A.T.L and beyond........

it has taken me 8 years to get all the pictures on here. there are a lot of pictures as well. there was just so many things to take pictures of, so this will be the post for the week. as i mentioned earlier we went to ATL, the homeland, for my grandma's 93rd birthday. what a celebration. we had a wonderful time there. Grandma got to hold and sing to BellaRose a lot. i am so blessed to be able to see my daughter with my grandma. so special.

Angela can't get enough kisses!

here are 6 of grandma's great grandchildren. 2 of them were in england and could not make it to the party. my sister with her 2 kids and my cousin with his 3 kids.

these are my cousins little girls Lindsey and Cassidy. they put on a little dance for us. i was so proud of them for coming up with the dance and wanting to show all of us.

so angela and the family got a new puppy. he is really cute, only 3 1/2 pounds. the kids adore him. we need help coming up with a name. so if you have any thoughts please let us know. i like Moose, and Bruno was a thought, but that might have been vetoed.

this is REBECCA she just had her baby, emerson, on 07.07.07. it was so much fun to catch up with her and meet her husband Sebastian. Emerson and BellaRose got to play under the star together. Emerson is so cute and little! Thanks for the good time Bec. We also got to see my other friend Sumner and her new husband Wes. I forgot to get a picture and i am kicking myself about that. Sumner just got married in Greece, in June. How exotic!

the gigantic skatepark tour made its way to georgia as promised. we first hit up Athens, home to the mighty DAWGS. it was scorching hot so worth did not skate as long as he would have liked and he took a hit on the concrete that sort of knocked his brain a little bit so he called it a day on the ole skatepark and we hit up the cute town of Athens. then worth found his Mecca, the new BrookRun skatepark in Dunwoody, not far from my dad's house. he said it is the best skatepark he has ever been too. i have to say that it was beautiful and i don't know much about skateparks.

this was worth's skating buddy......he was 3! so cute.

this is athens' skatepark below. BellaRose may just one day be a skater girl you never know. she sure likes watching her daddy skate!

sweet BellaRose smiles a lot now. it is so wonderful to have a little baby smile at you. her whole face lights up.

here is our harvest of pumkins and tomatoes. the pumpkins did not make it to October, but we will proudly display them in August for all the world to see! we have pumpkins and we are proud. i found a website on pumkin growing and it said that we can keep them until spring if we take care of them. check out the basket, it is filled with cherry tomatoes. if you want any PLEASE come by. i am not sure what we will do with all of them.

Worth's GIGANTIC skatepark tour

so begins Worth's gigantic skatepark tour. he has been preparing for this tour for sometime now. as you see here he is practicing at his home skatepark, Food Lion Skatepark, in Asheville. My dad texted us with some very exciting information about a new 2.1 million dollar skatepark in ATL, Brook Run Skatepark. It is only minutes from my dad's house. We are heading there for Grandma's 93rd birthday and we will be making stops along the way for Worth to skate. He is like kid in a candy store, he can hardly sleep at night. The anticipation for what this weekend holds is overwhelming. He wants to hit 4 different parks in 4 days, unheard of you say, not for Worth Grant and his GIGANTIC Skatepark Tour. Pretty soon you will be saying "Tony Hawk who?". We will be posting the destruction when we get back. You better go skate them before Worth gets there because there is going to be nothing left once he is gone.

and on to sweeter things, BellaRose is 10 weeks old today. my how it has flown. she is staying awake longer and smiling bigger. she is such a joy to our life. we went on a hike the other day and she did wonderfully, maybe because she slept most of the way, but still enjoyable for us.

so she may look like Yoda a little bit? don't tell her we said that when she is older and can develop a complex though!

Tomatoes and Pumpkins

Just wanted to share with you our garden as of late. We have lots and lots of very good cherry tomatoes. We also have a ton of green tomatoes that have not turned red quite yet. Worth makes some mean fried green tomatoes, so it looks like that is what we will be eating lots of around here.

We also have 8 pumpkins!! How excited are we about this. We are SO excited. They are all really different too. We are going to have a whole garden of pumpkins next year. They grow so much everyday.

