October has come to an end

Wow! What a busy month for us. Of course we celebrated Kate's birthday, we had lots of fall festivals to go to, and Halloween. Here are a couple of pictures from this month. The first is of Catch's 3K Class trip to the pumpkin patch. It is always hard to get kids this age to look at the camera. The next three pictures are of our church's Fall Festival. It was so much fun. One of the games they had was pop the balloon game, but Catch didn't like that, so he took his balloon and made up his own game. We just hit it around without letting it hit the ground. Funny thing was as Catch and I were playing, this little girl came up and caught the balloon mid air, put in under her foot on the ground and smashed it right in front of Catch. It was so funny and so sad to me all at the same time. Catch literally just couldn't believe someone would crush his fun like that. The look on his face was priceless. Thankfully, there was one more balloon left for us to finish our game with. The next picture is of Kate and her little friend Millie. They were born 4 days apart from one another. Finally, the last picture is of the children of the ladies in my bible study group. Between all of us, we have 15 children under the age of 4 with 2 more on the way. Crazy, but fun. Catch was a lion this year and Kate was a love bug. What a fun but busy month we have had.

Big Day Today

So today we celebrated Kate's first birthday with the extended family. We have actually been celebrating since Friday(her actual birthday) and it has really been so much fun. Anyways, she had a great day today. She got to see all her family she loves and she got to have her own birthday cake(which btw was so pretty thanks to Mimi taking care of that for us). But the best part of the day today was Kate started walking. She was so proud of herself, and giggling the whole time and I was so proud too, until I realized my life just changed. : ) Well, here are some pictures of today, friday her real birthday, a video of her blowing out her candle and a video of her walking.

Happy Birthday Baby Kate! We Love you!

Well, I don't even know where to begin. First, I guess, is Happy Birthday baby Kate! Whew, what a year it has been. I know you all know Kate's entrance into the world was a little different than we had hoped, but what a treasure this past year has been. We are so glad to have baby Kate here with us celebrating her first birthday. She has been such the trooper over the past year enduring countless tests to see what was causing her breathing issues and putting up with that monitor she wore for the first 10 months of her life. Well, we are happy to say, nothing seems to be wrong and she is now 2 months free of that monitor and doing so great. Kate has been such a blessing to us over this past year. She has taken us on a journey of understanding and knowing how to fully put our trust and hope in Christ and Christ alone. How He is faithful in giving us the grace and peace and rest we need when we seek Him and only Him. I will be forever thankful for this past year and the emotional ups and downs of it solely because I now have a firmer foundation in Christ, confidence that He is in control, and what a peace that brings.
Well, back to Kate, she is the greatest little thing that could have been added to this family. I am not sure I can even describe her, but I am going to try. The movie line that always comes to mind when I want to describe Kate is the line from the movie Shrek: “Ogres are like onions! Lot’s of layers.” Not comparing her to orgres here, but onions. She is much cuter than an orgre! Like an onion though, my sweet girl is full of layers. She is so sweet, mild, not too talkactive but when she gets her mind set that she wants something, those things go out the window and she is full force determined to go for it, nothing stopping her. She will not take no for an answer, and when she wants to be heard, believe me, you will hear her! : ) She is mysterious in such a great way...I think. She doesn't let you in upon first meeting(or maybe 100th meeting for that matter), but when she does, oh what a blessing she is. She really makes you work hard to even get a smile out of her(which to me is so hilarious because she really loves to smile and giggle.) She loves Catch and thinks he hung the moon, but she still gives him a hard time and tries to purposely drive him crazy by getting into his beloved red chair. Sometimes she does it while he is in it and just trys to squash herself right in beside him, but sometimes she waits so patiently till he gets out of it and then she makes a dart for it and giggles the whole way there and the whole time we are trying to tell her that is Catch's chair. The giggle there is the best ever, such a loving "I am just trying to get your attention because I love your attention." type giggle.

Kate is competitive already. She and Catch have crawling races and when he starts to win, she pulls back up and sits on her legs and waits for him to come back to her and right when he gets to her, but is stilling facing the wrong direction, she throws herself back down into crawling position and takes off, trying to win. If you know baby Kate, you know she does not like kisses(as I have been told, her mama was just the same way as a baby), but she can be so cuddly and loving with her hugs and touches. The other thing I find so great about baby Kate is...she loves loves to dance. It is the funniest thing ever, but if she hears music with a good beat, she can't control herself, she just breaks out in a dance. She gets a little embarrassed by it sometimes(like if we are in the store or something), but she just can't control herself. She loves music and it makes her move! : ) We frequently have dance parties in the office.

Other things...Kate loves animals. Dogs mainly. She has loved dagz from the moment she could move anywhere near him. Um, she is the best eater. The joy she gets from food is contagious to me. She loves all kinds of food(really good for you food, which is the best! It makes her mama so happy) She loves for you to get her bottle ready in front of her, she just squeals with excitement. I call it the bottle dance! : ) She has such a sweet sense of humor that I look forward to enjoying even more as she grows. So, as you can tell, I have soo soo soo enjoyed this past year getting to know this incredible little person that I actually get to call my daughter. She is just amazing to me. I am so blessed to have her and Catch. They have really been great joys in our lives and I do look forward to getting to know them both more and more each day. So with that....Happy Birthday again sweet girl. Mama loves you sooo much! Below is a video of her first year of life. Hope you enjoy seeing her grow!

The Beginning of Fall Fun

I love fall here in Macon. The weather starts getting perfect and cool(although of course there are always some hot days in there too) and fall fun begins. There are fall festivals to go to, the fair in Perry, Halloween, football games and now Kate's birthday to look forward to. This past weekend, we went to our first fall festival at Forest Hills United Methodist Church. Each year they have a fun pumpkin patch to go to and this year was our first time at their festival. Catch and Kate had a great time. Kate just watched in the stroller as Catch played the fun games they had there. He was pretty good at the game where you throw small toy pumpkins into halloween buckets(probably from the hours of basketball we play in the driveway!). I tried to get him to get wounds painted on himself, but I guess he is a little too young for that. : ) Anyways, here are a few pictures of the two of them in the pumpkin patch and Catch playing the games.