My Little Girl is . . . .

Growing Up!

Today Gracie decided to get her Ear's Pierced. We always told her that when she was ready she could get her ear's pierced well we were at the mall and I was looking for earrings and after a little convincing. She decided to go through with it. She whimpered while the lady was getting ready, but sat completely still and did not scream at all. Afterwards she let out a little cry because she was in shock and two minutes later you would have never known what had just happened. She is so excited and can't wait till she can put new ones in in 6 weeks. Unfortunately since this was not planned we did not have a camera on us to take while we were there, so here are a few pictures of her from tonight.

The Caterpillars are getting . . .

Bigger

and Bigger!!!!

Long Awaited Christmas Present!

I know Christmas ended almost a month ago, but Abbie has been waiting for her present to arrive in the mail and it finally did! You see my sister aka Aunt Summer always gives us really neat Christmas presents. You never quit know what to expect from Summer. I have a kitchen full of every gadget you could imagine. Many we didn’t even know existed, but leave it to summer to find it and buy it. Well this year Abbie got the live butterfly garden from her Aunt Summer. So a few weeks ago we mailed off for the baby caterpillars and they arrived yesterday in a nice little box. Abbie was thrilled and could not believe that she is now the proud owner of 5 baby caterpillars. She caries them everywhere and they even sleep with her. Thank goodness they are sealed in a bottle or she would probably have killed them by now.



So now the wait is on. The caterpillars will stay in the Larvae stage for the next week while they grow bigger. And believe me we have only had them 24 hours and they have already quadrupled in size. Then for the next 7-10 days they will live in their chrysalis and after that out will come 5 beautiful Butterflies.



Here is a pictures so you can see how the Caterpillars started I will update the site with pictures every few days so you can see the wonderful process of a Painted Lady Butterfly

Family Vacation!

A few months ago Stephen came home from work and said that we needed a vacation. A long awaited family vacation to the mountains. So I agreed and we decided we should leave the day after Christmas for a nice week of relaxation.

So Stephen worked extra hours and I found us a cabin in the mountain. The day after Christmas we were off on our adventure. The girls survived the 8 hour car drive with lots of movies and snacks.



We got there and fell in love with our cute little cabin in Hiawassee GA. The first day was very rainy so we did not go out much. The girls did go out for a few minutes to play with the leaves. You would have thought they had never seen leaves before!

The next day the sun came out and we were on our way to have some fun. Our first stop was Cabbage Patch Land. Where we saw hundreds of Cabbage Patch dolls and how they are born. Abbie even got a Cabbage patch doll named Parker!

We then headed to go put-put golfing in 40 degree weather. We were the only crazy people out there and boy were we cold! We had on a couple of layers, thick jackets and scarves. You could definitely tell we were from Florida!

After that we decided to be even bigger tourist and climb to the highest Mountain in GA. It is Brasstown Bald and it is 4900 feet above Sea level and you can see four states from up there (GA, NC, SC, and TN). Well between a steep hike straight up the mountain and the freezing cold weather I think we were all about to die when we got to the top. But the view was totally worth it!





On the way back to the cabin Abbie got car sick and threw up everywhere so we decided to take it easy the next day and just hang out at the cabin and play wii. (Yes, the girls got a wii for Christmas and we could not possibly leave it at home so it came with us.)

After our fun day of staying in we decided to venture back out and hike 1.2 miles down the side of a mountain to a waterfall. The girls just loved hiking and wanted to keep going. They did not realize that whatever we hiked down we had to hike back up, so we stopped at the 1.2 mile marker and returned 1.2 miles back up the mountain. Boy did they get tired pretty quickly on the way back up. But we made it and had lots of fun as a family.

On our way home on New Year’s Day we made a few stops along the way. The first stop was to the American Girl store where the girls and me where in heaven. They each got a new outfit for their dolls and Gracie’s doll got her Ear’s pierced. After hanging out in the store for an hour and spending way too much money on doll clothes Stephen knew that we are in the wrong line of business.

Our next stop was to Snow Mountain where we finally got to play in the snow. The girls had so much fun. Even though it was man made snow it was 3 feet deep and very cold. We all had fun Building snowmen, throwing snowballs, sledding down the hill, making snow angels and even sitting around drinking hot chocolate.

For six straight days it was nothing but Stephen, me and the girls and we enjoyed every moment of our time together in the mountains. It was a wonderful family vacation with lots of memories. We will never forget watching the girls fall asleep to a roaring fire or watching them climb there first mountain, and build their first snowman. But most importantly we will never forget to stop and enjoy our family and to take time out of the day to just have fun and we will never forget how precious our two little girls are.