The Caboose Park

Rachel here. Warm beautiful weather can only mean one thing... scrumptious pictures of two of my loves...

And another sweet little girl.

STOP!

Growing that is! Rachel here. In the last week my wee one has mastered crawling... not just the Army crawl anymore... the REAL DEAL. Emma Grace has also began feeding herself. I've been putting Puffs and Yogurt Melts in front of her for probably a month now... with a whole lot of nothing in return. She would just sit there and smile waiting for me to put a tiny morsel into her mouth for her. Today, I put them down on Reese's art tray, and she had them in her mouth before I could put the lid on the container. :)

On another note... brace yourself... this is good... I found:

Emma Grace Dr. in Jonesborough, TN... 2 hrs 45 min from Blacksburg, AND it was disgustingly close to where we were this past weekend... argh.

Emma Grace Lane. in Rock Hill, SC... 3 hrs 20 min from Blacksburg, AND it happens to have an amazing home for sale... that is the Contemporary Craftsman style I'm looking for!

Jackpot

Rachel here. So yesterday I turned 30-1. Ugh. While I do still have one year until the actual three o... it stares me in the face each and every day. How the hell did I get to be almost 30? I could barf. Anywhoodle... we "celebrated" by getting out of town for a night/day and shopping to make me feel better. :) The 4 of us headed to Tennessee to the outlets in Pigeon Forge. While Pigeon Forge is like Virginia Beach on meth... we enjoy going because they have some fun cute things for kids to do. Reese and Emma Grace are too young to do most of everything there, but we'll enjoy taking them in the coming years nonetheless, and we had a blast doing some things Saturday night and into Sunday.
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Now actually getting to Tenn. was an adventure in itself. We went egg hunting with B's parents mid afternoon and were on the road to our destination by late afternoon. We had just crossed into Tenn. when I began to feel AWFUL. My stomach was hurting and I felt uber nauseous but just thought it had been because I wasn't paying attention to the road because I was clipping coupons... we're exciting I tell you. Within 10ish minutes of us stopping at the rest area to feed Emma and stop for a potty break, we were again stopped on the interstate so I could barf. GOOD TIMES. We decided to ford the river and continue on.

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I felt awful for the rest of the evening, but we enjoyed some arcade games, carnival rides, and ice cream (not me) anyways. We finally got to the hotel around 10... the girls did exceptionally well on getting to bed. I didn't. I COULD NOT sleep... Emma eventually joined me around 230. We hung out on the bed, and she finally fell asleep between B and I around quarter to 4. I FINALLY fell asleep soon after, and everyone was up close to 7.

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Sunday was MUCH BETTER! We went shopping... and then we did some shopping... oh and then it was super fun because we went shopping! :) First stop... Bass Pro Shop. Now we are not really the Bass Pro Shop people, but Reese was so excited to "ride the boats" that were outside the store, and the Easter Bunny was in the house for free photos, so we took advantage.

Reese also spent some money that Grandma and Grandaddy passed her way on a "Cars" fishing pole. :) Then there was the amazing trip to the outlets. I found so many sweet things for the girls... and used a coupon at each place! NERD. The only thing I bought for myself... bras... that's a whole other conversation. We also stopped at a little Amish stop where I found a couple of things for some mothers for Mother's Day, two ADORABLE rag dolls for my girls, and something super awesome for a certain little Rapier boy's baby gift. :)

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Okay... here is where the "JACKPOT" comes into play. So over there to the right of the blog is a link for another blog called "Girl's Gone Child." It's a blog that everyone on the earth was reading but me apparently. I've become addicted to this woman's writing and sense of style. She recently posted on her children's bedroom. She has a little boy and a little girl and a little house. :) Her children are "forced" to share a bedroom (something many children don't do these days, which is fairly interesting to me... but again... that's a whole other conversation). She had a really awesome decorative element in their room... photos of street signs. These street signs were special though because they were photos of actual signs that are across the nation that just happened to be of her children's names... "Archer" and "Fable." I LOVED THIS IDEA, and immediately clicked on the link she posted, but thought for sure I could figure out how NOT to pay someone to do this for me. Very close to our home there is a "Reese Mtn" sign... this was as good as gold to us, and more than perfect... or so we thought. That was until we drove past this on our mini vaca this weekend:

JACKPOT! Now to find an "EmmaGrace"... oy!

Reester Egg Hunt Gma and Gdaddy style

Saturday afternoon we headed to Grandma and Grandaddy's neck of the woods for my first round of Easter Egg hunting. I practiced that morning, so I knew what I was about to encounter (however, I was not prepared for the kid who ran all of us wee ones over and grabbed eggs at what seemed like mach speed)... I mentally prepared nonetheless.

Ready... Set... HUNT! (See my bucket I made myself!?)

HALT! You didn't tell me there were cows... DONE and DONE!

AND ROCKS!!! You can keep your eggs... I LOVE ROCKS!!!

EG just looked adorable and hung out with Grandma and Grandaddy.

We eventually had to go back inside because the older kids were ready to have their fun with the eggs. Mommy and I manned the egg opening operation. Wouldn't you know I had two "magical" eggs that allowed me to pick prizes off the prize table?

My favorite prize of all though was the chocolate! Perhaps it WAS OKAY to come inside away from the cows... and ROCKS... I LOVE ROCKS!

Thank you Grandma and Grandaddy for a super fun afternoon! :)

Reester Egg Hunting 101

Step 1. Take a cheat peak at where the big Daddy is hiding the eggs.
Step 2. Completely span the yard and mentally prepare for your plan of attack.

Step 3. ATTACK as FAST as you can!

Mental note: make sure you're always ONE STEP AHEAD of where you need to be. Where will you go next? You better be ready because if you're not... someone else will be.

Okay... I'm ready... bring on the competition!

Oh bliss

Mommy now has TWO children to fight with each day to brush their teeth... her excitement is completely overwhelming...

I so beeeeuuuuful

Rachel here. We've apparently told Reese one too many times that she looks cute/beautiful because now she is not at all afraid to declare it to the world at the most random times/places. "Oh Mommy look at me... I so beeeeuuuuful! I so cute!" This is said in the shrilliest of girly voices and is both disgustingly adorable and disgustingly vain. :)

Big stuff

Rachel here. We've had some big stuff happening in this house the last couple of days. First... Reese has been completely pull up free/strictly underpants now for 2 days. This includes underpants during nap and bedtime. She's doing AWESOME! If we can just get through this roadtrip this weekend without any accidents, I'll call her completely potty trained! We can officially bid a farewell to the Lightning McQueen underpants and her beloved potty chart.

In the world of Emma Grace there are some big things happening as well! She can officially go from a sitting to a laying down position as well as a laying down to a sitting position. Her chicken mango risotto was devoured in mere seconds leading me to believe she enjoys chicken. Here is our biggest news though... she's perfected her Army crawl! We're getting closer!