Goodbye 2009!

As the year (and decade) comes to an end, I thought I'd post some of my favorite pictures from the 2009. It's been an amazing year filled with many fun times. I hope you enjoy the trip down memory lane...

Wishing you all a Happy 2010!

Hello there, blog...

No, I've not forgotten about you. We've been pretty busy. See here:

Matt took Ainsley to see Taylor Swift in concert.

We added "Roy" to the family.

We went to the beach. (Oak Island)

The girls went back to school. (Me too--teaching 4-year old preschool!)

August?

Apparently, I didn't post one single time in August! Yikes!

We had a great month. We stayed pretty busy, so that probably explains my lack of posting.

Matt celebrated his birthday with a Tarheels cake. The girls had fun helping me mix and stir the batter. They were especially happy when it was time to decorate it!

The week after Matt's birthday, we had our Alberty family vacation to the beach. The first part of the week was wonderful, but things started going downhill towards the end of the week. To make a long story short, there was a fire alarm that woke us from our sleep, lots of jelly fish stings, a slip and almost fall resulting in whiplash like injuries (me, and I'm fine now!), and a hurricane off the coast causing some pretty heavy surf.

The girls, of course, had a great time on vacation. They love the beach! They are getting so brave. Both of them rode a raft and had so much fun with it.

Cadence's Birthday Beach Trip

We spent Cadence's birthday weekend at Oak Island with Pap-paw Mike and Deryle. As many times as we've been down to their house, we've never been with them! It was a fun trip for everyone. We had lots of beach time!

Matt had his church league softball tournament on Friday night (the 17th). They won and won and won again making his team the champs but resulting in him getting home after 11:00 that night. (Since that was the night of the championship games, we delayed our trip by a bit.) Anyway, he got home very late! We wanted to maximize our time that we would have at the beach so we made plans to leave our house at 5:00 (AM!) the next morning. We made it to the beach house shortly after 9:00 including a trip to the grocery store on our way in. After unloading all of our stuff at the house, we trekked over the bridge to the beach. The girls had a great time doing what they do best on the beach--play! Although both girls did go back to sleep for a while on the ride, Cadence was still pretty pooped out. She fell asleep snuggled under a beach towel. Poor girl!

Dad and Deryle arrived later that afternoon (Saturday). The girls were excited to see them when we went back to the house after our beach day. We all went out for dinner and ice cream that night. Ainsley even tried her hand at Taylor Swift karaoke but it didn't sing along with her and she wasn't so sure about singing alone with a crowd of people she didn't know watching!

Sunday was Cadence's birthday. When we got to the beach, the water was nice and calm. We saw lots of porpoises playing/eating. Some were even jumping all the way out of the water. It was so much fun to watch! The water was so calm that we were able to go out past the breakers (what few there were) so the girls could just float and "swim" between the adults. The water was so relaxing! After our picnic lunch, Ainsley and Cadence wanted to build sandcastles, but Pap-paw Mike had other ideas. We built sand animals! Here we are in the process of building the alligator. When we were finished for the day, we had completed the alligator and built a sea serpent to go along with it.

That evening after dinner and before cake the girls wanted to go to the playground near the beach house. Pap-paw Mike went with us and was excited to show the girls some of the wildlife that lives in that area. There's a river that leads to the waterway which has some beach space along it. All sorts of little crabs live on the beach there. Pap-paw Mike picked up a few and even got the girls to hold them too! I didn't have the camera with me, but I promise, the girls were having a blast picking up the little tiny crabs and holding them! Ainsley carried this one crab with her all along the beach before finally letting it go just before we left.

It was getting quite buggy down at the playground, so we headed back to the house. We had birthday cake for Cadence waiting for us anyway. Cadence loved her cake and had a fantastic time opening her birthday gifts!

Monday, we spent the day at the beach before coming home. Again, Ainsley and Cadence wanted Pap-paw Mike to build them some sort of creature. That day, he decided to build a huge Loggerhead Sea Turtle. By huge, I mean HUGE. It took quite a while to build up enough sand to have a figure formed in the sand. We did it though!

We drove home late that evening after having dinner at one of Pap-paw Mike's favorite restaurants. It was a wonderful weekend jam-packed with fun! We can't wait to go on our next beach trip in August with the Alberty family. Something tells me that the girls are going to want to build sand creatures there too!

Alberty Birthday Bash '09

We celebrated Ainsley and Cadence's birthdays on July 11th with our usual pool party. The weather was perfect and a good time was had by all. After the party, the family all came back to our house for a hot dog lunch and gift opening. Then we (the 4 of us, Nana, Pap-paw, Sara, Cindy, Pap-paw Mike and Deryle) headed uptown to Ainsley's favorite restaurnt--Rock Bottom.

Here are the picture highlights of the day.

Ainsley's Cake (yes, I made both of them!)

Ainsley blowing out her candles

Cadence's Cake

Cadence blowing out the candles

The party go-ers

Cadence fell asleep on the way to dinner.

So did Ainsley. :-)

The four of us after dinner.

Haven't forgotten...

Hello all,

I haven't forgotten about our blog! I'll get some good things posted soon. There's lots to post about. I'll get an update on here soon. :)

The Garden

I realize I haven't posted about the garden this year. It's doing well, see for yourself!

The veggies...Zuchinni, strawberries, peppers (green and red), and cantaloupe.

The tomatoes...
Peaches

The peach tree...
The harvested peaches and tomatoes. This is only the tip of the iceberg!

Lots going on!

We've had quite a lot going on since my last post. I'll recap here.

One afternoon, instead of hitting the pool, we pulled out the sprinkler. The girls had fun running through the cold water!

We spent Father's Day at the pool. We all had a great time hanging out and playing. Ainsley is becoming quite the little swimmer these days. If you notice in the pictures, they are in the deep end (5ft)! Cadence does well with a noodle or floatie. She's not quite ready to jump in without some help yet.

Ainsley and Daddy jumping in.

Cadence jumping in.

Daddy and his girls.

While Matt and his dad took a trip to Atlanta (again!), the girls and I headed up to Greensboro to hang out with the rest of the family. We had a great time and managed to spend time with everyone. Thursday, we had lunch with my grandmother and mom. The girls got to play and water the plants and my grandmother's house. They thought that was so much fun! Then we headed off to my dad's house. We picked lots of raspberries before going out to dinner. Thursday night, we spent at the Alberty's house. Friday I took the girls to the Science Center. It was pretty hot out so we didn't spend a lot of time in the zoo this trip. I did get this great picture though!

Friday afternoon, since it was so hot, I took the girls back to play with Nana and Sara while I went back to my dad's to pick more berries. Ainsley and Cadence loved the play time! Dad and I put a small dent in the berries, but there were loads more when I left. We had dinner with Nana and Sara before we headed back home to Charlotte.

I guess that brings us to July now. We spent the 4th doing the usual around here--hanging out at the pool. (Well, not me. I was bitten by a spider before we went to G'boro and the antibiotics didn't mix well with the sun so I stayed in the A/C and had a bit of retail therapy thanks to Nana! I won't even mention the fact that a little seed tick found it's way to my leg while I was picking berries with my dad. Yep, it bit me too!) Sara and Nana spent the day with us. Cadence hadn't napped that day, so she and Matt stayed at home while Nana, Sara, Ainsley and myself went to watch the fireworks. It was Ainsley's first "outing" to see fireworks and she definitely enjoyed every minute of it!

This week, Ainsley is in Dance Camp and I'm busy getting ready for their combined birthday party on Saturday. I'll be sure to post pics from that!