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