The best Christmas present ever!!!

Three years ago tonight at 8:00 pm Jimmy and I welcomed our precious little girl into the world. Libby was a stubborn thing and didn't want to come out so we had to do a c-section after about 24 hours of labor. She was a big girl weighing in at 8 lbs 4oz and 21 in long. She was SO sweet right off the bat and for the most part was a really good baby.

Since that night she has blessed our lives and our families lives SO much. She is so kind hearted but definitely knows what she wants and when she wants it. She is very social smart and can figure pretty much anything out. She loves movies of all kinds but her favorites are Veggie Tales and Shrek right now. Her biggest fault however is night time... it is quit a struggle at our house because Libby never gets tired!! I always enjoy hearing what her newest reason for not wanting to stay in bed is. So far I have gotten the typical I'm thirsty and hungry and I have gotten the not so typical my teeth hurt? haha.

This has been the best and quickest 3 years of my life and I cannot wait to see what this year has in store for us, I have a feeling it is going to be a BIG year :)

Libby, I love you more than words can describe and I feel so blessed that God chose me to be your mommy. You are so sweet and loving and I can see that you just have a heart that melts for people and that you already have such a love for God. Happy birthday sweet heart you will forever be my BEST Christmas present ever!!

Christmas time with a 3 year old...

Libby is loving Christmas time this year!!! She has her own pink tree in her room that she got to decorate and every time we go to the store we have to get something new to put on it. She got bored with putting our tree up, but loved putting all the ornaments on it. She liked to hold up all the special ornaments and me telling her the story of how we got them or who made them... etc.

She definitely gets the whole Santa thing this year. Every time we are in the store and she wants something I always say "what do you need to do" and she always says "ask santa clause!!" haha its actually kind of nice!!! She has seen him 2 times and both times walked right up and sat on his lap and was SO excited about it!!

Last year we had an elf on the shelf come visit us and this year he came back. At first his name was miss piggy but then libby told me he changed it to strawberry cake!! So strawberry cake hides in a new place every morning and Libby has had so much fun finding him as soon as she wakes up. Her favorite candy is mints and so last week she found our elf hiding in the mint jar and she just thought that was the funniest thing ever!

We have been so busy that we just got started on our holiday crafts today. We painted a Christmas tree picture and did a Christmas hand wreath, which turned out SO cute!! She loves any kind of arts and crafts and I cannot wait to do a ginger bread house with her. We went tonight and bought a bunch of stuff to make cookies and other holiday treats so that will be tomorrow night.

She has really gotten into the holiday movies to. She loves the Grinch but her favorite one is the Santa Clause, with Tim Allen which mommy and daddy just happen to love to. I tried to watch the Polar Express with her the other night because neither one of us had ever seen it but I think it was a little to scary because she made me turn it off after 10 minutes haha.

There should be MANY more posts to come in the next couple weeks because Libby's birthday is just around the corner which involves 2 birthday parties and then whatever we decide to do on her actual birthday. And then 2 days later we will have all of our Christmas fun :) I love my baby girl and all the many memories we are creating together!!

It's a girl :)

So we found out on November 17th that Jimmy and I are going to welcome another sweet baby girl into the world on April 11th. I was So excited to find out and the fact that everyone felt like it was boy kind of made me have that feeling to. We walked into the room and the ultrasound tech went straight to find out what it is!! She looked at me and said "Well, did you keep all of Libbys clothes?" And I said "Yes... is it a girl?" and she said " yes it is"!! Libby just lit up with excitement. She wanted a sister So bad!! We have had the name Marlee picked out since I found out I was pregnant. My grandpas name (my moms dad) was Marlon and I was very close to him when he passed away 5 years ago. I was playing around with family names and then it just hit me to name her Marlee :) Her middle name, Lynn, is jimmy's mom and sisters middle name so that was something I had planned all along. It is So much fun to start getting her room ready and to pick out bedding (monkeys) and to start buying clothes. Libby finds all kinds of stuff in the store to buy Marlee (which gets us in trouble with daddy).

My belly is getting bigger and bigger everyday!! Marlee moves like CRAZY and I love it!! feeling her move is such a blessing from God. We have less than 4 months to go which is so crazy to me. I am so excited and cannot wait to have 2 sweet baby girls!!

