Beautiful Girls

It seems like I spend a lot of time lamenting how big my girls are getting. And it's true, I do. It just feels like each day flies by more quickly than the last one. I can almost feel myself trying to hold onto them.

It isn't that I don't want them to grow because I have enjoyed every stage of their sweet lives. I loved kissing their newborn heads, propping their chubby six month old selves on my hip, holding a one year hand as they learned to walk, delighted in those first words that quickly gave way to sentences, watched proudly as they rode a bike for the first time, hid my tears as they went to school and each year get a little big bigger. It's just that....I don't ever want them to leave.

Funny because when I was a teenager I was in such a hurry to grow up and go. I think back now on how hard it must have been for my mom, a single parent, to leave me at college knowing that she was going home to an empty house, to say goodbye to me as I headed off to my first job in Florida as a nurse. I didn't know because I wasn't a mom and I didn't know how hard it is to watch them get big, to watch them grow, to watch them not need you as much as they used to.

So I will be grateful for the time that I have. The time to snuggle with them, to love on them and to tell them how much I love being their Mama. They are my beautiful girls.

Maddie and Abby, Black and White Girl Scout Dance

Abby

Maddie

The girls and their Daddy before the dance

A Georgia Snowman

Day two and we are still homebound from the snow here in Georgia. The sled got a hole in it yesterday from the multitude of children using it so today was all about just playing in the snow. Destiny fancied herself creative and built her first snowman.

Destiny and "her man" (he almost resembles Flat Stanley)

Good Snow Day

I love a good snowstorm and the subsequent good snow day. I remember growing up in Pennsylvania and how eagerly I would anticipate snow. Standing in the living room watching out the picture window to see if the snow was still falling and hoping that school would be cancelled the next day. My dad used to take Eric and I to this great sledding hill near his house and we would sled for hours. My favorite memory is him taking me late at night to the snow packed road behind his house and having me lay on his back while he pushed off and we coasted for what felt like a mile.

I recognized that when we left Ohio and moved to Georgia that I was giving snowstorms and snow days up for more reasonable temperatures year round. This past Thursday however, the forecasters here started predicting a "Major Winter Storm." It's hard to get excited because here in Georgia "Major"is an inch or two and several times after predictions, we haven't even gotten that much. In the North, we would laugh at all this build up. Bud and I drove from Pa. to Ohio in 14 inches of snow one Valentines Day. However, as my Southern husband pointed out, this is the South where there are not big silos of salt or plows just waiting for winter weather or people that know how to drive in it.

The television coverage begin in earnest two days ago and has continued almost unabated since then. We were truly surprised to see the flakes start to fall last night and keep falling. The girls school was cancelled last evening (good call) and I knew that I wouldn't be heading into work at 7 am this morning. When we woke up, we had five inches in our backyard and a 1/4" inch of freezing rain that had fallen on top of that. We were not only not leaving early to get to work, we were not going in at all.

The afternoon was spent playing outside, shoveling the driveway (so glad we didn't get rid of the shovel when we left Ohio) and playing with the girls. We were the only ones in the neighborhood with a sled so we worked on a great sledding path that went along the side of our street down the big hill. It took a bit of coaching to get the girls to understand that you can't walk back up the middle of the sledding path, drag your feet behind you while you are sledding or let the inner tube slide across the asphalt and even more work to teach the neighbor kids the same thing but we persisted and a great time was had by all.

Tonight we will watch more coverage on the storm, eat crab legs and baked potatoes by the fire and play Apples To Apples. What a great snowstorm and great snow day.

The view from our driveway

The front of our house

Maddie Grace

Abby (after taking a header on her first trip down the hill)

Destiny using one of our improvised "snow tubes" from the pool

Turns out it was good he kept his shovel and he still knows how to use it!!

The gang

Our big tree

View from out side yard

Hiking up the hill

Destiny sliding down on our sled path

Maddie always slid the furthest on the slide

Lights at Lake Lanier

Since we have lived here I have heard how fantastic the Christmas lights were at Lake Lanier. Friends of ours found discount tickets and so this year we decided to go. The holidays were so busy that we actually ended up going the night before New Year's Eve which was actually nice because my father-in-law was in town and got to go with us to see the lights.

I have to admit that seeing them after Christmas was kind of anti-climatic and when we turned on the prescribeded radio station we discovered that instead of Christmas tunes that went with the lights, we were now listening to Kool and the Gang and other eighties tunes. It was all good though. A ride through the lights, roasting s'mores with the Harris's and Opa letting the girls pick out a Nutcracker and a last night dinner before Opa had to fly back home to Texas made for a memorable evening.

Christmas Morning

We enjoyed a quiet Christmas at home this year with just the five of us. Christmas Eve we attended services at the Strand Theatre in downtown Marietta for our new church, Sanctuary. We came home and spent a quiet evening watching a movie (or my family did) while I wrapped presents and then headed to bed. I was so happy to be allowed to sleep until 8:00 which was the absolute latest that Maddie was going to allow anyone to sleep.

Yeast Sausage rolls and Cinnamon buns in the oven, we sat down to read the Christmas story before opening presents. "And there were in the same country, shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night." I never tire of hearing those words and we have made a tradition since the girls were very little that we would always read the Christmas story on Christmas morning before opening gifts. A way to bring us together and to remind us what was important.

Every year, I can see a little less of the Christmas tree. They are growing way too fast.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

December just flew by here at our house. From 5th grade Christmas concerts to class parties to fun trips with friends to a Stone Mountain Christmas and a classic Christmas performance at the Fox Theatre. It's been the "Most Wonderful TIme of the Year"

Abby and her best friends Mary Katherine and Bria clowning around after their 5th grade Christmas Concert. Abby was a dancer.

Abby and Daddy and her first red roses that he got her for her performance

Abby and Mary Katherine

Lizzie, Abby and Mary Katherine

The very patient Mr. Griebe and two of his "favorite"students

Her beautiful roses

Maddie hard at work at Christmas Bingo

I loved getting to spend time with my girl at her Christmas party

Abby and her reindeer headband

The 3 Amigo's

Abby and all of her friends

Beautiful Christmas Lights at a Stone Mountain Christmas

Brandon or Michael, I have the hardest time telling them apart

The beautiful shops

The Snow Angel

One of many of the beautiful trees

Making Smores over the open pits

Hey Santa!

One big happy family

Our second family, the Harris's

The beautiful Fox Theatre

My 2 gorgeous girls right before the usher told me I had to put away my camera

The girls at the Nutcracker at the Fox Theatre on Christmas Eve