August Hip Happenings....

These couple of pics are actually from July. I forgot to post them in the July update. These pics are super special because we are at Bonefish Grill with our fabulous friend, Georgie. Bonefish is our celebration spot. The picture above was almost exactly 3 years ago on the day that I found out I was having twins! Georgie had went with us to the doctor that day when we found out and she was leaving the very next day to go back to New Zealand. We went to Bonefish to celebrate this amazing miracle of not one, but two little babies :) I wasn't, however, able to enjoy the yummy Bang-Bang Shrimp that night. My preggo sickness had just begun...oh, if I had known it was going to last my ENTIRE pregnancy.... yuck!

This pic is from just a couple of months ago when Georgie was here visiting us. We were celebrating yet again...our dearest Georgie got engaged right before she came over! We are SUPER excited for her and Mark (who is also a fabulous Kiwi friend of ours). It's so fun that we were able to be together during two life-changing events and celebrate together at our special spot. The Bang-Bang was ALOT more enjoyable for me this time! We love you Georgie! We CAN'T wait to see you (and Mark) in December!! yay!!

"Same-siders" Haha

The girls got their first ever haircut in August!! Yes, they were almost 2 1/2 before their first haircut....it was so hard for me to let their little mullets go!! :)

We took them to Smilz and Stylz (is that the right spelling??). Anywhoo....it's for kids and they do such a fabulous job! Jocelyn went first. She didn't know what to think in the beginning....she wanted Daddy to hold her hand....

Still deciding what she thinks about this whole deal...

Trimming the mullet....

Still skeptical....

This face is pitiful!!

"Am I supposed to like this??"

"OK, let me take a look...."

"Alright....cheeeeeese.....I look pretty darn cute!"

Gabbie was PUMPED...which surprised me...I thought she would be a lot more timid...

Bye-Bye long stringy mullet....

She sat perfectly still the entire time....

She loved the blow-dryer....

Hello cute-as-a button bob!

She looks SO much older to me now!

The end products....I think they turned out SO cute!

Can their hair be any more different!?!?!

We headed over to Jay for cousin Landon and cousin Ashton's birthday party. It was a big Luau with two enormous water slides. To say the girls had a blast would be a major understatement :)

Uncle D grilling up the burgers and dogs...

Crash...

Cousin Sawyer....so cute!

Cousin Landon...one of the birthday boys!!

Cake time!

Gabbie LOVED playing in the ice chest/palm tree..

She also loved playing with all of Landon's tractors he got for his birthday :)

Aunt Kim, Jordan, Shannon, and cousin Sawyer enjoying the HEAT....

We got to meet cousin Luke for the first time....adorable!!

Gigi and HayHay came to visit for a few days....

Chillin on the couch with GiGi...

HayHay getting geared up and ready to play with crazy two-year-olds :)

How cute are these pics??...HayHay playing "Play-doe" with the girls. He looks ginormous (not in a bad way...haha...it's just hilarious that he is sitting at their tiny picnic table:) What a trooper!

The girls love when Gigi takes then to Target...they always come home with a surprise...this time it was babies with their very own highchair and baby food....the girls have had LOTS of fun with these :)

We now have 4 children to feed at every meal :)

This was a fun weekend....there is nothin like getting together with great friends that you haven't seen in a good while and eating great food and laughing like you haven't laughed in a long time. It's just so refreshing. Several of our closest friends got together for a weekend in Montgomery to celebrate Justin's (sitting by Shane) birthday. It was fabulous fun. We met for dinner Friday night at this great Thai restaurant. Some of the riskier peeps ordered "extra hot" dishes and basically caught themselves on fire. Shane was one of them. He was stuffing himself with rice trying to put out the fire. It was hilarious. Fun, fun times. After dinner we just hung out and laughed uncontrollably. Great times. The next day we met up for lunch and then went and watched a matinee together. We had to head back to Mobile after that, but several of them stayed and had dinner and went to a Biscuit's game. We had SUCH an awesome time. It made us miss those friends that don't live here in Mobile so much more and long for more frequent time with them. Thanks to Leah (Justin's wife) for putting this trip together!!

Shane and the birthday boy...

All the fellas....

All the chicas....

An ENORMOUS thanks to Brynn, our amazing friend who made the trip to Montgomery with us and watched our girlies so that we could hang with our friends. Thanks to Kristina as well for helping watch them. They love you both! Bless you, Brynn, for enduring the "scream-all-the-way" ride in the car. Now you can concur that I do not exaggerate about this :)

Yes, they both have an entire box of Raisin Bran....whatever it takes for 5 minutes of quiet, my friends....

