Happy Half Birthday, Berkley!

Dear Berkley,
Today, you are six months old, my little precious pie!  Kay Kay and I made you a half birthday cake yesterday to celebrate the occasion.  Although it appears in the above picture that it's just you, sitting unsupported by a cake that Papa is holding so that it doesn't go flying off the table, Kay Kay is just barely out of the picture to catch you when you start to topple over :)  I would say you can sit unsupported for maybe 5 good seconds :)   Another funny you can't see in this pic is that I am whistling my head off because it sometimes can get a smile out of you, and your big sister is right there with me playing the music from a little dog toy that also sometimes makes you smile.  The finger in the mouth with a slight grin was all we could get from you :)  I'm now calling you my little serious baby.  You are a smiley baby, and it's fairly easy for non family members to get a smile from you, but you are quickly drawn back to this very serious face that appears to be saying "Who on earth are you and what in the world are you doing?"

You are such a sweet baby who still rarely ever fusses.  You take 3-4 naps a day, love playing in the floor with all your toys, love Kenadie who can always make you laugh, take 4 bottles a day, eat twice a day along with what we'll call a little snack around lunchtime, and you can put your paci in your mouth all by yourself, however; I typically am needed at some point to come find it for you in your crib.  I obviously love EVERYTHING about you, but some of my most favorite things about you now are:  How super excited you are to see me when you wake from a nap or when you wake up in the mornings, how just about every time I look in the rear view mirror while driving down the road, you are 9 times out of 10 happily watching your sister like she's super great, how you "talk" a lot in the car,  how you get really excited when it's time to eat and how you smile when I sing to you at night before bedtime.

The following is a much truer shot of how our photo shoot on Kay Kay's dining room table really looked...   

    Kay Kay made a little half cake for me when I was 6 months old, we did it for Kenadie, and now it was your turn.  Of course, you have no idea what it tasted like, but we all enjoyed it :)

Happy half birthday, Berkley!  I've been singing "Happy half birthday to you..." all morning!  I love you so much, and thank God daily for blessing our family with such a special gift as you :) 

It's My Turn

And yes, I do mean MY turn, to get to treat my sweet girl to a day of doing things she loves, just the two of us!  It always seems like various members of our family are indulging in this favorite past time, but I never seem to get a turn.  So, it was finally my turn today to get to soak up our time together, just me and her :)  Here is how our day went...

As soon as she woke up...

I asked her if she would like to go see Winnie the Pooh, and she was super excited!  She and I both got ready, and in no time, we were leaving...(Lily didn't go with us :))

and saying bye to these two...

We left our house early enough to run by Papa and Kay Kay's first.  I left one of my important computer cords at their house yesterday, and needed it to get something printed by Sunday.  While at their house, I emailed the document I needed to the UPS Store.  Yes, you need these details for something that happened later in the day!  My parents weren't home, which we knew they wouldn't  be, so we helped ourselves to the Skittles that were just so conveniently laying on the coffee table :)  It was like they knew we were coming :)

     Ok, so 30 minutes later, I've got the *very important* document emailed that I need for church tomorrow, and we are back on the road and headed to our movie.  The whole way going, I'm trying to explain to her that we aren't going to see the real characters on a stage, just a movie playing on a screen.  I told her we would just need to make sure we tell Daddy when we get home that we're ready to go back to Disney World :)  Yes, it's only been 8 months!

We've got our popcorn and fruit punch!

After the movie, she thought we needed some ice cream, and because it was her day, I went with it :)

The junk food ends here!  Promise!  Next, I thought she may have fun picking out a new book for us to read, so we made a stop by Books A Million, where we apparently stayed 3 minutes too long...  I forgot to snap a picture in there, so here she is with her books when we got home...

