Our first morning waking up in Disney World! The kids were SO stoked. The boys were both up and ready to go early! 🙂

We started the day at a slow pace and the boys went down by the food court and played a little ping pong after filling up on granola bars and hot chocolate. 😉

Then we got ready to go and headed over to the Contemporary Resort to have brunch at Chef Mickey’s! This is the best picture I got of all three kids in their cute little shirts. Parker was not really down with the posing for pictures that morning (it didn’t help that at one point, he flipped over the edge of the couch and landed hard on his head on the floor. There was a half-second there were I could have sworn he’d broken his neck).

Sweet little love was ready to meet the characters! 🙂

The Contemporary Resort has monorails going through it constantly – the boys thought it was about the coolest thing ever.

On our way to meet Chef Mickey! The boys were getting so excited at this point!!

They even had a little chair for Eisley and we all just laughed. Only at Disney World. 😉

“I SEE DONALD!!!”

This is pretty much how meeting the characters went this morning. Nathan about crushed their ribcages from the hugging and Parker clung with white-fisted hands to Jon saying, “I don’t want to. I don’t want to!” He loved them from a distance. 😉

Mickey Mouse and my biggest boy. Nathan still has to sleep with his little buddy “MeMo” every night. 😉 This moment was just adorable.

There’s a little show on Disney Junior called Minnie’s Bowtique and Parker LOVES it. It’s basically like a three minute show mostly featuring Minnie and Daisy but it also has the other characters in it occasionally. It’s perfect for my boy’s short attention span. 😉 But he now thinks that Minnie’s last name is Bowtique, and he was so excited to finally see “Minnie Bowtique” but not really down with hugging her yet.

Kind of, maybe, sort of warming up to the characters… #blessMinnie #sorryaboutyournose

This little man needed absolutely NO warm up time – Gabriel ADORED the characters! So so cute! He started kicking and laughing and flapping his little arms the second he saw one. 🙂

And LOOK!! Parker had finally warmed up and Pluto had him in total stitches!! It was SO cute!

Gabriel loved, loved, loved Pluto. He’s the bestest kind of dog. 😉

After brunch, we packed up our already tired babies and our over-the-top
excited five year old and headed to Magic Kingdom for the rest of the day! Nicole and I attempted to get a picture of us with the littlest boys on the monorail. Hey, at least we’re looking. 😉

On the monorail and ready for a great afternoon!!

We’re at the Magic Kingdom!! Parker and Eisley were both pretty much out at this point. 😉 Every morning of our trip, Nathan and I came up with a word of the day. Today’s word of the day was magical and Nathan and I were determined we would have a magical day. 🙂

My fellow Disney lovers. 😉 I can’t imagine a trip to Disney without these two!!

Parker was just barely tall enough to ride the Goofy roller coaster! He loved it! He puts his hands up in the car now too if we happen to be going over anything remotely bumpy or over 25 miles an hour. Ha!

Sweet face – so much fun!!!

Okay, guys. Nathan was just barely tall enough to ride every single big ride in Disney World. And so he rode every single big ride in Disney World. 😉 He LOVED the roller coasters. Like, he would have been totally content to only ride those and never ride the “baby rides” as he informed me the non-roller-coaster rides were. (My response may have been choking back tears and stopping myself from forcing him into a swaddle so he’ll stop growing up so fast.) Love this face. He had the BEST time.

We ended the day riding all the rides. And I’ll just leave you with this:

It was a magical day. 😀

My sweet little Parker Bear,

Today you are two years old! We have been blessed with two years of your sweet presence and I just can’t believe it’s gone so fast and at the same time, I can’t remember life without you in it.

I look back at the pictures of this last year and you have just grown so much! You started the year as such a little baby in every sense of the word and are beginning this new year as such a big boy!

You love to be in the middle of things but you also love to be alone. You are actually on the introverted side, which is just so different than your big brother. I often find you retreated to your room or somewhere by yourself when we are around friends or a lot of people. You love to have friends come over and get so excited, but you also need your space.

You love to laugh and you love to make us laugh. You are so cute and you have the biggest personality! You are so LOUD. You can yell, sing and talk louder than almost anyone I’ve ever met. There is no volume control yet! Ha! You are such a good talker and you have been using complete sentences for a long time now. You started calling Daddy “Dad” recently and it was just another reminder about how quickly you are growing up. So far I have held on to “Mama”, but I bet it’s not for too much longer.

You have the most kissable cheeks but you can only take so much kissing. 😉 You love to snuggle until you don’t. You love to play with your brother until it’s just been too much and then you are very good at letting him know when you are done. 😉 You have developed quite the opinions over the last two months and you know EXACTLY what you want and you are NOT happy if it does not go exactly like you would like it. Ha! I remember this stage with Nathan too and oh my… not sure if I’m ready for it again! But here we go! You are very happy when you are happy and very not when you are not.

You are still a fantastic eater and sleeper! So thankful! You sleep about twelve hours at night and another 2-3 during the day. You love all fruit and sometimes that’s the only way I can get you inside from playing is to wave some fruit in front of the door. 😉 You love to be outside. You never walk, you always run or hop or skip or do this wearing half-rumba-half-gallop dance move as you go. You know so many songs and you sing them all day long at the top of your lungs. You tried to tell me the Pledge of Allegiance yesterday. You remember everything and you are so good at parroting it back!