Blogging Updates Continue: July happenings....

For the sake of "catching up", I decided to group all the July festivities, pics, etc. into one post. I will do the same for August....then hopefully I will be oh-so-close to being up-to-date. Yay!

We moved into our house on Sunday, July 4th. Yes, what a very exciting way to spend Independence Day. haha. Traditionally, we celebrate the 4th with my family on the River. Due to the stress of moving, etc. , we were not able to do that this year. Sad times. However, some of our friends invited us over for a cookout and enormo slip-n-slide that evening. It was way fun. The girls LOVED it!

Gabbie helping daddy drag Jocie back to the starting line :)

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Gabbie and Jake shakin on it...... :)

Jocie's turn to help drag Gabbie....

Thanks, Loyd's, for inviting us!!

Our friend's, the Campbell's, invited us out to Stockton to their river house for a Saturday afternoon. The girls LOVE boats, so they were super pumped. Mr. Mike took us out on the river for a tour. After we had been going for a little while, the motor (or something mechanical :) started acting up. Long story short, Mike had to drive the boat in reverse for a long way until Mrs. Charlene could come rescue us :) Of course, during all of this, Gabbie has to pee (surprise....they only have to pee EVERY 5 minutes! I am not exaggerating!). I tried holding her over the edge of the boat to pee, but she was gun shy. As I was doing this, Jocelyn throws her sippy cup overboard (we were able to rescue it:). What an adventure!!

Mrs. Charlene set up the sprinkler and the girls went to town..

Jocie and Mrs. Charlene dancin it up in the wawa :)

Daddy getting pulled into the fun...

Look at this face....

Mr. Mike grilled up some yummy chicken and Mrs. Charlene made some killer sides for dinner. She also had ice-cream with sprinkles for dessert. The girls were in heaven :)

Gabbie: "Don't you even THINK about touching my ice cream!"

The weekend of July 9th, we headed up to Birmingham for Katie and Ben's wedding..whoop whoop! Shane was doing the wedding, I was coordinating it (along with various other odd jobs:) and the girls were the flower-girls. Complete insanity (in a good way, of course!). HayHay and Gigi came to B-ham, too to help out with the girls (THANK YOU!). We stayed with one of my best friends from college, Luann, and her husband and her TRIPLET girls (they are about 3 months older than my girls). On Saturday, one of my other best friends from college, Megan and her husband and her THREE girls came up from Montgomery to spend the day. They brought an awesome huge water-slide for all the EIGHT girls to play on. They had a BLAST. I was doing wedding activities most of the day so I wasn't able to personally participate in the excitement....but I can ONLY imagine :)

Luann bringing her three cuties down the stairs...not a great pic of them, but the best I could do :)

Helping Gabbie up the slide

Megan trying to fix one of the sprinklers....GREAT idea, Meg, on bringing the water slide!

The "wawa tunnel"

Jocie and one of the triplets. Pretty sure Jocie was sitting so far away to ensure that she didn't get close to her watermelon :)

Gigi swinging Gabbie

Feeding the fish in the lake across from Luann and Tracy's house

Breakfast at Cracker Barrel...

Aunt Julia was the wedding photographer (who did a FABULOUS job, by the way...anyone needing photos should call her!).

We love Aunt Julia!!

I think the girl's favorite part about the whole trip was staying at a house that had 3 two year old girls in it, thus....ALOT OF TOYS!!!! They decided to pretend like THEY were the babies.....

Let the wedding festivities begin.....

Bridemaid's Luncheon...

Rehearsal Dinner....one thing I LOVE about weddings is that we get to see and catch up with people that we haven't seen in a while. LOVE IT. Here is Shane with three fabulous friends of our...Georgie (all the way from New Zealand), Eva, and Eli......

Me and the girlies. LOVE THESE LADIES!!!

The wedding party....BEAUTIFUL!

AHHHHH! they were SOOOO cute as flower girls! Yes, that is a sucker in Jocelyn's mouth AND hand as she is walking down the aisle. I thought I had confascated them all, but obviously I had not. I was using them as bribing tools to get them to go down the aisle. I had to slowly nudge them along. They kept stopping and staring at everyone in the crowd. I think they were slightly confused :) And the flower ball thingies they are holding are so pretty, but they also weighed like 20 pounds...no joke. When Gabbie got to end of the aisle, she dropped it and said "all done". haha. Over-all they did pretty well!

