GERTIE HAD HER BABIES!!!

Congratulations, Gertie, on your very adorable and already very busy little ducklings! Karis and Meg appreciated that you tolerated them taking this video for 19 seconds before getting up off of your nest and coming after them... :)

10 Months of Cuteness

Check out the kid on youtube... We aren't in it (typical) but it is pretty good!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCEduLzGO8I

Meet Gertie.

As if we don't have to share the spotlight with enough little people (ahem, Karis), it seems that we have now added another member to the family...and potentially 15 more. Let me explain.

Meg and Brett went to the beach for a weekend to visit the Lybrands. After they picked us up from our vacation at Ultimate Canine Care in Graham (nothing like dogs that bark incessantly and sleeping on concrete in an unfamiliar place) our neighbor, Marie, pointed out to Brett what my nose was already telling me....check this out:

We moved to a new house! CRAZY story about Jesus' provision involving Meg's enormously generous mom & Steve that we'll tell you later. But isn't it pretty? It has a FANTASTIC backyard for me and Libby, too... But I digress. Notice the small bushes to the right.

So this is the view from that front window into those bushes... notice anything? Nope? Okay...scroll down to the next pictures.

LOOK WHO LIVES IN THE BUSHES!!!
Gertrude! ...or Gertie as we call her.

Gertie normally lives with her duck friends down at the pond that is on the trail we walk every day with Meg and Brett and the kid. Every time we would see Gertie on the walk, Libby and I tried to eat them, but the dagburn leashes and Brett's brute strength kept it from happening. Lucky ducks. Regardless, apparently while we were all on vacation (yay kennel... ugh) Gertie made the bold decision to make her home in the bushes in front of the home with two dogs that would like to eat her. Crazy duck.

Why is she living in our bushes? You might ask... Well, it seems that Gertie is expecting FIFTEEN little ducklings and probably in the next two weeks! For approximately 23.5 hours a day Gertie sits in those bushes on her 15 eggs in the SCALDING North Carolina summer heat. You go girl.

So there it is. ANOTHER member of our family. Gertie...and her 15 eggs. Yeesh that's a lot of kids to have at once. Meg and Brett could barely handle one.

And while we are talking about the front of the house and the scalding North Carolina heat, take a look at YET ANOTHER innocent plant that Meg killed.

We're just glad she takes better care of the animals in our house than the plants....

Where's Waldo?

Catching up from our hiatus... A picture is worth a thousand words, so here are 17,000 "words" summarizing Karis' 6th, 7th, and 8th month.

And while you're at it, play a little game of Where's Waldo...modified to "Where's Libby and Sam?" in the photo montage. We promise there is in fact one picture in there...

guest blogger.

it's meg. sam & libby have been grounded from blogging because of the following:

1. they ate all of the trash in the trash can the other day. including a zaxby's salad dressing packet.... which i then cleaned up in a pile of puke. ew.

2. every morning at 7 a.m. they want to eat. which is okay. i get it. they're hungry. whatevs. what isn't okay is their twenty little doggie nails scrambling on the hardwood floors and waking up karis.

3. they smell horrible. i don't have super high standards for bathing, but they take it too far. just hop in the bath once and a while, guys. smell control used to be limited to buttercream yankee candles, but now i've employed the help from arm & hammer pet odor for carpet powder and febreeze and our wonderful neighbors, art & marsha's, steam cleaner to do the intense smell removal.

{it's possible that karis' face reflects her disgust at sam's smell OR the miraculous fact that he is actually sitting next to her}

4. they don't clean up after themselves. there is dog hair EVERYWHERE.

and even though they are grounded, somehow, i still love them... for a few reasons:

1. they are both great cuddlers.
2. sam's ears are so soft and i love how when you pet him, he immediately rolls over, requesting a tummy rub, as well.

3. even though it's pretty much ruined the couch, it's adorable how they sit on the back of it, staring out the window all day long--keeping track of all the happenings on our sweet little culdesac{notice the dog's placement in door & window, looking out longingly... :)}

4. libby licks up karis' spit up...and lately she's started licking her face and so karis sticks out her tongue and libby licks her tongue... kind of gross. really cute. and funny.

5. i get mad at them and they still love me. ....which is more than i do for them a lot of days. karis' name means grace...and sam & libby live it out--offering me unconditional affection and devotion even though i definitely do not deserve it.

