The Graduation, it's official!

WOW, the past week has been a whirlwind of huge events in our lives. Tyler had all sorts of graduation events this last weekend: a hooding ceremony, graduation, dinners, etc. We also managed to move all of the furniture out of our house and into the top corner of our friends' garage. His parents and both of his grandmas joined us for all of the great graduation events, as well as all of the hard work that comes with moving. We are feeling the pinch...only 4 days left until we move. We will post more once we get settled in...

We are very excited to be finishing medical school and moving on to the next phase of life, however, we are beginning to recognize how much we truly LOVE the friends we have made during the past few years. We are sad that we are all going our own separate ways, we are going to really miss our medical school family. We love you guys! There will be a lot of tears this next week as we all pack up to go...

Last, but certainly not least, Makinzie!

When we found out we were pregnant with Makinzie, we knew our hands would be full. Even now, we are still trying to understand just how much we underestimated. She has brought so much into our lives. Here is just a glimpse at the past few months...

Since moving to North Carolina 4 years ago, Makinzie has grown from a baby into a beautiful girl. She has made so many friends, like Grace. She is always imagining new ways of having fun with them! She will miss them all very much in a couple of weeks.

Though at times she tries to act shy, she really is quite the show-off. She loves to get attention and be involved in everything, especially if there's silliness involved. Her dance recital was very entertaining, Papa really enjoyed it, or at least Makinzie REALLY enjoyed being able to perform in front of Papa (scroll down on the right and click on the link to Kaye & Charlie to see a few good video clips of the recital, until we can post some video clips of our own).

Makinzie's favorite things to do the past few months have been going to the museums/parks with the family and to her swimming lessons. She loves being a big sister and helping out whenever she can. She certainly is a wonderful daughter. We love her so much and we are grateful we have her in our family.

Papa came to visit!

Papa was here for almost a week and the only pictures we managed to take were at the zoo. We had a blast running around town, running around the house chasing kids, and just spending time with Papa. We went to the movies and had a big nice theatre all to ourselves. We had fun walking around the lake; pushing our strollers through the gravel and looking at all of the beautiful trees and butterflies. The girls especially loved throwing rocks into the water with Papa. We spent one of our evenings watching Makinzie dance in her recital. We had a fun pizza movie party in our front room (after a huge car melt down by the entire crew). But most of all, we really LOVED the extra pair of adult hands around here. Thanks Papa, you were very helpful and very nice to have around! We miss you already!

Addellyn absolutely loved the zoo! We stopped and saw the elephants at the very beginning of our journey and she made elephant noises the entire time after that and kept asking to go back to watch them. She also really enjoyed the monkeys. There were several places to find monkeys, but the Chimpanzees were very fun to watch; they drank from a water fountain, swung from the tree, walked past us in a single file and even tapped at us through the glass. Addellyn has been excitedly talking about them ever since. She was really happy to come home and tell Daddy all about her zoo adventure.

Makinzie really enjoyed the peaceful aviary. She found a sign as we walked in that showed all of the birds that could be found in the building and pointed out the blue bird with a "funny hat" as her favorite. A few minutes later we rounded the corner and that big blue bird was standing in the path right in front of her! She still tells us how much she loved seeing that blue bird.

Papa was a trooper, he pushed the heavy double jogger for miles in the heat...we realized after he left that the front wheel had been on a little crooked and he was doing double the work, sorry Dad!

Addellyn

Addellyn's turn...

Addellyn is our girl of MANY moods. She has quite the booming personality. She really loves getting reactions out of anyone and everyone around her. Lately she has been big into acting like different animals. The pig and the elephant are among her personal favorites...She loved the elephant trunk dad fashioned for her out of silly putty.

Addellyn can get very silly and crazy. She is usually covered in filth and has some sort of something on her head (like the pig hat or the winter ear cover, etc.) She does a lot of spontaneous dancing and face contortions to make us all laugh. When she gets tired she starts out being hilarious, and then, sometimes, she can quickly become a screaming monster(with a superb pouty face). If Addellyn finds a mirror, she will immediately begin to go through her repertoire of faces (she wants to make them perfect I guess).

She is a busy little girl. It was hard to keep her up in the bleachers as we watched Makinzie swim each Saturday. She really wanted to be down in the water with her big sister and she seemed to be willing to attempt to get down there any way possible or at least to continually lean clear over the edge to get a better look...

Addellyn is also very sweet and calm. She loves our good friends' ("Aunarka and Beebees") yard. She begs to visit their house daily. She especially enjoyed sitting and watching the water fountain(at least at the moments when she wasn't trying to be sneaky and play in the water while mom wasn't looking...)

We love her, she is a lot of fun to be with, I don't know what we would do without Addellyn around to entertain us and keep us hopping. She is a beautiful little girl.