6 years!

A funny thing happens when you have kids, the pictures become less about you as a couple and much more about the babies.  That is ok but when you are searching in your photo files for a pictures to show the people it becomes a little hard.  This was taken at Leah's wedding in Hilton Head in April.  Such a fun time and awesome getaway for us.  

We jusy went on another awesome getaway to Beech Mountain where Worth's sister has a 2nd home.  She graciously let us stay there for the weekend and took BellaRose for a night as did T-Love and Big Poppa.  THANK YOU!

Worth and I had a wonderfully, much needed, relaxing time.  Bless his heart, he even told me I looked the same as our wedding day!  What a good man.  

I love you deeply Worth.  You have been my "other" for almost 10 years and I could not have asked for anyone better to walk beside on this journey.  You are an awesome Dad and an AWESOME husband.  THANK YOU!!

5th annual Pumpkin Carving Contest

Okay so here are a whole lot of pictures from the Pumpkin Carving Contest at Matt and Margaret's house.  As I mentioned it was SO much fun.  Funny thing is when they started this tradition we were all childless and now it is overrun by our kids, and so much fun!  I love seeing the costumes that everyone picks for their kids.  We had a fireman, a Steeler, a Daisy, a Cupcake, Scary Skateboarder, a UNC cheerleader, Yoda,  a Pirate, and a Gangster.  Quite a variety!

THANK YOU FOR A WONDERFUL PARTY!

So the Swann Family was not going to participate in the carving contest.  One set of Swanns did not even bring a pumpkin (Becky and Jeremiah, not to name any names), the other set of Swanns might have been called some names on my part to get them to play.  My heckling worked though and they carved a pumpkin, even though Niki gave Nick something that amounted to a sharpened paper clip to carve their pumpkin.   

THE WINNING PUMPKIN!!!!  

FINALLY!

23 weeks

Well here we are back to measuring life in weeks and months.  I was so happy when BellaRose turned 2 and I did not have to figure out how many months she was.  Now I measure life in weeks and how round my belly is getting.  There are times I forget about the belly because so many other things have my attention particularly a certain cute 2 year old.  I feel like I am in that awkward pregnant girl stage where it is tough for me to see my rounding figure.  I know I need to push that vanity aside because what is happening inside this belly really is amazing and a little weird (come on you know it's true).  

The other night we were at dinner and there was a tiny new little baby there, BellaRose saw it and patted my belly.  That was a neat moment.  She knows about baby sister, and where she is living right now, but I never realized she connected the two.   She likes to feel baby sister move too.  We have still not named #2 yet.  We have a name in mind but we aren't ready to commit quite yet.  BellaRose likes it, and when she is says it is real sweet.  We will tell you once we know for sure.

The pictures below crack me up.  This is sweet girl in the morning.  She has taken to calling herself Rosey, which I LOVE.  I would not want her calling herself Bella, I don't like that by itself, but Rosey, so sweet!  She wanted me to take a belly picture of her this morning.  That is why her PJ's are unzipped.  She also put this outfit together and was standing there leaning on the table.  There are so many things to point out here, like the one ear out of the hat, and her shoes on the wrong feet.  This kid has a load of personality that is for sure.

In final Grant news, we had out 5th annual pumpkin carving contest at Matt and Margaret's house.  For the 1st time our pumpkin was crowned the winner!  We got to bring home the awesome turkey statue and a very generous visa gift card!  We are pretty excited.  Worth of course is taking all the credit (read the visa gift card) because he did all the work, but I am doing a lot of work too (see above picture)!  Those pictures will be coming next post.  Such a great party, one of my favorite of the year!

On Saturday I took pictures of Hannah and Kelvin's wedding.  Those will be coming soon, but you can go to my photo blog and check out Hannah's bridal pictures.  Sorry about the little business plug but I have to do it where I can!

