It's Christmastime!

Hello, All! Happy Holidays! 

Well, here we are, busily getting ready for Christmas (we just managed to get the majority of our shopping done this evening, yay!) and I thought it'd be a good time to share some cute shots of Avery getting ready with us. These first ones are from when we decorated the tree. Avery took a fall into the statues standing in front of our fireplace and got that nasty scratch next to her mouth, but I guess it's just a right of passage, right? Anyhow, enjoy the show!

Avery just LOVES these garland beads that we put on the tree. In fact, we frequently had to shove loops back into the tree after she grabbed them and pulled for the first few days after we decorated.

She deemed this train as one of her favorite ornaments before it even made it to the tree.

One of our Christmas pictures. Ed and I were on our way to his company Christmas party, so we dressed her in her pretty dress to take advantage of the opportunity.

She loves this fiber-optic snowman.

She's a climber. I guess she thought she could see the ornaments better this way.

The Other Favorite Ornament

As you can see, she likes trains. The other thing in the picture is a train decoration with snowmen on it. These things rarely stay where they're meant to be... she just can't help but to push them around!

Santa!

And, surprise, she's playing in a train here!

Anyhow, I guess I should give you just a little bit of Averyisms, huh? Well, let's see... she loves for us to sing the Alphabet song to her right now. She sings along, a little. She always starts in with "C, D," and ends with a "Yay!" (sometimes even before we say 'Sing with Me'). We just love it and will sing it again and again just to hear that sweet, happy "Yay!" She also recently started counting to three, quite unexpectedly. It's not like we were working on it with her, and she just started counting out of nowhere. However, she also lost the number two for some reason in the past couple of days, so now she counts, "One, Three." She loves to be read to sleep now, though she doesn't typically fall asleep during the book (only when we're lucky). And it seems like most weekday mornings, you can find us cuddling in bed watching "Elmo," as she calls Sesame Street, while she works on waking up.

Well, that's plenty for now. There's more day-to-day that I could catch you up on, but I should probably get to bed.

By the way, did I mention that WE'RE HAVING ANOTHER BABY! It's possible that this is the only place I haven't announced it yet. So you probably already knew, right? Anyhow, in case you were wondering, we're due on the Fourth of July. And we find out what we're having on February 1st, which isn't too far away, I'm happy to say. And, yes, we will be telling what the gender is, as well as what the baby's name will be (this time) as soon as we figure it out ourselves. We want Avery to have a name to reference, so that means everyone gets to know. (You can thank her later, because you know how we like surprises.) And since most people (women) always seem to want to know: no, I haven't been feeling well. This time, my stomach has not taken the pregnancy well. And just when I think it's getting better, I have a few days of not-so-good again. Plus, riding passenger in the car isn't my idea of a good time right now either.

So there you have it. We've had our hands full in the Reagin household lately. We all very excited about the new baby, and really looking forward to Christmas since Avery will certainly enjoy it even more this year. And in case we don't blog again before then, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Okay, so Halloween was two weeks ago, but...

I took a while to get it together. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's discuss Halloween weekend. On Saturday morning, we met Kelly, Dusty and Liam at Drew, Dani, and Diana's house to celebrate our annual Halloween get-together. We carpooled over to Stone Mountain to enjoy the pumpkin festival and get pictures of the kiddos in costume amongst pumpkins. So here are a few pictures from that venture:

After Stone Mountain, we went back to Drew and Dani's to eat lunch as a group. We all thoroughly enjoyed the white chicken chili, salad, and brownies. Unfortunately, we had to leave as soon as we were done eating, but Ed and I are eagerly awaiting the next time all of us are able to get together again.

On Sunday afternoon, Ed and I took Avery over to her friend Noah's house, where the babies had a Halloween playdate equipped with a table full of perfectly-themed goodies. Of course, she was first and foremost interested in playing in Noah's jumparoo (she spends most of her playdate time at his house in that, it seems). 

