Five

our sweet, smart, sassy, silly, spirited little girl turned 5 on november 11th!  if anyone finds that hard to believe, it doesn't even compare to how i feel about it.  i honestly can remember the day she was born with such great detail.  she came into our life after a hard few years of trying to grow our family and i suddenly realized exactly why God chose to make us wait.  everybody always says "there is a reason" and sure enough, she was our reason.  never doubt God.  he knows best.  and he knew exactly what he was doing by choosing her for our family.  

for her birthday this year, we decided to have a shared birthday party with gianna's friend and classmate, gracie.  they share a birthday and if we combined it, we could invite all the girls in their class and kill 2 birds with one stone, right? 

the girls decided on a unicorn party and so gracie's mom, lisa and i divided up the party prep and it was so much fun!

i made some unicorn ice cream...thank the good Lord for pinterest, right?

and i was in charge of the cake too.  i found an inspiration picture and did my best to recreate it.  i have to say, it did not look the same as the picture, but i think it turned out okay.
also, we found out after we sent out invitations that the girls had one more classmate with the same birthday, so isabella was added to the cake too!  can you believe there are 3 girls in one class with the same birthday?  isn't that crazy? 

her birthday balloon surprise...

someone was super excited to open presents in the morning.

roman picked out this present for her and she was so excited to receive it.

sleepy, messy hair pictures are my fave. 

ready for school on her big day!

it was also veteran's day, so they had a flag parade in music class.

here are all 3 birthday girls in their class.

after her classroom celebration, lisa and i headed to decorate for the party.

look how beautiful all three birthday girls are!

and this is gianna's friend, emma, who had a birthday the day before...whew...so many birthdays!

not real sure what is happening here, but they sure are goofy. 

they played pin the horn on the unicorn...

and decorated their own horn. 

we were so happy that gianna's friend lucy could come to the party too.  she really misses her now that they aren't in class together every day. 

not real sure what is happening here...

one of gianna's gifts was an instax camera, which spits out the polaroid pictures right away.  so we had lots of pictures like this with the girls showing off their horns and unicorn tails that lisa made!

she got to open a few more presents that night when we got home. 

and the next morning, she opened her present from aunt colleen, uncle josh and the girls.  it was full of balloons with surprises in them.  the kids loved looking in them to see the surprises before they popped the balloons!

and aunt hettie came to her soccer game the next day and brought her this talking kitty.  she was pumped. 

it was quite a day and i'm reminded of how truly blessed i am to have her in my life.  she brings me so much joy and laughter and i adore her.  just as we felt on the day she was born, gianna = God is gracious. 

Mimi is Retired!

well, it's official.  mimi is retired.  which means that she can come down more frequently...yay!

she came down a couple weeks ago and we kept her busy!

roman had a baseball tournament in walterboro that weekend, and aunt hettie came too!

i think that the thing they most looked forward to was having a mimi sleepover.  with roman's new bunkbed, that meant they could ALL fit!

aunt maddy drove down later in the week so that she could drive mimi back home.  it was so nice to have them both here!

Halloween 2016

halloween fell on a monday night this year, but that didn't keep us from having tons of fun!

we had a grim reaper and merida (brave) this year.

our neighbors have this great sign and i love getting their pictures with it. 

we even found our friend, adeline, who was already enjoying one of her treats.

meanwhile, back at the house, the boys were having fun scaring everyone...

the kids also got to dress up at school too.  gianna was shine (a genie) and roman was a phillies player (duh). 

Hurrivacuvacation

back in october, we had a little unexpected evacuvacation for hurricane matthew.  i have to say, we've lived here for almost 10 years and we've never had to evacuate.  it's been close before, but they always seem to turn.  and, we were hoping this one would do the same, but it didn't.  so, we watched the path it was taking and then we heeded the governor's orders and got the heck outta there.  

and you learn a few things with a hurricane evacuation...like...the kennel doesn't have enough room for ALL the dogs in beaufort county, so your dog gets to experience the road trip too. 

and boy oh boy, was he excited!

he did finally calm down after about an hour.

it was pretty surreal as we were driving away to see barricades and drones and tons of national guard and police and state farm trucks. 

when we finally got to our hotel in atlanta, we were pretty much pooped out.

the next day, we decided to go to the georgia aquarium.

i ignored my claustrophobia and climbed in the tunnel with the kids to get a close up view of the penguins.  this one wanted a selfie and to wave hello to you.  just kidding, he is scratching his armpit wingpit with his beak. 

the beluga whales were so beautiful, but they were staying near the surface because it was feeding time.

this seal kept swimming in circles around and around and roman wanted a picture with him, so this was the best we could get.

we found nemo

this big ugly fish just stayed right above roman's head

there were 3 nurse sharks and a few large manta rays in this tank and they were super cool to see.

every time we are in an arcade, gianna always wants to do the racing games.

luckily, we stayed at a hotel that had a basketball court and the boys pretty much lived out there the whole time.

we left super early (3:30am) to head back and try to gain entry into our county, so the kids were getting pretty silly in the car.

this was our view for most of the day.  we got to the checkpoint at 8:30am, waited for governor haley to hold her 10am press conference to see if we would be allowed back in.  we weren't.  so, we went and found some food, gas and a bathroom (about 45 mins away) and then drove back to the checkpoint.  and we sat there ALL day. 

the kids were so great.  they didn't complain and they even had to use the bathroom outside. 

can you tell we were ready to be home?  at 6:00pm, they finally let us back in and we raced straight home. 

we didn't have power, but we had water and we were grateful to be in our own home, in our own beds.  the kids still had some power left on the ipad, so it wasn't so bad...

the next night, we still didn't have power and most of the restaurants were still closed, so we headed to heather's house because they had power and food.  and entertainment...

when we finally got power back, we headed to the grocery store to stock up on, well, everything.  we also saw our friend, jason, cruising down the road on his tractor.  come to find out, he rode it all the way onto the island and spent the day helping clear trees.  we have awesome friends and neighbors...

the kids had the opportunity to help do some cleanup at their school too.

we learned a lot from this experience, but the thing i learned the most is that we are not in control. God has this.  and i am forever grateful for His goodness.