happy australia day

To celebrate Australia Day this year we went to a park and had a picnic with our church. It was a really fun day and the weather was perfect! Everyone loved that we had our little American girls dressed in Aussie clothes :)

our little school girl

Today was Grace's first day of school! The school system here starts at age 3, so we thought we'd enroll her, but only 2 days a week. Thanks to ExxonMobil, she gets to attend a fantastic private girls school and her studies will include: classical ballet lessons, Italian, German, & Chinese language classes, art, pottery, music, horticulture, PE, and yoga.

She had a great first day and was as sweet and friendly as could be!

She also has a PE uniform. I'll post pics of her in that next week. It's super cute, too :)

Prince William & The Australian Open

Bruce and I got to go on a fantastic date last night. Thanks to ExxonMobil & its affiliates, we got corporate tickets to The Australian Open and got to watch the world tennis champion, Roger Federer play! How fun is that?! Also, as if the night wasn't already exciting enough, mid-way thru the match in walks Prince William and his Royal Entourage....talk about bringing the house down! I've never heard so much applause in my entire life. It was very exciting - especially because Prince William sat only two sections away from us.

Very, very cool!

Our seats were amazing! Only 4 rows from the court.

Prince William (front row, second from the left of the woman in the orange jacket) and the Royal Entourage all around and behind him.




Roger Federer after his win taking off his sweatband and throwing it into the crowd.

big changes for little girls

Today was a big day for Gracie and Haylee....Grace went to Sunbeams and Haylee braved going to nursery without her big sis. Grace did fantastic in Sunbeams and Haylee did okay without Grace. Her nursery leader said she kept circling the room saying, "Where Grace?" I'm sure she'll be fine within the next couple weeks of church.

Here's us right before I took them into Primary:

Gracie the Sunbeam! I asked her after church if she had fun in her class and she said, "Sure! I had fun and I not pee pee in my undies!" What a big girl :)

gets me every time...

We've lived here almost two years now and I still get a good laugh at the sale prices:

grace's birthday party

i still can't believe my baby gracie is 3!! we had a really fun birthday party for her at our friends, the stewart's, house. we had a yummy bbq dinner, a choo-choo train cake, and lots of swimming in their pool! i love my big 3 year old!

i love that miss haylee is helping blow out the candles

opening presents...haylee got some, too :)

ava was such a happy little party girl! she's such a good baby

i love this! what's so sweet about it is that grace put her arm around bruce before i took the picture. what a sweetie!!!

her most favorite present...her first jewlery box! she loves it so much. it's a wind-up music box and the little ballerina dances to swan lake. grace thinks the ballerina is amazing! very cute.

Happy Birthday, Grace Kathryn!

Wow! Can my first baby already be three?! I can't believe it! If feels like Bruce and I just brought her home from the hospital as a tiny little newborn days ago. How fast three years has gone by! Sometimes I wish I could stop time because I love my little Gracie and don't want her to grow up!

Grace is such a special little girl. She has the most tender heart. She has an enormous amount of love to give. We are so blessed to have her sweet, tender spirit in our home. Grace is happy and giggly all the time and always has something to say. She's our little chatter box and I love it when she comes to me and just chats it up...she's adorable!

We love you, sweet baby Grace! Happy birthday to you.

the story of us....

5 1/2 years ago we got engaged...

....and 4 years ago today we got married!

then, a year later we had a baby, and.....

...then the next year we had another baby, and...

...then another baby!

and now we're a really happy family.

i'd say that's a pretty good little story.

happy anniversary, bruce! i love you more every day. thank you for being my best friend.

cutie

grace is just the sweetest, funniest little thing. i'm really enjoying her age. don't get me wrong, she's a total diva and sass-a-frass, but still so funny. her latest funny is that she pronounces the word 'hungry' as 'honky'.

she said to me this morning: "mommy, i honky for water and cupcakes."

okay :)

family time

we walked down to our beach this past saturday morning and had our usual muffins and juice at the bakery. oh, we love this place! we miss home back in houston, but we are really starting to love it here and feel more at home....we will really miss our saturday mornings at the beach when it comes time to move back to america. how many times in your life can you live blocks away from a gorgeous australian beach?!

chasing seagulls

haylee loves her hi-5's

the seagulls coming to check out our food stash

collecting seashells - the girls love this

It's official.....

....Ava is an American citizen!! Yay! Bruce and I were finally able to take Miss Ava to the United States Embassy to apply for her American citizenship and passport. We had to take HEAPS of documents....everything short of a urine sample. Anyhow, I was all excited and geared up to take photos of her becoming a citizen with the U.S. Consulate General, but silly me, of course cameras aren't allowed inside the Embassy. We had to go through airport-like security and then we were escorted by a security officer up to the Consulate General's floor. It was a shame because the inside was a beautiful building and I would've loved some pictures. Oh well. The closest we could get with the camera was outside:


It was exciting for us to see the American flag waving in the middle of Melbourne!

We love that Ava is our little Australian souvenir :)

Guess what??....

...we're going to FIJI!!!!! We booked a family vacation for the first week of March to the island of Nadi, Fiji. It's only a 4 hour flight from here, so we thought, 'Why not?!' WooHoo!!!!!!

baby love

firsts & favorites

Grace is officially potty trained! She's gone 3 weeks now with zero accidents. I am so proud of her! I'm also so proud of myself for potty training for the first time without losing my mind. I was really sick of mopping up pee off the floor 15 times a day. So, with that said....now it's about time to start potty training Haylee! Here's Gracie showing of her undies... Cutie pie!

Grace's favorite thing right now is the "fishie game". She's really good at it, too! Haylee will also sit down and play, but she cheats by just picking up the fishies and then Grace gets upset. Grace takes playing the game very seriously. :)

haylee's party

we had miss haylee's birthday party last saturday. it was a 'tinkerbell' party because haylee is in love with tinkerbell at the moment. we invited some of our good friends, had a bbq, pink and green tinkerbell cupcakes, and enjoyed a really fun evening!