At most of the playdates we attended in the first half of the year, we'd line the babies up on a couch and take a snapshot. Unfortunately, they're all on the go now, and corralling toddlers is nearly the equivalent to herding cats... so we were forced to stick them in a hallway in an attempt to get a group shot. Bad idea...

Immediately after the babies' playdate, we drove up to Alpharetta to spend Halloween evening with Grandma and Grandpa Tallant and Auntie Melissa. Avery had a blast trick-or-treating with her Auntie, and she even said "Trick-or-Treat" at most of the houses. She also had a habit of walking into people's houses and going back into bowls for more and more candy. (Truth be told, it was all really cute, even apologizing to people when she bowled past them into their houses.) 

This is Avery right before her hayride with Melissa. She doesn't look so sure about it...

Mimi and Pop gave Avery this Elmo basket to use on Halloween, and it's one of her favorite things right now.

Avery and her Grandma, pausing for a picture (by the way, she insisted on this package of Mentos - it was actually the third candy piece to come out of one lady's bowl [we didn't let her eat any, BTW]):

This is the piece of candy Avery chose out of her basket to eat. (Don't worry, Mom, we watched her like a hawk and snuck it away as soon as she was thoroughly distracted by something else.)

Not finished yet...

A momentary pause before deciding where to go next (you can tell she was tired from all the fun; we left not too much later) -

All in all, we had a fabulous Halloween. It sure was different from last year, when we could put our baby girl in a pumpkin for pictures! I can only imagine what next year will bring...

Gigglemania

Avery had a lot of fun with her Doggie tonight.  She was flinging crushed ice as Finn was flipping out trying to eat it quickly.  There is absolutely nothing better than listening to her laugh...

We Went to the Bahamas!!!

Wondering where we've been? Now you know! We up and took a trip to Nassau to celebrate our five year anniversary as a family. We left on Sunday the 17th and returned on the 21st, the day before our anniversary (which, by the way, was made extra special by Avery's Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunties, who came to babysit for us that night while we had a WONDERFUL dinner out).

Here's our girl on the plane before take-off. She was particularly displeased when she realized that we were not letting her sit in her own seat during the actual flight.

Avery slept at least half of the flight, so we can't complain about that. This is Ed in our taxi on the way to the Sheraton Nassau Cable Beach Hotel.

What a Nice Room We Had

This is our view from the balcony:

This is also our view from the balcony:

Avery's first trip onto the beach - she would not let go of this cup, which soaked her shirt before she was even four steps into the sand. But she's happy!

Daddy and Avery really loved playing in the surf that day.

This is Ed and Avery the next day, our first full day in the Bahamas (which was spent solely on the beach and at the hotel).

Ed had a great idea to write in the sand, and we got a bunch of neat pictures.

This one said 'loves Nassau' before the water swept it away. Our first family shot:

A fantastic photo Ed took from our balcony at night:

On Tuesday, we experienced the Dolphin Encounter on Blue Lagoon Island. It's a private island that we took a bus into town then a ferry to the island in order to get to it. 

We don't actually have any decent pictures from the encounter b/c neither of us are any good at working a disposable and keeping hold of a squirming toddler in the water; but let's just say that Avery was not a fan. The dolphin squeals did her in. She was not cool with that loud noise it made after every trick, nor being in the water with such a large unusual-looking animal. It was simultaneously sad and funny. (We did purchase a pic of all three of us with the Andy the dolphin, and you can see it all over Avery's face that she's not happy about the situation.)

After the encounter, everyone was free to enjoy the beaches of the small island. And they were beautiful. This day marked my favorite day of the entire trip. I was so happy to be on Blue Lagoon Island.

Daddy was snapping pictures and getting Avery to smile, and this is the last smile she gave us from that series of shots (hilarious!):

My favorite picture from the vacation:

Kisses for Daddy

To be continued...
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