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!

I'm so grateful

Whenever I hear the song of a bird or look at the blue, blue sky,

Whenever I feel the rain on my face or the wind as it rushes by,

Whenever I touch a velvet rose or walk by a lilac tree,

I'm glad that I live in this beautiful world

Heavenly Father created for me.

He gave me my eyes that I might see the color of butterfly wings,

He gave me my ears that I might hear the magical sound of things,

He gave me my life, my mind, my heart; I thank Him reverently

For all His creations of which I'm a part.

Yes, I know Heavenly Father loves me.

This time of year is a bit hard for Bruce and I living so, so far away from our families. However, it's really good for our marriage and has made it stronger because we've learned to rely on each other completely. We do everything as just the 5 of us. Just our little family.

This morning we walked down to the bakery at the beach and had muffins and juice. It was a gorgeous spring day. As the little girls played on the beach playground, I looked out over the sparkling blue ocean at the beautiful sailboats, I took a deep breath of the ocean breeze, closed my eyes and said a prayer of thanks. How blessed I am. How grateful I am for my dearest friend who is also my husband. How grateful I am for my beautiful, healthy little girls.

With the world in such turmoil, it's so comforting to know of the love of our Father in Heaven.

Healsville Mountains

While Janelle was here, we went to Healsville animal sanctuary. It's a very cool place because it's an open range sanctuary, so you get very up-close-and-personal with native Aussie animals. We were lucky to enjoy beautiful spring weather!

We had a really fun day....well, until Haylee lifted up the rope between us and the kangaroos and literally ran into their play area! Holy smokes! I about lost my lunch! Bruce had to go run in after her! We had joked earlier that day that we would just leave the girls in a kangaroo pouch....Haylee must have heard us talking :)

This is the rope Haylee ran under and darted towards the kangaroos behind us:

A Tasmanian Devil (pictured both above & below ;) )