Rewind, Recap, & Revive! - Part 1

Wow, I can't believe how much of a slacker I am. Wait. Maybe I can.

Anyway, I've been meaning to revive this blog for a while now, and as most of you already know, we have a lot happening for our family right now. So, this is my attempt to try to Rewind back to 2012 where I left off, Recap some of our highlights, and Revive this blog! I want this to be our family journal for us to look back on years from now and smile. I have a horrible memory, so documenting is something that I really need to focus on while my children are young and growing SO fast.

Amelie turned THREE!

Amazing photography by Michelle L Morris Photography

Here's Halloween and her 'Under the Sea' Party!

Here are some pictures from November/December 2012

Amelie Faith, just turned 3, Sweet as Pumpkin Pie!

Stacey & Frank's wedding on a cruise ship

Making her very first ginger bread house at Grammy's

Admiring Nana & Pop's beautiful Christmas tree

Waiting so patiently to open her gifts

Amelie the explorer

Daddy lovins

All dressed up for Christmas Dinner at Aunt Lucie & Uncle Tad's

Singing 'Happy Birthday' to Jesus with her cousins.

Sorry, Reagan, this was the best I got!

So, that was the remainder of 2012 in a nutshell. 

To be continued…

chatter box

We have a chatter box on our hands! Everywhere we go we get comments from strangers about how well Amelie talks for a (not even) 3 year old. I don't know if she's a genius (I would like to think so!) or if it's because we never baby-talked her, or if it's just a fluke and it's nothing we did at all, but she is talking like a 5 year old—going on 10! Every day she amazes us with her vocabulary, diction, pronunciation, memorization, and the context in which she puts certain words.

MOST of the time she gets words right, but in some cases she says things and it's just way too cute to correct! (Like when she used to say "oposis" instead of "octopus") For example:

Me: "Amelie, what is this?"
Amelie: "a count-a-lator




















Me: "Amelie, what is this thing called?"

   

Amelie: "a loop-a-loop"

I just think it's so cute. She's probably tired of me asking her to say both of those things, but I can't help it.

We are gearing up for Amelie's 3rd birthday party and we are so excited! Can't wait to share all the cute details :)

Charlotte explorations

We headed downtown to explore today and had a great time with Shawn and Addison.

We walked around and then had some pizza at an Italian restaurant and then checked out the kids museum/library, Imaginon (awesome place, would love to go explore more).

dancin'

fresh fish at a market

addison and amelie

amelie goofin'

loving the oversized bugs at the Imaginon Museum & Library

qwerty playground

always.

the light rail

Downtown Charlotte is really nice... Reminded me a lot of Orlando, just on a bigger scale and the weather was beautiful.

'Twas a good day :)

//These pics were taken on my phone and then edited in pixlr-o-matic app.//

20 months

(I was just going through my blogs and saw that this one was never published :( I have no idea how I missed that, but here it is… almost a year overdue!)

20 months already… holy moly! It makes me think about how Reagan used to tell everyone that she was "20 months old" when you asked her how old she was (she was actually 2 at the time)… so funny, that girl!

These past few months have been amazing! Ant finished his Spring quarter and we immediately headed out on our annual tour of FL.

We visited Ant's mom, Grammy in Spring Hill…

Then, I took a couple days to myself and headed to Orlando to see some friends…

This is Ms. Olivia Grace. She is precious and belongs to this pretty lady:

This is my sweet friend, Alicia. We met on our trip to Sierra Leone, Africa in 2006.

I also hung out with my friends Minh-thi (and her chunkers, Miles) and Hazel, but surprisingly, I didn't take any pictures :(

Then, we headed up to OP to stay with mom and dad for a while…

We had a fantastic time and didn't want to come home.

There are more pictures on our flickr if you want to see them… go HERE.

Amelie's 2nd Birthday - Part One

I know, I know… I'm almost a half a year late. OOPS. Better late than never, right?!

First of all, I want to thank the amazing Michelle for our fantastic pictures again this year. She knows how to make us look really good :) She blogged about our session HERE and you can watch a video slideshow that she created HERE. And as if that weren't enough, I'm going to post a few of my faves here anyway.

Her birthday theme was vintage circus and she was the cutest little ringmaster ever! I'm so happy with how her costume came out and she loved it.

That's it for part one… next up is the party!