A visit with Jack

Shortly after New Year's, Susanna, Jeramy, and Jack stopped by for a visit. It was fun to see our 3 day apart babies play together, and it was SO NICE to finally meet a baby who literally acts just like Leah (i.e., active, wiggly, squirmy, etc.)

Above, Leah covets Jack's toy.

The next sequence of photos is just funny to me. It's a classic example of the unsteadiness of little babies.

LOVE Jack's face in this one. :)

Welcome Micah Emily Davenport!

A huge congratulations to our friends Mark and Melissa for the birth of their 2nd little girl! Micah Emily weighed in at 7 lbs, 2 oz and was 18.5 inches long. Jared, Leah and I went to visit the family after work yesterday, and my was she cute!! I couldn't believe how ridiculously tiny this little baby was-- Leah looked like a giant in the room with her! (A whiny, squirmy giant who kept trying to stick her fingers in everyone's mouth. Why?) This will be fun to have 3 little girls so close in age together.

Mark and Melissa-- may your journey into man-to-man coverage be blessed and joyous!

Not the best picture of me (I never look good when I come home from work), but funny to see Leah looking so concerned. What do you mean I'm not the littlest anymore???

Christmas vacation

First things first: I never said I was good at keeping this bad boy up to date. So there.

Now onto the rest... :)
We flew up to Delaware and New Jersey to visit our families for the Christmas holiday. It was *so nice* to see everyone again and spend some time with them. The trip was busy and went by quickly, and, as always, we are looking forward to next time.

Daddies feeding babies before church on Christmas Eve.

If you go back in our blog a few months, you will come across a photo of us three ladies, except then we had babies in our bellies. Well, here we are, many months later each with our own little nugget. Though Leah is the oldest (older than Adria--to her right--by one month and Evan--to her left--by two), she is BY FAR the smallest. She's looking a little roughed up in this picture, because, well, she had a rough day. We had just flown in that morning and the plane ride had messed her up for a few days. Poor kid.

Leah on Christmas morning. She's the perfect little present, don't you think?

Jared and I got all decked out to go hunting one evening. The weather was amazing-- cool, crisp, and sunny. Though we saw many deer (12 to be exact), we didn't get any. And by we, I mean Jared. I just sat in the stand and enjoyed a nice quiet evening with my hubby.

Ah, the Wii. What a source of entertainment this was for all of us. Here are Jared and his brothers, playing Wii tennis, I think.

Jared playing nicely with our niece, Katelyn.

Leah and Katelyn having fun together.

Leah and Evan, pal-ing around on the blanket.

I am awaiting more pictures for posting, so stay tuned!

We thought it would be best to let Leah get addicted to all sorts of bad habits at an early age.

Like watching TV... Scarface, no less. (Yes! Guns! Blood! Foul language galore!)

And playing video games with Jared! Here she instructs him on his next move...

And here she watches how it all plays out. They're a pair, aren't they? It's only a matter of time until Jared has a live-in Halo partner.

And here she's just being cute. That's not a bad habit, right?

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We did some Christmas shopping on Friday night at the new Town Center. Luckily it was nice and cold, so it helped us to get in the Christmas spirit.

Jared's showing Leah all of the lights on the Christmas tree (notice the palm trees in the background... weird, isn't it?)

A family photo... with a ridiculously tired little girl.

Snow!

A rare thing happened last night-- it snowed here! I suppose I'm being pretty generous when I say that it "snowed" because we didn't get much more than a dusting at our house, but still, there were flakes falling from the sky! Of course such an event had to be documented with pictures...

The pups sat nicely on the bench for a photo op.

At first Leah wasn't so sure what to think...

And then she decided she did not like it. (She likes to accentuate her sadness by making her eyes look like frowns when she cries.)

I tried to make her happy by raising her up and down in the air so she would realize that snow is actually fun.

It did not work.

You're too late, Obama!

This is Jared. I recently exercised my right as an American and purchased an AR-15. More specifically, a Bushmaster M4 "Patrolman". It's a semi-automatic version of what the military uses, the M16. It's commonly referred to as an "assault rifle" by most folks. Most people will immediately think "Nobody needs a gun like that." Personally, I couldn't agree more. Right now, no one needs a gun like this. And I hope it stays that way. But who knows what the future holds, and the right to purchase this gun (and all guns if some had their way) will soon be gone, possibly forever, so I broke my own rule of only buying what you can immediately pay for and made the purchase. It's not that I wanted or needed the gun right now, it's just that I don't like anyone telling me that I can't ever have one. Besides, it's hella fun to shoot. That's why I'm giggling like a school girl whenever anyone around me is shooting it. I also learned why soldiers always walk around so hunched over. Even though the kick of a single shot isn't bad at all, continuous shooting literally pushes you backwards:

Even Gina took her crack at it:

Of the guns I have this is her new favorite.

One more reason to own the gun: who doesn't like seeing a pretty girl holding a mean piece of weaponry. This may be my new favorite pic of Gina, even with all the cute ones of her and the little girl on this blog.