I remember how long we waited for you and how hard we prayed for you and I am just overwhelmed at how God has answered those prayers. You are such a blessing to us, my precious boy! You are so loved. You are the best little brother and the sweetest big brother. You are so special because you are the only one in our family who is both a Big and a Little. What a privilege! It has been a hard adjustment for you to get used to a baby sister taking up my time and attention, but you are still so sweet (most of the time!) with her. You love to help and when I ask you for help, you are quick to jump up.

You have the funniest little quirks that make you you and you just make me laugh. You can’t stand for your hands to be dirty and if there is even a speck only visible to you on them, you are immediately demanding a “paper towel”. You only want to wear jackets if they are zipped up. You love to be “nice and warm” and I often find you in a pile of clean laundry that has just come out of the dryer. You are VERY attached to your pacifier. You can’t sleep unless I sing Jesus Loves Me to you, put your blanket on top of you and make sure you have two Pooh Bears and your Mickey Mouse. You are very brave as long as one of the adults you trust is around. You have a very short list of people you will go to and often there is only my name on the list. 😉 You always, always, always have a bruised knee and usually have a lumpy, scraped-up head to go with it. I pray for your safety every single day and often throughout it. 😉

Sweet little man, we just love your cute little self! You are the perfect middle to this crazy train and we cannot imagine how boring our life would be without you in it. You bring so much spark and excitement and joy and tears and sweetness and sass to every day! You keep us on our toes and keep our hearts and prayers filled. 😉 You are such a joy, my precious Parker Bear! I pray that you grow to love Jesus, to follow His commands and to walk in His ways.

I love you so much! Happy birthday, baby! I can’t believe you are already two years old!

Love,
Mama

Oh friends!! We just got back from the BEST trip!! 🙂

We have been planning this trip for almost a year, so it came incredibly slowly and passed too quickly. We had the best time!! Nathan has been counting down the days for about three months. He would randomly pop his head in and say, “Forty-two days until Disney World!” Ha!

So, on the last week, Nathan could barely sit still. 😉 We went with my parents, Cayce and Bryant, Nicole and Gabriel. We missed Caleb, Nicole and Hudson so much!!

It was finally the day!! Our flight was at 6:30 in the morning, so we got to the airport at 4:30am. The kids were SO EXCITED. Love this picture – they thought the luggage disappearing was about the coolest thing ever.

On the Disney bus with Gammy! They were so tired but so excited by this point. 😉

We’re here!!!

Oh my sweet babies! Love this of them in the hotel. They were so enthralled with everything they saw – hotels are SUPER cool. Even if they are only 260 square feet. 😉

After they explored the hotel room, Gammy and Pops took the boys to look around the hotel while Jon and I got beds set up and a few things unpacked. I love these pictures! They had the best time looking around!

We decided to go to Downtown Disney for dinner, which ended up being not necessarily the best decision because it took forever to get there and when we finally did get there, the kids were just done after the early, early morning and the long day. But they held it together fairly well! Parker could not get enough of all of the “MeMo and Minnie Bowtique”s everywhere. 😉

There’s an entire wing of the huge Disney store that is completely dedicated to Star Wars. Nathan thought he’d died and gone to heaven. He was SO excited by it all!

We headed back to the hotel and put our exhausted kids down for bed so we could start our fabulous vacation the next day! More to come!!

I cannot CANNOT believe how quickly the time is going by – she is just getting so big so fast!

Sweet Eisley girl is just such a joy! She is so happy, so content and has the cutest little wrinkled nose smile. We cannot get enough of her!

She is wearing 0-3 month clothes. She loves to be held and feel like she’s a part of the excitement. She is a fantastic sleeper! When we are at home, she takes several good naps a day in her bed, if we are out, she does a great job sleeping in her car seat or the wrap. She loves to be held in the wrap or Ergo!! At night, she is just the best sleeper ever and we are SO thankful!!

She has started getting so interactive! She will try (and often succeed!) at sticking her tongue out when you stick it out at her. She always returns smiles! She loves to stand up and loves to sit up straight. 😉 She’s so happy all of the time!

We had her two month check up and she got a clean bill of health and several shots (which I cried again. It’s now a tradition for each of my kids’ two month shots). She did good with them! She cried a little and was a little more fussy the rest of the day, but she was back to her cheerful self by the next morning.

At her appointment on March 9th, Eisley weighed 11 pounds 9 ounces, which puts her in the 34th percentile. She was 22 inches long, which puts her in the 9th percentile and her head was 38.5 centimeters around, which is the 35th percentile.

She is TINY. Both of the boys have always been in the 80-90th percentile for height. I knew she was smaller than both of them, I just didn’t realize how much smaller! She’s just our sweet little pint-sized girl and we could not love her more!

Oh. My. Goodness.

This blog has been completely neglected over the past six weeks and I am so sorry for that! Things have just been going at full speed and while we are starting to settle into this whole three kid thing, it has definitely thrown us for a loop. 😉 I saw a post on a blog I follow that was talking about which number kid was the hardest transition and I can 100% say #3 has been ours!! Eisley is the EASIEST baby ever, but Parker has had a really hard time moving into the big brother status.

All that to say, I am back! I will be doing some backdating on posts for the next few weeks so I don’t miss anything, but I’m going to do my best to be updating on here way more often!!

So, off to sort through pictures!!! 🙂