GORGEOUS WEDDING

Almost a month ago, we went to Florida to be part of celebrating Adam's sister's Wedding and it was FANTASTIC!!! It was a total whirlwind 2 days, but the event was gorgeous. Amanda was a breathtaking Bride, the venue was gorgeous, and it was truly a fun Reception! Ainsley and Elise were both flower girls and they did a great job. They LOOOOVED their fancy dresses, getting to stay up late, and drinking "bubbly juice" (SPRITE, not Champagne) in pretty stemware.


CONGRATULATIONS to AMANDA and LUCAS!!! It was a blessing for US to be part of your day.


Oh yeah, Mitchell was 'kind of' in the wedding. He wore a dapper little outfit, practiced walking down the aisle with the girls, etc.. but at 'go time', he froze and hung out in my arms during the whole ceremony. We're thankful that Amanda had such a laid-back attitude! Mitchell did rock the dance floor, though... dancing with total strangers, spinning in circles... it was awesome.


The girls got to hang out with the Bride/Bridesmaids for a little while and had a blast, apparently!

I'm not sure exactly HOW this happened, but could she BE any cuter!?

One of my favorites from the day...Great, great, great!!!

Adam was honored to walk his sister down the aisle...



RECEPTION

just LOOK at that floral centerpiece!! hand-made by the very talented Brenda Donovan...

mid November

Mitchell is such a champ. About a month ago, he decided that he wanted to work on potty-training. At 2 years and 2 months old, I had very low expectations when he kept pointing to the toilet and saying, "Me Potty!" (which actually sounds like "Me Bobby"). So for a couple days we let him run around the house mostly naked most of the time- and as Adam likes to point out, 'what male WOULDN'T love that!?!...uh, sure. Mitchell did love it and only had a few accidents over the course of a few days. Although exhausting to enthusiastically run him into the bathroom every 3 or 5 minutes, hoist him up on the toilet, and then entertain him while he keeps trying to get off, phew... IT WAS WORTH IT!!!!!!! To have a potty-trained BOY who isn't even close to 2 1/2 yet, is fantastic. He is so proud of himself, the girls still cheer him on every single time he goes to the toilet, and we've only had probably 3 accidents in the last 3 weeks. AND that INCLUDES 7 days in Florida, 2 days at Disney (posts to follow) and 5 days with a stomach bug that caused constant diarrhea. constant. at Disney. awesome. but, the little man loves his choo-choo (Thomas the Train) underwear and didn't mess them up through all of that. it's great.

And now that the weather is cooling, we've been able to enjoy the outdoor fire-pit that we got Adam for Father's Day. These are a few pictures from our first s'mores event of the season.

Ainsley loved the s'mores, but didn't want to get her hands/face/clothing dirty.

Elise just wanted to be comfy and let the marshmallow slow cook...Gus getting in on some crumbs, too.

And Mitchell LOVED the mess and staring at the fire, but then only wanted to eat the Graham cracker and the chocolate. Not interested in the marshmallow.

fun, fun, fun Halloween

This was Elise's outfit for school on Halloween day


Of course we had to throw some pictures from Halloween up on here.... only a week and 1/2 later. Not bad, really.

Kids had a blast, we really enjoyed it, too. This was our first Halloween w/o a stroller or wagon, and that was NICE! Well, it was nice until the last 30 minutes when the two little ones were both crying, tired, and begging to be picked up... which was right after Adam rolled his ankle and fell hard to the ground while holding Mitchell, who was kind of thrown and then of course screaming. Adam was in pain and couldn't hold anyone, so Mommy was trying to carry two 30 lb kids up a steep hill... oh, man, it sounds bad all written out. Ok, we'll just pretend that part didn't happen. Rose-colored rearview mirror, people. =)

The girls only wanted to be princesses (easy! already have those costumes. Thanks, Paul and Jen, for Elise's dress from two Christmases ago). Mitchell LOOOOOOVES monkeys, so he was stoked to re-use a 5 year-old costume, too. win-win.
We hung out with neighbors we love and all was good. impressive that all 6 of these kiddos were at least 'pleasant' looking-no way possible to get all 6 smiling, happy, and looking at the correct camera.




He's really just awesome. He's been wearing the monkey outfit all week, too... just put it away yesterday.
We gave away 1/2 our candy to some friends who were out of town and didn't get to Trick-or-Treat, but I'm still ASHAMED of how quickly the stuff is disappearing...and it's not the kids eating all of it. augh. "fun size" Kit-Kats are my enemy.

Probably not going to be a professional song-writer...

I just walked downstairs and wanted to get this written down immediately...
Elise is at school, so I was putting Ainsley and Mitchell in bed for naptimes and Ainsley asked me to sing her a song about princesses. I told her that I don't know any songs about princesses, but I could sing something else instead.
Her reply:

"Mommy, want me to sing YOU a song? It's called the Four Princess song."
(she actually sat upright, cleared her throat and started....she swayed the whole time, it was all SUNG in a cute little squeaky voice.)

