So life has been slipping by at a very rapid pace and I have found myself struggling to keep up with the blog. This is not fair to little Peyton since I captured all of Jenna's moments, yet it is a product of Peyton as she has been keeping me on my toes.

Since my last post, we have adjusted to Josh taking on his new role with Stanley Black & Decker, which resulted in much more travel.

Jenna finished her first year at Discovery Village Preschool and was home with Peyton & me all summer.

My Brother's family, my folks and I planted a 30 foot by 100 foot garden on my folks' property. We planted 3 types of lettuce, radishes, brussel sprouts, okra, bell peppers, banana peppers, squash, zucchini, acorn squash, butternut squash, Japanese eggplant, corn, 59 tomato plants, 2 types of cucumbers, cantaloupe, and watermelon. The garden was HUGE and a lot of work as the weeds were out of control!!! We had great success with some crops, failed with others, but enjoyed a great harvest of vegetables! We learned that we really like roasted butternut squash and eggplant. I learned that a radish picked right out of the ground is 100 times more potent than one from the grocery. We learned a great way to saute okra so it does not get slimy. I learned that I can make pickles!!! In fact I have over 50 pints of dill/bread and butter pickles and 18 quarts of Kosher dill pickles down in the basement cabinets (that doesn't include all that were passed on to my folks, brothers family and friends).


Josh and I traveled to Southern California in June for my cousins Shane's graduation, but mainly for a vacation for just the two of us. The girls stayed with their Grandma and Grandpa Cowley in NJ. Everyone had a blast!

Our niece Brianna finished her first year of kindergarten and was going to spend the summer hanging out with my folks on the farm. So to make things more fun for all of the cousins, we spent a lot of time down there too so the girls could play. We also had Brianna come spend a couple of days a week at our house too. I'll definitely have to post pictures of all of our fun times.

Pete and Deb came down for a visit and we discovered that we can rent pontoon boats on Lake Norman! We spent an entire day out on the lake boating around, swimming, and tubing. It was an amazing day and definitely worth doing again.

Now we are getting back into the routine of Jenna going to preschool again as she has now started in the 4 year old classroom at Discovery Village. She has had a blast, but it has been hard for Peyton who walks around saying, "I want Jenna. Mommy, I want Jenna." Hopefully soon we will be able to get Peyton into a part time daycare so she can go to school too.

I will try to post pictures soon from all of our summer adventures.

A little broken hearted tonight

My heart aches tonight, even though I know that the ultimate healing has occurred. My Grandpa Ed passed away tonight at 5 pm my time and 2 pm in Oregon. My mom let me know that it was a peaceful passing, that my Aunt Barbara told him it was okay, that he could go and see his folks, his brother and his sister. She left to go to the bathroom and when she returned he had passed. I say that it is the ultimate healing as he has been living with dementia for awhile now and has been on oxygen. He hasn't really been "present" for some time now.

My heart aches as I wish I had seen more of him these last few years. It had been too long since I had seen him and now I won't get the chance to see him now. So please bear with me as I shed some tears and remember an amazing man...

I think I deserve a raise.

We are about to end a very long week of Jenna not having pre-school, Josh being out of town on business, and my folks being in Florida on a vacation. That has left me with both kids, by myself, with no outside help.

Monday we played with friends and I ended up watching 2 of the neighbors' kids in the evening since the parents had an appointment. (That gave me 4 kids to juggle.)

Tuesday we went over to our neighborhood friend's house to swim in their heated pool. That was fun but it is tiring on your own playing pass interference with Peyton as she runs around the pool. Jenna however is fearless with her swimmies on and jumps from the side, slides down the side and goes non stop!

Wednesday we had exterminators come out to the house to spray for bugs and we ended up just playing in our driveway with bubbles and a kiddie pool.

Thursday we ran errands and then all of our neighborhood friends came over to play since it was raining. What a zoo it was with everyone running around screaming.

Today (Friday) we have been playing with play dough, doing puzzles and I have swept the deck since we have been covered in pollen, swept the front porch, changed the light bulbs in both garage door openers and the burnt out lights on the garage ceiling. Plus I vacuumed all of the cobwebs off of the garage ceiling and swept it out. The girls will go down for a nap soon and I am spent.

Thank goodness it's almost the weekend!

Hanging with the girls

Lately I have been spending a lot of time with the girls. Josh has been traveling more for work and with his new position he will be traveling even more. The best thing we do to get through this is to have structure to our days and just trying to find fun things to do. We do craft projects, jump in the bounce house, play dress up, watch movies and hopefully Spring will be here full time so we can play outside more. Last week we had a sunny but brisk day, so we had a picnic at the neighborhood park and then played at the playground with our neighborhood friends. This resulted in a 3 hour power nap by the girls, which was awesome!!! There's nothing better than playing outside.

