Wednesday, January 26, 2011

A Day In Our Life

Rob has taken a few random pictures over the past few weeks. Here's a little glimpse into our life.

Grace singing loudly into her microphone, which makes her singing even louder. Favorites these days are the Wise Man/Foolish Man song with princess's names inserted for wise man (Ariel built her house upon the rock...), Jingle Bells, B-I-N-G-O, I Am A Child of God, Where is Thumbkin? and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Laptop and sleeping baby.

Eating a DumDum after making a poopy on the potty. We're working on it!

Gracie and DeeDee dancing along with Princess Sing-Along Songs.

Ruby sleeping peacefully in her bouncer despite her noisy family.

What a wonderful life! We are so blessed.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Belle Meade

Tennessee got a new governor last weekend and the whole town celebrated by offering discounts to fun Nashville attractions. We decided to visit Belle Meade Plantation which we've driven by many times and always wanted to visit. Our friends the Walkenhorsts even joined us for some fun!

Dusty and Chelsea looking dapper in turn of the century attire.

Whoops. Identity crisis...Rob?

That's better!

Belle Meade Plantation was a very famous thoroughbred farm. In fact most of the most famous racehorses today trace their lineage to here including Sea Biscuit, Secreteriat, and lots others I can't think of now.

Grace and a little jockey friend. She actually wasn't too keen on the idea of standing next to him if you can't tell...

The mansion. Very cool old house, much like the Hermitage. It's really neat to see how (rich) people lived in days of yore.

Checking out the rocking chairs. Someday we'll have a big porch and rocking chairs on it :) But we won't use them on frigid days like this!

Teach them how to work...

...then put them to work!


This was a really cool life-size play house on the grounds. Someday, Grace, when I have my porch you can have a playhouse :) (Here's to wishing!)

Sunday, January 23, 2011

I {heart} My Girls

Today my dreams of having little girls came true. We dressed them up matchy-matchy for church and they looked so cute if I do say so myself! :)

I am sure that I have two of the sweetest girls a mom could ask for!

Utah Trip Part V: Ruby's Blessing and Other Fun Events

Sunday night (Dec. 26) we had a double baby blessing for Ruby and her cousin Jack. Our immediate families gathered at Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa Gwilliam's house to bless the babies. (There would have been waaaay too many people for Grandma and Grandpa's house had we been able to invite everyone from the 3 families involved!). Rob gave Ruby a very sweet blessing. The thing that stood out to me (besides the fact that he blessed her to have a good relationship with her siblingS) was that she would live up to her name and shine brightly like a ruby in this increasingly dark world. It was a beautiful blessing and we sure did feel the Spirit there!

Ruby and Jack

Sweet Ruby

Bunkers

Again, I didn't do such a hot job of the picture taking but despite the lack of photographic evidence, we had a great last couple of days in Utah before flying home on Wednesday. Monday night we attended the Annual Easton Family White Elephant Party. Let me just say that Rob's family is a hoot. We always have so much fun with them!

Tuesday was Mikey's Eagle Scout Court of Honor. Mike is such an amazing young man. I am seriously impressed with all he's able to handle. He's student body president, Madrigals president, plays in the school band, works, plus does great at school and he's cute to boot! Plus he's an Eagle Scout - what an accomplishment!

Wednesday was our exciting packing day for our flight home. Now, remember how we were 13 lbs too heavy on the flight out and we weren't carrying any Christmas presents with us? Right. Uh oh. So we bought those space saver bags that you suck the air out of with a vacuum and we packed our carry-ons so tightly that they probably weighed just as much as our main suitcase! I'm happy to report that we were able to get home with only our carry-ons and the one suitcase we flew out on. It really was a Christmas miracle! The flight home went really smoothly. Both girls were very well behaved and kept everything in their diapers that they should! :) We even had the back two rows to ourselves so we could spread out and have a sound barrier between us and the rest of the passengers. We were exhausted but sad to leave our families. We were blessed to be able to go to Utah and had such a great time!

Friday, January 14, 2011

Utah Trip Part IV: Christmas

We had a delightful, not white at all Christmas in Utah. It was so fun to be able to be with both of our families Christmas Day - that's a first! Usually we're either in California or Utah and Skyping the family we're not able to be with, so this year was a special treat!

Christmas Morning
Grace helped Ruby open all her presents. Here she is showing Ruby the awesome play keys she got from Santa!

Okay, okay, so maybe mom wanted this ZhuZhu pet more than Grace did....But it's really fun!

Ruby snuggled with G.G. during the great opening of the presents.

Rob felt festive :)

Grace with her presents.

Christmas Evening all of Rob's siblings got together for the sibling gift exchange.

Grandma'Nette bought the kiddos matching Christmas outfits. Here we all are getting everyone changed and ready to go.

All the cousins.
Henry (22 mo.), Chloe (7 days), Jack (11 weeks), Ruby (4 weeks), Grace (29 mo)

Cute cuddly girls.

Everyone!

Merry Christmas!

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Utah Trip Part III: McChesney Fun

While they were in Utah, my parents stayed with my mom's brother Gordie and his family, the McChesneys. We got to spend a couple evenings with them playing and having fun. We were too busy playing Cranium and Catch Phrase (and whooping the boys in said games) to take many pictures.