Ok, so I'm thinking we've had our fun, and it's about time to be heading back home to take a nap.  But wait... first I've got to run in and get my 3 prints from the UPS Store, which happens to be my most favorite place to print from, as far as quality for the price goes.  And here my friends, is where it is sometimes  a bit painful to be a perfectionist :(  I get Kenadie unbuckled and I'm pulling the store door open, but it's not wanting to open--kinda seems locked if you ask me.  The good thing about this store is that they have 2 doors.  So, I'm thinking they must just want everyone to use the other door, I mean... I see a little girl about Kenadie's age in there and another woman...  What do ya know???  The other door didn't open either, and I am a bit perplexed, it's only 2:03... About the time I'm trying to open the 2nd door, the woman who apparently works there is shaking her head no.  I'm STILL confused???  Then I have the bright idea to read their store hours.  I see that they close at 2:00 on Saturdays, and I look down at my watch to see that it's 2:03!!!  Are you kidding me???  I'm 3 minutes late for something I REALLY need and I REALLY only like their quality for what I'm doing!  So, what does a girl do in this moment of despair... she calls her husband to cry, but instead holds back the tears when she hears her soon to be 6 month old crying on the other end of the phone, and plays the role of a mature big girl!  I'm for sure that this probably seems severely trivial to anyone who may be reading this, but when you know that 3 short little minutes cost you quality and you are a person who is crazy about quality, that just leads to an adult meltdown if you're me :)  Kudos to Kenadie for sympathetically telling me "I'm so sorry Mommy that that store was closed."  I picked my little tears up off the sidewalk and went to print place plan b, where the girl was severely drab and unfriendly, and I didn't even get half the quality as store #1!  Oh well... lesson learned, UPS Store closes at 2:00 on Saturdays.  I WILL NEVER forget this!  And one more thing, before you think I've totally lost my mind... it was the measly 3 minutes that got me the most.  I could have taken this FAR better if I had been an hour or so too late.   

My sweet girl and I had too much fun today to let that little episode ruin the day!  I look forward to the next time we get to have another day like today!

Days 181-190

Day 181, Berkley's little entertainer :) *you can't beat the quality of my phone*

Day 182

Day 183, Going to see Cars 2 with Daddy

Day 184, She learned a new trick, and usually it would be Aaron that taught her something like this, but not this time... I take full credit :)

Day 185, Happy 4th!!!

Day 186, Happy girl waking up from her nap

187, Grand Berkley Station, minus the knives :)

Day 188, Daddy's home!!!

Day 189, First time in the jumpy, and not real sure about it!

Day 190, My little explorer, looking for bugs...

Days 170-180

Day 170, Happy Father's Day!

Day 171, Trying out the high chair--don't think we're quite ready to eat our meals here though...

Day 172, Bath time bunny Berkley

Day 173, On our way to Destin!

Day 174, Playing in the sand, still her FAVORITE thing to do at the beach!

Day 175, Rule # 1,347: If your child tells you her tummy hurts, you may want to consider it true!  Stomach bug hits the Hall Family Vacation!   

Day 176

Day 177, From day 1, this little girl has LOVED her bath, and still does :)

Day 178, I shopped till she dropped :) This is what happens to her if she misses her nap... she WILL find some place to take one!

Day 179, Happy 5 months, Berkley!

Day 180, A staple in our home... or I should say a staple for me!  I don't think I would be able to sleep without having some of this sometime after dinner, and it HAS to be in one of those little cups, or it just doesn't taste right.  It is the BEST low fat yogurt you have ever tasted!  I'm just waiting to find out that it's actually "real" ice cream...  Side note random funny that just came to mind: I fell in love with McAlister's "light" ranch dressing a while back.  One day I decided to ask how low fat it really was.  Are you ready for this???  The fat gram difference was only 1 gram from the "real" dressing!!! What???  They can actually call it "low fat" due to a 1 gram of fat difference???  No wonder it tasted so good!  That's why I'm a little leery of the yogurt here...

The Things She Tells Us

After she put a toy butterfly on Berkley's head:
Kenadie: (laughing hysterically) "Momma, come look at Berkley!"
Me: "Awww, let's don't laugh at her, she can't help that there's a butterfly on her head."
Kenadie: "I wasn't laughing at Berkley, I was just laughing at what I did." :)

When asked why she made a flower at church:
Kenadie: "Because it was flower church day."

