Emma's Trip to Florida

The adventures of the beautiful Emma continue! :) She had her first plane ride down to Florida this past weekend to see Becky's family. Her Aunt Stacey shared these pictures with me from their visit. There are a lot- I actually had to narrow these down from the 60 that Stacey sent!! It's tough when a child is so dang cute... (and of course Stacey and I are not at all biased) ;)

Miss Emma got her first experience swimming- leave it to the Florida relatives! I'm glad she's in the water so young- she can be a water baby like me! Here she is, showing off her bikini (she must get that from her mommy and Aunt Stacey, not Aunt Erin!) and her already highly advanced swimming skills:

Emma was also baptized at Becky's church during this trip. Here are some family shots from her baptism:

It looks like they had a great trip, and a good time with Becky's family. Hopefully the NC crowd will get to see them soon, too! Here are a few more random pictures from the weekend, and a good-bye from Emma :)

New Stuff

Today we finally got some time (and internet access) to add some house pictures for people to see. We actually realized that we don't really have any pictures of "after" a lot of the work we've done inside, so we'll have to try to remedy that. But here are a few outside shots:





One of our favorite things about this house was the yard- it's almost half an acre, and we loved getting outside of the Charlotte city limits to a real yard!! It's proven to be a ton of work. Both back corners of the yard had been used a dumping ground for all kinds of stuff, from leaves and twigs, to car parts, glass bottles and trash, and even mattresses. There were also crazy, insane vines like I've never seen before. Phil had to pull some of the out of the trees and the ground with his truck!

Phil's Bible study guys came over to help one day, which was AWESOME, and he and I have spent tons of time working to get the corners cleaned up. We ended up renting a dumpster because there was so much to get rid of. They have come a very long way from when we began. We are planning to build a toolshed/workshop this fall in one corner. Here are some shots of the work we've been doing.

View of the yard from the back door:
Here are the two corners we had to deal with:
And here is Phil, with the rented dumpster :)
We figured that a house wasn't enough of a new purchase, so we went ahead and got a car, too! It's a Chevy HHR- sort of funny looking, but great gas mileage, and much more reliable than the Saturn!

Some updates...

Okay, like I said, we won't get to add pictures to this very often! Sorry about that! We've had a busy few weeks, so it took a while to get these posted.

We celebrated Phil's birthday by attending the NASCAR Nationwide Series race in Darlington. We had a good time, and I think Phil is happy any time he's near a race track! Not long after that, our good friend, Will, ended up with some comp tickets to the All-Star race here in Charlotte. That's what these pictures are from. This is actually one of the races I like attending- it's shorter, so it's easier to sit through ;) We ended up with some GREAT seats in between turns 1 and 2, and had another fun night at the track! (Don't tell too many people I actually enjoyed the Nascar race, please...) It's hard not to get a little excited at how loud and fast the cars are! (FYI: The UPS truck is Dale Jarrett- it was his last race, and UPS is his sponser, so during driver introductions, he rode around the track in a UPS truck w/a racing engine in it!)

A couple weeks later, Phil surprised me with dinner at Outback for my 30th birthday- with 16 of our closest friends! :) I was so touched that everyone came out just for me, and it was a wonderful evening. I have such a good husband!! I'm not as averse to 30 as most of my friends seem to be, so I was proud to wear my sparkly "30" hat all night!!

We've been doing a lot of yard work around the house (well, Phil has, at least), and hope to get some shots of the house posted soon. We also went to a wedding this past weekend for our friends David and Hollie, which was a ton of fun, and absolutely beautiful! This weekend we are heading to Raleigh to visit our friend Erin, and see the townhome she recently bought. The weekend after that is a long weekend trip to NY for Phil's 10-year high school reunion. Should be a thrilling night at the Springville fire hall!! ;) And at the end of June we'll celebrate the wedding of some other friends, Clint and Annye!! It's going to be another crazy, busy, fun month!

Thanks for checking in on us, and we'll work on some more pictures, I promise!

Stolen Pictures!

Mark, Lesley, their kids, Phil's parents, and Phil's grandparents all headed up to Saranac Lake to celebrate with Nathan as he graduated with his RN! He's already got a job lined up in the ICU at a hospital right around the corner from his and Kim's house- congrats, Nate!!

It was also a final visit with Mark and Lesley's family before they make their big move to Australia tomorrow. It's sure going to be hard to have them so far away, but we know the Lord will bless them abundantly over there :) Kim is the one who inspired me to make a blog, so it seems only fair that I steal some of her pictures to share on mine ;)

The Henry's Visit!

Phil's oldest brother, Mark, and his wife, Lesley, came to visit in early May. They brought their two precious babies, Laura, who just turned two, and Michael who will be one in June. They are moving to Australia on May 20th, where Lesley is from, so we were very thankful that they were able to visit before they leave the country. We had a great time hanging out with them, pampering the kids (literally and figuratively!), and even got to celebrate Phil's birthday while they were here. We hated to see them go, but look forward to heading to Australia to visit them in the future!

Here's Laura and her Uncle Phil:

Michael is already quite the flirt with the ladies (and the camera!):

We spent one afternoon playing in the park in Belmont- the kids loved the swings, and Laura was crazy about the slide!

Mark and Phil also did a lot of work around the house during their visit. They built a compost pile in the backyard, raked and weeded the front yard (Erin and Lesley helped with this), reran some of the electrical wiring in the house and added new light switches inside, and cleared a lot of the yard waste in the back corner of the yard in preparation for the tool shed. We certainly didn't mean to put our guests to work!! But they did such a great job, we hope they can come back soon ;) Of course, no project was complete without Laura's helping hand!

Emma's NC visit

Erin's brother, Jason, and his wife, Becky, brought their new baby to NC to visit all the family. They were able to stop by Erin and Phil's housewarming party in Charlotte for a little while, which let Erin show off her adorable niece to all her friends :) Then they drove down to Tampa to see Becky's family. On the way back up to Baltimore, they stopped in Greensboro for a few more days with the Bower side of the family. Emma loved meeting her great-grandparents, and hanging out with all the family :)

Check out Emma's stylish outfit for the housewarming:

Emma Bower, meet Emma Miller :) (born just 3 days apart!)

Here's Emma with her Grandad Bower:

Proud great-grandparents Jack and Sarah:

Now she's hanging out with Grandma Pam:

She even got to meet her great-aunt Jane Ann! (Oh, the things she could learn from her...) ;)

In addition to Emma, Erin's cousin Bower was there, along with her step-nieces, Lydia and Grace. After some fun playing with sidewalk chalk in a rainstorm, the clean-up was even more fun for the girls:

Just hanging out being beautiful: