summer fun

Things have been busy around here this summer!  We sold our house {assuming nothing falls through with the buyers}, looked at several houses {yet have not found one to buy}, and of course, we've had lots of fun times with all the babies!  Here are a few pictures from the last couple of weeks.

Spa day for the babies! 

{nope, just bathtime, but in cute robes that were passed down from some friends who also have twin girls!}

Will loves playing games and doing puzzles on the ipad.

We had a fun playdate with Megan and her sweet boys the other day.  It was so fun!  We were very brave and put all three boys on the couch and let the older ones hold the girls...so adorable!  

Will had so much fun playing with Parker.  Poor guy hasn't gotten out much since the girls arrived, so he loved having company!

Adorable Cole has grown up too fast for me!

And here are a few pics of Caroline...

I love big smiles!

And a few of Emily...

first bath without the newborn sling!

zonked after a busy day of being a baby.

And here are a few examples of how much Will loves his baby sisters.  He really and truly wants to be as close as possible to them at all times.  Such a sweet big brother.  {we just have to make sure he doesn't try to pick them up and take them on his adventures quite yet!}

love my sweet Will!

We are so lucky that our kids get to live so close to our parents and spend so much time with them.  {and that we have help whenever we need it...really and truly couldn't do it without them!}

This one is old, but I found it when going through pictures this afternoon, and it's so sweet!!  Love!

Nana is off work for a short summer break this week, and we're loving some extra time with her!

Will surprised us the other day by being interested in smiling for pictures again!  He actually requested this one with Nana and Emily instead of what usually happens when I have the camera out, which is me chasing him around and begging for him to look in my general direction.  :)

I can't believe June is almost over!  The babies will be 4 months old next week, Will is getting dangerously close to 2 1/2, and we only have ONE month left in our first house!  EEEK, where does time go?!

happy father's day

Well, I didn't take any pictures actually ON Father's Day this year, but here's Will preparing for it:

And I've been meaning to do a post about a little road trip Will and I took recently, and Father's Day seemed like a great time to do it.  Matt was recently out of town {for TWO weeks!} for a trial.  He was in Marshall, TX, which is about 3ish hours away, so on the Saturday in the middle of his two weeks, the girls stayed with Mimi and Duke for the afternoon, and Will and I met Matt in the middle {Canton} for an ice cream and playground date.  It was so much fun, and Will really really had a blast seeing Daddy, eating geeeen ice cream, and playing at the only playground we could find. {BTW, if any Canton Elementary alumni ever stumble across this blog and read this post, please donate some money to your alma mater for some better playground equipment!}  Will had so much fun, and he talked about eating ice cream with Daddy for days afterwards!

And we can't forget that Matt isn't just a father of one this year...here he is with his pretty girls! {and I lied earlier...this actually was on Father's Day, so I did take one picture!}

Happy Father's Day!!
Will, Emily, and Caroline are so lucky to have such an amazing daddy!

put on a happy face

                                           {caroline}                                                                                             {emily}

                      

looking at daddy...they love daddy!

This last one cracks me up.  {not the best quality...love the iPad, not so much the iPad's pictures}  I think it looks like Caroline {left} is taking a self pic of the girls.  {and she's learning very early the important lesson that the person taking the self pic always ends up with a bad chin angle.  sorry C!}

for sale

Well...

*sniff sniff* 

Our house is officially on the market.  Obviously we need more space.  I mean, we have FIVE people {four of whom have a LOT of stuff, and then there's Matt} living in 1621 square feet right now.  So we cleared out everything fun, personal, and functional from our cute little house, fixed every little thing, touched up all the paint, cleaned like we were planning to eat off the floors, and it went on the market this week.  After getting it ready for pictures and showings, however, we pretty much have fallen in love with it again {although we remember that we don't fit}.  So we're calling ourselves the UNmotivated sellers right now, mostly because we haven't found a house to move to yet, but also because we are pretty sad to think about leaving our first house.  But we're happy that we've had lots of showings this week, plus an open house, so we are trying to focus on finding our next home.  We pretty much know what we want and where we'd like to be, and it seems that everyone who owns one of those particular houses is staying put right now.  So we're waiting.  And we know that we may possibly be homeless soon, but it's cool...  