Our sweet Sophia....

On October 27th EARLY in the morning my cousin and her husband welcomed their sweet baby girl Sophia Lowe Cassetty into the world. My cousin and I are very close so i felt like I was getting a niece. Sophia was very stubborn in getting here so when she finally decided to make her appearance we couldn't contain ourselves!! She is so perfect in every way and it has been so funny to watch libby with her baby cousin. I think in Libby's mind she feels like she is 10. She thinks she

hold Sophie and pick her up just like anyone else, so we have to keep a close eye on her. She loves Sophie so much though. She loves to give her her bottle and she HATES when she is fussy, it makes her so sad. It just shows me that when Marlee gets here she is going to be such a good big sister!! Before Ashley had her baby I had matching cousin t- shirts made for the girls, don't they look SO cute :) Well I can't wait to watch Sophie grow up and be apart of her life, she is such a sweet girl already and such a blessing :)

Nana and Pop Pop zoo time :)

So of course one of the most important things to do in Louisville around Halloween is go to the Louisville zoo. They do a big Halloween party and we have taken Libby every year and its always So much fun, but of course this year she really liked it!! She was Strawberry shortcake and my mother in law and I made her costumes by ourselves this year and it could not have been any cuter!! She loved getting dressed up and loved getting candy even more!! At each station she wanted them to put the candy in her hand and not in her bag so that she could see what she got! haha. One of the biggest differences I noticed in her this year was how excited she was to see the dressed up characters. She couldn't wait to get her picture taken with the princesses, Toy Story gang, and Shrek!! She loved the zoo and of course by the time we got home she had almost eaten all her candy she got that night. haha, its okay Halloween is only one time a year :

Some much needed daddy time!!

So Jimmy has worked for UPS for the past 5 years and to say that they are good to him would be an understatement. He gets about 4 weeks of vacation a year and with his job change and everything he hadn't really taken that much of his time. So when he found out he had 6 days left he took every Tuesday off for the last 6 weeks!! So if you combine that with my schedule all three off us were off together ALL day on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday for 6 weeks!!!

We took full advantage of this because we know that the days of just the 3 of us are few and far between!! So the first thing we went and did was a good ole trip to Hubers farm. Libby has never been there and we were So excited to take her!! She had so much fun playing on the swing set and feeding the fish!! But of course what she loved the most was picking a pumpkin. She looked so close at every pumpkin and of course it had to be HER choice!! She picked a good one though :)

So the next place we were off to was the Louisville Science Center. Libby had also never been here, so we were very excited to take her. The featured exhibit right now is about colors and they had it where they could paint by themselves, which is right up libbys ally!!! She had a lot of fun in the kids place to, playing with the water, and by the looks of these pictures you can tell that daddy had just as much fun if not more than Libby!! haha. We ended the trip that day with going to gattiland, also a Libby first. She also loved that and we got a bunch of tickets that got her a volleyball and a couple bracelets!!

Why I haven't been blogging.....

Well I think this picture sums it all up. For those who don't know yes, we are going to be having another baby in April of 2012. We are so very excited and I couldn't wait to blog about it and tell everyone the story of how we found out and how we told Libby but at that time I was getting sick about 5 times a day, while caring for a 3 year old and working full time!!! So the blogging had to wait until now, but better late than never.

So Jimmy and I had decided that we were both getting baby fever and that another baby was definitely in out near future. Also for those who don't know I had taken up running last spring and was really loving it. I have always wanted to run a mini and I was going to do so in September. So it was our plan for me to be pregnant right after that. Lets see what words are important there OUR PLAN haha... so on August 5th we found out it was Gods plan for me to be pregnant before September. As disappointed as I was that I wouldn't get to run it I was even more excited that I was going to have another baby :) Now also for those who don't know I have a history of many miscarriages so while some pregnant woman can continue running, I cannot :( But it is SO worth it!!!

