Believe it or not!!!

Well....these pictures are getting closer to the actual season we are in!!! Yeah for me!

Oh and if you didn't realize it-you can click on the collage and view the pictures a little bit closer if you like! I do know that some of them are kind of small!







So I am sure that you can tell that Reese was Ariel from the "Little Mermaid" for Halloween. We went trick or treating in our new neighborhood...oh, did I mention that we just bought our first house!! We love it in this house. It really is the perfect place for us. Reese got to wear her costume numerous times this month....for her birthday (which you saw her party pics below), for music class, for dance class, a local Halloween party at a friends house, and for trick or treating with her cousin Oliver. Halloween is honestly one of my fav holidays and this one really took the cake. I took Reese out for an hour and then we came home and handed out candy...that was a lot of fun for both of us. Yes, I did say both of us because I honestly think it has been over 15 years since I got to hand out candy! Living in NYC as well as apartments here in Georgia have made trick or treaters hard to come by! Reese really had a great time even though the weather was a little yucky!

Just some pics from November....getting ready to go for a walk (top pic). When we go for walks we still take the stroller, but when we get on the golf cart paths in the woods, Reese wants to get out of the stroller and run. She really runs and for distance. I have visions of a track star! Later that day we decided to wash the car-she loved that! And the last pic is us making yogurt strawberry muffins with whole wheat-it has soooo many less calories and fat than a regular muffin!

Thanksgiving this year was in New York with Grammy and Grandpa Halverson. Reese also needed to meet her newest cousin...Abby! Reese enjoyed feeding her and holding her....hoping she will be a big sister someday! We took Reese ice skating. I have to say that I was so thankful for my mother in law Terry because if it weren't for her we would have never made it. Terry and I skated along while practically dragging Reese! She really loved it. She honestly skated for over an hour...even though it was colder in the rink than it was outside! While we were in New York we also got together with our friends Bill and Natalie and their family...a pic of all three girls is there (Reese wouldn't "cheese" for the camera). The girls really enjoyed playing together-puppet shows and all!

Sixx Sense

Ok....wish this banner would publish a bit bigger, but can I tell you how excited I am about Nikki's voice being on the radio???? Please log onto this site and ask for the call letters WKLS to put his show on 96 Rock!!!

What a life!!!

I am still in the process of uploading pictures to share with everyone so that you can see what has been going on, so bear with me...I promise I will get to the present day really soon!

If you haven't checked the blog lately you will notice that there is a new post below this one-go to that one first and then read this one-then you will understand my thought process.



Reese and I went to visit my friends Diana and Heidi in Long Island (they both have two girls each) and we had a blast. We went to the beach, a friends pool, Adventureland (an amusement park), and had lots of girl time!

August 2009 (Mom's birthday present was the bike with Reese's seat on the back!)

Fall 2009 Pumpkin patch visit (we roasted smores this time-a new fav for Reese) as well as the start of her dance career!!! She loves her dance class....see her checking out the crown she received. They don't keep the crowns, but the teacher uses props such as crowns, necklaces, and other fancy things to teach the children to keep their heads and chests up....I think I love her ballet class more than she does!!

Happy 3rd Birthday Reese. This year she really wanted an Ariel party, but since we were inviting many boys (she has 3 boy cousins and many boy friends) we decided the kids could dress up in their Halloween costumes. We moved into our new home 2 weeks prior to this party, but we pulled it off. I made the Ariel cake and Rob made the poster of the dragon from Sleeping Beauty...one of the games was pin the fire on the dragon! They had lots of fun making sugar cube castles and of course eating cake and ice cream!

Really????

Ok, so I don't really believe that my last posting was really in July??? I think that maybe I got lost in the internet somewhere!! haha...One would think though that since I haven't had to work at Delta since September that I would have been keeping up with all this stuff!

So I read on a blog just recently that they don't love reading past blogging so I am really just going to give you pictures and some descriptions below the collage so that you can just see what has been going on....don't want to bore anyone, but I know that many people have been bugging me about updates (really it is just my husband!!)

I think that once again I got so far behind that updating this seemed impossible. I will certainly try better and if I don't keep up with it this time around then I will just leave the blogosphere!





These pictures are from our trip to Disney in May-seriously can't believe that I never posted these! Disney really is a magical place...have to say that seeing this all through my daughter's eyes has just really shown me what dreams really are made of!

June 2009 we went to the N. Georgia mountains with our friends the Whyte's-they have a daughter who is a year older than Reese and the girls just love to hang out. We also went on a visit to a Dairy Farm....very cool! Recommend it if there is one near you!

June was very busy as we also went up to New York to celebrate Reese's great Grammy's 100th Birthday. She is one of the most amazing women that I have ever met. Just think of all the things that she has witnessed in her lifetime. She is incredible and still very healthy. We are so grateful that we were able to celebrate her birthday with her and it is wonderful to know that Reese will have a memory of her.

These are from Father's Day (Reese with her dad and then Reese and her cousin Oliver with their grandpa), July 4th parade (that is the one where Reese is holding a popsicle), a visit to the children's museum in ATL (Reese loves to paint!), and a trip to Lake Wedowee in Alabama to visit with our friends...yes that is Rob wakeboarding behind their boat. Reese absolutely loved the boat and we had a wonderful weekend!

Well the end of April and beginning of May were very busy! I took Reese with two of her friends, Nathan and Caroline, to see her first movie in the theatre! We saw "Earth" on Earth Day. It was a very good movie. Reese really enjoyed it. You can see that we came to the movie prepared! I popped popcorn at home and brought it in individual bags and of course we came with sweaters and blankets because you know how they LOVE to freeze you out of a movie! By the end of the film, she was ready to go...but we did get to see the end.