I told the babies about it, and they were pumped.  

Especially Emily {left}.

3 months {c+e}

Caroline and Emily turned 3 months old on June 2nd!  We have been calling these precious girls our perpetual newborns, because they were born so early that they really and truly were total newborns for about 2.5 months before they started changing and growing up a bit.  Don't get me wrong, they are still very newborn-esque {which is super cute, although a wee bit exhausting}, but they really have changed and grown so much in the last couple of weeks.  

Both girls weighed in at 8 lbs, 10.5 oz on their 3 month birthday, and while they are still wearing newborn clothes mostly, they have recently added a few 0-3 month items to the rotation.   And even more fun - both are interacting and smiling a lot more lately!  We love it.  

Both girls are sleeping well for their size with their "long" nighttime stretch being anywhere from 4 to 6.5 hours.  Personality-wise, I've noticed just a few differences between the girls in the past 3 months.  Caroline tends to get very upset very quickly when she's hungry, and Emily can usually keep it together a little better while waiting to be fed.  Since there are two babies, when someone wakes up hungry, that little someone must wait for the other baby to be woken up and changed if it's necessary {and it is}, plus mama and both babies have to get positioned with all our pillows before anyone gets to eat.  Twins must learn patience very early in life.  Also, I've noticed that Emily seems a little more sensitive to other people holding her than Caroline is, and she typically prefers her mommy.  Sweet girl.  :)  Emily also rocks it at tummy time, and Caroline usually just lays her little head down and rests.  Caroline can totally hold her head up, because she demonstrates it anytime we hold her up on our shoulders, but she just doesn't love doing it when on the ground or on the tummy time pillow. Even seeing these little differences makes me so excited to see how these girls will be similar and different as they grow up.  

And now for the pictures!  {there are lots because I haven't posted in awhile}

3 months old!!

C was very serious about the monthly pic.

Sweet big brother joined in for our pictures.  He was SO good about sitting up there with the babies.  I really wasn't sure how this would go when he asked to get up on the chair where Mr. Bear was sitting.  But he was so sweet with his sisters, and didn't bail out like a tornado or anything!  :)

And now for some random pictures from my phone, because that's usually the easiest thing to grab when I want to snap a picture.

there's just something soooo sweet about daddy+daughter

recent outing to the LH town center

Emily loves being outside sooo much, and was so so relaxed and sleepy!

she even rolled up on her side and didn't wake up

{e}

{c}

Apparently taking the self-pic makes me look like I'm in a fun house mirror?!  Oh well...

Will had a blast running, climbing, jumping, and rolling in the grass.

One of Will's favorite activities is a Hawkins original called "SPIDERMAN!!"  This is most often done on our bed, and consists of Will screaming "SpiderrrrrrrrrMAN!" as he blindly jumps off the big bed into someone's {usually Matt's} arms.  When we play on the bed, he then gets thrown into a pile of pillows, but outside, we just pray he gets caught safely.

Spiderman!!!

Here's one that totally cracked me up.  On the way to the car after a grocery store run, Will grabbed this big bag of Ruffles out of the cart, gave it a huge hug, and said "Will LOOOOOVES these.  He loves them soooo much!"  Fast track to childhood obesity?  Hopefully not.

And here's Will dancing to the Fresh Beat Band and wearing his rock star sunglasses.

Sweet boy loves to hold his sisters.

I think Mimi likes holding them too.  :)

And of course, so do I!

Will and Duke ran through the sprinklers one hot afternoon...such fun!

Sometimes they look different to me, but sometimes, exactly the same!  

On Sunday, Will went to play with Nana for a few hours, and Emily was doing this...

So I played one on one with Caroline!  Such fun times with this little cutie.

And she even liked my singing enough to show me a big grin!

Remember what I said about tummy time?  Exhibit A:

But C made up for it by being very cute when reclining.  :)

Happy 3 months, pretty girls!  I was just stuffing the girls' birth announcements into envelopes yesterday, and I had a totally sentimental moment just thinking about all the months of worry while I was pregnant, and how we really didn't know if we would ever get to be doing fun things like newborn pictures and announcements for these special babies.  What a blessing to have the girls here, healthy, and thriving!