This past weekend, Papa John, Mimi, Aunt Ame and Cameron came to visit us. We had so much fun watching the cousins play together! We went to the duck pond, had a sword fights with pinwheels, played in the pool in the backyard, bounced on the bed and the best part of the weekend was when we went to the hot air balloon festival in Decatur on Saturday night. They had about 20 balloons in a huge field with a band playing and then when it got dark all the balloons would light up at the same time, it was beautiful! At first Christopher and Cameron weren't sure what to think of the big balloons breathing fire, but it didn't take long for them to get used to it. There was a huge Energizer bunny balloon that was passing out bunny ears that the kids looked great in. We are definitely going to go back next year! (Hopefully Brandon won't be on call that weekend and won't have to miss anything!)

Yeah! We just found out that Kyle and Caroline are going to have another boy! It is going to be so much fun to have the boys all playing together! Congratulations!! It's been busy around here the last month and it's been a lot of fun too. We've been to Botanical Gardens to play in the water, played with the neighbors, celebrated Mother's Day, had our first golf lesson, recently had our first stomach virus (no photos of that pleasantness!) and finished school. Here are a few photos to show you what we've been doing. Enjoy!

We just returned from a weekend in Montgomery and boy were we busy! We arrived early Friday evening and met Brandon's parents at the zoo. His mom was putting on a walk/run Saturday morning to raise money for the Arthritis Foundation and we wanted to help set up. Christopher loved seeing the animals too. Saturday morning we woke up and headed straight back to the zoo to cheer on everyone who showed up to walk or run. Christopher had a blast and we happened to get to the chimps right when they were let out for the day and it was so funny to watch them chase each other around fighting over the oranges they were given for breakfast. We left right before the event ended to make sure Christopher had a nap and later we actually had to wake him up so we could head to Nicholas' birthday party. The kids had so much fun playing together and even more fun once they got into the cake! Saturday afternoon was spent napping and relaxing in the backyard. We let Christopher play in the sprinkler since we knew there was no way to keep him out of it. (He would live outside in the rain if we'd let him!) Sunday we headed to church and then went to watch the Montgomery Biscuits play. Christopher LOVED it! He had more fun walking around and playing and seeing all the people there. He actually watched part of the game too! We left after the 10th inning because he was barely awake and was in desperate need of a nap. Thankfully we didn't have to return home until Monday so we all crashed Sunday night. Needless to say it was a wonderfully fun and exciting weekend for the three of us and the rest of the week will be spent recovering.

We had a wonderful Easter this year! It started on Tuesday when the neighborhood kids/moms got together to die Easter eggs. Luke and Ava did a great job making beautiful eggs while Christopher, Isabela and Lani played around on the floor with each other. On Sunday we woke up really early to go to church and let Christopher play with his new trike the Easter bunny gave him. (He's making his car sound in the photo.) We came home to make sure Christopher got a good nap in before lunch and after he woke up headed to Luke and Lani's house for the Easter egg hunt. Christopher just stood in the yard watching Luke and Ava run around collecting eggs and then he decided he'd go try it out and ended up finding a few eggs himself. After the hunt was over everyone came over to our house for lunch. We had quite a feast of pork tenderloin, ham, deviled eggs and much more. After we'd visited and had the carrot cake that Ava and her mom made everyone went to their homes for an afternoon nap. Then everyone gathered again at Themis and Yvonne's house for a huge Greek feast. There were lots of people and food, most of which had been eaten by the time we got there (Christopher slept for almost 3 hours!), but what was left was tasty! They had a lamb on a spit and all kinds of other Greek foods (including our chips and salsa, not very Greek, but what we were asked to bring). It was so much fun! To top it off, Christopher decided to try walking around more and is doing it all on his own. Now we are just waiting for him to officially quit crawling and just run everywhere! It was a long, but very fun and exciting day. We've already talked about doing it all over again next year.

So we had all ths warm weather and decided that Christopher needed a swimming pool. We headed off to the store and bought him a pool and some water shoes and went home very excited. Brandon takes it out back to set it up and before we know it Christopher has already crawled in and is sitting in the middle of the pool with no idea as to what is happening. I bring him back inside, kicking and screaming because he's missing something, to put on his bathing suit and shoes. By now it has started to fill up and if Christoper could run and jump he would have done a cannon ball into the half inch water that was already in the pool. He had more fun playing with the hose and watching the water, it was really cute! Unfortunately March isn't quite warm enough to go swimming, and we knew this, but thought we'd give it a go anyway. After a while Christopher had goose bumps all over and we took him out to warm him up, which didn't make him very happy. We waited a day and it wasn't any warmer so we emptied it and decided we'd try again next month!

We just want to congratulate our friends with new babies! Trey & Jennifer Henig welcomed a little boy into the world on March 16th and Matt & Alice Alexander had a little girl on March 30th. They started the next wave of little ones on the way and we can't wait to meet them! We'll keep you all posted on the next of our friends and their additions. : )

Christopher turned 1 years old this Saturday and we were so excited! We can't believe how quickly the first year came and went! We woke up an hour later than usual (his gift to us) and he was so happy to be awake and playing. It was almost like he knew it was his birthday. He played really hard and then crashed for his morning nap. Uncle Kyle, Aunt Caroline and Hunter came down from Nashville for the day and helped us celebrate by going out for pizza. We were going to go to the lake downtown and feed the ducks after lunch, but Christopher just wasn't his normal happy self so we headed home to find out he had a fever. So we waited until the Tylenol kicked in and once he felt better we pulled out the birthday cake. At first he wasn't sure what to do with it, but he soon figured out it was pretty yummy and dove right in. He was so messy the only way to clean him up was to put him in the bathtub. Afterwards he crashed for a long afternoon nap. Overall we think it was a wonderful day and we still can't believe that we have such a wonderful little boy!! God has blessed us more than we could ever imagine with our Christopher.