Thursday, November 19, 2009

No more tears

Well less of them atleast. Ann Edwards had surgery yesterday to have a stint placed in her left tear duct that never drained properly. She has had a little weepy eye since about day 4 of her life. I will never forget the first trip to St. Louis when her little left eye had a constant tear running from it..Ava Belle must have said, "Oh! HE's crying!" Like 1,000 times. (She now uses the correct pronoun for her cousin also) It was an early day and a rough go to give my baby up to be carried into an OR. Luckily she had her passy and her lamby with her in the OR. But, all is well now and her little eye is healing just fine. The highlight of the day was when a little girl in the Children's waiting room thought Ann Edwards was tinkerbell. So sweet!

Here she is playing in the waiting room, they had a princess kitchen! She of course loved the hospital at this point!


And for anyone who has been with us in the car for any length of time knows how impressive this next picture is. She hates her car seat and refuses to sleep in it. I took this because this is literally like the 3rd time she has slept in the car in her entire life! She was so tired after the procedure, and so were her parents!

Sunday, November 15, 2009

When Daddy is in Charge

I went to Atlanta Sunday for my friend Anna's shower. She has a baby boy on the way and I was so excited to go celebrate with her!

Meanwhile, Little Bit stayed at home and played with her daddy. The weekends are so special to us all, but Ann Edwards really gets her fill of her Daddy and being with the two of them makes my life so sweet. They have captured one another's hearts the way only daughters and fathers can, and its so dear to witness! They have their weekly Saturday breakfast date, which always involves pancakes or waffles. Yummy! (while mama sleeps in!! woo hoo!) And they take wagon rides and wrestle, explore the back yard and always find new adventures. She loves her time with him, and its so good to have some new ways to entertain a busy toddler! So today I had no worries about her happiness as I left them. I knew fun was to be had, as it always is, when daddy's in charge!

When I left this morning she was in her Sunday best as they left for church...Then as soon as I crossed the Georgia state line I got this picture via text from Daddy. Ha ha. (Thanks to the Matthews for this cute shirt!! RK has been itching to get her in it)

Thats a wooden spoon in her hand, she is really into Kitchen items these days!

And here are some pictures of the 2 of them from our last Blink Lady Session. Enjoy!




Friday, November 6, 2009

An ode to our neighbor...

Dear Neighbor (it seems somehow wrong to put your name on the Internet) So, we'll just call you G-Dog.

Dear G-Dog,
We can't believe you are really moving, though we'll believe it when we see it. You come back everyday to move about 2 boxes at a time and leave your van and sometimes dog here, so I have a feeling the process could take awhile. Meanwhile, we will be reflecting on how much we will miss you. Life can get too predictable sometimes..unless you have a neighbor like you. We never knew what was going to come out of your mouth or what event we'd get to watch you do through our windows. I'd now like to recount some of the highlights...

There was the time (yes only one in 4 years) that you decided to wash your car. Looking back it totally made sense to do it your way. You emptied an entire bottle of dawn dish detergent on the top of your dry car. Then you used your (our borrowed) hose to run water over the top of your car creating mass bubbly chaos for about an hour until the water ran clear. No need to wipe, scrub or actually do any work. Meanwhile using the maximum amount of water possible, mind you it was during a severe drought. Filling up a bucket and using a rag like the rest of America just wouldn't do. Besides your way ends with the gleaming roof that no one sees and the dried dirt on the tires and rim of the car, almost as if you had never washed it.

It was always fun when you got the urge to do yard work about every 1.7 years. That one time it was so cold when you decided to blow your leaves, I'm sure you hands would have been freezing..IF you had not thought to plan ahead and wear tube socks on your hands. Yeah maybe it was a little hard to maneuver the on and off switch having no fingers, just a blob for a hand, but you were warm, and it warmed our hearts too.


One time we came home to you standing in our carport wearing jean shorts, no shirt and...SKI GLOVES. Why the gloves? Oh, because you were hunting for a roly poly for your daughters school project. I'm sure there weren't any in your yard. And the ski gloves proved to be a little tricky to pick up the tiny roly poly, didn't they? But after the socks-on-hand incident you were definitely going to wear the gloves you no doubt got for fathers day.