Here is just a real sweet picture of Worth's brother Ben when BellaRose was first born, oh yeah he is single too ; ).

shots

we went to the doctor yesterday for our 2 month check-up. BellaRose is pretty much over her cold! she did get her shots and she did fabulous. she had 3 shots and had to drink something. when she got the shots she turned bright red, held her breath and let out one big scream. after that she was over it. what a champ. she is in the 70th percentile on height and weight. she weighs 11lbs 5 1/2 ozs. her height is 23 inches, and her head is 15 1/2 inches. we did have a great milestone yesterday in that she took her first full nap in her crip. she cried, and i let her, and after about 10 minutes she crashed! she sleeps in her crip at night and as been pretty much since the beginning, but i am such a sap during the day. i just love holding her so much. i never thought i could love a baby this much.

you want to know what BellaRose loves, her baby einstein play gym. i put her there one day and was amazed at how much she loves it. she just flaps her arms and legs, and coos and smiles. who knew a star that lights up and makes silly noises would be so entertaining. i guess the people at baby einstein!

and this was how i was able to take a shower the other day. the door she is in front of is my bathroom. i put her in the swing and she was awake, and when i got out she was asleep. i am sure it is unorthodox to let her sleep in the swing and all the books will get mad at me, but they aren't home with me trying to bathe now are they? and allow me to get on my soapbox for one moment....books. i love them, we all know i do, but i had to put the baby books down. they completely stressed me out and i believe made the 1st couple of weeks even harder then they needed to be! new moms revolt. i declare a "put the books down" protest. who is with me i yell!!!!!!!!!!!!

back from the beach

We are back from out 1st beach trip with a newborn! It was a wonderful time and we are so thankful that we got to go on this trip. Worth's parents and sister we so helpful to us. They gave Worth and me many breaks by wanting to hold sweet BellaRose for us. She was such a good baby. She continues to sleep through the night. What a blessing that is. I feel like I can handle so much more now that I have sleep. She did get her first cold. I was so scared. We were able to take her to a pediatrician while we there and she said everything was okay with her just a little bit of congestion. I, on the other hand, was a complete mess. The doctor told me she was okay and I just cried. I felt so guilty that she had a cold. It is the saddest noise ever hearing a baby with a cold! She also did wonderfully on the car ride there and back. She would pretty much wake up right when we got to our destination. Thank goodness!!!

As you can see by the car we are not light packers. I feel like we are moving everytime we go on vacation. It takes days to unpack. Of course we take all this stuff and maybe use a third of it. It was so much fun to get back on my beach cruiser, although maybe not so comfortable :).

This is my Angel's Trumpet that was in full bloom when we got back from the beach. The bloom is huge and it is on this little plant. I think that this might be the only bloom that i get this year, but pretty impressive. I am glad I got this picture of it, because this morning I was messing with it and it fell off!!!

what not and what have you

so BellaRose went out on her first date with Will, annie and dan's little boy, to the pool. as you can tell they were both thrilled. don't worry Poppy we were there to supervise to make sure there was no hanky panky.

this is what sweet BellaRose did while we were at the pool. she loves the mama!! this is her favorite place to sleep, on my chest, but it is just so darn sweet when she does that. we did have a good afternoon there with good freinds.

we leave for the beach on saturday. i am really looking forward to it, but i know it will be a whole new experience with a baby. i will post pictures when we get back. can't wait to talk to you then. thanks for loving us and keeping up with us on the blog!

boys will be boys

on the 4th of july we had big kids (lets say in their 30's or close to it) and little kids (lets say weeks old to 6yrs). guess who was trying to blow up the army men with bottle rockets, you guessed it, the big kids. guess who's army men they were? let me just say that they were NOT the little kids. worth swears that they are our nephews. i am not sure i believe him. needless to say the army man did not blow up, but he did get pretty close to going to space. in the last picture (hopefully the last picture, i am still not a good arranger of pictures on this blog) of the army men all you see is smoke and no army man, thats right houston we have lift off!

the true little kids had a blast with rain dog and dirt. as you can see they wanted rainy to be a chocolate lab like their lab is. rainy does not care what color she is as long as she gets that ball thrown for her. the Woody boys helped her out!

and of course we have to post pictures of sweet BellaRose. worth was serenading her this morning as he does most mornings when i go have "quiet time". what a sweet baby girl and a good daddy!

the holy grail (6 weeks)

we have almost reached the six week mark, the holy grail. tomorrow she will be 6 weeks old. our sweet baby girl. we have learned so much from her. becky, i think i know why people say weeks instead of months, and months instead of years. they want to hold on, to noy let go. i could say sweet BellaRose was 1 month old but then that would make her sound so much older then 6 weeks, get it :). so far she has slept through the night almost 7 nights in a row. we are so thankful for that. she is finding her hands and likes to suck on them. she still whines, but not like she did, or maybe we are used to it now. she loves to sleep, but will fight it. we love this baby so much. i know we tell you that alot, but it is true. she went to her 1st wedding reception this weekend. she did so well, slept through most of it, thank goodness. i must apologize if there are a lot of errors in this entry, iam writing with one hand, as i am holding a sleeping baby!

in other news, our dear friend katie has opened her own online store at ETSY. she is so talented and can make anything. not sure if you remember that beautiful brown dress she made BellaRose several months ago. we can't wait for BellaRose to wear it. you to can have your own (eventually). please go to her shop and buy, buy,buy!!! the address is http://www.texasnorth.etsy.com/. go there! now!