Rebekah here. My parents have now been here in Nashville for 2 weeks and are beginning to feel more comfortable with getting around town on their own. We drove out to their new home today after church to check the progress and to let Sydney and Abigail explore the inside of the house. It's coming along nicely! Brad and I have been taking pictures of the house for my parents over the past few months and every time we have the girls with us, we've been telling them "this is Papa and Grama's new house!" Which the girls usually reply with, "Papa and Grama house in uncle louis". (Back in August when we went to Indiana, we stayed with my Aunt Lanie and Uncle Lewis and when we all left to go home, we told the girls my parents were going home to St. Louis. Ever since then they think my parents live in uncle louis.) So, I think it may be awhile until the girls understand that my parents actually live here now. However, my mom has been helping me out a lot during the week and the girls seem to understand that we will be seeing a lot more of my parents than we have in the past. We're excited to have them here and I know Sydney and Abigail will love having both Gigi and Granddaddy and Papa and Grama in the same town as they grow up.

Sydney & Abigail - Retrospective #6 (11.3.07)



After 84 years, Papaw is as spry and witty as ever. The girls celebrated with their Great Grandparents last weekend in Chattanooga. Nitro is doing well!

Sydney & Abigail - Retrospective #5 (10.31.07)





We practiced "Go Titans!", "Touchdown", and "Go Vince" throughout the season for this moment, and Sydney and Abigail did not disappoint. The weather turned cool just in time, the leaves were changing colors, and the candy was plentiful. Trunk or Treat at church was a big success, and our tour through the neighborhood could not have been better. This is the first time the girls have had access to such a wide array of candy types, but I think suckers were their favorite. They are young enough to forget easily (or be tricked by Mama and Daddy), so we were able to give one piece of candy to the girls and put the rest of the collected booty in our pumpkin to give out to the neighborhood kids!

Sydney & Abigail - Retrospective #4 (10.23.07)

Parents night at preschool went well a couple of weeks ago. The girls love Miss Eva and Miss Julie, and we can tell that their teachers care for them as if the girls were their own. We are glad that the girls like to go to 'school' and are learning lots of new things from a new perspective. Miss Eva has said that she can persuade the children to do things that "Mother" cannot...they don't have a problem with them going down for a nap, they drink out of open top cartons each day without fouling their clothes, and they bring home new songs that warm our hearts (although we can't always understand what they are singing). Kudos to the teachers!

Sydney & Abigail - Retrospective #3 (10.21.07)



Climb Nashville church night! We had the priviledge of the gym all to ourselves as a Celebration fellowship together. There were hundreds of people on the walls, belayers, gawkers, and bystanders, but we found a little corner of the gym to test out the climbing abilities of Sydney and Abigail. They liked the concept of being in a full-body harness and taking on the rock holds like the older kids, but while each of the girls are naturals at climbing (mostly furniture, playground implements, and Daddy), they climbed (or were pulled) above the reach of Mama and Daddy and were visibly terrified! Maybe next year...and hey, there is always the fun of picking up rocks at any age (pictures not shown)!

Sydney & Abigail - Retrospective #2 (10.20.07)

The pumpkin patch was quite warm for mid-October this year, but we ventured out anyway. The girls love to see the goats, sheep, and cows in their pens, and they really enjoyed running around on the hay bales (all touching and in a circle). But what they wanted to play with the most was the feeding troughs full of corn, grain, and other seeds. Filling the cups then dumping them out - sometimes on the ground - and repeating! Yee-haw! It is in those moments that I think 1) why didn't I think of that for our backyard (maybe with birdseed), and 2) kids are so fun because they can be happy playing with tupperware, rocks, or cracked corn! And we saw some of the girls' classmates and friends from church - I don't think they noticed.

Sydney & Abigail - Retrospective #1 (9.29.07)

Greetings, loyal bloggers! You will be pleased to know that we have not gone the way of many other good intentions. Yes, life is busy, but when the grandparents (who see the girls almost every week) are mentioning the lack of posts, you know this is important to somebody. I've heard it said - you can run the rat race all of your life, but at the end you are still a rat. So, I'll slow down for a couple of minutes this week and tell you what our beautiful daughters have been up to over the past month. Actually, as you can see on the title of this post, we skipped a day in September while waiting for "production". We took advantage of a very nice Saturday morning in late September and met Amanda M. at the Boulevard Steps for pictures. Sydney and Abigail were in good moods and were very natural for the camera. We all ran around, over, up and down the steps after the girls, and somehow Amanda captured some really cute shots. Enjoy. More posts to come...soon...