucky with a beautiful day for the party, i think it was 80 degrees, but it was super windy. because of the wind the table was not as cute as i would have liked it to be, but i am pretty sure that didn't matter much.

 i think my two favorite things about the party were our Carnies (jr high and high schoolers who came to run the games) and the photo booth (i made it out of a large box and it was SO fun).

 it was loved by all the party goers.

 and we even got a few with our birthday boys.

 i also loved the face paint...the mp special...

 and the bounce house..

 and all the other games and goodies.

 it really was a great party and we all had so much fun.

 and even managed to grab a family pic.

 a sweet friend made all three boys these tie t-shirts and they make me smile.

happy birthday boys!

nashville. day 4.

 Our last day we really just got up and headed out. It was Campbell's birthday so we did breakfast and a few presents before we hopped in the car. We got home mid afternoon and had a little family time before heading to a special birthday dinner for Campbell.

 Campbell requested Hacienda for dinner...it is his favorite. Some of our closest family friends were in town so they met us and my cousins and Mimi & Papaw.

 The birthday boy was beyond excited and got totally spoiled with yummy treats and sweet gifts.

 It was a great end to our mini vaca.

I tried to get a picture of all four of us every day of this trip and it was more challenging than I would have liked....there aren't any I'll be printing, but I am still happy to have them.

nashville. day 3

On our third day in Nashville we got up and going early and hit the Nashville zoo. It was really warm this day so I was super glad we had gotten there early. It was a great zoo with wide open spaces where the animals are roaming.

The boys loved the meerkats and the unbelievable playground. The playground felt like the home of the lost boys in Peter Pan...so cool...they would have stayed there all day.

Wilson fixed his own hair this day...what do ya think?

nashville...day 2

 I am making myself share pics from the rest of our spring break trip before i allow myself to blog party pics from this weekend, which i am dying to do.

On our second day in Nashville we headed to the Gaylord Opryland hotel. It is the largest non-gambling resort in the world...a fact i learned on our small boat ride inside the hotel...and it is beautiful. I wasn't sure how entertained the boys would be, but they loved it. There are paths everywhere that they explored, gorgeous flowers, waterfalls.

 It was a great time.

That night we took the boys to Pete's aunt's house to hang out and play and then we left them there while we did an adults only dinner with my parents. So fun!

spring break. day one.

 I feel like I am loosing at keeping up with this blog and my gut reaction is to quit, but I am going to press on in this attempt to document our family and the places we are and things we do. I am also contemplating combining my work and personal blogs (thoughts?) For today I am going to work on a little catch up.

SPRING BREAK...we headed to Nashville for a few days of fun with my parents.

 The first day we went to the Adventure Science Museum. It was so fun! A must see if you are visiting Nashville with kiddos. It had great hands on exhibits and a huge jungle jim-ish thing.

 We spent about 30 minutes playing on this water table that is explaining the way blood travels through veins.

After the museum we headed to an outlet mall and then back to our hotel. We walked to dinner at Joe's crab shack and took a carriage ride that night (pics are on my phone and i am without the cord)