In Honor of the Iron Bowl...

I shot this video in October and have been hanging onto it until now...

I hope everyone had a fantastic day of giving thanks! Enjoy your families- we sure are enjoying ours!

AND WAR EAGLE!!!!!!!

Mom's 60th

Happy 60th birthday to my sweet Mom today! Everyone came in town last weekend, ostensibly for Katie's 7th birthday, for which Mom made these cute turkeys...

We also got in some great cousin time (there are three moms in this photo because the previous ones included two crying children)...

But actually, Jodi, Susan and I have been scheming since the summer about a surprise party for Mom and a scrapbook of letters and photos from friends and family. We did a dessert buffet after the kids' bedtime and around 30 guests assembled while an oblivious Mom read bedtime stories upstairs!

Pre-party pic of two of the planners...

It all turned out perfectly and Mom was completely surprised! The only glitch was my camera going on the fritz and missing several shots. I do have this one of Mom with three of her dear friends...

And this one of them pretending to push and get in trouble like our kids do when we try to take pictures. But of course my camera battery died before we took the real picture.

Thank you to all of you who help make Mom's evening so sweet! We all sure love you, Mom!

Keeping Priorities

My dear friend Holly posted this link. While my head spins with all the things I would love to and plan to give my girls, Jake, my nieces and nephews, our parents, etc., THIS is the best, most exciting thing I've read about giving this Christmas.

The idea is asking what we give Christ for Christmas.

Listed as you read this site are several "catalogs" where you can choose anything from care for a child with HIV in Mali for $25, therapy for a disabled child in Cambodia for $47, a month of school lunches for a child in Sudan for $22, $7 for medical care in Africa. You can spend as little as $5 to purchase a Bible to be given in China or India or as much as $40, 300 to build a medical clinic in Indonesia, if you have the funds and felt so led...

Happy shopping.

Smocked Sale...

Last Black Friday, this sale clothed my children for the spring and summer. 50% off clearance items makes for quite a deal! Get excited!

Two Things I am loving...

First of all, thanks for the kitchen feedback. Keep it coming, if you have an opinion, because I am still undecided. Who knew little kitchens were so hard to choose?

Runs are getting colder these days, so with that in mind, these are two things I am loving at 5 a.m. every day:

1. My new birthday running gloves from Greg and Susan. They are from Athleta, one of my current favorite "window shopping" brands. They keep my hands toasty, have little reflective designs on the tops of my hands so cars don't back into me, and they beat the heck out of the pink fleece Old Navy gloves I rocked last winter.

2. My new favorite base layer, courtesy of Target. I can't find the exact shirt to link for you, but it's made by Champion, dri-fit material, really lightweight, keeps me warm, and all of $14.99. I returned the $37.99 top I got from REI.

Kitchen Input

The girls are getting a kitchen for Christmas, and we have narrowed it down to two. The Pottery Barn Kids one is my absolute ideal, aesthetically, but all the reviews say it scratches easily, and I just love the Kidkraft products anyways. It also seems to be more bang for buck.

So it dawned on me that some of you readers may have one of the ones we are deciding between and can help us out.

This first one is the Red Retro kitchen (do you see a theme here?) I think it is so cute- I obviously am drawn to the red retro look, and this one seems to have everything we need.

The second is the Let's Cook kitchen. It is not nearly as cute, but it is about a foot higher and longer and may be more suitable for three girls wanting to play all at once.

So... do we choose what I think is much cuter, or what is likely the best kitchen for our family?

I think what I'm wanting to hear is that someone out there has the red retro kitchen and their three children can all play on it at the same time. Or that you, too, picked the kitchen that wasn't as cute but you don't regret it.

P.S. Yes, I know the red retro comes in pink, but we are in a potentially losing battle to avoid our house turning 100% pink, and we plan for this kitchen to eventually be in a playroom, not one of the girls' bedrooms.

Loveliest Village

On Friday night, Jake and I had our first night away from THREE girls! THANK YOU, GRAMMY, for babysitting. We joined Andy and Emily at her family's fantastic lake house, and we had a FABULOUS time with such precious friends. We enjoy them so tremendously, and we realized that the last time we were away overnight together was our NYC trip... where we also spent some time with Andy and Em! So they are evidently our getaway friends. Sadly, we totally forgot to get any pics, which is particularly unfortunate as Em is fantastically beautiful at 29-week pregnant! Thanks again y'all!

We drove into Auburn on Saturday with the rest of the Auburn Family, and we joined a big group of friends at the Goldsmith tailgate. This group was also all together in May when we were all in Michelle's wedding! The only difference is the little boy in Beth's tummy!

