I kind of remember these people

I found a few old pictures of Matt and me. I know what you are about to say. "Anna, you haven't aged at all." I will say that you are correct. I completely agree with you. Thank you for noticing. I am sure I will look exactly like this in another eight years and more too (Don't burst my bubble, this is my blog). Let's talk about Matt....he looks so young in these pictures!

This was taken at my UNC undergraduate graduation. We were engaged. I just got that necklace as a present from my mom.


We were "studying" in the library at Carolina. We thought we were so cool. Who am I kidding, we WERE SO COOL!!!!

This was at our rehearsal dinner. Don't let that smile fool you folks, I am sure I was yelling at Matt for something that he didn't think even mattered to his crazy wife.

I guess that didn't change at all either.

Get that hat on while you can

Let's face it, kids hate hats. They probably only hate hats because we (parents) make them wear the hat. Harper doesn't have enough arm control or desire to remove the hat from her head. Yet.

Until that day, I will make her wear every hat we own that is her size. We have lots of hats because I bought a lot before we had Abby. I was given even more after I had Abby. I kept them all for Harper.

She loves Cheetos

These are the messy little hands (really just one hand because she only needs one hand to reach into the bag and eat Cheetos) that were coming at me and my new chairs. My new nightmare is that I will go upstairs and these hands will go after everything...the door, the cat, the sofa...you name it. I should just get over it, right? Easier said than done when you see this wet cheese hands.

Just so tired

She just couldn't go on any longer. A lot of food...a long day...it is tough being 8 months old and this cute.

Come on, let's go out!

For his birthday, Matt wanted to go out. You only turn 31 once, right? Right. We decided to not go out to dinner because it was late and the children didn't take naps (dinner at 8pm with three sleepy kids spells D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R). Let's get takeout instead. Thanks to Shay-Shay and Aunt Stephanie, Matt and I went out with his dad and brother to pick up food.

We stopped at the first restaurant we saw and ordered takeout. We sat at the bar and ordered drinks (shots for some) to wait for our order to be ready. Wait, I remember this...this is going out...and this is fun. We remembered what it was like to go out and it is really fun! This is great, let's go home eat dinner and come back out!!! Oh yeah big plans to come back out!!! O-U-T! We are going out!!!

We went home, ate dinner....and never went back out. I was asleep by 10pm.

So we can blame it on the kids right? Wrong. We only have Harper this week (Shay-Shay has the big kids, thank you again Shay-Shay) but we went to sleep last night at 9:30. Not only in the bed at 9:30, but lights off and noisemaker on at 9:30pm. We might go out this weekend.

Go the other way

One afternoon on vacation, we took the kids to ride go karts. Matt and his brother Adam took the kids around one time. We had a few left over tickets so my sister in law Stephanie and I took the kids for one more trip around.

Pulling out of the gate, Stephanie went the wrong way around the track. Like a lemming, I followed her. The attendants went crazy. Three grown men came sprinting over the race track. They chased after us in order to turn our go karts around so that we wouldn't cause a head on collision with the go carts speeding down the track the CORRECT way.

I could hear Matt laughing over the roar of the engine. Stephanie swore that she heard me yell about my child's safety over the roar of the engine.

They need to put signs on that track.

Turns out, I don't like fishing in the ocean

On the last day of our beach vacation, Matt's dad chartered a boat to take us out fishing in the ocean. I was so excited. I packed a big cooler of beer, put on my sunscreen, and waved goodbye to Abby and Harper for the afternoon. I kept telling Will how much fun we were going to have on the ocean.
It was a beautiful day with clear skies and lots of sun. We got into the boat and headed out to sea. Wow, the boat was rocking a lot! That's okay, I will get used to it, right?
I did not get used to it. From 3pm until 8pm, I was nauseous. Soon after we got out there, Will started to feel bad. I knew he felt really bad when he said to me: "I want to go back and stay with Abby." So bad he wants to be with his sisters? Dang. The only person who felt worse than Will and me was Papa Tim.
While the three of us sat at the front of the boat feeling awful, Matt, his brother, and sister in law sat at the back of the boat with the captain. They laughed. They joked. They reeled in fish. The daggers I shot at them with my eyes did not phase them.
When we started moving again, I started feeling better. I looked over at Will but he didn't seem to be better yet. Very quietly at first and then a bit louder I heard: "I am Iron Man, I am Iron Man, I am Iron Man, I AM IRON MAN!"
Me: Will are you feeling better?
Will:(pause) Yeah, I guess I am.
Me: You ready to go back home now?
Will:(pause) I want to stay on the boat now. Do we have anything to eat?
He was better.