Mallory's 1st Birthday

I feel like I post so much about Luke, so this entire post is dedicated to our sweet little cupcake, Mallory!

I cannot believe we are already celebrating Mallory's 1st birthday. I swear she was just born yesterday. I think time goes by even faster with the second child. Is that possible? Mallory's birthday celebrations kicked off with a Gigi's cupcake on her actual birthday at home. Then, she had a party with her classmates at school. How cute are they?!

We had her party at Grandy and Gigi's lakehouse on Memorial Day weekend! It was very laid back with close friends and family. We enjoyed some snacks, took a boat ride, and gobbled up cake and ice cream! Mallory dug into her cake. Luke was so tentative that we had to show him how to dig into his cake at his 1st birthday, but not Mallory! She had icing all over the place including the back of her chair. How do you do that?!

Sweet Mallory, you are our garbage disposal, eating everything; and our godzilla, knocking over all of Luke's toys. You give us lots of smiles and love to giggle when you do something you're not supposed to, like climb the steps. You love your brother and follow him around everywhere. While you're not as laid back as your brother, you have so much personality! You are a tough girl and don't flinch when you accidentally get hit in the head with a baseball bat. I'm so excited that I'll have a shopping buddy for life! You have brought so much joy into our lives and we can't wait to see you grow and develop! We love you!

I'll end the post with some of my favorite pictures of Mallory from the past year...

The BEACH!!!!

Since I was on a 165 day school calendar, I got out of school in mid May as opposed to late May. When we started looking for places to vacation, I noticed most of the condos still offered their spring rates if we booked before Memorial, so we took an early beach trip with the Henrys! This was our 5th trip to the beach with Wade and Kerry, but this was the first time we took the kids. Whoa, what were we thinking, taking 4 kids under 4?!
We went back to Waterscape in Ft. Walton. If you've never been, I highly recommend the resort. It is very kid friendly, with numerous zero entry pools and a lazy river. It's close to everything, but not too crowded. The first night we went to the Crab Trap with 4 tired kids, but they did pretty well. This was them celebrating being at the beach!

While it's different and more work going to the beach with kids (no laying out while reading all day), we had so much fun! Luke loved playing in the sand with Parker and riding the waves with Tim. Mallory did pretty well, too. She still takes a looong nap so one of us would have to go back to the condo with her while she slept. Mallory loved splashing around in the pool water. She also started taking multiple steps while we were on the trip. I have a feeling the next beach trip, she and Adeline will be great playmates! I'm already looking forward to our next beach vacation!

Thomas the Train

Santa brought Luke a train table and he is obsessed with Thomas and trains in general. So it was a no brainer when the Henry's invited us to attend the "Day out with Thomas" in Calera. They had plenty of activities including mini golf, crafts, train tables, and of course the Thomas train ride. We had a blast! Luke was a little disappointed that only the engine was Thomas, not the entire train. And of course, since he's still petrified of people in costume the last picture shows you how close Luke would get to Sir Topem Hat. Ha ha! Calera also does the Polar Express train ride in December and we recently bought our tickets. I've heard nothing but fabulous things about this event as well.

Spring Outings

I hate that I don't have any digital pictures of the kids from Easter. We went to the lake and Clanton to celebrate with our families and of course I left my camera at home. But, this was our attempt of an Easter photo two weeks before Eastser, posing in front of the azeleas around campus. They were beautiful!
For Christmas, all the kids chipped in and bought Tim's dad a flagpole and flag. Tim joked that Paw Paw was going to have school kids coming to his house because the flag is so big. But, Tim's dad has wanted to get all the grandkids in town and put their names and handprints in the cement. Since Mallory was so tiny, we did her handprint and footprint. So cute and what a special treasure for Paw Paw!

We attended Clay Brunson's wedding in Birmingham in April. Abby Grace was the flower girl and Caleb was the ring bearer. Right before the ceremony, AB saw Luke and gave him the biggest hug. She looked so pretty all dolled up for the big event.