Matt, Jake, and Jay- sweet husbands!
Bella Grace (big sis-to-be) is beyond delightful and was practicing "Touchdown Auburn!"
Holly, Alex, and sweet children were kind enough to brave the crowds and come over to campus- it was wonderful seeing dear friends and finally meeting Jay!
We had no tickets, and the going rate was between $200-250 each. Jake spent a lot of time doing this...
but we still ended up watching the first half at a tailgate (that is, after buying one ticket at $75, and selling it for $140- I'm married to quite the wheeler and dealer, it appears).
Then at halftime, we walked over to the stadium, and Jake asked this couple leaving the game (I know, they had to be nuts) if we could use their tickets to try to get back in. They assured us we would have no luck and gave them to us anyways.

I was confident we would have no luck as well.

But Jake's persistence and a sneaky $20 landed a gate lady some pocket change and Jake and I into Jordan-Hare stadium!!!! Just in time for the beginning of the second half and this slice of heaven on earth...
There are only a few things in life that are better than experiencing a night and game like that.
Thanks to this guy and the rest of the the Auburn team...
we went to Toomers afterwards, where we found these folks we're related to...
and met up with sweet Michelle and her husband Matt before returning to the Goldsmith tailgate for their famous Auburn/Georgia post-game soup!
This scene is so precious!!!!! WAR EAGLE!!!!

1st pigtails!

She calls it having two ponytails, as we've called her previous hairdo's with her hair halfway-up "pigtails." I'm a little obsessed with them and can't believe how much older she looks!

In other news, I'm a bit OCD about germs. As in, I'd rather make Abby Jane walk, carry an extra baby in a Bjorn, or keep a one-year-old in a carseat than put two in a buggy without their Buggy bag (that is only made for one baby) that protects them from e.coli or whatever lurks on those handles. But I finally broke down the other day and allowed two children to ride side-by-side at Costco. It's so cute and they all have so much fun riding together. But just the sight of the three all together always gives me one of those, "Oh my goodness, I have three small children!!!" moments!

1 year

Once again, I'm marveling that my smallest ladies are one year old. We thought Abby Jane was practically fully grown by the time she was a year old. We cemented this belief by deciding to expand our family when she was this age. One more tidbit on our having twin girls. There is apparently accepted research with a definite link between consumption of sweet potatoes and the incidence of twins. We used to have sweet potatoes about once a week, so these evidently are our little sweet potato babies.

That said, here's a little "then and now": you don't get much more brand spanking new than this... Jake's got Joy, I've got Blythe.

At one year, Joy waves bye bye to Dada, says "Hi!" all the time, says "nigh-nigh-nigh-night", blows kisses, gives kisses when asked and spontaneously, plays peek-a-boo. She does a lot of laughing and mimics tones of voice. Joy points at lots of things, and we're working on her accuracy in pointing to specific items when asked. She can stand independently for quite a long time, and we are forecasting a walker sometime around Thanksgiving. So far they both rolled over on Memorial Day, Blythe crawled on the Fourth of July, Joy crawled on Labor Day, so it would make sense for someone to walk on Thanksgiving Day. STILL only two teeth. But we started right after their birthday making the vast majority of their meals finger foods (along with their cow's milk- YEA we finished our year of nursing!!!) Her 1 year stats were 21 lb 9 oz ( 60%) and 29 1/4 inches (55%).

Here's my Blythe with her Polly horse. Mentioning Polly is relevant because this horse has become extremely sentimental and vital in the last few weeks- such that we need to separate them when she gets out of bed, or she'll have to take Polly everywhere she goes. Blythe's standing and cruising, but I don't think she's quite as on the verge of walking. She's a good snuggler, giggler, blows and gives kisses, plays peek-a-boo, is a reader for short periods (they both love books with textures!), and chews on anything. She, too, still only has two teeth! Blythe has a funny habit of putting her food on Joy's tray, then eating it off Joy's tray. This morning I turned to see what Blythe was fussing about- Joy was smacking Blythe's hand when Blythe was trying to retrieve her bananas she had relocated to Joy's tray! Oh dear. Her stats were 20 lb 6 oz (50%), 29 3/4 inces (80%)- so she's now taller than Joy.

Getting them to sit side by side in that chair was definitely more difficult now...

than then!

One other really fun part about this age is how they flip out for Jake. When I say, "Daddy's home!", they crane their little necks to see Daddy and go ahead and start laughing and bouncing with excitement. Jake's already roughhousing, gently, with them, and they belly laugh at his tricks. He is their hero, probably ties with Abby Jane on the funniest person they know, and he is firmly wrapped around the chubby little fingers of three small ladies in this home.

The children's minister at our church has recently been a foster family for a set of twin infants. I've never thought about twins ever being foster kids, but the concept of two tiny babies just floating around out there simultaneously broke my heart and made me want to hold on so tightly to my girls, never taking for granted the ability to raise my precious daughters.