I was kind of dreading the 1st trimester because with Libby I was SO sick!! It started about week 5 and went through week 13, and it was horrible!!! But with this one I hit 6 weeks and still hadn't gotten sick so I thought I might be in the clear... wrong!! Jimmy and I took a short trip to Gattlinburg in August and it was there, of course, that the sickness started. So from that moment until about 7 weeks later I was throwing up pretty much all the time. It was pretty rough but it seemed to go by pretty fast and at the 12 week mark I just woke up one day and it went away :)

So on to what everyone really wants to know... telling Libby. We had an ultrasound at 7 weeks and the baby looked great but we still decided to wait until my next appointment to tell Libby just because of my history. So we went to the doctor at 11 weeks and the heartbeat sounded great so we rushed home to tell our baby girl!! She was very excited but the first thing she said was that she wanted to hold HER!! Yes her... Libby swears this baby is a girl and if you tell her its a boy (a mistake some have made) she starts screaming crying. So either she is going to be one happy camper or we are going to have some convincing to do!! She is going to be one amazing big sister!! She already tells my belly goodnight, if she is to rough around my belly she says "sorry baby sister", and she has even started saving things for her baby bother/sister like her old blankets and a pack of wipes she found haha. She talks about who gets to hold it first (of course her) and wear its going to sleep (she thinks in her bed), it's just so sweet how she pretty much understands it and is just as excited as we are!! I'm so thankful that God has blessed us with the oppportunity of seeing her so thrilled about something that is so special to us.

I thank God everyday that he has blessed us with one amazingly healthy child that is so sweet and loving and blesses my life everyday. I thank him that we had a very successful 1st trimester and I feel so blessed to be able to bring another child into this world.

We have another doctors appointment next week and if everything continues to go the way it's going now I should be able to blog more often :) Hopefully we will be finding out what we are having in about 5 weeks which is SO exciting!!

Thank you all for taking the time to read this and definitely thank you to all my friends and family for your prayers and support over the past 4 months, it has meant SO much to us :)

I am back!!

Well I know you all are wondering where I have been since I haven't blogged in over a month. There are a couple of reasons to this, over the past 2 months we have had some pretty big changes in our life that have led to having absolutly NO extra time. First of all Jimmy got a promotion!! We are so very proud of him and he has been loving his new job, but he works 2nd shift so libby and I have and I have had most of the evenings to ourselves. Since this is when I did most of my blogging you can see how being by myself with a 2 year old that needs to be fed, bathed, dressed and put to bed, can put a damper on my blogging plans.

The second thing has been the massive amounts of running that I have been doing. I just all of the sudden got the urge to start running so I have been doing that about 4 times a week, which has been taken up a lot of my extra time. Then on top of all this I had a very stressful day one day and sat my camera ( the one I carry with me and take all of my blogging pictures with) on top of my car and drove away so that camera is now in 1,000 pieces on the Watterson Expressway!! So needless to say its been a crazy couple of months, but I am back now :)

Libby has been growing like crazy and we are reminded everyday of what a blessing she is to our lives. She is becoming such a mommies girl, she wants to me hold her and rock her all the time. The other day she asked me to rock her to sleep and I asked her what she was going to do when mommy decided to have another baby and I had to rock that baby and she said "Libby can sit on one leg, and baby can sit on another leg and you can rock both". She is so sweet and such our little problem solver. Her favorite songs are "Joy Joy in my heart" and "5 little monkies". She loves to swim this summer, with much help her puddle jumper float. She loves to help mommy stretch and work out and it is adorable!! Here are some random pictures of my sweet little girl. Be sure to keep checking the blog because I will be catching up on the past 2 months events :)

Crazy weekend

We have just been So crazy busy over the past couple of days so I'm just warning you that this is going to be a long post. Jimmy got 3 days off since he was starting his new job this week. So we were very excited to have 3 whole days with him :)

We started the weekend off by going to the bats game Saturday night. We had never been before and didn't really know how Libby would do. She LOVED it, well not so much the baseball game but the food, carousel, and playground... oh well she is a girl ;)

Then on Monday we went to Jimmys parents to celebrate Abigail (jimmys sister) 12th birthday. Libby wanted to open all of abigails presents and her being the great aunt she is, she let her. She actually blew out 9/10 birthday candles to which was pretty impressive for a 2 year old. I was so glad we got to spend Abigails special day with her and it is so crazy to me the she is already 12!!

