Merry Christmas!

Here's Sophie who has gotten so big in front of our tree. It kind of makes me sad to see how grown up she is becoming. At the same time though, I'm really proud of her and I love being able to converse with her more and more. I can't believe (and yet I sort of can) that we are about to have another baby! It's harder to sleep, harder to bend down, etc. When I see the countdown on our blog page, I'm thinking, "Whoa, we are getting really close. Am I ready for this?" Anyway, it will be neat for Sophie to be a big sister. She is so nurturing with her baby dolls so we'll see how she does with a real baby who is demanding our attention.

So far, getting ready for Christmas (and including Sophie in some of the traditions) has been really fun. She was so excited for us to get our Christmas trees put up a couple of weeks ago. She loved being able to put a few of the special non-breakable ornaments on the bottom of the tree that I had saved for her. She also got to help me decorate our little tabletop tree. She has enjoyed getting to see the Christmas light displays around town, helping me to put some of the presents under the tree, doing an advent calendar, making cute Christmas crafts at school, etc. The not so fun part about December is that this is the 2nd time that Sophie's had a really bad cough and a fever where she can't sleep well. The timing wasn't great because Matt's family came in to spend an early Christmas with us yesterday and today. Oh, well. It's just one of those things I guess.

June Happenings

Sophie's got style! Sophie with her P.J.'s on, her maracas,
and her BIG boots.

Sophie playing in the rice pool

Damage from storm-neighbor's tree on house

Storm damage

Well, things haven't been too exciting here lately but we had a huge storm come through the 1st weekend in June, as soon as the official hurrican season began! A big part of our neighbor's tree ended up on the side of our house. Thankfully, it didn't seem to do much damage and we found someone to remove it for us but it was kind of a mess. It could have been much worse though. Sophie went to one of her first "kid" birthday parties last weekend. One party was rained out. The only other "kid" birthday party she'd attended besides her own parties of course =) was when she was a couple months old.

Anyway, this week I decided to try to keep our schedules free so that I could potty train Sophie. It went well the 1st day but we spent a lot of time in the bathroom. The 2nd day however, was awful. So, I think we'll just not worry so much about it for a little bit and then come back to it when she seems to be ready. Potty training is not for the faint hearted it seems (which I'm not, but this is a real doozy of a task).

Sophie scouts out where she would like her tree house

Last week, Sophie, Paula, and Paula's good friend, Andrea Hardison, visited the Angel Oak Tree on neighboring John's Island. Sophie was awed by the sheer size of the tree. The Angel Oak's trunk has a circumference of 26 feet and it is the height of 25 Sophie's stacked on top of each other. The longest limb is 89 feet long, and some of the limbs are so huge and heavy that they rest on the ground. The tree is thought to be 1400 years old. Sophie was not feeling very well all last week but she is feeling better now. Sophie and Paula had a good time spending time with Andrea, who was visiting from TN, while Daddy was at work.