Our Big 2 Year Old

We have a 2 year old ! I can't believe it! Kate's birthday was Friday last week and we celebrated with family on Saturday. We had a farm animal theme because Kate loves going to her G's farm! Sadly, her Pop (my dad) has a farm too but she's never seen it before so we'll have to take her out there soon to see the big tractors and cows. I think we're going to have a little farm girl on our hands.
So I have to tell you Kate was not herself the day of the party which was a total bummer. I don't think she was feeling good, I didn't make her lay down for quiet time that day (she's no longer taking naps but I still make her lay down for a couple of hours everyday) and I think she was so overwhelmed with all the attention. So, this will explain why she's frowning in every picture. Poor thing.

She loved her cow balloon

Sitting at her new table that mommy and daddy bought her for her birthday with cousin Pierce

Most of the pictures she was crying in them but this was one decent picture of her opening presents. I had this vision that she was going to love this part, but this is the part where she had a melt down. Oh well.

We were singing Happy Birthday to You and she looked like she was terrified! haha!

I made her cake. It wasn't anything fancy but I found these cute farm theme candles to go with the theme. It tasted pretty good too.

I decided to make it a rainbow cake and it turned out really cool looking. It was a mess and time consuming to do it this way, but totally worth it.

My brother Kyle was so cute. He found this balloon kit and practiced at home to make these balloon figures. I don't know if he meant to make this look like a flower but we were all impressed!

Kate playing with her gifts with cousin Pierce. She was feeling a little bit better by this point, when all the attention was not on her.

We go to her 2 year checkup next week so I'll post her stats then. I can't believe she's not a baby anymore. She's growing so fast and I don't know if I like that. But we're thankful she's a happy healthy, active little girl and we love her sooooo much!

Kate's Crafts

Since it's been cold outside, I thought we'd do some crafts to stay busy around here. Kate did her first finger painting today.

She kept saying "uh-oh mama" because of the paint on her fingers. At least she's trying to be clean.

And here's her masterpiece!





this next craft was making a Christmas ornament. I thought it might be a fun tradition to make one each year. This was more of me doing it than her however. Oh well she had fun making a mess!

And here it is.



Here we are making some Christmas sugar cookies. She wasn't too interested in this because I wouldn't let her do much. It makes such a mess as it is, I didn't want flour ending up all over my floors. She lost interest after about 5 minutes of this.

And of course I had to post some pictures of both of the girls just hanging out around the house.

chubby cheeks!






These next few pictures were cute to me. Her hair is a mess and she's wearing some scrubby clothes but I thought she looked so cute

I kept trying to get her to smile for me and this is what I get. Ha! She was being stubborn

New Church

Some of you have asked me if we've found a church yet after moving back to Texas. After searching for months we finally found a church home. New Heights Baptist Church is in Wylie and is about 10 mintues from where we live. (if you're interested their website is www.nhbcwylie.com) I'm so excited about it because we have been praying for God to lead us to the church He wants us to attend and raise our kids in and after visiting this one a few times along with many others, God kept bringing us back to this church and now we have such a peace and excitement about it. Unfortunately, we kept running into the same type of church everytime we would visit one. Most of them were "seeker sensitive" churches. If you want a full description on this you can read up on it at http://www.christianexaminer.com/Articles/Articles%20Mar05/Art_Mar05_oped1.html. My short definition is this....it's a big church movement that is becoming more and more popular where these churches have a philosophy of bringing as many unsaved people into their church as possible by making it seem entertaining, non-threatening, etc....by using technology, lights, big bands, loud music, watered down sermons, self-help sermons rather than really studying the scriptures all in the hopes that these unaved people will become saved. Needless to say, this is not what we're looking for and not a place where we would grow, not to mention it's unbiblical. The pastor of this church we are attending, his name is Steve Foster, reminds us a lot of the famous late Pastor Adrian Rogers. He's very dynamic and tells it like it is. We have always left feeling convicted but also encouraged in our faith. This church is on the small side so our only concern was that they might not have enough things for our kids to get involved in. But we figured they can go to AWANA at another church on Wednesdays and there are some things they do with the kids, just not as much as we were used to at our last church. Well, anyway, I'll quit rambling. But I'm so grateful we found a church home and that it's so close too! I love it when we seek God's will and He is always faithful in guiding you to it.