February

Lindsey's 2nd birthday

Nana Crowder

Lindsey loved Elmo everything last year - still does, but she's getting into the princess stuff!

Lindsey and Eliegh always having a good time

Lindsey got lots of paint and glitter glue for her birthday.

Here's Lindsey having birthday cookies with her playgroup.

Nana & Papa Fulton came over for Valentine's Day. Jeff and I got to get away to the Cheesecake Factory for a couple hours. :)

Yeah for window stickers!!!

Mackenzie at 2 months - already a smiley girl.

January

Arkansas Princesses

Mackenzie is 1 month.

I found Lindsey in the bathroom with a box of pantie liners!!!! She thought they were stickers!

Christmas '08

At the Fulton's

Here are the girls with their 6 cousins

Here we are at the Crowder's. Mackenzie is only 20 days old.

Christmas morning 2008

Cousin Eleigh and Lindsey being silly
Christmas Eve 2008

Coming Home

Jeff, Dorothy, and Mackenzie

This baby blue onesie is the one Lindsey wore when she came home from the hospital, and the same one I wore when I left the hospital 30 years earlier!!!

Looking Back

Mommy and Daddy getting ready to go to the hospital

Miss Mackenzie only a few minutes old

Later that afternoon, the whole family is together.

I'm hoping that I can figure out how to "slurp" this blog into a book to give to the grandmas for Christmas. Neither knows that I've been doing this, so I hope they like it. My first post wasn't until March '09, so I'm backtracking to get in lots of pictures from Dec 9, 2008 through the end of March. I can't believe Mackenzie will be one in a couple weeks!!!

These pictures are of course from the day Mackenzie was born. I woke up around 4:45am with contractions about 6-7 minutes apart. I laid in bed for a while just to make sure 'this was it'. My mom had pneumonia, but I called her anyway to tell her I was in labor. I felt bad for waking her, but she felt even worse she couldn't be here. Next we called Jeff's mom to tell her we were gonna have a baby and she immediately got in her truck and zoomed to Owasso!!! Nana Crowder was amazing!!! Jeff had been ill, Lindsey needed to be watched, and I was having a baby, so Nana Crowder to the rescue!!! We were all very thankful.
The next phone call was to our awesome neighbors Peggy and Michael around 5:30am. Peggy came over a little before 6 with one of the boys and stayed at the house with Lindsey (who was still sleeping) until Jeff's mom arrived, which I believe was about 8am.
At 8:15am weighing in at 8lbs 15oz, Mackenzie Anne Crowder was born!!!
Delivery was quick - no drugs - but the nurses had to hook me up to an iv for fluids - and that took at least 45 minutes. For some reason, no one could find a vein or get the needle in. 5 nurses tried and then an ER nurse finally got it in, but that was seriously the worst part...and it really wasn't that bad - i just kept turning my head away so i wouldn't faint. :) I started pushing at 7:30 and 45 minutes later Mackenzie arrived - with a lot of red hair!! :) She was so pretty and loved to snuggle right away. We nursed for a few minutes before they took her to the nursery for a couple hours. I stayed in the hospital for two nights (yeah). I needed to rest up before coming home to an almost 2-year-old and newborn. :)

11 Months

Miss Mackenzie is 11 months!!!
Her favorite things to do are to play with her sister, climb the stairs, dance, tickles with daddy, and chase. On the way to Arkansas the other day, I got in the backseat with the girls 'cause Kenzie had woken up. We were all sharing animal crackers and Kenzie held out a cracker like she was going to give it to me. So I acted like I was going to take it, and she pulled it back - teasing me! The pictures below are Mackenzie and Lindsey playing her new little game! Mackenzie would walk over to Lindsey and act like she was going to give her a toy. Then at the last second, Kenzie pulled her hand back and ran in the opposite direction. :) We had lots of fun. Nana is here for a few days since Jeff is gone. Yeah!!! Nana is a cleaning machine. We can wear the same clothes everyday 'cause Nana likes to do laundry and have everything clean. Notice that Mackenize has her onezie half on and half off. :) she doesn't like putting her clothes on AT ALL!!! so, if we're sticking around the house, sometimes all she wears is a diaper and she's perfectly happy.

There goes Kenzie running away after teasing Lindsey with a toy.

I'm 11 months!!!

Catching up...

i can't remember the last time i blogged....
everyone is doing well. mackenzie is getting over her ear infection and lindsey is almost over her little cough and cold.
we went to arkansas for one night last weekend and stayed with my parents. the girls loved it - they have so much fun playing with them. jeff and i went out after the girls went to bed. guess what we did? we went to wal-mart and toys r' us - looking for birthday and Christmas presents!!! How nerdy is that? It was actually nice to look at all the toys and have a moment to think about what the girls may like. Then we drove around downtown Fayetteville where we went to school and remembered the good old days where all we had to do was go to class and our part-time jobs and then do whatever we wanted the rest of the time. but, we wouldn't change our life now for anything - we love you girls so much and both of you are growing up so quickly.
jeff left for michigan sunday - this will be his last week there - thank goodness. no more business travel for a while.

Pepper Pickin'

At 7:30a.m. Sunday morning, we decided to drive to nana and papa crowder's house! that was very spontaneous of us and very crowder-like. :) We had such a nice time even though we were only there a few hours. nana and papa crowder had a huge garden in their backyard this summer/fall and still had some crops to harvest...

Here's Lindsey with a carrot she dug up from the ground.

Mackenzie was having fun wandering around the backyard...looking at the dogs and pointing at everything she saw.

Here's Lindsey with nana and papa picking peppers.

"No, baby, NO!!" My peppers!

Here's Lindsey with the fruits of her labor.

Nana made spaghetti for lunch. Yum!!!

Mackenzie has been putting her hands behind her back when she walks...it's so precious.

Halloween!

Two bootiful bees

We went to the fall fest at our church. There was a guy in a monkey suit - Mackenzie was in awe. I'm surprised she wasn't scared...she just kept walking toward him.

This game is the mystery wall. It's so funny 'cause this is the game that Lindsey liked the best last year, and you can see that Mackenzie is loving it too.

Here's my little jumper!!! The Scooby Dog is the little boy that I secretly want Lindsey to marry one day. :) His name is Matthew and he and his family are great - guess it's not a secret anymore. :)

Daddy and Mackenzie in the bouncy house!

Three little bees

We had a nice Halloween. The girls both had a cold, so they weren't feeling in tip top shape, but they still had fun. We went to the Boo Fest at one of the hospitals in town - Lindsey fell asleep in the car on the way home. Then later in the afternoon we went to our church's fall fest. We came home and Lindsey went trick-or-treating to a couple neighbors. We went to Miss Wanda's house. Lindsey was acting so shy for some reason. When we were walking away Lindsey finally said trick-or-treat to Miss Wanda. :) Next year she'll have the hang of it. :) And then we passed out candy until it ran out which was only about 8pm. It was a very Happy Halloween!