We ended our weekend by going to the zoo on tuesday with some of our good friends from church. Libby has been to the zoo this year but she has never been to the water park, and she loved it! Her and cole had so much fun playing together. It is so cute to see libby grow so close to her friends and see them laugh together, I love it!!

Well to say the least we had an amazing week cram packed with lots of family time! JImmy started his new job this week and is loving it so far. We are so proud of him and are so excited to get to spend sunday and monday all day together as a family ;) God has been so good to us and I am so grateful for the wonderful ways he has been working in our lives !!

Libbys 1st dentist appointment

So Libby is 2 1/2 now and during my last trip to the dentist I asked when I should bring her in for her first cleaning. He told me they like to see them around 2 so I went ahead and set her up and appointment. I had a feeling it was going to be a rough time because ever since our hospital stay Libby has been so scared of anybody with Dr infront of their name haha.

So we worked with Libby the next week and talked all about the dentist. I let her clean my teeth like the dentist and we talked about how it didn't hurt and she practiced opening her mouth wide so he could count all her teeth. Libbys appointment was at 2:00 and she brushed her teeth 7 times that day before we left ha ha. She had already had a nap. I had done everything I could to make this day go smoothly now we just had to wait and see :) Libby brought 2 purses and her disney princesses camera with her. She seemed very excited!!

This is her with her 2 purses and camera waiting for the dentist. It was So cute!! So when we went back she saw the room and the chair and kind of started crying a little but I reminded her of everything we talked about and she seemed to calm down a little bit.

The dentist walked in and he was perfect with Libby!! He started asking her about brushing her teeth and talked about her purses and he camera and he got on her good side right away!! So he allowed me to hold her back in the chair because I told him that if I didn't she would freak!! So he layed us back and started looking at her teeth and... she started crying, BUT she only cried for a minute and the whole time she was crying she stayed completley still and didn't move her head, which was great!! After he looked at her] teeth he informed me that she has ALL her teeth in. I was very excited but kind of sad because this is just another one her baby things thats going away :(

So after he did that he told her he was going to clean her teeth with bubble gum, well that was it she was fine after that!! ha ha. She let him clean her teeth while I held the spit sucker (which he called Mr. Thirsty) and then he rinsed it out. He sat us up and we were all done. She was so proud of herself and so excited when she saw that she take to take home a goody bag and pick out a toy from the treasure chest!!

I was SO proud of Libby, she did such a good job and now she has very pretty teeth to go along with her very pretty smile :)

Indianapolis Water Park 2011

So for the past 2 years our family has gone to Indianapolis on Derby weekend and stayed at the Holiday Inn that has a water park in it. There was about 18 of us this year and we had so much fun. When Libby went last year she really liked it but she was only a year and a half. This year she could say "Water park" and she actually was excited about going.

She actually went down the slide this year and had so much fun. Libby likes playing in the water, but she doesn't like water to be in her face at all so she avoided anything the sprayed or shot water (which was a lot).

When we ate breakfast saturday morning CoCo ( the hotels mascot monkey) came around to our table to see all the kids. I thought that this was going to be a disaster because in Disney world, just 7 months ago, Libby hated anything that was not dressed as a human. But libby liked CoCo, now don't get me wrong she wanted him to keep his distance but she got her picture made with the other kids and I was pleasantly surprised :)

We couldn't have asked for a better child the whole time. She went to sleep really well and took naps really well and for the most part was really good. She loved that on saturday she got to decorate a cookie for mothers day, although she ate the whole thing and didn't share it with me.

I love making these memories with her and it is so neat to do something that you did last year and see how much difference a year makes. I better enjoy this time now because its going by SO fast!!

Libby is a little artist

One of the neat parts of being a mom is getting to see your kids figure stuff out. Its so funny as libby learns what she likes and doesn't like to do. Yesterday I decided to have libby paint. It has been raining here for the past 2 months so we have ran out of things to do in the house. So i decided we should paint. Libby was so excited and we had a blast. She didn't want to stop, she painted everything!!

And this morning when she woke up she wanted to paint some more. I think everything in our house right now is painted by libby haha. So since that went so well mommy had the great idea of painting her hand... BAD IDEA. She screamed and she screamed. She wanted it off!!

So then Of course she had to paint mommies hand to see that it really was ok :)

We had a fantastic time and we got some precious art work out of it :)