Practicing for the Big Day

So there has been a lot of decision making regarding Aubrey's blessing. When to have it? What dress to use? etc, etc. After a couple date changes, we finally settled on May 24th, but that meant Aubrey would be 3 1/2 months old. Not a big deal except that her sisters where both way younger for their blessings (8 weeks and 5 weeks). Still not a big deal, except for me who has a picture display of the girls in their blessing dresses by a picture of mom in her wedding dress, so I kind of wanted them near the same age for this picture. So, I thought as long as I had Aubrey's blessing dress I could just take the picture early and have it taken care of, except that when we went shopping for a dress, we found nothing that we loved that was in our price range. Blessing dresses are ridiculously expensive for that one-time usage. We were about to purchase one after "settling" for an okay looking dress but not loving it, but then the lines at the store were super long, so we decided against it. Plus, Tyler asked why we were paying for another dress when we had two perfectly good dresses at home. I just figured that since we had made the decision with Tessa to get her her own blessing dress, we needed to do that for each of our girls. However, I LOVE both blessing dresses we already had, so it did seem a little crazy to be buying a dress I didn't LOVE just to have a third dress. So, then I looked into making the dress myself, but by this point I had a picture of the dress I wanted in my head and there were no patterns resembling this vision, so no go on that. So long story somewhat shorter, I found a dress online I really liked at a dress store in Utah, so I had my brother go and buy it for me to send to us. We are currently waiting for the dress to arrive, but in the meantime I still wanted pictures of Aubrey in a blessing dress before she got too much older, so I pulled out the other two blessing dresses and we had a photoshoot. Here's some of the results of Aubrey in Abby's blessing dress. This first picture is my favorite of the bunch. It was the very first picture I took - of course!

A picture to see the full dress even though it's a little blurry because by this point Aubrey was getting a little anxious to be done I think.My attempt at getting a cute closeup of Aubrey's face like they do at the studios, but not haveing the right equipment/backdrops so you can see too much background. However, Aubrey still looks cute! (Abby was my assistant. She was there to keep Aubrey from falling out of this position). Here's Aubrey in Tessa's blessing dress. I took these during a time when Aubrey had some kind of eye infection, so they weren't the best picture-perfect photos, but at least she was happy for the entire photoshoot.

I'm sure there will be plenty more pictures in Aubrey's actual blessing dress when it comes.

And to finish this post, I couldn't help but search through my cds to find pictures of Abby and Tessa in their dresses. I always get asked who Aubrey looks like more, so now you can decide for yourself. My picture choices were limited, so I think they look more different in these pictures than they really are, but who knows. They're all beautiful to me! And in case you need help, Abby has the purple background, Tessa has the navy, and Aubrey has the blue.


I don't think you could get 3 girls any more beautiful than this! :)

Our Newest Addition

With Abby's awesome photography skills, we can play the game "What's this a picture of?" to find out our newest addition. Not too hard is it?

It's a NEW CAR!!!

Or van I should say!!
It's a Toyota Sienna. Used, but looks brand new.
Leather interior, power everything, and the main reason for the new addition...
lots of space!
I'm still getting used to having Abby so far behind me, but we all love it!

And here's my latest photo shoot with the girls. The pictures are labeled "bigface." Because, with adorable girls like these, how can you not take close-ups for everyone to enjoy?

Abigail

Tessa

Aubrey

Please excuse the drool. :)

Easter Festivities

Now that Aubrey is here, I got the family together again for some family pictures. Especially since we had the girls in beautiful, matching Easter dresses. (I didn't make these ones, my mom got them for us, since I didn't have time to sew these past couple months.)

We went to a neighborhood Easter egg hunt. Both girls were in the 4 and under age group and they got to find 33 eggs each. Good hiding job wasn't it? Here they are with their stash of goodies which included candy, rings, necklaces, and frisbees.

We dyed Easter eggs.
And they woke up Easter morning to find the baskets the Easter bunny left them.

And thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Gibbons the girls each got another basket full of goodies and toys, and color-coded eggs for an egg hunt. (which we haven't done yet, but are excited for. So the festivities continue...)

How do you know when....

QUESTION: How do you know when it's time to work on the yard?

ANSWER: When the weeds are taller than your 4-year-old.

QUESTION: How do you know when you watch too much reality tv?

ANSWER: When after each dinner your 4-year-old says, "This is a good meal mom, you get to stay."

QUESTION: How do you know when you have a newborn in the house?