Kenadie: "I'm good at listening.  See watch, ting ting ting... that's how you listen in Spanish."

"Momma, do you know what Berkley just did?  She put her little finger right in my nose."

When feeding Berkley baby food for the first time:
"Oh, does she have teeth now?"

"Mom, Berkley almost pulled off my hammer jammers." (What we call pajamas that Kenadie use to think was hilarious, but now just very nonchalantly calls them that :)

Kenadie: "If Berkley gets a hole in her teeth, she may lose all her energy!"
Me: "Well, she doesn't have teeth just yet, so that couldn't happen."
Kenadie: "Oh, well then she will just turn back to normal and move again."

What she says about Berkely's babbling:
"Mom, I think Berkley's speaking Spanish."

About 20 minutes after showing her the following picture of what Lola would look like when she got bigger:

Kenadie: "But Mommy, I don't want Lola to turn into a different animal."
Me: "Oh, she's not going to turn into a different animal, she's just going to grow like Berkley is growing."
Kenadie: "Oh, so she's still going to have her antlers?"

When a fly was on Aaron's shoulder:
Kenadie: "Look Daddy, there's a fly on your shoulder!"
Aaron: "Shu fly, don't bother me."
Kenadie: "Shu fly, don't bother my Daddy."
Aaron: "Look, there's a fly on your shoulder."
Kenadie: "Shu fly, don't bother Daddy's daughter."

Happy Birthday, America!

Great FOOD, Great FUN, Great FOURTH!!!

We had a great time at our church's annual, Celebrate America on Sunday night.  I should probably rewind and tell you that all of our 4th festivities actually started on Saturday!  It all began with Aaron telling me that he was going to take Kenadie to get do-nuts Saturday morning, to which she apparently ate all of "his" do-nuts and left him the do-nut holes, ha!  Then, he decided that he needed a haircut after the do-nuts, to which Kenadie went with him :)  So, after do-nuts and a haircut came swimming with lots of Aaron's family at his grandparents, which was followed by lunch at a place I had never ventured to, Mr. T's!  Now, I know what you're wondering and I'll go ahead and answer it, yes, it was at this time that all four of us came home and we ALL took naps at the SAME TIME!  For me, it's just a 20 minute power nap, but for everyone else, it's practically sleep till supper-time!  After naps, Aaron and Kenadie went to the 7:20 showing of Cars 2--they slept through the 4:00, while Berkley and I stayed home to catch up on some laundry and Say Yes to the Dress!  And the final thing that happened Sat., as Aaron and Kenadie were leaving the movie, it was perfect timing for fireworks!  I'm pretty sure they didn't make it to the finale, as Kenadie was requesting to go home :)  The only thing that got x'd off our "To-do" list today was getting a "snow-ball cone" :)  We'll save that one for another day!   

Momma D and Papaw joined us for the fun!

Quick, think fast... who doesn't belong in the next picture???  Note to self: Have more than one patriotic themed outfit in my closet for next year!

Ready for the fireworks!

On Monday, we enjoyed more swimming and cookouts with both of our families!  Probably not a good idea to weigh today...

And a 4th of July just wouldn't be complete without homemade Butterfinger ice cream!  After helping Kay Kay make the ice cream, she asked if she could drink some :)

  Thank you, thank you, thank you to the brave men and women who have served or are serving our great country!  Thank you for the sacrifices you make and your commitment to our country! 

Days 163-169

Day 163, Berkley helps put away ALL the laundry from Bible school!

Day 164, Kenadie did great this week at swimming lessons!

Day 165, Obviously she doesn't eat pretzels...

Day 166, One of Kenadie's favorite toys, paired with her love of pretending!  That would be a "band-aid" because the cupcakes got hurt.

Day 167, She's found her toes!!!

Day 168, So, maybe every day isn't a smiley, feel good kinda day :)

Day 169, Beauty Shop--something new we like to play :)