Holiday Joy!

What a beautiful Holiday Season is unfolding! We've been quite busy and unfortunately my blog has suffered! Nonetheless, we have been having a wonderful time.

Thanksgiving was challenging being away from our families, but at the same time was a blessing to get to spend time with dear friends and their beautiful children (all 4 of them). We were quite a crew together as we bustled about for a week in Blue Ridge, Ga! Their sweet children just pitched in and helped with our little ones. I realized there is a certain spirit in children from large families. It seems like a,"we're all in this together", outlook! We were grateful! It was so nice and warm the first part of the week and then turned intensely cold right after we had our Thanksgiving meal on the deck- while enjoying our mountain views. About an hour after we ate, we were pulling everything inside and starting the fire. Black Friday was really cold as we shopped and heard the Christmas musicians on the sidewalks of the little town! It was as if scheduled, the Christmas season arrived with the weather playing its part! We were all bundled up with gloves, hats and scarves. A change for all our Southern kids!

We got back in town and decided to go get our live tree before Darby had to head back to Tuscaloosa for her stretch of classes and finals. (after cleaning up a huge mess of scattered Costco sized Special K with berries cereal that the twins decided to crunch all over the kitchen floor). Shane, Darby, and Jamie held up trees for the rest of us to pick from! We had a great time and the babies were wide-eyed from that point on with regard to all the Christmas traditions coming their way! Little Annabelle was a bit uncertain about things being rearranged in the den to accomodate the tree. She tried to move her little toy box back to the spot I had cleared for it. Fortunately, her curiosity over what was happening won out and she seemed to accept the change fairly quickly :) She and Cade both have been so excited to see all the decorations go up and are doing well with them all so far (after we changed out one entire tree with shatterproof ornaments). I think only three things have gotten broken. A lot fewer than I had expected for 6 trees and 2 toddlers!  I pulled out the cloth nativity set I had made for Darby and Shane at least 15 years ago and let the twins arrange it and play with it every day. Annabelle can tell you about Baby Jesus and Mary, but Joseph may not be pronounceable until next year!

I do love Christmas and they seem to as well. One of our favorite gifts to ourselves this year has been the recordable storybooks form Hallmark. We shipped "The First Christmas" down to Florida and Ma Carrie, Jamie's Daddy, and Susan took turns recording pages of the story. We all cried when I picked it back up from the post office and opened the first page to hear sweet Ma Carrie's voice. Then Sue Sue's and Daddy's! We are so excited that the babies will have that forever! We took "The Night Before Christmas" out to Alabama and had my Grandmother, Mom, and Daddy record it. It's so precious! So thankful for our families!

The little ones have so enjoyed all the festivities. They have been helping me bake and decorate. Especially Annabelle. She scares us sometimes too! The other day, she opened a cabinet in the kitchen, got out my mini chopper, saw the cord attached to it, walked over to where I plug the vacuum in, and plugged it in! It has a polarized plug, so she had to flip it over and then plug it in. She then pressed the buttons and "chopped" her imaginary food! Oh my, we were just watching with our mouths open. Needless to say, we made sure that child lock was one she couldn't open. She also helped me change out the breakable ornaments as I mentioned before. She can thread a hook through a needle and not hurt herself. It amazed me. Thank goodness they weren't really sharp ones. She insisted on arranging them where she wanted them to go..even if they were all bunched up in one area. I loved it.

There has been so much happening that it will take me several blogs to update and remember it all.

Annabelle has gotten in the habit of helping me tuck Cade in for his nap during the day. She is so cute...I leave the room first and she backs out, pulling the door closed, while blowing Cade kisses and telling him "night night". She has to have her "pap pap" and blanket to sleep herself!  In fact at bedtime, as Jamie is taking them up to go to sleep, she takes an inventory by asking him, "pap pap?", wa wa?, blankie"? All the things she likes..then she reminds him to brush her teeth...don't dare change her little routine! She'll frown and stick out her bottom lip. So funny. She has been cracking us up. Tonight, James asked Cade if he had a stinky diaper. Before we knew it, she had him cornered by the toy cubbies and while standing behind him, she pulled up his shirt and  pulled out his pants. She then looked down into his diaper to see. We laughed so hard I thought Cade might not be the only one in need of dry undergarments!

Cade is just the funniest little fellow! He has learned how to gargle! So we hear him gargling his milk, his water, his slobber, just about anything he can get in his mouth! He's quite pleased with himself, it would seem, by the grand smile on his face as he finishes! Pure satisfaction! Boy item # 25, check!

