Outdoor Fun

Our family returned home from Nashville on Monday after Easter. On Wednesday afternoon, Matt's parents rolled into Charleston for a visit during Matt's mom's Spring Break.

Sophie gets ready to help Mimi and Paw Paw Tom do some heavy duty yard work while they are visiting.

Sophie takes gardening very seriously and she doesn't stay clean doing it either. Here, as you can see she's very wet from watering herself as she waters the plants. Later, she's covered in dirt as well and loving every minute of it. This was Sophie's first experience with planting flowers. Our yard looks much better thanks to everyone's help-especially Paw Paw Tom and Mimi's.

On Saturday, we all visited the Middleton Place plantation and walked around the gardens and visited the farm animals. Everything was so beautiful! Sophie really enjoyed seeing all of the animals!
A monumental occasion occured at our house this week-Sophie used the potty for the 1st time. Yay, Sophie! It's just the beginning but it's still exciting. She gets a couple of M & M's when she's successful.

Sophie and the guys

Here's Sophie at the top of one of the tunnel slides at our local park. Paw-paw Waggoner and Uncle Phil came in to visit last week. One day, they offered to babysit Sophie while Paula ran some errands. They took Sophie to the park and had a lot of fun. That night, we all went to a restaurant called "The Queen Anne's Revenge" that had a pirate theme. It was about 45 minutes away but it was really good.

Matt, Paula & Sophie at "The Queen Anne's Revenge" with replica of a ship.

Big day out

We enjoyed visiting and cycling around Charles Towne Landing State Historic Site today. At the visitor's center, Sophie pointed out a turtle on the wall that was just like the one on her shirt. We walked through the animal forest where there was a river otter exhibit. Sophie enjoyed pointing out the river otters and telling us, "See!"
Later, we visited the Children's Museum of the Lowcountry. Sophie loves to pretend "shop" in the grocery store exhibit there. She loaded up her cart with all the bags of chocolate chips she could find. Did she learn this from watching her Mommy shop at the Piggly Wiggly?
Here Sophie is steering a shrimp trawler into port. Watch out!

Christmas is coming!

Here's Sophie in her Santa hat. She loves our Christmas tree and has actually done pretty well around it. One night last week, we went to our local park where you can drive through and see tons of Christmas light displays, get out and see Santa, ride a carousel, ride a train (we're on the train below), and see a sand sculpture. We went with some friends and had a lot of fun. We all enjoyed seeing the lights and riding the train! Sophie was scared of Santa and didn't want to have anything to do with him. In the bottom picture, it's hard to tell, but we are in front of an incredible sand sculpture with a Christmas theme.

On Wednesday, Paula & Sophie will be flying to Nashville for a week to celebrate Christmas with Paula's family. Matt will come on Thursday and spend a long weekend with them. We are all planning to attend Aunt Martha's (Paula'a sister) graduation from Freed Hardeman University. We are so proud of her!

Catch me if you can!

Sophie loves going to the park and playing on the playground. She recently started making fish faces after watching "Finding Nemo." She also can say "fish" now.

Splash Time!

The end of summer is here and we made several trips to Splash Zone at James Island County Park, about 3 miles from our house. These were some of our best times this summer. Sophie loved to go down the waterslide with one of us in the children's pool. After sliding she would immediately get up and wade through the water, climb steps, and get in line to go down the slide again. She did this repeatedly.
We also visited the Folly Beach County Park recently. Sophie loves every part of the beach-the water, the sand, everything. It's scary at times because she has no fear! Once she became a better walker, she got to where she would just walk all over the beach chasing seagulls with no real destination in mind it seems. She calls the seagulls "ducks".

Other news with us is that Sophie has a cold right now but hopefully, she'll feel better soon. She's going to Mother's Morning Out again one morning a week. Poor Sophie has had a lot of falls lately so her knees are skinned up!

New Tricks

We took Sophie to Hampton Park in Charleston after dinner one night. There were ducks in a lake who were very friendly and walked right up to Sophie. She kept pointing and saying, "duck!" "Duck" is only about the third word in Sophie's vocabulary. She also says "Mama" and "Dada."


Uncle Phil and Nana came down to Charleston to visit Sophie not too long ago. Phil and Sophie had similar schedules during the day; they both woke up late in the morning and took long afternoon naps. Sophie did go to bed at night five hours earlier than Phil though. (OK, so their schedules were a little different. She's usually up by 7 or 7:30 A.M.)
Sophie has also taken an interest in brushing her teeth. She loves to sit in the sink and brush her teeth. The week before Phil & Nana's visit, Grandma & Grandpa Vergne came down to help get some projects done and help babysit Sophie.

Road Trip

Our little future virtuoso bangs on Grandma and Grandpa's piano. For the weekend before July 4th, our family drove up to Richmond, VA and visited Matt's family including his parents, sister and aunt and uncle. We all had a nice 4th with a cookout. On Wednesday, our immediate family drove on up to Maryland where we used to live. Matt did some work there while Sophie & Paula were able to meet up with some friends during the day. We all enjoyed seeing some of our old friends. Sophie was a good little traveller during the long trips in the car. We can't believe how much Sophie's walking has improved in the last 2 weeks. She wants to walk just about everywhere!

Mommy & Sophie on Independence Day
Sophie in her watermelon dress kept walking towards Daddy as he took this picture of her.
Sophie met her friends, Anna & Sidney, at the park. Sophie and Anna liked driving the car best.
Sophie met Nelson for the first time and they hit it off!