Carlyn

no, it is not a white Christmas, but we did have some snow a few weeks ago. luther loved it. pearl was not a big fan.

hope everyone is having a very merry christmas. james has 5 days off, so we are all very excited, but pearl is the most excited. she won't let her daddy out of her sight. we are going to have christmas with my side of the family tomorrow and the kids are going to stay with my parent for a few days. james and i are going to stay in a "4 star" hotel we grabbed for 2 nights off of hotwire.com as our christmas present. i am 11 weeks pregnant now. i have been having lots of nausea and some vomiting, but not as bad has it has been in the past with my other pregnancies. maybe my body is getting use to this whole pregnancy thing!! i added a few new videos of the kids. so check them out.

this pics are from our layton family thanksgiving celebration. james was not able to celebrate thanksgiving with us so we celebrated a few weeks early with the traditional meal of course!!!

james had the 3rd week on novermber off of work. since i am pretty sick in my first trimesters, we really didn't have any big plans. we just did a few fun things around here. one of our outing was to the irondale cafe and the bass pro shop. pearl and i had fun playing dress up while the boys played with guns. i was glad to have james home and took the opportunity to get lots of rest. my parents came at the end of the week on saturday and took the kids home with them. i met them in atlanta on wednesday for thanksgiving. the kids did great with my parents. it was pearl's first time being away from me. she was actually still nursing twice a day and i was trying very hard to wean her. i was hoping being away from me would help and not make her flip out. she did great and is now drinking 2 or 3 sippy cups of cow's milk a day now. yay!! my dad had just had his 1957 Massey Ferguson tractor completely remodeled. so, luther was in heaven riding around on the ...

We found out a week ago that i am pregnant. sometime in july, we am going to have 3 kids, 3 and under!! i am sure most out there think i am crazy(that ok, i am), but we are really excited. james and i have both always wanted a big family and with #3 on the way we see God making our dreams reality. luther is thrilled and is already wanting to know if he can hold the baby when he/she is born and if the baby can sleep with him in his "big boy bed". we actually were going to try to keep our news on the down low for a little while, but luther has done a good job of making that impossible. so, we gave up keeping it a secret. i have my first ultrasound the end of the month, so i will know an exact due date then. i am about 7 weeks now and not sick yet. please join me in praying that will last as long as possible. i was pretty sick with my other two, but better with pearl than luther, so i have hope this could go even smoother. pearl on the other hand seems to be very u...

the days, weeks and months are going way too fast. luther will turn 3 next week. pearl is 14 months. she can now run, not just walk, and she just cut her 6th tooth. i don't mean to stay so busy, but somehow i always manage to. i can't even remember what all has happened since my last post, but one thing stands out in my mind. the kids and i recently went on a week long road trip. we went to greenville south carolina to meet up with one of my closest friends from james's med school years. talia and i grew very close in those years trying to survive being "med school wives" and went thur 2 pregnancies together. anyway, we met at her parent's farm for some great visiting time. we also were able to see some of james family(Aunt Carol, Uncle Steve, Rachel & Angela) and Elizabeth and Seth(more med school buds) while we were there. so we made the most of our little trip to SC. Luther and Bryce were instant best friends again, actually the got along b...

pearl eating hummus from the pita house at her layton great grandmother's 80th bday party

luther painting eating corn at Black Bear Jamboree Cabin where we stayed in Aug to celebrate james' grandmother's 80th bday Luther is his "Big Boy Bed" we moved him into a twin bed about a month ago and he has been doing great!!! he has never even gotten out of bed when he is suppose to be sleeping. when he wakes up he crawls to the end of his bed and knocks on his door and calls for us.

so my camera has been broken for about 2 months now. but it took me about that long to figure out it was actually broken. i just kept thinking the batteries were not charged. i am missing all kinds of milestones and photo opportunities. i have picked it up 100 times to take a pic and when i turn it on, if goes off before i even get it up to take the picture. i haven't been able to video pearl's cute little toddle or how she walks around with a cell phone in one hand and a pink purse in the other mostly all of the time. luther did about 20 laps around the park on his tricycle today. that would have made a good pic or video. so, i do have a camera that is working that Brittany gave me a while back, but i lost it's charger. so i guess i am just going to have to get a charger for it. luther has been on a roll lately of saying some really hilarious stuff. i forget a lot of it, but he definitely keeps us laughing. lets see if i can remember a few. he had a bad dream in ...

well, pearl has been taking little steps here and there for over a month, but today she walked half way across the room to me. so i guess i can say she is officially walking. i have been potty training luther for about a month now. and he has now gone several days in a row without an accident so i guess i can say he is potty trained. i have a 1 year old and a 2 year old!!! that sound so weird to say. luther bday is coming up soon in oct, so he will not be 2 much longer. he is already planning his party. i think i am going to let him plan everything since he had some really creative suggestions for pearl party. it will be fun to see what he comes up with. james is enjoying anesthesia. he has a whole month with no call nights, as he got adjusted to his new job. but, now he will start back call. it looks like he will have it only about 3 times a month and before it was about 6. so that is better. he still seem so exhausted even with this month off of call. he has to get up ...

sitting forward in her new car seat and trying to ride her brother's tricycle cakes i made for her birthday party pearl's birthday party went well. we had lots of family and some friends come for the big event. pearl did pretty good with all of the attention for little gal that is really not that social. i had to take her back to her bedroom a few time for a little alone time with mommy so calm her down a little. but, by the end of the day she had gotten use to having a ton of people in her house and face and decided that she loved it. the williams came down fore the event and brittany ( http://www.photographyhonestly.com/ )took lots of pictures at the party, which freed me up to socialize, serve cake and be mommy. i know she got some great shots and i am so grateful because i think i only took like 4 or 5 pictures. so birthday pics will be posted later but everyone kept asking about the cake. so here is the cake i made for her party. it was my first try at fondant. i learne...

i made blueberry jelly from some of the fresh blueberries we picked at meemaw's house pearl eating figs!! luther enjoying a homemade fruit roll up ( fruit leather) that i made in the food dehydrator with pureed blueberries and apple sauce so we planted a huge garden this year and it has been keeping me busy along with our fig tree and blueberries from my meemaw's house. i also have been on a huge sewing kick. so the next few posts are to show everyone some of what has been going on at our house over the last 2 weeks. i didn't have any pictures of all of the squash preservation.

spaghetti sauce!! gotta use some of those fresh tomatoes to make a tomato pie!! diced tomatoes to be frozen.. these will be perfect for soups and stews in the winter!! and i had to try our the dehydrator on the tomatoes!! sundried tomatoes are packed with flavor.

peeled seeded(i keep the tomato juice to freeze) cut in half at this point then i have lots of options. so far i have used my tomatoes to can salsa and spaghetti sauce and to freeze diced tomatoes.

fresh picked tomatoes from our garden cored blanched ice bath