He's been climbing out of his bed and doesn't make single sound while he does it. He just appears in the hall! Guess its time to convert the cribs soon! He has also learned how to go down the stairs standing while holding on to the bannister spindles some time back. The other day he ventured to holding on to the top of the handrail. I turned around to find him hanging from it with both hands holding on and little feet dangling. Oops! Guess he wasn't quite tall enough when he tried to step to the lower step that way. I can't explain how many times a day they make me chuckle! Sometimes it's at the sheer amazement of how much work comes with them, but how I can't imagine anything I'd enjoy doing more. The sales calls and meetings that filled my days before they came sure seem different from this amazing world I find myself in now...and oh how those fierce competitors (and clients) would laugh to hear my version of Ba Ba Black Sheep! ha ha!! At least they'd know I'm versatile!

They both are picking up a ton of words. Annabelle is stringing two and three words together! She says, "I got boo boo",  and "mama's flowers (cacas), "my daddy" and lots of others! Sha and Cade both love horses. As we passed some in a pasture in Blue Ridge, she would say "neigh, neigh" over and over in a really high sweet voice! It was so cute!

They had fun delivering neighborhood Christmas goodies in their wagon a couple of weeks ago. They  just go along with whatever we put them up to. Last night they, (and us all), enjoyed carolers! Sweet Stella, Stephen, and Samuel came to our doorstep and sang several Christams carols as they delivered yummy homemade treats that their precious mother had been up baking through the middle of the night the other evening. That woman runs off energizer rechargeable batteries for sure! :) It was so wonderful. I got it on video ;) We are so thankful for the incredible neighbors God has given us! What a joy to watch these little ones ( who we consider our other children) grow over the years. I looked at them and remebered when the youngest was born. It was hard to believe he was standing their ( or maybe dancing around) singing! Blessings blessings!

Shane is all finished with the semester and did very well! He's worked so hard this year and it's great to see him succeed! He is still the greatest object of afffection for the twins. Now that he's on break, he'll have to keep up his daily routine of getting them up from their naps even though he normally did it when he got home everyday from school! He's a tremendous treasure! He keeps us rollling with his hysterical comments just at the perfect moments! It's so fun to have his comic relief and help!

Abigail has been doing so great! Physical theray has now been bumped up to everyy week as she's showing that she's really close to sitting! Her therapist, Melissa, still claims she'll be breaking all her records. So far we're still on track developmentally as a "non Down's" child would be. It's so fun to see her show us how strong and determined she is. As her Aunt Sylvia said, "she's the cure for...everything" She had a great report from the opthamologist last week. None of the problems associated with Downs were evident. She doesn't even require a prescription for eyeglasses ( not that they put them on the babies ;) Prasie the Lord! He's been so good to us! My vision was so bad even as a child! I was legally blind- until I had lasik. We meet so many others in what we consider the Down's Family, who have had such different stories. Who knows what we will face, but we'll be thankful for each blessing and good report and pray over the rest!

We had such a heartfilling time in Alabama over this past weekend! Earlier in the week, I had gone to BAMA to help move Darby's things home for the year. Since she'll be studying abroad in the spring semester, everything had to be moved out. I took my niece, Kourtney with me while my parents and my sister watched the twins, Abigail, and her little one, Allie-as she and Kourntey have moved back from Colorado. We had a lot of fun and the twins loved playing with their cousin. My poor parents looked a bit tired upon our return. I can't imagine why. ;) Anyway, Shane wrapped up his classes and we all headed out for the weekend! We had everyone there and just really enjoyed tons of good times, good food, fun games, lots of giggles, laughter and little feet running through the house. Even our dogs enjoyed playing with my parents dogs. It amazed me that some Christmases I have tried so hard to make things special with so many "touches" and have wound up tired and frustrated, while this one just happened on its own and was more wonderful than anything we could've planned. There was a sense of peace and togetherness. One our funnest events was letting the kids and dogs all run around the side yard enjoying the sunshine and picking up pecans! Annabelle refers to them as "mecans- long e". She must've spilled them out of her bucket 5 or 6 times. The warm sun felt so good and with just pecans to recover on our "to do" list, the day was quite restful! Mom even brought baby Abigail out to soak it up. Contentment- that was it. I also got to spend time with my grandmother as I had to use her oven to bake my casseroles. We shared memories of my papaw over my cup of coffee and smells of sweet potato casserole! Sweet times!

Shane and Darby got time in with their cousins! I love all my nieces so much! They're beautiful girls, (young women) of whom I'm very proud! They give the best hugs too! LOL!

Its already after 11pm and I better recharge! Love to all!