(Making pancakes with Nana)

We enjoyed our vacation to North Carolina, although it was way too short!! We visited with family and friends, but I didn’t get to go see my friend, Kimberly! (Sorry Kimberly!)

We had to split our time between Jacksonville and Wilmington and it took us 27 hours one way to travel there! The children did really well for it being such a long ride!

For church on vacation we enjoyed visiting with our friends, Johnny and Staci, in New Bern.  It was a great service and sermon! Then we went out for lunch and had some fresh seafood, man it was awesome!!

Emilee tried Collard Greens and she loved them!! (Just like her mom!)

Christmas Morning Santa brought a couple of gifts for the kiddos to open, and he left a note saying that the rest were at our home in OKC, OK.

Our Children and our dog, Jack on Christmas Morning.

Vance and I got matching Carolina Tarheel Watches for Christmas!

Emilee love this fish bowl toy!

Makayla (their cuz), Dalton and Claudia in Nana’s tree!

That is about all that is going on here…we are back and in our normal routinue now.  Dalton is doing great in 2nd grade, Claudia loves her pre-K class and Emilee loves being with Mommy and Daddy!  Our children are growing up way too fast, so please forgive me for not being on the computer too much! (Plus, I really like facebook better in keeping in touch with everyone!_

Blessings,

Alena

Here is a video of Emilee laughing…I had Dalton record it for Vance and he wanted to say Hey to Daddy at the end of the video.

We miss you Vance, and we are looking forward to you coming home soon!! Love you!

Enjoying vacation! Here is a picture of My mom and Step=dad, Ronnie.  We are at Mai Tai, a great chinese place here

Dalton and Claudia love staying in a hotel just for the POOL!!

We are headed to Myrtle Beach, SC this week and then next week we are going to Bible Conference.  Then we are headed back to Oklahoma!

Love to all!

We are on VACATION!! We are loving it!

Blessings!

(We are enjoying Family and Friends in North Carolina!)

Today was Jack’s first experience of getting groomed….the ladies were really nice but they said he got upset when they tried to clip his face, he tried to nip at them and scratched the ladies…..I brought him home and now he is really jumpy and nervous……I felt so bad for him, but I knew he would feel better with shorter hair for the summer.

Here are the before and after pictures!!

Before:

After:

Have a great week!

My mom has been here for a week and a day…she left yesterday, boy I am missing her already!  We enjoyed having her here with us.  I cried for an hour after she left!

We took her to the pool, we showed her the Natural History Museum, we went to the OKC Zoo, we went to a cute store down in Norman called Mason’s; she got a basket shaped like the state of OK, we showed her the oil derricks here, and of course some eating places here; Cracker Barrel, Rudy’s, and we even tried WHATABURGER again…..it was better this time. We also took her down Route 66, which was pretty cool!

Here are the pictures…..

Our precious three at the OK Trails part of the OK ZOO.

Our Family at the OK Zoo,

this was in front of the part of the zoo that they tried to make it look like Turner Falls.

This was at the Natural History Museum

Nana, Claudia and Dalton at the ZOO.

At the Cracker Barrel in the Oklahoma Sooners Rocking Chairs

Here is the picture of Nana meeting Emilee for the first time…

She was smiling at Nana when she met her until I snapped the picture!

And then a picture of Nana holding her for the first time.

Two pictures of Nana with our precious three…My mom has 8 grandchildren

(The sun was too bright for Claudia, LOL)

HAPPY 7TH BIRTHDAY DALTON!!!!

I still can’t believe that 7 years ago, in training, Dalton was born….it seems like just yesterday he was so little!

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July.  We did!  We enjoyed the pool, a cook-out at home and then went to see the fireworks show.

Our family in our Red, White and Blue.

Our precious children! We are so blessed! 

(We had to take two of the children, one with Dalton holding Emilee and then Claudia wanted one of her holding Emilee.)

Emilee is 1 Month old already!

She is wearing a shirt that says “Heaven Sent” and it is so TRUE!  We are loving having a baby in the house. 

It is hard to tell who she looks like, but she does look a little like Claudia’s newborn pictures and then sometimes she looks like Dalton’s newborn pictures.

Praying for all those who are moving and unpacking and settling in to new places.

We are enjoying OKC still.  We had a great Father’s Day, Vance is a great dad!  We surprised him with a GPS and he was so excited.

This is a picture of Vance, Claudia, Emilee, Dalton, and his GPS, Sam (short for Samantha)

After church on Father’s Day we went to Norman and enjoyed a country BBQ place called Rudy’s, it was good food and a fun place to eat, Dalton loved the bottle opener.  AND they even had SWEET TEA!!

Emilee had her first bath (Minus all the sponge baths) and she liked it until she was out of the warm water.

Emilee is a good sleeper for a newborn.  We have only had two rough nights….and that is great considering she is almost a month old!! 

I hope Congress was a great time for everyone, I missed getting to see everyone, but glad I got the time to recover. (And I am still not used to the sleep pattern of a new-born yet, LOL)

Emilee had her first trip to church last week.

We got to enjoy the pool here in our neighborhood.

Dalton and Claudia enjoyed the pool.

Emilee and I after our walk to the Pool.

Emilee also had her first bottle and it was from her Daddy.

Dalton had his end of the season party and they passed out trophies.  They had pizza, snow cones, and there were plenty of games for the kids to enjoy. (They used the corps building for the party and it turned out really nice!)

Have a great week everyone!