Happy Birthday Hannah

Okay, so this is a little late.....but better late than never right?
My sweet Hannah turned 4 on March 16th! What a sweet and curious girl God has given us to raise. I am so proud of the young lady she is becoming.
We started your life in the state of Washington and moved you to Texas to be closer to our family.
You love to dig in the dirt, and you have no fear of creepy crawly things like your mama. You love to catch bugs and be outside.

Sweet Hannah, God has given you a very caring heart. Your teachers at school and church are always amazed at your caring for others who feel left out or are hurt. I hope to help you grow in that spirit of caring and love that God has given you.
You are becoming a wonderful big sister. I hope you and Jackson will be close and take care of each other growing up.
Happy Birthday to my beautiful girl! I can't wait to see what year 4 has ahead.

Growing up

Time keeps marching around here, sometimes faster than I am ready for. Hannah turned 4 on March 16th and Jackson has started eating baby food. He loves to eat when we do and will not stop yelling until he gets fed. So far the only thing he does not like to eat is baby cereal. He prefers veggies and fruit. We purchased two kayaks in the hopes to start doing something fun outdoors this spring and summer. We were going to try and use them this past weekend, but we got around 8" of snow. We still used them, just not on the water. Hannah had tons of fun, but we are ready for the warm weather to come and stay a while.

Snow!

Dallas had a record breaking 12.5" of snow on February 11-12th. We have had fun playing outside making snowmen, snowballs, and rolling around. Jackson even got in on the fun for a little while.

Crazy or not here we go

Clint and I are in the middle of planning a road trip for this summer. With all the crazy stuff going on when you travel by plane, we decided to avoid it this summer.
Clint is currently unemployed and will probably remain that way until the fall. Classes at South Eastern will end in May and Hannah will be out of school as well.
We will begin out journey by packing up our apartment and putting everything in storage. The Moore family reunion is Memorial weekend and we will begin our road trip there. From there we will go on to the first on many national parks we plan to visit. Our first stop will be the Guadalupe Mountains national park. From there we will head west. The grand canyon, redwoods, crater lake, and yellow stone are just a few of the places we plan to visit. We expect our trip to take at least two months. We will be driving the expedition and camping part of the time, staying in cabins or hotels other times. Jackson is calling me, so I will fill you all in more later.

Christmas 1,2, & 3

Hannah got skates for Christmas


Jackson's first Christmas


Jackson and his stocking at our house

Hannah looking at the doll house


Since our lives seem to stay in such upheaval, I don't know if we will ever be able to get any family traditions started, but we do what we can.
This year we had Christmas with our little family here in Allen on Tuesday morning. Carrie flew in from Portland on Monday and went straight to Glen Rose to see Aunt Judy and Uncle Tom for Christmas. We all drove to Durant on Tuesday night.
This year Hannah asked Santa for a doll house, a baby doll, and a box of candy. ( I took the kids to have their picture made with Santa that Monday and that is exactly what she told him.)
"Christmas morning" she got up and was more excited about the stocking with candy in it than she was the doll house. I guess that is ok, we bought the doll house two years ago at a clearance sale, so we got a good deal at least....
Christmas Eve was spent with Clint's family at his sister's house. We had lunch and opened gifts that afternoon. We headed home sooner than planned because the snow was picking up and we did not want to let the roads get bad.
I sung "Breath of Heaven" at the Christmas Eve service at church that night and my cousin Rachel did a dance to it. When I started singing Hannah said " Listen Mimi, mommy is going to sing dramatically!" I don't know where she gets this stuff.
Santa came to Mimi and Grandad's house also. She got a baby doll and a little piano/keyboard. We opened gifts with my parents and then Mike and Charlene and the kids (not so young now) came over for lunch. We had fun playing Rachel's game Apples to Apples. All in all it was a good holiday time.
I am still in the process of figuring out where all the new stuff is going to go in our small apartment. I had already culled and packed up a bunch of Hannah's old toys, but I still am out of space. Some day we will be in a house and I hope that helps a little.

Siblings

Hannah and her cousin Connor on Thanksgiving

Jackson age 2 months (taken at Thanksgiving)


Well it is no secret that age three is a challenge. Hannah has been quite a handful the last few months. I don't know where my sweet girl goes most of the time but she has decided to take a leave of absence most days.
The other day her teacher told me she was put in "yellow timeout", what ever that is... She was not sitting on the rug singing in music. She had decided to chase another little boy around the room the whole time. I asked her why she did this and she told me she had too much energy and just could not sit still so she had to run.
She is pretty good with Jackson and I try to give her plenty of extra attention these days.
She has had some interesting stories lately. She was telling me the other day about Heaven.

Hannah: Mommy, I know my great grandparents.
Me: You do? How did you meet them?
Hannah: Well, they were my babysitters in Heaven. They babysat me and Jackson for a while, then they had to leave, but they came back, then I had to leave.
They were watching Jackson while I came down here, but now he is here too. I will see them again when I go back to Heaven. I think they can see me down here.
Me: I bet they can, and I bet you make them smile.

Kids say amazing things sometimes.

Halloween

This year Hannah wanted to be a " Rootin Tootin Cowgirl" . Those were her words not mine.
She played the part well. She rode her stick horse from house to house. She would wait until the sidewalk was clear and would run up to the house with her horse "bucking". Then she would take off her hat and say " Whoa horse! Howdy, trick or treat." People were not sure what to think, most of them laughed pretty hard though. We had to cut the night short because she got a stomach ache from eating cookie dough earlier in the day with her grandad.
Jackson went as a horse and I wore my boots to try and go with the theme.