Here are the kids chomping at the bit to open their special Christmas Eve gifts.

Siler, Easton, Grace and Jade

Cute girls!

Grace modeling her Christmas jammies.

My sweet girls in their matching jammies.

I love this picture. I wish there was a picture of whoever it is behind the camera that's being so entertaining...

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Utah Trip Part II: Bunker Family Dinner

Wednesday night we headed down to Provo to my brother Brian's for family dinner with my side. Bri is an amazing cook and made us a roast dinner. Delish! Some girl is going to be very lucky someday!

My parents came up to Utah for the holidays so we could spend time with both of our families (thanks again guys!). Kira, Stew, Kylee and Tyson and Colleen, Andrew and Elizabeth all were there at the dinner. It was so fun to get together with (and meet!) the babies! (Again, not very good at photo-documentation this trip...sorry!)

Ruby enjoyed meeting her cousins for the first time and vice versa.

Rob, Tyson and Stew chilling on the man couch.

Uncle Bri playing with Kylee and Grace. They sure do love him!

Moms and babies,
Kira and Tyson, Colleen and Elizabeth and me and Ruby.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Utah Trip Part I: Easton Family Christmas Party

Early, early (we're talking 5:30 am) on Monday the 20th found us on our way to the Nashville airport to catch our 7 am flight to SLC with one big bag to be checked and 5 carry-ons...the cheapest, but not the easiest, way to pack for a family of four for 10 days. We were hopeful that all our stuff would get us to Utah and home plus all of the kids' Christmas presents (mind you we had sent all of the gifts back earlier with Dave when he flew out earlier that month!). We only had to find a new home in our already-stuffed-to-the-brims carry-ons for 14 extra pounds. Oops. After that initial excitement, we boarded our plane in hopes that the girls would sleep and we'd have a peaceful flight. (Looking back we were doing a LOT of wishful thinking...) In the first hour of the flight Ruby blew out of her diaper, so Rob went to change all her clothes in the lavatory. Upon his return to our set of seats, Grace blew out of her diaper, so Rob went to change her. Upon his return this second time, Grace spilled a cup of Coke all over herself and pretty much everything else. Rob took one more trip to the lavatory to do some cleaning. Poor guy! (In my defense I was stuck at the window seat and it would have been much more work to get me out to do one of those trips.) We weren't excited for the next two hours, but apparently we'd gotten all the excitement out of our systems and had a fairly peaceful ride, except for asking Grace not to kick or touch the seat in front of her in any way since we weren't getting very good vibes from that direction. Hey, we tried. Unfortunately (for all of us) no one slept, so upon our arrival in Utah, we were all exhausted.
That night was the Easton Family Christmas Party with Rob's mom's family. We were pretty tired from our trip, so I didn't take many pictures. Sorry. But you can take my word for it that it was really fun and delicious. We had the traditional breakfast feast and played Don't Forget the Lyrics courtesy of Kim and Cary and family.

More highlights included:
Grace and Henry finding their long-lost cousin love for each other. Grace wanted to hold hands all night. He didn't so much.

Aunt Leslie showering the only two girls (plus Ruby, but she's a little small still) with attention. Those poor girls have so many boys to fight for attention. Lucy and Grace loved having cousin time too!

Leslie getting mauled by the kids. (What a good sport!)

Grace being very cute in a Santa hat and enjoying so much attention from cousins who are so much cooler and more fun than her mom and dad.

And Annette almost serenading the room with R-E-S-P-E-C-T, from the tabletop. Rob picked her up and put her there, but at the last moment she chickened out :)

Stay tuned for more Utah fun! I'm trying to get caught up...slowly but surely....

Monday, January 10, 2011

Happy New Year

This year I was lucky to get a New Year's card out, let alone a Christmas card. So we kept in the tradition of the interactive card for y'all to learn about what we've been up to this year.


Click on letter to enlarge so you can actually read it if you're interested.


Answers:

ACROSS 2. MBA; 5. Blogging; 7. Avenues; 12. General Electric; 15. Yellowstone; 17. Target; 19. Race for the Cure DOWN 1. Nashville; 3. flood; 4. Vanderbilt; 6. November; 8. princess; 9. Utah; 10. sewing; 11. nine; 13. two hundred; 14. four; 16. ten; 18. two

Monday, January 3, 2011

Christmas Cookies

We had our first cookie-baking-and-decorating adventure before we left for Utah. We had tons of fun, but it was oh-so-messy!


I rolled and cut out the dough.


Grace and Daddy decorated the cookies.


And Daddy baked them. While Ruby supervised from her swing. Very fun, but I may have romanticized how fun and easy it would be to decorate cookies with a toddler...not something I'll be trying solo with Grace any time soon!

Christmas Part I

While my parents were here to help for Ruby's birth, they got Grace her Christmas present. Right before we left for Utah, we Skyped them while she opened it.
What could that gigantic present be?


Her very own Cozy Coupe!!!


Oh happy day! Thanks Grandpa and Grandma!


That night, while Mommy and Daddy watched the Biggest Loser finale, Grace sat in her car with the portable DVD player and watched Sesame Street.

And ever since, she does pretty much everything in it like watch tv, eat snacks, haul toys, give stuffed animals and dolls rides, etc. What a great gift!