Fabulous Day

Auburn won, Alabama lost, great football in general, did I mention that Alabama lost?... and we had a fantastic race morning!

It was COLD- 34 degrees at start and finish! But it was so fun. Ericka was speedy from the beginning, but my childhood friend Betsy and I ran the whole way together and got in the last year's worth of catching up while we ran. My watch froze from the cold at the starting line, so I had no clue what our pace was and didn't really care because we were too busy talking. At around 10 miles, Betsy looked at her watch, and we were running a two-minute faster pace than my training runs have been! We ended up finishing 30 minutes faster than I expected (though it was still 20 minutes slower than I used to run it in high school and college, but hey- that was 10 years and three kids ago, right?!), and it was a breeze doing it because of sweet conversation with a precious friend. Ericka came in 8 min ahead of us, and it was her first time to run the full 13- so she had an incredible run, too.

Here is Chateau Elan, part of the vineyard, and the last hill going up to the finish line.

Thankfully, Jake got there early enough, despite our estimated time being so far off, to be there on that last stretch to so he and Abby Jane could cheer for us! He said she got so excited to see us running, and it was so precious to get to wave to her.

Being met at the end of a big run by my husband and child is definitely one of those incredibly precious sweet life moments- the kind of thing my girlfriends and I used to see and say, "Oh that will be so fun!" It is.

Bets with her 2 yr old twins, Hannah and Eli, with Jane and I.
It's amazing how a pink radio can help foster friendship quickly. What's crazy is that Betsy and I were only two years older than these girls when we first became friends!

It is extremely impressive that three two year olds fascinated by a freezing cold fountain didn't end with someone getting really wet.

Mom had a great run as well- note that she is in sleeveless shirt and shorts, and I am by this point holding onto Abby Jane as tight as I can for warmth!

One last shout-out for Mom- I hope I'm running half-marathons when folks can cheer "Go Grammy" or whatever my grandma name will be- that's pretty amazing. Her goal is to race until she can win her age division because she's so old no one else is in it. Good plan, Mom.

It's Finally Here!

One week after the twins were born last year, Mom briefly left her Grammy post and went and ran a half-marathon real quick before coming back.

Ever since then, I've been looking forward to doing the same race- and now it's tomorrow! She and I are running it, along with my childhood friend (and mother of 2 yr old twins), Betsy, and my church friend (and mother of Grant, who just turned one), Ericka!

I've been putting in consistent long runs since January, so I'm definitely very ready, but I'm also definitely slow! I was feeling really good mid-summer and decided to try some speedwork... and old knee injuries started to hurt. So I decided to suck up pride in meeting fancy time goals and just enjoy the distance and process!

That said, when I registered for the race, it gave the option of having my split times automatically uploaded to my facebook status. Um, no.

I also could have my splits texted to up to five people. My husband, who is stuck with me for better or for worse, is pretty much the only person who is on the need-to-know basis as to my exact progress. The other morning I came in from my last big run before the race, and Jake said, "So, are you ready?" And I said, "Like a rockstar. Like a slow rockstar."

Jake's playing superdad tonight while Mom and I go stay at my aunt's home, which is closer to the race. In the morning, Jake and Abby Jane will be braving some FRIGID weather to come cheer for us, while the little ones get their epic naps at home with their Mimi.

This morning, I plopped all the kids in the front yard to hang out while I unloaded groceries, and they all struck me as being particularly photogenic. Here's what happened, all spontaneous and unposed by me.

Joy waves all the time and says, "Hi!" (cue extremely Southern drawl.) She's still waving after saying "hi" here to Abby Jane across the yard...

She loves pretending to get stuck in this tree.
Quite the comic
Cracks herself (and us) up...

"Mom, I want to sit right here with Byfe and Jo-oy!"
Blythe and Joy: "And... we're out!"

Wrapping it up

So this is still last weekend, but I'm just getting around to getting pics up. All the cousins in town for the party got dressed up for our church's festival- there are a lot of funny out-takes from this attempt!

Jake and I had a shift on our small group's game, but my siblings seemed more into it than their kids did.

Abby Jane and Ashley seemed very intent in their discussion. I'm not sure where Abby Jane's fairy wings were at this point.

Joy rocked the pumpkin, if I do say so myself.

And Blythe was compliant enough to tolerate her duck hood just long enough for a few pics.

A few of the other girls in our small group and a few of our kids!

After a long day of twins' party, fall festival, and everything in between, we all ended up back at Mom's, where Susan had ordered a SEWING MACHINE CAKE in Auburn colors! Hilarious! She literally took a picture of the sewing machine we both have to Publix, and voila!

Amazing.