My American Girl

Nanny Alva introduced Alivia to American Girl dolls and she loves them. Nanny Alva is the queen of thrift store/garage sale shopping and has found a few AG dolls to loan to Alivia until she gets her own. Her latest purchase was "Julie" - it is a doll that Alivia has wanted for months and always longingly points out to us as she looks through every page of the AG catalog. Needless to say, Alivia was in heaven. Nanny Alva even did their hair to match. I think my mom is going to take Alivia to the AG store in Dallas one of these days so Alivia can purchase her own doll.

Date Night with Daddy

Matt took the older kids to a Round Rock Express baseball game last night. They left the house around 6:45 and got home 3 hours later. The kids were on a sugar high after having Skittles, cotton candy and root beer. They loved it! Matt said they did really well at the game.

Life at the Lake

We had another fun weekend at the lake. We could really get used to going out there every weekend. . . . While we were there, we had a fun visitor. JASON BRAWNER! He was driving from Purdy, MO to San Antonio, TX to do some recruiting for Camp Barnabas. It was so fun to see him and get caught up on his family. Jason is the Camp Director at the camp and his wife, Alison, is one of my closest friends. He was only with us about 10 hours so I took a picture to prove he was actually in Granite Shoals. . .

Another fun activity was Will got to help Grandpa pick all the peaches off this little tree near the lakehouse. The peaches are so sweet and yummy. . . .

John 3 1/2 months old

Alivia and Will love their little brother, John. I think John may be close to turning over soon! Here is our basic schedule. We wake up around 8 am for the day. He breastfeeds about every 3-4 hours during the day. His longest nap is in the afternoon and is pretty consistently from around 1-4ish. We are getting him into bed around 7 pm after a mini-bath every night. I nurse him to sleep. . . Then I give him a twilight feed around 10 or 11 pm. We get up in the middle of the night between 3-5 am.

The Girls

These are some of my closest friends in Austin. I met Amy and Beth right after I had Alivia at a Lamplighters picnic and instantly knew we had to be friends. So. . . I asked them about starting a playgroup. Now there are a total of 8 members. Since I have known them there have been 7 children born and 2 more on the way! I cherish our monthly girl's nights and look forward to celebrating many more life milestones with them in the future! Thanks Friends.

Alivia's Drawing of Mommy and her Signature

Mimi's Birthday at the Lake

The Taylors and Risingers headed out to the lake to celebrate Mimi's 64th birthday. I have a pitiful number of pictures from the weekend but we were having too much fun! The kids are starting to really enjoy going out there. Alivia loves just riding on the boat and jumping off the back to swim in the lake. I got some good wakeboard time in with some coaching from Peyton. Matt and Will took a 3.5 hour nap on Saturday. . . ahhhh. . . .they both needed it!

Happy Birthday Mimi. We love you and appreciate all that you do for us.