In mentioning the bounce house, we set it up in the basement so the girls can bounce off steam. They took a quick break to "pose" for this picture! Peyton is fearless in this and bounds headfirst down the slide. This has taught me to ensure there is a foam pad at the base so we don't have any ouchies!

There's nothing quite as fun as eating a blue raspberry laffy taffy that turns your tongue blue!!! Jenna kept running back and forth showing her mommy and daddy her blue tongue. At one point she even tried to lick daddy!

I don't think I could have imagined Peyton wanting to dress up at this age but she gets the biggest kick out of wearing her big sister's dress-up clothes. Here she is sporting the Snow White look. The only accessories missing were the ring, satin apple purse, and ribbon necklace. Not quite sure where those things are at the moment.

Next she wanted to wear the Cinderella outfit. Too funny and as with the previous outfit she is just missing the ring. I have a feeling all of the dress up accessories got put into the satin purse and have been put into a "safe" place that even I cannot find them at the moment!

Wow I cannot believe how fast time is flying by. I can't believe it has been over 2 months since I posted something. I guess I have gotten caught up in finishing each day that I hadn't realized how many of those days had past. Let's see what has been going on...

The first weekend in January a group of my sorority sisters and their families came to celebrate 2010 at our house. There were 9 kids all under the age of 4 staying here: Bennett Sanborn (3), Jenna (3), Ava Morris(now 3), Henry Phillips(2), Caroline Harkness(1 1/2), Noah Sanborn(1), Maddie Morris(1), Peyton (1), and Grace Phillips(now 4 mo.). We laughed about how much things had changed when every time you turned around there was a little one under foot. It is so amazing to me that we all still make the effort to get together even after all the years and changes in life.

Here's Jenna and her gal pal Bennett playing dress up as two little princesses!

Next we have Jenna, Bennett, and Ava who were having a blast playing with the little couch.

Then we have the only group shot we could semi-manage which shows Peyton, Bennett, Henry, Jenna, Ava, and the back of Caroline's head. They were watching cartoons and once they realized we were going to start taking pictures, chaos broke out.

Then came Peyton's first birthday. We invited our neighborhood gang and my folks for "cake & cocktails" to have fun spending time together and let the kids play. Yet another crazy time with a lot of kids running around. It was so much fun watching Peyton have her first taste of sugar and boy did she enjoy it. The video is hilarious and at one point you can watch her just bend down and take a huge bite out of the icing. By the point of this picture though she had had enough and was ready for her "triple b": bath, bottle, bed. You can almost see her saying, "I am done get this off of me!!!"

The next day Peyton had the best time playing with all of the balloons we had decorated with. She also got the biggest kick out of the punch balloons we had given the kids because she could hold the rubber band straps and run with them! This picture is hilarious as it shows not only her joy but the amount of static she created with them and her hair.

At the end of January we had a "huge" snow storm hit our area. I say huge because we don't get a lot of snow in this area and it doesn't last long. It started snowing on a Friday night, so we got Jenna bundled up and went outside to play in the snow, make snow angels, and have fun. By the morning we had 5-6 inches on the ground. Keep in mind what it looked like outside and this is what Jenna came down stairs wearing in the morning:

Apparently the freezing cold outside did not bother her at all since this is what she was determined to wear. However, she did not want to go outside at all that day. I guess she had enough of the cold and wet on Friday night. By Sunday we had convinced her to go outside to play with our neighborhood friends. A couple of the kids had inner tubes and we soon discovered that our backyard is AWESOME for sledding/tubing down. You have the first hill then you hit a ridge and get another hill down the back side of the house.

My favorite moment was when Josh decided he had had enough of watching the kids doing all of the tubing and he had to give it a shot. I think the kids were shocked and excited that he actually did it, since the other dads don't usually play with the kids. He takes off, then you see them chase after him, and then they all celebrate that he made it the whole way!

In mid-February, Grandpa Pete, Grandma Deb, and Great-Grandma Betty came down from NJ for a visit. Josh and Pete went down to Daytona, FL for the NASCAR races, while the girls all hung out in NC for the week. It was so special to get to spent the time with Deb and Gram. The girls loved having them around and it was special getting to watch the bond grow even more with everyone. Unfortunately snow brought the trip to an end as they had to head home a day early due to a "clipper" that was headed towards NJ and they needed to get home prior to the snow coming again.

Now we are in March and I am ready for sun and warmer weather. That will mean we get to play more outside with all of our friends. Playing outside in the fresh air results in sleepy girls which brings long naps...like the 3 hour one the girls took today which let me make this post!