Jesus, give me open eyes & ears & hands to RECEIVE the gift of Your grace... even when it is through my sometimes annoying, but always loving dogs.

i love you shweet sammy boy & shweet libby girl.

shenanigans with sam, libby & karis...

now that the kid is older and plays a lot more, we thought a video might better explain what we live with these days... you'll notice that our only appearance in the whole 2 minutes and 38 seconds of this is the barking from sam...

in other news, duke beat carolina last week. if you don't live in north carolina, you might not understand the immense importance of this. our family is rather divided when it comes to acc basketball: meg's mom went to & taught at carolina; brett went to both carolina & duke; meg's brother, treat went to state... and meg went to appalachian, but they suck at basketball...and it's really cold there, so we don't really care about that. but we digress.

to acknowledge the rivalry, karis decided to sport her daddy's duke hat, even though it should go for the record that neither we nor meg & brett encourage her cheering for duke.


meanwhile, karis is going to bsf with meg on thursdays (aka just another reason to leave us alone at home). this week, karis got dressed up for bsf (meg just went in a tshirt and jeans) and so meg decided to do a photo shoot when we got home. it was actually pretty cute:

...and we were even allowed to have a cameo in it...

welp... that's about all... off to play with karis and hope that she spits up on these toys and drops them so we can eat them up...

{p.s. happy day-after valentine's day! may you know the "never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love of God!" (as the Jesus Storybook Bible says... :))}

too much cuteness.

okay, she steals all our attention, but seriously. how AH-DORABLE is this little gal?

well anyway, it's been a heck of a past few weeks. karis is up to all sorts of new and exciting things that constantly take meg & brett's attention away from us.... one of which is sitting in this new fangled thing called a "bumbo seat," which i just had to check out:

{karis likes it just a teeeeeeny little bit}

the best part of the bumbo seat is that karis spits up all over it and it's easy to lick up on there. man i love me some good ol' fashioned baby spit up. mmm mmm good.

last thursday, they locked us up in the house the whole day while meg took the kid to BSF and then afterward, they went to hannah & piper's house for karis' first "official" play date with canaan and piper, her new BSF buddies. she enjoyed a head scratch from canaan and piper rolling over on her during the photo shoot so much!

{canaan 2 months; karis 4 months; piper 6 months}

and then there was the day when we got out our favorite new quilt from jess (whose sister, jill, took the great pictures of karis when she was itty biiiiitty...as in 2.5 weeks old...}, while wearing leg warmers from jenny {who also made karis the best onesies ever when she was a little tyke}, and enjoying the SUNSHINE from the front door... something we haven't seen much this winter!

these two pictures describe the three of us kids well... i like to bug karis by sniffing her and licking her and laying beside her...

....and sam could care less. he's missing out on a fascinating little human! {and let's be honest, adorable, too.}

snow & ice & everything nice

sigh... this is my life.

the kid's books & toys & even the boppy have officially stolen my spot on the couch.
but i won't be defeated so easily. i am houdini. i can fit into even the smallest spaces in order to maintain my position of keeper of the couch in this household.

and at least i had more success than libby did...she tried to hold down her spot, but eventually she had to come out for air:

okay. enough grumbling. {because in reality we actually kind of think the kid is cute and like having someone else around to lick and sniff and stare at...} onto the purpose of today's post--an update on the life of our family.

we had a whole week of snow & ice last week. being as brett is a teacher, he got three days off of school and two days of two hour delays. {who do you think gets more excited about snow days? teachers or students? TEACHERS.}

so here are the top 5 highlights of our week o' ice & snow:

1. a little tiny bit of sleep. libby & i have not allowed the kid to alter our sleep schedules. but meg & brett don't get quite as much as they used to. so now they pass out anytime they have a minute to rest. brett wins the award for most uncomfortable nap:

2. the kid is sitting up at longer and longer increments of time on her own. {okay, i can barely handle it--break in my hardened front--SHE IS ADORABLE.}

3. smiling. we did a lot of that. and laughing.
{it really is the gift that the kid brings to the house--joy in the very smallest things. like singing "skinnermerinkidinkydink skinnamereenkydoo i love you" over and over again. like "eating up" karis' feet. like pushing her nose and saying "boop!" like doing "the superman" while doing tummy time. and diaper changes, which are truly the times full of the most joy around here these days.}

4. something karis can do that libby & i can't: suck her fingers. she wins on that one.
but it seems little miss thang is going to march to her own drum and has rejected the thumb and gone for the pointer finger. you go girl.

5. pictured in the background of the above picture: NOT FOLDING LAUNDRY.
why use your time off to do something as lame as laundry? ...especially when it makes such a great background to pictures.

Gingerbread Girl

we tried to eat her up because she looked so tasty but meg & brett wouldn't let us...

(plus we found out that those were buttons, not lifesaver candies, on the gingerbread man and even though we like your unconventional types of snacks--like ketchup packets and Chick Fil A sandwhich bags and milk cartons--we still don't prefer buttons over candy)