When you needed to expand your Drive-Way you could have hired a professional, but of course not. You just mixed up quick-crete in a cooler (no bucket handy I'm sure) and spread it inch by inch with a small spackle spreader. Too bad quick-crete dries almost instantly, and it was pitiful that your parking pad crumbled the first time you parked there. Although it did come in handy when you inherited your dad's broken down car that sat there for 9 months.

After living in a house season after season things loose their luster. Like your chain link fence. Good thing you thought to get boo-koos of silver spray paint and spray 1/4th of your fence to make it shiny again. Those cans ran out really quickly didn't they? It was also an added bonus for us to get to have silver grass for a couple of weeks.

When Rainer told your girls he was getting me a puppy a few years back for my birthday they asked him, "Boy or Girl?" When he answered Girl, they ran off, and he got the feeling they were up to something. Three days later they came back and presented him with a list of 87 suggested girl dog names. And 2 days after that they brought a second list with 67 more. They were written as one long sentence, no numbers, just a stream of random names. Some that I remember being highlights were: Pansy, Blossom, Indonesia, Asia, Bruce (what?) Needless to say, we had to choose one of the suggestedd names. And thats where Ginger came from. I personally feel like we should go back to that list to pick ALL future pet names..Rainer might disagree. (Readers- I can only find the 2nd list, but will keep searching for the first because its even better. Regardless, enjoy this one, and feel free to use any of the names!)



Needless to say when we found out we were having a baby we were sure to mention that we had names picked out already. I'm a sucker for kids and probably would have named my daughter something crazy like Gladiolia if another list had appeared.

Another thing that was always hilarious was when you (or your family members) came over to borrow things. My personal favorite being this conversation with Rainer:
G Dog, "Rainman!...Whats up?! You know I was thinking...We should grab a beer sometime"
Rainer, "Yeah, that'd be nice"
G Dog, "Well, you got one?"

Then Rainer came in to grab 2 beers and you stood in the dirt that divided our homesteads and enjoyed a cold one, on us of course.

One night you sent one of the girls over just before dinner time. Here is what she said, "Hi. My dad sent me over. We were going to have spaghetti for dinner. But, do you have some sauce we can borrow?" I asked her if she needed noodles too, but you had planned ahead for that one.

Then there was the time you were sending one of the girls to camp. She ran out of luggage so you left a note when we weren't home, to borrow some extra large leaf trash bags for packing.


But in all seriousness you could not have been kinder to us, always checking in on us, loving watching Ann Edwards grow and of course you did name our dog and all. I really can't believe you are moving. We will miss you, our lives will be filled with a few less laughs and smiles now. Thank you for being the PERFECT neighbors for our first home. We will never forget all your quirkiness or kindness. You will be missed.

Love,
Your neighbors, The Kendies

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Staying

You might have noticed a lack of a certain subject I blogged about for a while..Moving. Well, after denial (on my part) about God's timing for us to move, we have taken our house off the market. God is so faithful and has brought us so much contentment in our not-so-huge house. We are confident in His plans for us and knew that now just wasn't the time for many things we had planned. So, we take heart and wait on the Lord!

Meanwhile, its our favorite time of year to be in our home, we have loved our backyard lately and the beautiful huge trees that daily seem to remind me of my father's perfect covering over me, over my home and over my family.



Ann Edwards runs freely on the back deck, in and out of the kitchen at her leisure and roams our house with such joy. I can't help but realize God had further blessings for us staying put for a little while!



We also turned our guest room into a playroom and sold our coffee table, so its offically toddler roaming/play house over here! You see, its really Ann Edwards house anyways,filled with her toys and her laughter, we just get to live here too!


As we're staying our neighbors are moving! Which is another post all together...Stay tuned.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Proud (of my) Peacock








We had a fun Halloween weekend with dressing up, seeing family and even our first sucker!


Happy Halloween Everyone!!

Love,
Ann Edwards