A Visit to Asheville

Nina and I just got back from a few days visiting the Williams family in Asheville. Mark and Lyla held down the fort here, and Nina, me, and Bo drove down together on Monday and came home yesterday. My parents also went down, so the Williams family had a lot of post-Christmas visitors in the house. We were all excited to meet little Laynie, and she is such a sweet little baby. She hardly cried the whole time we were there! I am also proud to report that Laynie actually looks like a Lawrence. We thought both Emme and Ryleigh came out looking like a full-blooded Williams. We think Laynie, however, has more of Shenley's side of the family in her. Everyone enjoyed taking turns holding Laynie.
The cousins had a great time together. They played so hard each day that we were there.
They also enjoyed playing with/on Poppy and Uncle Bo.
While we were there, we did a mini-Christmas celebration, played ping pong, ate some good food, and G, Pops, Bo, and I went on a little tour of downtown Asheville for a few hours. Most of the time, however, we just enjoyed hanging out and spending some time with Laynie.



It was a great visit, and we just wish we could do it more often. It was great to meet Laynie and spend some time with the Williams family.

Christmas

We had a really nice Christmas morning. After a late night for Nina and Lyla, we were wondering how early they'd be up on Christmas morning. Lyla was up by 7:20, and once she saw the presents under the tree, it was too hard to wait any longer, so we let her wake up Nina, and we all enjoyed opening our stocking and presents on the family room floor while eating donut holes and drinking milk (coffee for us). After a little time at our house, we drove over to my parents' house where we had our traditional Christmas morning together with the rest of the family. The time spent enjoying family, the fun of watching the kids, the good food, and the celebration of Jesus' birthday were definitely the highlights of our Christmas!

Christmas Eve

This year on Christmas Eve, we had our annual family dinner at my mom and dad's house. For each year that I can remember, we've always gathered for dinner at mom and dad's house (despite weather conditions) with my Aunt Jeanette and Uncle Mike, cousins Erin and Mike, P.B. and Grandma Bette, and our whole family. Through the years, we've added significant others, spouses, kids, and dogs. It's always been an evening I look forward to during Christmas time. The focus of the evening is family, but there is always an abundance of great food, generally lots of laughs, presents, and we all clear out just in time to get the little ones in bed before "Santa" arrives. This year, we were missing the Williams family (who are obviously at home with a one-week old baby), but still gathered and enjoyed a great evening.

With Emme and Ryleigh in NC, and Alex visiting his dad, there were only three kids there this year. Nina, Jacob, and Lyla played for a long time together on this one chair. They made some sort of game out of spinning each other around and trying to get everyone hanging on some part of the chair without getting knocked off.
My handsome and talented husband was the co-chef for the night. My mom made a ton of appetizers, and he made an awesome dinner that kept him busy most of the afternoon and evening, so after dinner he got a chance to relax and enjoy everything.

Nina's Christmas Program

Yesterday was Nina's preschool Christmas party and program. The family and grandparents were invited to attend, and Nina was very excited for this special day. The kids had been making special gifts and practicing their songs in secret so they would be able to surprise all their guests. Nina kept all the secrets (even though it was hard), and we really enjoyed the whole program!For the party, the girls helped make some special cookies. We spelled out the word "Dinos" because that is the name of her class.
Nina and her friend, Avery.
We were so glad that Mousey and Poppy came out to the party and the program.
Here are two of the songs they sung. I wanted to put vidoes of it all, but I know that would be over-doing it a bit. So here are "Baby Jesus We Love You" and "Away in a Manger".
Nina is in the back row, five in from the right (in the black and white).

Road Trip Weekend

We got back this evening from a four-day road trip, but we covered a lot of ground in our travels. We left early Thursday morning to visit my grandma in Pittsburgh. We spent time with Grandma Thursday afternoon, took her out to dinner that evening, then after we dropped her off, we headed to the hotel to let the kids run out a lot of pent up energy. Even though it was 7:30 by the time we got checked in the hotel, we changed into bathing suits and swam in the pool until 9:00 that night. The kids had so much energy to get out, and after swimming and a warm shower, they actually fell asleep that night.

We got up early Friday morning, took breakfast to Grandma, had a short visit, then got on the road to head up to Cincinnati, Ohio where we met Mark's sister and her family, along with Mark's dad and stepmom, at the Great Wolf Lodge. It was our first time visiting one of those hotels, and we loved it. We had a great time playing and visiting with family.

