Sunday Morning

 Sunday mornings can be crazy. Keith has meetings starting at 9 and then comes back for us girls with little time to spare before we need to be there for 1 PM church. This Sunday, I managed to get everyone ready with time to spare so we snapped a few pictures. Clara was the most cooperative. I'm lucky to have married a handsome man who gave me such beautiful children.

Clara at 7 Months

 Clara is always up for cuddling after a bath 

Love her blue eyes

 How can I not be obsessed with this face? This girl is so unbelievably sweet. She's very calm and loves to be held. She's great at sitting up and has no interest whatsoever in crawling which makes my life so very easy.

Clara is very social. She will stare a person down with wide eyes and an open mouth until they acknowledge her. Upon acknowledgment, she'll reward you with a big smile. Crowds make her excited and outside is her favorite place to be 

She rarely cries and when she does it's usually because Mackenzie has knocked her over, hit her on the head, squeezed her too tight, ect. She also has 5 teeth with her 6th coming through any day and that tends to disrupt her sleep and make her sad.  

In the morning, she usually wakes up around 5 AM  to nurse. I bring her into bed for it and if we're lucky, we both fall back to sleep. Many times she won't or she'll wake up an hour later and she'll wake me up by stroking my face and cooing. It's the sweetest thing and I treasure those early morning hours the most.

I painted her toenails for the first time this past week. Kenzie took the reins and painted all of her nails by herself. She was pretty proud. Clara loves Kenzie more than anyone. She gets really excited to see her in the mornings and will play with her all day as long as she's playing nice. 

Clara loves to eat! She will eat anything but  food that is green. I'm not sure her physical stats, she seems on the longish side with plenty of squishy chub to squeeze. I do know that she has a sweet pure spirit that we enjoy having in our home. I'm so grateful to be her mom!

Silly Kenz

Easter 2012

 We started Easter off with an egg hunt put on by our apartments on Saturday morning. Keith was at school doing his thing so I took the girls out and we had a fun time. Kenzie was hesitant (crying, panicking) at first but once I showed her the candy in the eggs, she was all for it.

These are just a few of the kids in our ward in the complex. It's so fun to have a lot of playmates for Kenzie and great mom friends for me.

Kenz, Lily and Sawyer.
By the way, you like Kenzie's outfit? She totally dresses herself about 98% of the time

Clara didn't mind hanging out in the grass

 
 Easter morning, The girls were happy to find baskets with a few goodies. The day before, we went to the Stucki's house to dye Easter eggs. I had just decided to cook an Easter lunch for Sunday and invited them over to share it with us. Best idea ever! I made the ham and Sarah made all of the sides. It was so yummy and relaxing but kind of made us sleepy for Church.

Church was wonderful. I think I'm the most grateful for my religion and beliefs on important days like Christmas and Easter. The Holidays are fun to celebrate, but the message they carry always turns hearts to the Savior and what's really important in this life.

A first year wife, Brynn, put together an Easter egg hunt and Mexican confetti egg fight? It was really fun and I want to make confetti eggs next year.

No family photo for us on Easter. I didn't have anything new to wear, Kenzie wouldn't wear her Easterish dress, and Keith changed immediately so I just didn't bother. 

A Little Princess

 To say Mackenzie loves Princess's and dressing up would be an understatement. She has worn her dress up clothes ragged and yet, there is something ethereal about them and I can't let them go. Each tattered piece I cut off of this Cinderella dress only reminds me that someday she won't have the beautiful imagination she does and I want her to revel in it as long as she can.

Florida: The last day and a trip home

I don't have any pictures of our last day at the beach, but this one didn't add to the last post so you get it here. I wasn't in a great mood the last day. It was really windy that day and Clara just wasn't having it anymore. I didn't spend a lot of time at the beach until the afternoon but was glad I joined everyone. Keith and Mackenzie had been playing and she was really brave. I got back in the water and had fun fighting the crazy waves. We all collected seashells and enjoyed having the beach pretty much to ourselves. That night we packed everything up so we could leave at 4 AM the next morning.
Our trip home was memorable. We got caught in a horrible thunderstorm in Alabama. I was driving and pulled over pretty quickly when the car kept hydroplaning and I couldn't see well. The thunder shook our car and the lightening was constant. Keith drove us through that and about an hour after I took over driving again, storm clouds loomed ahead of us. These clouds were so dark, I immediately started feeling panicked. As soon as the rain started pouring, I was gripping the wheel and when it got so bad I could absolutely not see out of the windshield I was almost in tears. We were on the freeway and I was in the far left lane trying to figure out how to pull over when I couldn't see anything around me. Keith calmed me and guided me and we pulled over. I switched spots with Keith and felt better when I saw most of traffic had stopped or was driving really slowly.  After that, the weather wasn't bad. When we were about an hour outside of Kentucky, we got a text alert notifying us of a tornado warning in our county. We called up a friend who told us it was storming pretty good and he'd let us know which way the storm was headed. A tornado did end up touching down in Louisville, but we luckily missed driving through that storm.
Keith humored me and let us stop at the Zappos outlet on the way home. It was a great break and I came home with a couple pairs of shoes.
All in all, it was a wonderful trip and I hope that we get to go back sometime soon. I would recommend Destin to anyone. The beaches are beautiful and clean and the town is family friendly with a lot to do if you run into bad weather (or bad sunburns).

Fudpuckers, Bubba Gumps, and a walk on the beach

Because we were so burned from day 2 at the beach, we tried to stay out of the sun on day 3. We pulled out our little tourist brochure and picked a couple of places to go. Our first stop was Fudpuckers where you could eat (we didn't) and see live alligators for free.

For a ridiculous price, you could take a picture holding this little guy.

Kenzie refused to be in this picture

Our next stop was Bubba Gumps. It was delicious and we liked the Forrest Gump theme

That night when the sun was setting, we drove a little ways down the beach and explored by the resorts.

You know how families go to beautiful places like Hawaii and Florida and come back with beautiful pictures of their tan families all happy and smiling against a scenic background? I want to know how to create that illusion

 

Blake and Kenz running for the playground

 

The men took the kiddos back to the condo and started dinner while Brittany and I walked into the sunset for about an hour until we reached our condo. It was incredibly relaxing and  one of my favorite parts of the trip