We're Still Here

Happy 22nd birthday Kathleen (my #3 sister), we love you and can't wait to see you tomorrow!

It's been a busy week, but I have a quick minute to post a couple of pictures and
video of Luke (as requested by one of my sisters).

Aubrey's a chunk :) and is losing most of her hair!

She's smiling a lot now, here's a partial smile
There's nothing exciting or interesting about the video, just wanted to let Anna know that I do read her text messages requests. Anna, if you listen very carefully you can hear Aubrey "talking" in the background.

Weekend Recap

We've had a busy weekend. It started Friday night with a trip to a local consignment sale.
I didn't find the double stroller I was looking for, but I did get a few things for Luke's winter wardrobe.
If you could see Aubrey's closet, you'd know why I didn't buy anything for her :)

Ryan had some daddy bonding time with the kids while I was shopping; I think they wore him out...
this is what I found when I came home

Saturday, we got out Aubrey's floor gym
to see how she'd like it.

After the initial shock and awe wore off...

I think she enjoyed it

Saturday night, I went to a girls night out at Sips n Strokes.
I love my babies, but it's nice to have a baby-free couple of hours every once in a while!
I have no artistic skills what so ever, but we had a blast attempting to paint.
I think this painting turned out better than the one I did a couple of years ago, but I still need to work on the blending concept & making sure there isn't any bare canvas showing.
Here's my masterpiece

Sunday after church our small group had a pool party.
We were worried how Luke would react to the pool, because it took him several weeks to warm up to his inflatable pool, and the last time he was in a real pool was over 3 months ago and he wasn't too fond of it.

Much to our surprise, he loved it!

He wasn't afraid in the least and was swimming around like an old pro.

Jumping to daddy

Flashback Friday

Luke's 3 month pictures


These pictures were taken at the Arboretum
on the Auburn University Campus

2 Months

Aubrey turned 2 months old yesterday! I was planning on posting this yesterday, but Aubrey had a rough afternoon after getting 4 shots at the doctor's office. I don't ever remember Luke being fussy after shots, but Aubrey was unconsolable for about 2 hours yesterday afternoon...daddy had to come home & relieve me so I wouldn't lose it :)

Other than the 4 shots, Aubrey's 2 month check up went great; she weighed 11 lbs 13 1/2 oz (75th percentile) and was 21 1/2 inches long (50th percentile).

She's working on sleeping through the night; she's slept from 10pm to 7am twice in the past week, so we're hoping this becomes more consistent in the coming weeks!

Aubrey's much more alert these days, smiling, cooing, and letting us know when she's not happy. This morning she was making all kinds of "talking" sounds, she must have had something really important to tell me!

2 month chair picture
Have you noticed all the outfits with cherries on them?
I love anything with cherries on it, so Aubrey has at least 4 cherry outfits

Luke is still doing really well with his sister, he wants to hold her all the time

Here's what a holding session typically looks like:
He's not too good at the "holding onto" part

After a few seconds, she slowly starts to slouchInstead of grabbing her, he just watches her fall
Either Aubrey or Luke get tired of the holding after a few mintues,
this time it was Aubrey
So, they're happy to just sit next to each other

Wordless Wednesday

This is what the kids were doing yesterday while I was making dinner.

Crash

Luke loves cars, when he first learned to say "car" he would point to everything on wheels and say "car".
I tried to teach him the difference between a car, truck, and van, but he didn't quite get it, so now he calls all motor vehicles "Crucks" (trucks).

He has invented a game with all his toy "crucks" that he plays for hours on end.

First, he gathers all the cars

Then he meticulously lines the cars up smallest to largest

Well, most of the time they're in size order...sometimes one small car gets stuck between the big ones

And last, he sends each car plunging off the cliff, shouting "Cr-ash!"

His favorite place to play this game is on the TV stand, but he'll line up the cars any place that has at least a 2-3 foot drop off for a good "cr-ash"

Flashback Friday

Luke celebrated his first Easter in Birmingham. We went to church, and then met all the Alfano's for lunch and an easter egg hunt.

Easter family picture...
this was our first family picture since Luke was born, isn't is terrible that it took us almost 3 months to get a picture of the 3 of us together?!

Luke with all of his Easter eggs

Luke and his baseball Easter basket

9 Hours

Little Miss Aubrey slept a solid 9 hours last night without so much as a peep!!
We're so excited to get our sleep back!

Now if we can just get Luke to stop waking up at 6:30 AM

Wordless Wednesday

Snug as a bug in a rug

Au-bee

Most of the time Luke refers to Aubrey as "baby", he always wants to know where the "ba-bee" is and what she is doing.

For a while he prounouced Aubrey, "Au-ree", but last week he picked up the "b" sound, but dropped the "r", so now when you ask Luke what the baby's name is, he responds, "Au-bee".

Wonder if Auburn is looking for a new mascot? ;)

I think she's way cuter than the real Aubie!

In the picture above Aubrey is sitting in the baby swing. We recieved the swing as a gift from my grandparents before Luke was born.
Luke sat in the swing for hours and hours when he was a baby, he loved it!

When we moved from Auburn we had to put the swing in storage, and when we got it out a few months ago to get ready for Aubrey it didn't work!
So, Aubrey hasn't been able to enjoy the swing.

