My Montage 6/2/10 at OneTrueMedia.com

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St. George Island

We have returned from an amazingly lazy, slow and restful week at the beach of St. George Island on the Forgotten Coast of Florida. Have you heard of it? It is a more remote area of the coastline, almost 2.5hrs down highway 98 from the more-visited Destin and Panama City areas. My family discovered it and took us on a vacation in July of 2004, where Lee completely surprised me and proposed at sunset on a dock on the bay! So, nearly 6 years later...we returned to celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary coming on June 18.

Our parents magnanimously agreed to keeping Sullivan during our 6 days away and we are more than appreciative for such a gift! We spent our tranquil days at A Place in Sun #1 with lots of time of the beach, lounging at the pool or on our shaded deck, reading lots of magazines and books (Lee read WWII books and I kept my head burried in Allure, Redbook and MarieClaire...ha!), cooking meals of freshly caught Pompano and Trout from fisherman Lee, perusing nearby Apalachicola and her restaurants...in general, soaking up some much-needed downtime together. My favorite moments were watching Lee's blissful capture of a large Trout, eating an amazing lunch fare at Tamara's South American cafe, drinking yummy coffees at Cafe con Leche and meeting PerryAnn at her quaint giftshop named The Pearl...there I even scored Sullivan a hand-made Muslin doll and shell jewelry for me and my sister. Ahhh...

Here are a few photos from a friend that we met while down there...I'll post my own pics soon.

Arriba, abajo

Dairy Queen is dee-licious!

Happy Mother's Day to me! :)

A great picture of Lee and Sullivan at Furman.

Fun at Furman.

Visiting our best buddies, Blake and Dane Hollenbeck, at the Saturday Market.

!Arriba, abajo! Up, down! Sullivan's new words (she's been repeating them in both languages in a sequence today...thanks to a song from Dora...) articulate where she is these days and all that has been going on in our lives. Ups and downs! Thankfully, we are truly more on the "up and up" these days, but I thought it quite ironic that she was singing this continually today as she seems to go from happy to sad, giddy to frustrated or grumpy to delighted in about 5 seconds flat. Is she a teenager already??? Sometimes I feel like I am tending to a small crazy person! Ha! Patience and more patience is my prayer these days.

Graciously, we had a really memorable weekend with very few fits of her many personalities :), and we were able to enjoy some fantastic family time and celebrate Mother's Day in true form. We stayed in Friday night with pizza, then on Saturday we strolled through our beloved Farmer's Market downtown, hit Artisphere (our local art festival) and listened to great music and savored tasty treats, then after naps (yes, I need one too these days! :) ) we walked Furman as they were finishing graduation! and even ate out at the Dairy Queen. Can anything beat a blizzard!? Wow. On Sunday, mass was wonderful and then we tried a new Meat-n-Three place, recommended by my friend Danielle (Thanks, girl!), called Fried Green Tomatoes. Yum! Having Lee home all weekend is such a gift and we really drank it all in...

I hope that you are well!

This week in a list

Here is our run down of our update in list form:

1. Giving and grading exams this week. My last face-to-face classes for a long while...

2. Sullivan's new vocabulary is growing. Favorites recently are:
a. "Here go!" (Handing us something...)
b. Baby Oruga....(a mix of English-Spanish, "baby caterpillar" to ask for rocking and lullabyes.)
c. Baseball
d. No mas, Mommy. No Mommy, No Daddy. (Telling us to "get away" and let her do it by
herself!)
e. mas Ee-Oh, Ee-Oh (asking for us to sing "Old McDonald")

3. Contents found while cleaning out my car:
a. three pair of Sullivan's socks
b. two pair of Sullivan's shoes
c. four stuffed animals
d. remains of cheerios, goldfish, raisins.
e. 3 cups
f. 3 of Sullivan sweaters
g. two (new!) diapers
h. five wrappers to snacks
i. seven pens and pencils

4. Our baby girl in utero is now the size of a cantalope!

5. My parents are trekking the Moselle River in Germany by bike and say it is a chilly 40F, but they are loving the beer, white esparragus and pork. They are amazing riding 25-35 miles a day!

I hope that you are well! Have a great weekend!

Miss Independent

...sort of. So Little Miss Sullivan has been doing really well playing by herself lately, in our den, in her crib, at the table, in the car seat, babbling and ordering her toys around, asking them questions (Like, "pipi? No. popo? No. {Asking if they need to use the bathroom!} Yum,yum. {feeding them}) and trying to give them food or drink. It is really endearing and a joy to watch and I've been eager to capture it on film. This is challenging, however, as she is so eager to watch the video, she won't allow me to actually take it. But, yesterday I found a chance to sneak a video while I was making dinner. Amazingly, she had been "having a tea party" for almost 20 minutes and I snuck in to catch what you see here. This is clearly not Hollywood footage, nor exciting, but to those who know and love Sullivan, you may have the patience to enjoy this. In all of our moments of frustration these days, these precious moments help me focus on her "Sullivan-ness", her pure, innocent and beautiful personhood. I hope that this finds you all well.

Spring in Greenville

We've been enjoying some amazing weather here lately, cool mornings, pleasant days, crisp nights...and we've been out and about in the outdoors! Here we are enjoying our incredible Falls Park with Daddy and then hitting our zoo with playmates!

All is well on our end...Baby Girl #2 is doing just fine and growing nicely at 19wks. We are having fits trying to think of names!!! Sullivan is lively as ever, talking up a storm (in both languages!) and loving life in general! Her latest cute phrases are, "Mommy, hold you!" (to be picked up) and "Mee-house!" (for Mickey Mouse). She loves to play outside and gets so filthy almost daily digging through dirt, sticks, mulch, etc. Lee delights in her not-so-girlyness.

Lee is also thriving more these days as he is on less-hectic research rotation until July 1, which is such a welcome thing! He has more time with us almost each afternoon, can workout and sleep more and in general, soak up life a bit more! And my classes are finishing up in a few weeks... I will leave teaching traditional classes for a good while and transition to teaching online solely. Although not my preferred method to teach (or learn!), this way will allow me to work AND be the wife and mother I desire to be, as it will provide more flexibility of my time and talent.

I hope that this finds you and yours doing well! Happy Spring!

Happy Birthday and Happy Easter!

It has been a big last week and a half or so, as we celebrated Sullivan's 2nd Birthday on March 28, went home to AL for a week during Spring Break and came back to celebrate Easter with Lee. Thank you to Gigi, Waylo, Honey, Murph, Lauren, Golson and Mac and Josie for a fabulous visit!!!

First, Sullivan: It is hard for me to realize how much our girl has grown and changed over the last 2 short years...children really do change and develop so quickly. She is a true joy to us, bringing us more smiles and fufillment than we could have ever imagined! And what a pleasure it is to bring our parents so much joy through her also.

Lee has just transitioned from a difficult rotation on spine to research! We are so thankful to have a more relaxing next 3 mos! Although Lee doesn't love doing research, we are all celebrating his less-hectic schedule, earlier afternoons and just having him with us more often.

And finally, we just found out that Baby #2 is a little girl! Two girls! How nice that they will have each other and share in sisterhood as Lauren and I have...but most of all, we are so thankful for a healthy baby. Maybe just as Lee and his college friends have predicted, we'll end up with a basketball team full of girlies! :)