friends

A lot of fun times with friends during the month of July! 

4th of July parade! 

Dollywood with friends!

Cookout with friends! 

A fun dinner with friends from college and their little ones!  

Cole and Hudson were made to be best buddies.  Wish we were closer.

Girls weekend with some great friends from our time in Columbia, SC 

What do four 30 something moms do after a nice dinner on a Saturday night.  

Get excited about shopping at The Container Store and discuss how to better organize our houses.  

Happy Birthday Ray!

Ray turned 30 at the beginning of this month!  He is finally catching up to me!  I've been listening to 30 jokes for a good 17 months and now they can stop.  :)  We spent a fun day together celebrating! 

I just love this guy so much!  

Race Car Room

I've been working on Coleman's big boy room for months now.  

We took him out of the crib around February - yes when he was 3!  

He loved his crib and we loved it too but at 3 it was time to change.  

He got a race car bed.  a 3 year old boy's dream.  He loves it!  He talked about it for months; told strangers about his bed. 

It took me a while to work on the other decor in his room.  

I don't consider myself great at interior decorating.  There are much cuter rooms out there but this is what we came up with without spending too much on all new stuff. 

 

We have a picture of the 3 of us with Mater and Lightening McQueen from our Disney trip framed on his dresser.  A fun addition to the room!

 

These letters were in Cole's nursery.  My friend Anne had decorated his nursery and made these letters with navy/red/blue patterns.  I decided to re purpose them to match his new room.   So I just took some checkered paper from hobby lobby and used modge podge.  It was an inexpensive way to reuse his letters. 

The race track I got off of Amazon.  It was pretty easy to apply. The hardest part was making a race track and measuring to make sure it took up the entire length of the wall.  Cole loves it and I think it looks really good for wall decals. 

June Recap

I can't believe June is over already.  We've had a busy month.  We did all 3 of our summer vacations back to back.

We started off our summer with a trip to Hilton Head with the Parrish  Family. 

So fun to begin summer at the beach.  Cole loved the sand, the waves, & the pool.  He also loved playing with his cousin Brody. 

Next we headed to Fontana Lake in the mountains of NC with the whole Barnes clan.

We hiked, swam, and spent a day on the lake.  Even Coleman took a turn tubing  with his Dad.  The lake was clear and beautiful. We had beautiful weather and enjoyed spending time with all our cousins. 

Our last vacation was to St. Petersburg, FL with the Rueters. 

Even though I lived in Florida for 6 years I don't think I ever saw the gulf. It was beautiful with white sand beaches and a fun resort with lots of activities.  Cole loved the beach again and even played putt putt for the first time.  He didn't want to stop and wanted to hit everyone's balls.

It was a busy, fun June.  And now we are on to a calmer July. 

Cole has some news...

He's getting a baby brother!

Baby boy is due in October 2014.

 

Everything is going great.  At 20 weeks today the baby is healthy, growing, and moving.  I am being monitored closely even though the hemorrhage that caused Nora's anemia is very unlikely to happen again.  We are very excited and feel very blessed that the Lord would grant us another child to add to our family. 

I've found that it is possible to experience so much grief and so much joy at the same time.  We still have so much sadness in our hearts and lives over losing Nora even though we are filled with joy for this new baby boy.  We have trusted God with our past and we continue to trust him with our future no matter what the road brings.

Little Gym End of Season Show

I have been taking Cole to The Little Gym since he was about 6 months old.  It was one of the first things we started doing when we first moved to Knoxville.  We had nowhere to go and not much to do without knowing anyone that we started a little class and have been going every since.  I'm still friends with two women we met in the baby class :)

At age 3 kids move out of the "mommy and me" classes into a regular class where just the kids go in with the teacher and parents wait outside.  Cole has been going on days that I have been at work this year so it was really fun for me to go to their end of season "show" and see him in his new class and all he had learned. 

I love that this class is a place he can release energy, learn to follow directions, gain strength and coordination and have fun with friends.  Cole loves it!  (P.S. - there are more boys in his class, they just happened not to be there this particular week;)