Well, today I needed to get some things done and Aubrey refused to take a nap longer than 30 minutes, so I put her in the swing and gave it a push.

Of course she loved it and some one else thought it looked like fun too...

I promise that no babies were hurt in the making of these photos!
After a few forceful pushes I decided to ban Luke from running the manual swing.

Flashback Friday

A couple of weeks after Luke's first trip to Indiana, we loaded up the car again to go to the SEC basketball tournament in Atlanta.

Everyone in Ryan's family is a huge Kentucky basketball fan, and we all go to this tournament every year to cheer on the wildcats.

We were very excited to bring Luke to his first tournament to experience what it's really like to be a wildcat basketball fan. For those of you who aren't that into basketball (me before I met Ryan), being a Kentucky basketball fan is akin to being an Alabama football fan...the tradition, legacy, and expectations.

Ryan's family(& thousands of other UK fans) look forward to the tournament all year long. We always stay in the same hotel as the team, which means we get little sleep when the team wins because there are fans down in the hotel lobby cheering "C-A-T-S, Cats, Cats, Cats" all night long!

Luke & Parker on Day 1 of the tournament
Parker's daddy is a huge Florida fan and I'm an Auburn fan
Day 2, go Wildcats!
Luke did great at the games, he was either eating or sleeping in the baby bjorn.

In between games we dressed the kids in their matching dachshund outfits

The tournament starts on a Thursday and ends Sunday, Kentucky wasn't scheduled to play until the last game on Friday night.

During the first game Friday night, the seats began to fill with a sea of Kentucky blue as we anxiously awaited UK's 10:00 tip off. Some of the family was intently watching the game, while others (me included) were chatting away or tending to the babies.

All of the sudden we hear this loud noise that sounds like a train rushing toward us, we look up and see the white ceiling panels of the dome ripping open, and the giant metal rafters swaying back and forth above our heads.
Everyone was frozen in panic and had no idea what was going on.

I must confess, my first thought was that the Lord was coming back!

After about 30 seconds the noise left as quickly as it came.

As people began to realize that a tornado had just hit, there was a mad rush for the exits.

We stayed put and tried to access the damage...all we could see from the inside were several ceiling panels torn and some completely ripped open exposing the dark, gloomy sky still lit by lightning.

Luke was not phased in the least by the tornado, he slept soundly during the whole thing!

We waited at the dome for what seemed like hours for the storms to pass and to finally get to watch Kentucky play...believe it or not that's all most of the fans could think about!

About midnight they announced that the Kentucky game would have to be postponed until Saturday.

As we walked out of the Georgia Dome we could not believe what we saw.

There was enormous pieces of debris everywhere...we saw everything from twisted metal to chunks of sheetrock to broken glass and pieces of insulation strewn all over the street and sidewalks.

We looked up at the buildings around (CNN center, World Congress building, & Omni hotel) us and saw hundreds of windows blown out exposing insulation, curtains, and office materials.

There were firetrucks, ambulances, and polices cars lining the streets, along with about 20 news trucks.

Our hotel was about 15 blocks from the dome and the first 5 blocks were like walking through a maze trying to avoid all the debris. There was less damage the closer we got to our hotel, but there was still huge pieces of sheetrock and broken glass in the streets.

I've lived in the south my entire life and been through many tornado watches and warnings, but I have never been right in the center of an actual tornado, and have definitely never seen firsthand the damage that such a storm can do!

I didn't get any pictures of the damage that night, but here's some pictures of the city the next day

View of the city, many of the buildings had lots of windows blown out

The Weston Hotel
Very small pieces of debris at Centennial Olympic Park...
these were nothing compared to the debris by the dome


We didn't sleep much that night because it continued to storm on an off all night and we heard the tornado sirens going off a few times.

There was enough damage to the Georgia Dome that the powers that be wouldn't allow any more tournament games to be played there until it was fixed.
The tournament was moved to
Georgia Tech's basketball arena which only seats a couple thousand people, so the only fans allowed to go to the games were family members of the teams.

We had to watch the rest of the games on TV and find other activities to occupy our time.

Family picture at the World of Coke

So unfortunately Luke wasn't able to experience his first UK basketball game, but he did witness his first tornado.

After two road trips that brought us a blizzard and a tornado we tried to hang around Auburn for awhile to avoid anymore natural disasters!

Splash Pad

We had a blast yesterday playing at a splash pad/playground with some friends from church.
If you don't know what a splash pad is (I didn't) it's basically a playground that sprays water everywhere.

I was certain that Luke would love the splash pad since he has grown to love his "poo" (pool), but he didn't want anything to do with it when we first got there.
So, we headed over to the regular playground to climb stairs, swing, and play on the slide (those are the only 3 things he does at the playground)

Climbing stairs with his friend, Ella

He calls the slide a "weee" because that's what we say when he slides down it


Swinging with Nathaniel

After lunch, we headed back to the splashpad, this time he loved it!



Where was Aubrey during all the fun? Snoozing in her carseat, she slept the whole time! I would've taken a picture of her, but I had the carseat cover completely over her, so she wouldn't be exposed to the sun.

Chillin' at home after a long nap at the playgound