On Sunday we loaded up the family truckster (honda) and headed down to Greenville for some birthday celebrations.  Christian, our nephew, shares a birthday with me.  I say with me b/c I am older and have had it longer!  He turned to double digits and bought himself an iPod touch, a kid after my own heart.  Sadly we don't have pictures of them (Cameron too) because they had basketball practice during part of the celebration.  Worth did get a couple pictures of Taylor and Rocco being rad on the ramp they bought with their own money!  

Angela took these of the sweet BellaRose coloring and then of the beloved birthday song, with my beloved ice cream cake (thank you mom) as BellaRose keeps taking my beloved icing!  She might have learned it from me though.

Loving the fall!

Worth raked up a leaf pile for BellaRose and she has been LOVING it!!!  We can't walk by without her wanting to jump in it.  Isn't that what fall is all about?  Crunchy leaves, and playing in leaf piles!

I recently celebrated a birthday as many of you have wished me to have a happy one.  Thank you so much!  It was a beautiful fall day.  I spent the day with my mom and the evening the my wonderful husband.  I got loaded down with spa gift certificates that I can hardly wait to use.  I want to spend hours and hours there getting myself pampered!  Life has been SO good and it just keeps getting better.  Thank you all for being in my life and the love and joy you bless me with on a daily basis!

Baby Girl #1

I have been meaning to share this picture with you for some time.  Well now, here you go.  Me and my sweetie baby this summer in Hilton Head.  Don't you just want to eat up BellaRose.  I was newly preggars and not feeling so hot, trying to get love from sweet girl.  

I wanted to thank you all for your excitement on baby girl #2.  I know you would have been excited either way for me, but it just means a lot.  Can you believe we will have 2 of these beauties?!  Oh poor Worth!  I wonder if #2 will have brown hair and blue eyes?  I think that her ultrasound picture looks like BellaRose.  We will see I guess.  We have 2 names that we are throwing around, still not sure.  When we have BellaRose say them they sound so cute.  Maybe I will tell you soon.  I am not sure I am ready to hear what everyone thinks just yet.  I have to be confident in them first so that I can defend them!  You know they are not going to be traditional with a Worth and Sunday deciding.  

The word is..

As most of you know right now, we are having another baby girl!  BellaRose will have a sister.  I don't think that this is bad to say, but both Worth and I had hoped for a boy, but I was thinking the whole time it was probably going to be a girl.  I was right.  But I have to tell you that I LOVE MY SISTERS!!!  I love them with my whole heart.  It took us awhile to get as close as we are b/c they are so much older then me (but you can't tell), but now that we are older we are so close.  There is nothing like the bond that sisters share and so with that I am thrilled that BellaRose will have a sister!  I pray that they will be best of friends and watch out for each other and survive me going through menopause together (this last statement reflects nothing on current mothers of such age)!  

The MOST important thing though is that SHE is healthy!  The heart looks great, the spine looks great, the kidney looks great, no cleft palette.  Health was our biggest prayer and it has been answered!  We have no names yet.  I have some thoughts.  One in particular I am trying to sell Worth on.  We will see.  At least I don't have to change the nursery......much!

Here are some cute pictures of sweet girl.  It seems like we got a lot of good ultra sound pictures of her today.  

Thank you for all your love and support!  Your excitement over this little girl has made us so excited.  We have loved talking to you!

Who is #2?

The big question is who is #2?!  We will hopefully be finding out on Thursday if everyone involved (#2) will corporate!  Who do you think it is?

This is 19 1/2 weeks right here people.  I am starting to feel pretty pregnant too.  I can tell I have been on my feet all day by the end of the day.  This pregnancy is moving really fast though, much faster than with BellaRose.  

I am totally embarrassed to show you this picture, but I must do it, this will be BellaRose's big girl.  Currently a guest room and usually a little more organized than this, but Worth and I have started going through it, cleaning out closets and under the bed.  I had to show you the before, because the after will hopefully be spectacular.  Worth won't be making the bed any longer especially after his back injury.  Which by the way was 2 herniated discs but he is doing so much better and is walking around and not crooked.  Praise the Lord! 