This is us with B & J and all the kids. We had so much fun!

We tried to get all the kids dancing. Well, Abby Grace and Caleb were up for the challenge. Luke saw Abby Grace dancing with this little boy and the next picture shows his reaction......

Ha! Ha! Luke was not a happy camper!

National Champs

I know this is long overdue, but I wanted to give this blog post its due diligence. Wow, what a fun football season we had at Auburn this past fall! Little did we know, when we started the season ranked 24th that we would go on to win the SEC, have a Heisman Trophy winner, and go on to claim the BCS National Championship?! I joke with people that Auburn sporting events are our entertainment. We love tailgating and supporting all Auburn athletic teams win or lose, but man it sure is fun when we're winning! :)
This first picture was actually from the SEC Championship game in Atlanta. Thanks to my parents for keeping the kids so that Tim and I could go not only celebrate the SEC championship, but also our 6th wedding anniversary. Kinda ironic that the last time Auburn played in the championship in 2004 was also on our wedding day! Yes, can you believe as big of Auburn fans that we are that we got married during an Auburn game?!

We were fortunate enough to attend the game out in Glendale. Thanks to Tim's dad and sisters and cousins for helping to keep our kids so we could go enjoy all the festivities! As you might know, ticket prices were outrageous and we figured eventually ticket prices would go down, but they didn't. Thankfully, our friends found some tickets on ebay in mid December and we went ahead and bought them, even though I thought we were crazy to spend that kind of money on tickets. We had no idea that ticket prices would get so high. We could have sold our tickets for triple the price we paid for them. At one point, we were wondering who was crazier, the people paying that much money for tickets or the people like us not willing to sell our tickets! :) There was no way we could sell our tickets. We knew this was such a special opportunity and we couldn't pass it up! We flew out of ATL early Sunday morning (my birthday) and couldn't get over all the AU fans in the airport. We arrived in Phoenix and met up with Walt and Cat and toured Arizona State's campus and ate at a really cool local brew pub called Four Peaks. We also attended the pep rally which was really crowded. I laughed when Lindsay called and wanted to try to meet up with us. Didn't she realize there were thousands of fans...we would never find her and David. Sure enough, after being at the pep rally for 5 minutes, we run into Lindsay. Later that night we headed out to Old Town and met up with Brian and Joy. We went to the Westgate City Center near the stadium and ate at a fun saloon type restaurant.
Monday morning, Tim and I headed back to Old Town Scottsdale and did some shopping and sightseeing. As you can see in the next two photos, the scenery was beautiful!
This was camelback mountain that we drove past on the way to the stadium.
Tim and I were giddy as we arrived and hung out around the stadium. Check out the slideshow for all the funny signs we saw around the stadium. We tailgated and ran into so many friends outside the stadium. There were so many people trying to get into the stadium as soon as the gates opened. We were relieved once we made it inside. Words cannot describe the atmosphere and how much fun we had just trying to soak in all the memories. After a thrilling game, Auburn won the game 22-19 against Oregon on a last second fieldgoal by Wes Byrum.
We love Auburn athletics, but more importanly, we love the city of Auburn and the University. Auburn is such a special place for us...it's where we met, where we live, where we make memories with our kids. I was just thrilled that the Auburn football team could showcase the town and University in such a positive manner! War Eagle!

Catching up to speed

Just thought I'd reminisce about some of things that we've done this winter and early spring. Let's see...we celebrated Luke's 3rd birthday at FrogLegs Inflatables in January, had playdates with friends, had fun on Valentine's Day, took in a rodeo in Montgomery with Tim's family, attended numerous Auburn basketball and baseball games, and oh yeah, Auburn won a football National Championship (I'll be sure that feat has it's own post). Here are snapshots...enjoy!

Every Sunday, the kids get to run the bases after the game. Luke was so excited to meet Trooper Taylor and show him how he wears his "Trooper" hat backwards!