Live, laugh, love

Today was a great day of fun, friends, & football. What could be better?

Like a breath of fresh air

Today has been a wonderful, lazy day. My friend Kristine is here from California and we spent the day just laughing and catching up. I forget how ridiculous and giddy we are until we are together again. She is an absolutely wonderful friend and I feel incredibly blessed to have her in my life.

During the time that Alaina was in the hospital, we were blown away by the love and generosity that was poured out on our little family. One of the most incredible things was done by Kris and her fiance Bryan. Because the majority of my maternity leave was eaten up by Alaina's NICU stay, I was only going to have a week or 2 home with her. She decided that it just wasn't acceptable that I only have a tiny amount of time with my child so she did what any good friend would do.

She threw us a party.

A ton of people that we have never met got together to celebrate my daughter. They donated money. They donated items to raffle off. They made us beautiful handmade gifts that we will cherish forever. A couple weeks after the party, I got a package with the presents and a check that enabled me to stay home for 5 weeks with my baby girl. It was one of the most incredible, generous things that anyone has ever done for us.

I can not express enough how grateful I am to her, and to all of the people that supported us during that season. You blessed us in ways that I can not even begin to describe.

Thank you.

365 day challenge

There are many areas of my life where I am steadfast and consistent. However, when it come to blogging, I'm a total flake. I am so bad about posting on a regular basis. It's gotten better since Alaina was born but I am still more sporadic than I want to be. I always intend to write more and I even have several posts that I've started and never quite gotten around to finishing. Somehow I manage to get distracted by just about anything else and then forget to post.

In an effort to change that, I'm joining love and marriage on her 365 day blogging challenge. Perhaps if I have to be accountable for my goal, I will actually reach this one! I won't promise that all of my posts will be deep and meaningful, but I will post something every day. So for those of you brave (or crazy) enough to read this, here goes nothing!

Happy Halloween & Game Day

Since I know several of you are Georgia fans, I'll get the game day portion out of the way first. Being the always fair person that I am, Alaina was house divided on Saturday. She wore a black shirt & Georgia socks with her Gators bib. Which she drooled ALL over.

I think she took it to heart when her daddy told her that, "Dawgs rule & Gators drool."

Her first Halloween was wonderful. We spent the evening over at the Emerson's and had such a great time. We took the girls trick-or-treating until it started to get cold and windy. Scotlon and I headed back to the house with Alaina while Hannah braved the elements in search of more candy. She was NOT going to let a little wind get in her way! I don't blame her a bit, by the way. I would have done the same during my trick-or-treating years.

I know that I am a wee bit biased but Alaina was the cutest thing ever. Don't you agree?

I hope that you all had a wonderful and very happy Halloween!

Check-up

I just had to write a quick note to tell you how big my sweet girl is getting! At her check-up yesterday she was 12 lbs. 14 oz. (45th percentile) and 24 3/4" (75th percentile). It looks like she's going to be tall and lanky like her daddy!

4 Months

My sweet baby girl is 4 months old today! It's hard to believe that the time has gone by so quickly. She is doing new things every day and getting bigger by the minute. I swear I pick her up after work and she's heavier than she was when I held her that morning. Hailey swears that she's not feeding her miracle gro but I'm not so sure... We tried to take some 4 month pictures but our photo shoot was not entirely successful.

After several minutes of this, we changed locations and finally got a good one!

My sweet Alaina,

You are such a joy! Your daddy and I are ridiculously in love with you baby girl. You have really found your voice over the last few weeks and you are not afraid to use it! You usually wait until we are trying to talk on the phone and then you chime in nice and loud. After not getting to hear you make any noise for so long, we are always tickled when you talk to us though. You absolutely love your jumparoo and squeal with delight when we put you in it. We love that you are happy and we have free hands to eat dinner with:) While it is a little sad that you are getting SO big, we look forward to seeing what the coming months hold. We are incredibly honored to be your parents and thank God daily for giving you to us.

I love you,

Mommy

Pumpkin Patch

One of my favorite things to do each fall is go to the pumpkin patch. Last year, I found out I was pregnant right before our annual trip and I remember thinking about how great it was going to be to come back with our sweet baby. We usually go to Burt's and we tried to again this year but it was just miserable. Since Burt's is so far away from our house we decided to try a new place near Athens.

It was awesome.

Instead of having all the pumpkins together, they're still sitting on the vines.

Alaina thought the vines were really cool. And then she tried to eat them.

She wasn't so sure about the pumpkins themselves. She kept touching them and then pulling her hand away and looking at us.

We took a million pictures and tried to get her to smile but she only looked at us like we were crazy. As soon as I lowered the camera she would smile and giggle again!

Finally on our way out to the car I caught a couple of her smiling at us.

Overall it was a wonderful trip and I can't wait to go back again next year!