"There were four princesses-Ariel, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Belle, and Aurora. They all went for a ride in the forest one day. One had a horse, one had a unicorn, one on a horsey, one was on a reindeer, and one on a sheep. They were all so happy. They went for a ride in a forest. The horses picked them beautiful flowers. They were happy. All the princesses loved their flowers and so they (drawn out for dramatic ending!)....went.... home.....to their castle."


"That's it. Did you love my song?"

Absolutely. Beats Old McDonald ANY DAY!

that picture was a few weeks ago, but it's sweet, so I stuck it in here. That's her 'new' smile... we do miss the 'growl' smile as it used to be called, but this is cool too.

LOVE the Fall in Virginia!

Two Saturdays ago, we woke up to the PERFECT Virginia fall day. It was a little cool in the house, THIS was my view from bed (after I ran downstairs and got the camera...).

REALLY! THAT IS MY VIEW. EVERY DAY. I LOVE IT.

Actually, THIS if my view from bed. The above shot is when I got closer to the window and turned off the flash. Whatever.


Since our kids are AMAZING and sleep until after 8am on the weekends, Adam and I got up, enjoyed our coffee on the back deck (don't judge me, ok? no makeup yet and it was my first cup of the morning!). It was glorious.

We decided to take a little family hike for the morning at a local park- another joy of living so close to mountains- we drove about 3 miles and had access to GREAT hiking trails heading up a good-sized foothill of the Blue Ridge Mtns. We couldn't do THAT in Ohio, Florida, or South Carolina...
We probably hiked a total of 2.5 miles (?ish). Mitchell was in the jogging stroller for part of it, Ainsley's little legs got so tired and I was piggy-backing her by the end, but they all did GREAT overall!


Ainsley found a cute little walking stick that she loved, although she never actually used it correctly, she looked good with it! Agreed?

Elise (NOT surprising to anyone, of course!) was a total adventurist! She kept running ahead and exploring for us.

We kept following markers for the "Old Giant Oak Trail" or something like that... figuring it gave us something to look forward to, right? take some cool pics by a huge Oak tree. I'd read somewhere that it's a record of some type? largest in the Region? Oldest in VA? something special...



Well, 30 minutes of doing that and we found the OLD GIANT OAK... laying (lying!?) on it's side where it's, apparently, been for YEARS. awesome. I guess it never said, "Old Giant ALIVE Oak" tree.

It was great to climb onto it and play some, though. At least for me. I've always had a thing for climbing around in the woods... Elise loved it, Ainsley was ok with it for about 35 seconds... just long enough for Adam to snap one cute picture of the Moseley Girls. =)

Happy.

Dance Party...

I think this pic was from the same night as one in the last post, so I'll throw it on here quickly...

We love dance parties. I often have music playing in the background while we're getting everyone ready in the morning or as I'm cooking dinner at night. If something fun comes on, we can quickly have 2 or 3 little 'dancers' on the kitchen floor. That is one reason I'm hesitant to get a kitchen island...where would we dance!? anyway.... The girls ESPECIALLY love to dance with Adam, which of course makes me cry thinking about my dad and all, but i can usually hold it together enough to make it through the Rave session. =)

Caught one cute shot of Ainsley and Adam that night... she INSISTS on the crown of flowers and the slippery/dangerous high heels. it's unreal cute.


Then she gets silly, runs away, Adam chases and it ends up like this...


and then she'll run away more, someone will get knocked over, stepped on, tripped, there will be tears from a 2,3, and/or 5 year old, mommy will scream for everyone to get out of the kitchen, and the dance party will be over.... how's that for reality?

Still wouldn't trade it for the world, though... =)

where did a MONTH go?

slacker, slacker, slacker. I've been trying to think of a fun blog lately and.... I got nothin'. Really. We've had a great month, we're settled into school-routines, gymnastic classes, etc... but nothing that's even a little exciting for other people to catch up on... so, here are a few pictures to appease all 5 of you that may look at this.

Nana visited for a quick weekend mid-September. Always fun to have her around...the kids loved it, of course! Mitchell calls her "Ninny" which is funny and adorable, too.


Mitchell and I get 3 mornings a week to hang out alone and we LOVE it. We get laundry/cleaning done, run some errands, build LOTS of towers with blocks, and he's often in jammies until 11am. I'm fine with that. He also, like all toddlers, (right?) constantly wants to put on everyone else's shoes... my tall rain boots were quite an attempt.


They were a little tall for him...

But he giggled the whole way down and then tried it 4 or 5 more times!

We had some chilly weather last week, so were forced to stay inside. So the dress-up box came out and the girls tried on outfits that may be Halloween costumes. And then they kept them on all afternoon.

Although they have moments of 'sister grumpiness', they really do get along well most of the time and I'm so thankful for that!!!