Friends!

We got together with friends the other night (thanks again, Criders!) and it was so fun to see Whitney, David, Mylie and Coley who were in town from Dallas. It was also fun to be with Fran and Guy - even though Fran cheated and got off bedrest to come. We couldn't help but laugh as what used to be calm, lingering dinners has turned into "no, you have to eat your vegetables" and "don't throw that on the floor, please" and "please share that toy with so-and-so" all night long. How quickly times change! Below is a photo of all the kiddos (minus Livvy, who had already gone to bed.) Any day now Grayson Guy Mays will be joining the crew!

From the left: Mylie and Coley, Kaylynn and John David, Avery and Lincoln. We were lucky to get one photo of them before they all squirmed off the couch!

Playing around the house

One thing I adore about Lincoln is his grin - he is such a happy little guy. He makes us smile all the time and is such a blessing. Now that he's starting to walk more (still only about 6-8 steps at once, but progress nonetheless, he likes to be outside and if we aren't careful, he has the door open to the backyard in a flash. Here are some recent photos of him cracking us up when we were just hanging around the house.

Halloween and the Pumpkin Patch, and FCCC Fall Festival

These pictures are from the fall festival at church - each grade in the youth group is in chare of a booth, and "our kids" ... (the 12th graders) had a great one. They did "whack a mole" and it was pretty funny to see them pop up and down like a life-size version of the arcade game. Here are a few of them.

Berkely, Amy, and Ben...wearing the appropriate "brown" for a fashionable mole...

Jake is WAY excited about whack a mole . . .

Anna...

Hillary...


And, Bryan and Brice, and Lincoln and Andrew. On this particular evening, Lincoln refused to wear his costume. But, Lincoln was supposed to be a dragon for Halloween...but in reality it was more like the body of a dragon since he detested wearing the hood portion of his costume. (And, it was 80 degrees here for the fall festivals, so who can blame him?) I think this is the only picture we have of him in the full costume where he's not crying. This was taken at his school Halloween parade.

We took Lincoln to a pumpkin patch and farm this past weekend; he enjoyed the pumpkins but did not enjoy feeding the goats! Even though it was 82 degrees, being around the pumpkins sort-of made it feel like fall...