Goodness!  A whole lot and nothing at all has been going on here on the home front.  First this picture to the left, let's talk about it!  This is how my child went to school today.  She LOVES those glasses, she picked them out herself.  I am not sure where she gets the sunglass fetish from (um, yeah right).  Worth was asking her to give the thumbs up sign, she gave the number 1 sign instead, whatever. 

Becky and I went to Hickory Nut Gap Farms yesterday.  We both were in need of getting out of the house, and this gorgeous fall weather had us thinking about pumpkins.  Where else to go but a pumpkin patch.  I bet you guys did not know that Ellen is such a little farmer, just like her mother :).  I love this farm, they have the best organic meats and they are SO kid friendly.  They will be open 7 days a week in Sept. and Oct. with loads of things to do.  We said we are going every Monday, we'll see if that happens!

This was our attempt to get the girl's to stick their heads through the board.  It did not work out so well!  Look at this little baby calf.  It was all I could do not to climb the fence and give this cow some cuddles.  Would that have been bad Katie?  Momma was no where around but Becky thought it would be funny if I tried, I wonder why?

Ellen knew just what to do with the goats, BellaRose was much more interested in taking pictures.  You would think that this child would be all about the animals, but not so much.

The girls with their pumpkins that the mommas had to haul.  So worth it!

So all this leads me to why we needed to have a break.  Poor Worth has a herniated disc we have come to find out today.  He had an MRI on Monday and that was the determination.  If you know Worth then you know a solid week of him being on his back in horrible pain is just terrible for him.  It would be terrible for anyone, but this man hates to lay around.  It is hard on him b/c he knows I am worrying about him and having to take care for BellaRose.  Thank goodness we have some awesome friends and family who have been a wonderful support system for us!  BellaRose has been so sweet with Big Daddy too.  She will lay with him for about 10 minutes max.  She is like her daddy, no laying around for her either.  So your thoughts and prayers for Worth are always much appreciated!  Last week we were heading to a dinner at The Cabin to celebrate Worth's dad's birthday.  This is what the clouds looked like and it reminded me of hope, which we need.  Thankfully I had a wedding photography job on Sunday.  It was hard work, but I am looking forward to seeing the results.  You can always check out my blog, my website, or become a fan on facebook.  All good choices (sorry for the shameless plug:))

On #2 front, I have been feeling the little one move a lot lately.  Worth actually felt #2 too.  He did not feel BellaRose move until 22 weeks or something.  I know that was exciting for him.  As much as we try it is hard not to have this pregnancy over shadowed by life and BellaRose.  It is sort of nice because you just don't have time to dwell on every little thing.  Time is flying by and we need to kick it into high gear for sure.  After we find out what we are having it is on!

Working Hard

Here is the new paint color!  Ta..da!  It is called Tucson Winds, but I would much rather call it Tuscan winds because, come on, who really wants to live in Tucson.  It is from the Pottery Barn catalog, Benjamin Moore paint.  I went through a Hodge Podge of colors before deciding on this and I am very pleased.  Now I want some sort of pink pillows for my couch, I think it will look awesome!  Thank you again to my in-laws for painting for us while we were away!  

My friend Blair (whose blog is Hysterical BTW) inspired me to make Cinnamon rolls.  She got the recipe from The Pioneer Woman.  I have been wanting to make Cinnamon Rolls ever since Worth got back from Alaska some 4 years ago.  He came home with a very difficult recipe and I never attempted it, well my pregnancy induced sweet tooth kicked my bottom into cinnamon roll making over drive!  BellaRose, ever the helper, jumped right into help.  Her sweet disabled Dad (who has been laid up with a bulging disc? all week) made her some dough, while Momma rolled out the real dough.  Cooking for BellaRose is more like a full contact sport, flour is everywhere, but she sure does love to bake and help cook!  If you attempt to make this recipe be forewarned, it makes a ton!  I have three trays, with 1/2 the dough still in the fridge to make!  I might be in sugar overload.