To see the pictures and read the captions from our time at Great Wolf Lodge, click HERE and view the slideshow.

We left the lodge Sunday morning and drove the 8+ hour trip straight home. It felt really good to be out of the car by Sunday evening, but we had great visits with family and enjoyed our time away! A view from inside the water park
A Simpson family photo

Layne Virginia Williams

Layne Virginia Williams was born yesterday morning. Shenley and Layne are both doing great! That makes five little granddaughters for my parents and another little girl cousin for Nina and Lyla to play with. Congratulations Shen, G, Emme and Ryleigh! Good luck Garland!

Girl Time

On Friday night, P, Kristin, and her daughter, Avery, arrived for some girl time. The little ones were asleep by the time they got here, but they had a fun time playing around on Saturday morning after everyone woke up.

After some running, dancing, and having some sort of discussion with their chairs in a circle, they decided to play possum. We all were in PJs pretty late into the morning but that's ok when you're having girl time. There's too much talking going on to worry about who's wearing what.
Mary came over for lunch, and we continued the talking (shocker) until it was time for P and Kristin to leave late Saturday afternoon. It's great to have good girlfriends who you always pick up right where you left off with from the last visit. I just wish our visits were more frequent, but we all appreciate the girl time when we can get it!

A Literal Play "Date"

Yesterday, I thought I was taking Nina and a friend out for a play date, but I think instead I was taking them out for an actual play "date". Since the first week Nina started preschool, we've been hearing about Braydon. At first, we thought she had a little crush on a boy in her class and we teased her about it a bit, then she kept asking me to schedule a play date with his mom, telling me how much fun they have chasing all over the playground, so then I thought this was just a little friend of hers who loves to run, chase, and climb like she does. So, his mom and I planned a play date at the playground after preschool one day, and Nina and Braydon had a blast. They ran, chased, climbed, etc. and just had a lot of fun. I came home and told Mark, #1 - he's a really nice little boy who even made a point to include Lyla in the play date, and #2 - I don't think Nina has a crush on him. I just think he plays her style of play and is a lot of fun.

Well, that didn't end the request for play dates with Braydon. There has been another one since then, and then yesterday, we picked up Braydon and I took the three kids to Sport Bounce and to lunch at Chick Fil-A. It was then that I realized I just might be on an actual date...scary! There was the playing, running, chasing, etc., but there was also that little look in Nina's eye, and I caught her actually reaching over to touch his hand while we were at lunch. REALLY? We had a little talk about that one when we got home. I am still mostly convinced that Nina likes hanging out with him because he's really nice, very active, and a lot of fun for her to play with. There might be a secret crush there too. After all, his mom did whisper to me when we left that he had put a dab of cologne on for the play "date" occasion. :)

First Sleepover

Nina and Lyla had their first sleepover two nights ago. We are getting ready for a few visitors this weekend, so we'll have guests in the guest room and in Lyla's room so we were trying out Lyla sleeping over in Nina's trundle bed for the first time. She was excited to sleep over and was really the one keeping them both up. I still heard her in there talking at 9:30 pm (Nina said Lyla's talking put her to sleep), then Lyla woke Nina up before 7:00 the next morning. We paid for it a bit in that Lyla was quite cranky the next day, but we're going to give it another try tomorrow night when our friends are here and hope for a little more sleep time.

A Visit to Santa

Today was our community's holiday celebration. It was Nina and Lyla's chance to get dressed up in their Christmas outfits and visit with Santa. We got there early, so we didn't have to wait long in line. Last year, Lyla was really apprehensive of sitting with Santa, but with a little encouragement from her big sister, she did just fine.

After Santa, we took part in the rest of the activities with Nina and Lyla's friends from two doors down (pictured below), got some yummy food, then headed home.

Christmas Tree 2010

The girls have been really looking forward to getting and decorating our Christmas tree, so we got our tree yesterday and decorated it last night.

Nina was really excited to be allowed to put the angel on top of the tree this year.

Our trees are never beautifully decorated, but they're decorated mostly with ornaments that have some meaning to us or homemade ornaments by the girls. Our tree was always like that growing up, and decorating it was a fun evening when we would get out all the old ornaments that we had made as kids and laugh and reminisce about the significance of the different ornaments.
After we decorated the tree, the posing began.