Time to CELEBRATE!!

Oh, Uncle Lance, you are SOOOOO funny!!

Katie and Gabbie

Katie and Jocie

Ummmmmm....let's just say that they girls had WAY too much to eat at the reception...particularly CAKE!

HayHay and Gigi took the girls home so we could stay and party at the reception. On the way home Gabbie proceeds to THROW-UP in the van everywhere. NICE. Bless you HayHay for cleaning that mess up!

Gabbie...Pre-vomit..

Gabbie with her daddy

The girls LOVE dancing...here is Jocie with Katie....I finally had to take Jocie away so that Katie could dance were her new HUSBAND :)

Jocie and Auntie Georgie

Mommy and Gabbie :)

Me and Julia....We made a great team....we should do it again sometime! :)

A few days after the wedding, Auntie Georgie came down to Mobile to visit with us before she headed back home. The girls love some Auntie Georgie!

My friend, Lindsay, came in town for the day and stopped by to see us. The girls took to her quick! Everyone say "cheese"!! Come back and see us soon Lindsay!

Some of our friends Chris, April, and their son, Eli from "God's Country"...aka...Clarkesville, GA...were in town and came over for dinner. So much fun! It was SO great seeing ya'll!!

Jocelyn trying to spray the butter. Hilarious. She ended up spraying it into her face. She thought that was hilarious.

The girls LOVE playing dress-up. Here they are in the Minnie Mouse outfits that their twin friends, Ellie and Kathryn (from Orlando) gave them. Too Cute!

Jocie giving Gabbie a back massage. I'm training them early....

EVERY SINGLE DAY the girls go into my closet and get out some of my shoes to put on and walk around the house in. This particular day they decided on my tall boots...more like boot-pants on them :)

We decided to have a yard sale because we had SOOOOO much stuff we needed to purge. I decided to put it in the paper just to help with people knowing about. I had never done a yard sale here in Mobile before. I decided I would start it at 7am. That's PLENTY early enough, right? I got up at 5:45am the morning of the sale so that I could go outside and set up all the tables, etc. I wanted it to be super organized (surprise). Well, when I walked out on my porch at 5:50am (it was still dark), there were 3 cars on the street in front of our house. The proceed to get out and walk up the driveway when they see me. WHAT????!?!? Yes, they were there for the yardsale that didn't start for another hour and ten minutes. They start going thru all the boxes and wanting to check out.....WHAT?!?! I couldn't believe that people were there waiting for me at 5:45. That is insane. It was a CRAZY day, but we made $500 so all the madness was worth it! I forgot to take pics of everything before but basically this is what was left out of our quazillion items.....only a few clothes....nice.

Mrs. Charlene invited us over to her house for slip-n-slide fun and lunch. The girls LOVE the wawa slide.

"Hey, how do we make these things go??"

Loving life....

A couple of weeks before this, we had made plans to go over to Mrs. Charlene's for lunch. However, there were some change of plans but I didn't know about them b/c I had forgotten my phone at the house. We showed up at her house but no one was home. I figured something had come up. Of course, when we got there the girls had to pee-pee (as usual). There was no bathroom to use, so I just did what any person that grew up in the country would do....i let them go in their yard. The girls thought that was way cool, so when we went over there this time and they had to pee, they wanted to just pee in the grass and Mrs. Charlene let them :) Hope they didn't kill any of your pretty grass!

We made a trip over to Jay to visit my fam. The day included swimming, watermelon, and feeding the fish. What a perfect day!

"Trust me...you DO NOT want to try to take this watermelon from me!"

Gabbie and cousin Kaylea

Daddy and Jocie

Uncle D and Gabbie

Uncle D and Jocie....ok, is it me or do they really look alike in this picture???

Gabbie makin sure she gets it ALL...

Swimming!!

On the way home from Jay, Jocelyn gets a hold of a pack of gum and proceeds to put EVERY SINGLE PIECE in her mouth. Here she is showing us the finished product....Nice.

At the end of July one of our great friends, Scott, threw a huge surprise anniversary party for his wife, Annie (also one of our great friends). He totally reinacted their wedding reception along with several other fabulous twists and surprises. Shane even sang the song he sang at their actual wedding. The whole night was awesome! We danced the night away and had more fun than we've had in a long time. The white tux was such a special touch, don't ya think? Splendid job Scott. Annie couldn't have been more surprised. What a fun thing to be a part of!!

Well, there is July in a nutshell. August is soon to come!!