In May we went to the zoo again...someone remind me next year to not bring her in May since the school groups are there!!! Really it wasn't too bad, but it would be nice to not have to navigate around them! We carpooled with Reese's friend JP and we met Nathan and Alexander there as well. We rode the train and the carousel and then visited all the animals. Reese really enjoyed the baby pandas...so cute!

The other pictures are from Mother's Day. We went to brunch with my brothers and sisters-in-law who live here in Atlanta as well as my parents. It was very nice and the cousins always love seeing each other.

Will update with our trip to Disney very soon!!! The profile picture at the top is actually from our lunch with the princesses (Ariel is Reese's favorite!).

april update

Oh my goodness, I can't believe that I was actually able to post two collages on here. Makes it a little easier for updating my blog and also I don't have to make the photos way toooooo small to be able to fit it all on!

I am really trying to get back in the swing of things. I have so much to update on. These photos below are from March 2009. As I stated earlier, we moved into our new townhouse and then the Easter stuff started!!! There are photos here from our day with her cousins Hudson and Sam. She absolutely adores them and they all had a great time playing with Reese's kitchen. It was also nice having my brother and sister-in-law over as well as my parents!

We had our MOMS Club Easter bunny brunch and we also went to three Easter egg hunts....needless to say by the end of the Easter season Reese totally knew where to run for getting the most eggs. She ran straight to the middle of all the eggs and started scooping them in her basket-you can see the basket in the picture below. That same day we went to get our toes painted and then went to our friend Corrine and Paul's house to spend an Easter dinner with Corrine's family.

You can also see the budding ballerina pictures, although I am really thinking that Reese's real profession will be Broadway. She loves to dance and sing...and she makes up all her own songs. She sings in a language that I am still unfamiliar with, but maybe someday she will identify it! I love that she has a great outgoing personality (of course when she is with people that she knows). I really think it will take her far in the long run.

These pictures are from Easter. We met my brother Terry, sister-in-law Anne, and cousin Oliver over at my parents house. My dad loves to color eggs each year and so Reese and Oliver helped him. The reason why she is coloring eggs in her underwear is that I didn't want to get her beautiful Easter dress dirty....I know, let her live a little, but I did by the dress in France and I was totally afraid that the dye wouldn't come out-I was probably right as it took at least a day for it to wear off of my fingers!

Reese and Oliver had a great time hunting for eggs in the backyard and taking a nap in the same room. We had two pack n plays in the guest room and they were in there giggling away. After countless times of going up there to shoosh them (it had been 45 mins and they were late for the nap as is) I told Reese that if they couldn't be quiet then she would have to go in another room and she said "ok, I want to go to the other room". I moved her and she went right to bed....too funny. Oliver was still awake after about 30 mins....and I seriously thought it was Reese keeping Oliver awake since it was him giggling and her dancing around in her pack n play!!!!

Ok, so here is where I am going to have to brag a little bit about my little beauty!!! I really don't ever do this, so I shouldn't feel so bad about it, but Reese is just amazing. I never really knew how much a 2 1/2 yr old could know! She has known her ABC's for at least 1/2 the year....she can count to 20 in English, count to 5 in Spanish (they have Spanish at school) and count to 5 in French. She also sings in French. I have a CD of French songs that I play once in a while and we usually listen to it while we are playing. Well recently she had really begun to verbalize what she is hearing. I know that everyone says that they are little sponges, but it really is true. I need to make myself speak French on a regular basis so that she understands the meaning of the words she hears. I read to her in French on a regular basis, but must admit that I don't translate as I read because then the book would take forever!!!

I have to say that I feel so lucky to be her mom.

Jan-Mar

After we returned from New York in January we moved in with my parents (they live 3 miles down the road). They had two extra bedrooms so we were able to still have Reese in her own room. The reason that we moved out of our apartment is because our kitchen became infested with ants and our new townhouse would not be ready until the first weekend in March. That meant that we had 6 weeks that we could stay in this place that reeked of pesticides or live with my parents. This is just one of many, many reasons for my absence from the blog-I really felt kind of absent all the way around!

My grandmother was also living with my parents at the time so it was a wonderful opportunity for Reese to be able to get to know her great Nana Marie. They would play tea parties in nana Marie's room and sit on the bed together and watch TV. They were so cute together. Reese also loved having two new pets-my parents have a lab named Claire and nana Marie has a small dog named Charlie. Reese loved taking them for walks and playing with Charlie. We only had one toy casualty-Claire ate Maria (a toy that came with her Dora playground). She still talks about it. I know that I shouldn't laugh, but we were at the movie store the other day and there was a picture of Dora and these two babies (we named them Esteban and Maria when they came with the playset) and Reese saw it and said-Look Mom, it's Maria. Then she reminded me that Maria is no longer because Claire ate her.

In February Reese went to the Circus for the first time with her grandparents and her two older cousins Hudson and Sam. She had a wonderful time and the kids had a great sleepover too! She loves being with her cousins.

We had a pretty good snowfall on March 1. I was really lucky to get home. I went to NYC for a night (to hang with my mates) and fortunately something woke me up at 6 am and I decided to look at the flights for the day. I knew there was going to be snow in NY that day, but I had no idea that ATL was going to get snow. When I logged onto the computer I saw that all the flights after noon from NYC to ATL were cancelled so I asked me girlfriends to take me to the airport. The ATL airport was a complete mess by the time we landed so I was grateful that I got in when I did. When I arrived at my parents house we put on our ski gear and went to play in the snow. It wasn't nice fluffy white powder which is what I prefer, but it was great snowman building snow! Reese loved it....just so thankful that she didn't mind wearing all the gear b/c I really want to take her skiing sometime soon!!

The pictures at the top of the screen are from her valentine's day party at school which her great Nana Marie and nana were both able to attend! She loved it!