A Month in Review

Wow! A month has flown by and where have I been? Well quite busy as usual but add a two year old to the mix and much of the time is spent keeping after her! We have been pretty busy with the girls and their ball season. Caroline has now started her ball and will have her first game Monday. It will be quite fun trying to juggle the days when their games overlap and I'm rushing home from work.

So here are a few highlights from the last month. Caroline celebrated her 9th birthday! I can't believe 9 years have flown by. For the most part, she had a nice birthday. The one thing we could have done without was our first case of head lice! Yes, we came across this on her birthday. Not only her but Abby too. So we spent the entire day treating, picking, and washing everything! I had to laugh considering this was the week before Easter and I told everyone I was going on an egg hunt! Now that we have had our 2nd treatment, I am breathing a little easier. I'm just hoping that they are gone for good.

Caroline got a Justin Bieber Cd for her birthday. We hear "Baby, baby, baby Oh" every hour of the day to the point that Mattie walks around singing "bab, bab, bab" too.


We also have an addition to our family. Frisco had 5 cute little kittens! It was amazing to watch her give birth. The girls have really enjoyed the kittens. We plan on giving them away and then time for Frisco to get fixed.

We have been on vacation this past week. We've tried to take advantage of the beautiful weather. We drove to the beach for the day. No pictures...I forgot the camera. Mattie hated the sand at first but after about 45 minutes she figured out that she could walk in it. Thank goodness I had helping hands to keep up with her. We also went to the pool one day. It was actually warm enough to swim.

Mattie has been quite busy herself. I rarely get front view pictures anymore since she seems to always be running in the other direction. Here is her Easter Picture. Ha! That's pretty much what you see.

At school, she had her first Easter Egg hunt. I love this picture. She is so excited! I really don't think it was because of the eggs. Really just because she got to go outside. She did pick up a few eggs and then it was off to trouble.

You see Mattie is climbing on everything!! We have to rescue her from tables, chairs, and whatever else she can find. I finally broke down and bought a leash for my child. It looks like she is wearing a little bookbag, but with this little stinker.....we are going to need it!

I hope that I will be able to get back into the swing of things with blogging very soon. Summer vacation is just around the corner!

First Round of Pillowcases

On Saturday, a friend of mine and myself got together to make our first round of pillowcases. We originally got the idea from an organization called Conkerr Cancer. This is a wonderful organization. You basically just make these bright and fun pillowcases for children with cancer. Our Joyful Stitchers Ministry is going to meet tomorrow to learn how to make the pillowcases. It is our hope to put a little extra smile on their faces during the difficult trials of their lives. So I was looking for a local drop off for our pillowcases. They only have 2 locations in NC and we were really hoping to possibly do something locally. We may branch out later but for now I think we need to just get our feet wet. So I contacted our children's hospital locally and they are very excited about our project. She even said that she would let us take a tour of the children's hospital on the day of our first drop-off. I am so excited and can't wait to start making more pillowcases!

Photo Fun

Hooray for warm weather! We have had some beautiful days this week. We took advantage of this nice weather before the rain rolled back in. I had a lot of fun taking pictures of Mattie. She is such a ham. I had a hard time deciding which ones to post. She gave me so many cute shots sitting on the porch chair. Here are a few of the many shots I took.

Purity Ball

A couple of weeks ago, Abby went to her Purity Ball at church. What a special night it was for her.....and her parents too! We had a wonderful dinner complete with a chocolate fountain. Every girls dream come true. All the girls also were given a purity ring as a reminder of their commitment to stay pure. The dads were given the honors of putting the rings on their fingers. The girls were also given a china plate and a letter of encouragement from women within the church. They ended the night with lots of dancing and giggling. I made a smilebox below of the evening. You can click on the photos to get a better look. We had a really great time and would like to thank all the volunteers for all their hard work!

Create your own digital scrapbook

Wordle

Wordle is a website I learned about in one of my technology workshops. I love this site. It takes a passage of words and and jumbles them all up. The more the word is used the larger the word becomes. You can change the color and directions of the words also. Hop on over and have a little fun with this website. Here is a Wordle I did with the Down syndrome Creed. You will have to click on the image to see it larger. I can't seem to figure out how to post it large.

Abby made this one on softball.

Happy Almost Birthday Mattie!

Today is Mattie's Almost Birthday! Happy birthday to my leap year baby! I can't believe it has been almost two years. I wouldn't change anything about her for the world! What a pure joy she has been to our lives. I had a beautiful pregnancy, a beautiful birth and an absolute beautiful baby!

Down syndrome hasn't been near as scary as I pictured the day I learned the news. It hasn't been even close to the images that I pictured in my mind. I have this beautiful daughter who is simply my daughter. I am truly blessed and thank God each day for sending her to our family!

Birth Day!

My silly mommy put socks on my hands.

My first birthday!



Me now! Mommy will put up my birthday picture after our party tonight.
I'm such a big girl!

All Better

Mattie is all better. It didn't happen over night but she is finally back to herself. Thanks to all those who left such kind comments.

Mattie will be two very soon. I can't believe it has almost been two years! I took her for her well child visit the other day. She was 26 pounds. She was 50th percentile on her weight and 5th percentile on her height. That means her BMI is slightly above. Her doctor said we could start skim milk now and with her activity level her weight shouldn't be an issue. She was such a trooper. She had two shots and then headed over to the hospital for her annual thyroid check. They tried drawing blood from each arm and had no luck. They ended up just pricking her finger. Even though that takes much longer, she liked that much better than getting stuck twice with the needles. Anyway, labs came back great! Now all we have left to do is set up an appointment for those beautiful eyes.

Here are a couple pictures from the snow day we had two weeks ago. Her new thing was pointing. For some reason she would not walk in the snow this time. It was deeper and fluffier than last time. The first one was a sorry attempt at making a mini snowman. I wasn't wearing gloves and my hands were cold!