ANSWER: When you know what's on tv between the hours of 3 and 5 in the morning. (and it's not much.) By the way, did you know that Music and the Spoken Word is on the Hallmark channel at 5:30am Sunday mornings? Well, it is.

QUESTION: How do you know when you have a wonderful husband?

ANSWER: When he gets up with the kids, feeds them, dresses them, and takes them to preschool so you can sleep in. (See previous Question.)

QUESTION: How do you know when it's been a long day?

ANSWER: When your backseat is full of sleepers. And what a blessing it is to have an older sister who can put the pacifier in the baby's mouth in the car. Am I right people? :)

Tessa Turns Two!!!!

Happy Birthday Tessa!

Tessa turned 2 yesterday so we had a little party for her that included a few gifts and a "bababug cake" as Tessa calls it.

She's been into ladybugs lately, so I thought it was a cute idea.

She seemed to like it too - how it looked and how it tasted.

She blew out her candle on the first try and it was funny because we had to relight the candle for Abby to get a chance to blow it out, but after two missed attempts, Tessa leaned over and blew out the candle with such ease like she was saying, "See Abby, this is how it's done."

And what happens when dad is left home with the girls? They make yummy treats to eat, and Tessa decides to see how well chocolate pudding works as a full-body lotion. Good thing you're super cute Tessa to get away with stuff like this. :)

We love you sweet girl!

Our New "FAN" Club

We have enjoyed having Tyler's parents here for a week. Marilyn was a great help in loving on Aubrey and in entertaining the older sisters. Lee was an awesome help for completing some of Tyler's to-do list around the house including fixing Tyler's car and installing light fixtures/fans in four of our rooms.

If any of you have been in our house, you may have noticed the big void in our entryway. This tiny light fixture that you can barely see in Tyler's hands is what came with the house, and we heard the same question over and over again, "how will you change that light bulb?" Renting a 16-foot ladder was the answer, but luckily it was only for once. I couldn't even get the entire ladder in one camera shot. This was one huge ladder.We changed that tiny light for a fancier chandelier.

It is definitely more pleasing to the eyes.
Our new fan club consists of 3 new fan/light fixtures. One for the master bedroom:

One for the guest bedroom:

And one for the girls' bedroom: (pink of course, however, the fan blades are reversible so if the girls ever grow out of pink, the other side of the blades are blue.)

And can I have a blog without a cute picture of the girls? Of course not, so here's one of Abby and Tessa and how they like to play these days. I wonder what people think when they see them playing without bikes but with bike helmets? :)

Finally, I forgot this cute story when Aubrey and I were in the hospital. Tyler took Abby and Tessa to Build-A-Bear, so they could give something to their new baby sister. They made Hearts (fitting since it was 4 days before Valentine's Day). They each were able to pick a heart, kiss it, and put it inside Hearts which makes me tear up every time I think about it - so cute! There's also a music box in Hearts so it sings a song when you push one of the paws. I thought it was an adorable gift from the girls that Aubrey will always have to be her own.

Introducing Aubrey Jeanne!!

Aubrey Jeanne is finally here!!!

She joined our family on Tuesday, February 10th, at 3:40 am. She weighed 8 lbs 2 oz and was 19 1/2 inches long - by far the largest of our three girls.

Here she is with the proud papa. As you can see, she has super dark hair, and lots of it. And what do Abby and Tessa think of their new sister?

.

.

They're amazed by her. (Can't you see this being like the front of some Hallmark card?) It's so funny! :)

Abby loves to hold her,

and so does Tessa.

It will probably change, but for now it's funny that I have a blonde, brunette, and black-haired child.

Would you say Tyler's outnumbered or what?
Some of our most memorable experiences of this birth would have to include the hospital accomodations. We delivered at the Baylor Medical Center in Frisco and it's more like a five-star hotel than a hospital. One of the reasons we decided on Baylor was because we heard of their celebration dinner - steak and lobster. Here's Tyler's dinner. That's right - they bring dinners for the dad too - every meal. He chose steak and chicken and I had chicken and lobster. And check out that chocolate cake. It was huge and oh so yummy!
And our other experience - finding out what "code black" means in a hospital. For us, it meant the severe weather sirens have gone off so take your baby to the OR and join all the other new mommys and daddys. So of course we had to wear caps on our heads and booties on our feet. We stood around for about 15 minutes before returning to our rooms, but with the bad weather we were experiencing, it was quite the adventure.

We couldn't have had a better birthing experience overall, and we're just so happy to have Aubrey as a part of our family!