Laugh. Love. Learn.

Tanner loves “Tarley.” They’ve been BFF since they were born, 5 weeks and 6 days apart. I think it’s awesome because my friends Morgan and Tanaya have been BFF for life, and I’ve always thought that was the neatest experience. These pictures will be really cool when Tanner and Carley are freshmen at UGA! ☺ (Goooooo Dawgs!)
Tanner, 10 weeks & Carley, 6 weeks

Tanner, 14.5 months & Carley, 13 months

Tanner, 26.5 months & Carley, 25 months

They’re so sweet to each other…precious!

My friend Nikki takes pictures.

Sweet baby Jaxson.
More to come…

This picture will be hilarious in 18 years.
Actually, it’s hilarious now!

Jaxson - 3 weeks, Tristan - 7.5 weeks, Cade - 4.5 months, Landon - 7 months.

Tonight we helped Tanner celebrate her 2nd birthday with her favorite characters from Sesame Street!

Tanner wore her custom Abby Cadabby shirt… (notice it says “2″ and “Tanner”)
and Jaxson rocked the Elmo Onesie. We couldn’t find a real Elmo onesie that was small enough, so I had to make it.

Katelynn and I were super-cool in our Cookie Monster and Big Bird Shirts. Ha.

And Nick’s shirt is visible in the first picture;
it says “I wear this shirt when I’m a Grouch.”

We ate Tanner’s favorite foods at Tanner’s party: pizza, cheetos, and watermelon!


She enjoyed blowing out her candles with her favorite big sister,

And playing with beach balls and bubbles!
She definitely got dirtier than she’s ever been in her life.


Then we got her all sugared up on these yummy Sesame Street desserts:

It’s still hard to believe she is TWO!

In the latest installment of My Pretend Bakery, here’s how we implemented the Sesame Street theme:
First, super-grandma made 15 colors of icing while I baked the bases.

Cake (Pillsbury Funfetti…no need to make scratch cake for 2-year-olds!), Cookies, Brownies, Lemon Bars, and Rice Krispie Treats, dyed green.

I bought some of these fondant cutters and cut the rice krispie treats into 2.5″ circles, and everything else into 1.25″ circles.


The rice krispie treats became Oscar the Grouch.

The cookies became (who else?) Cookie Monster!

The brownies became Elmo.

And the lemon bars became Big Bird.
(If I did this again, I’d try lemon cheesecake instead of lemon bars…the lemon bars were exceptionally difficult to cut out as the top layer wanted to stick to the cutter, and the bottom layer wanted to crack.) The “beaks” are the yellow ends of candy corn, scored in the middle.

The star of the show was Miss Abby Cadabby!

Here’s the entire collection. Sunny Day / Sweepin’ the clouds away….

It sure was fun, but my hand is still shaking from those gazillion star tips
The birthday princess is worth it!

The baby party.
Tanner’s first Valentine’s party, to be precise. She had a ball.
What organic kid wouldn’t love a day where she got apple juice, cookies, “cheeeeps,” AND gummy candy? Here she is sharing her kiwi, and then thinking, “is mom really going to let me eat this cookie?!?”

She had fun distributing Valentines to her friends,

Hugging Miss Debbie,

And saying, “Candy! Candy! Candy!” Apparently the kid likes Sweettart heart gummies. And she wanted to share!

She was very excited that big sister and daddy came to the party, too!

And I was reminded, once again, that Katelynn’s practically a grown-up. Her head barely fit through the table where Tanner sits!

We had a great time. For 35 minutes. And I seriously have no idea how those teachers do that all day! EIGHT one-year-olds. Goodness.

i’ve actually gotten a lot done lately.
one thing i’d been wanting to do was paint a polar bear for my youngest Tech volunteer, Landon Jones. Landon’s room is khaki & blue with white bears. i finally found an adult polar bear i liked, and freehanded him into a little polar bear cub. it turned out pretty cool; check it out.

Christmas Eve was amazing. We had two services in the Elan Ballroom at Chateau Elan, and everything was gorgeous. This year we had help from the guys at DCR Media, and their expertise + our learning via school of hard knocks led to a super-organized, minimally-stressful, totally rockstar service. We pulled off our most technically-complicated adventure yet, and it makes me really excited when thinking about the future of theVine!
Nick’s stars looked amazing, especially when coupled with all the LED lighting…

Here was my view for the evening. I think the most exciting part of the night for me was watching our team do such an amazing job! It’s so cool to see people find the sweet-spot of their talents, and two of our people were in new positions…clearly positions they were made for! Morgan Collins OWNED calling all the camera shots, even though we only gave her one preview monitor. Homegirl earned herself a future seat at the video console in our imaginary video control room. Robbie Pancake had been holding out on us with his phenomenal camera skills, and he got crazy-awesome shots all night! In addition to providing quality entertainment on the tech comm system, Nick & James held down the wide shots, and Mr. Kris Jones (a.k.a. MacDaddyPro) handled ProPresenter like a champ. Also, we couldn’t have done what we did without the 20-or-so volunteers who assisted with set-up and tear-down…it went smoother and faster than ever before, thanks to their dedication! (and muscles.) I still can’t believe I get to be a part of this team…it’s surreal. And in Braselton. Haha. Braselton?!? Who would have thought…

Tanner enjoyed getting all dressed-up and coming to Christmas Eve with LaLa and PaPa, and she was especially excited about eating grapes from the snack area!!! That was the highlight of the night for her.

And finally, this was just too cool not to take a picture of … it’s in the atrium at Chateau Elan — they put millions of REAL cranberries in their fountain!!! It was sooo awesome. And creative. Major cool points.

The music was great, the message was great, nobody caught anything on fire, nothing glass got broken, the Macs behaved, and only one person got gaff taped.
I can’t wait for 2009 at theVine!

was a wonderful occasion.
there were carbohydrates a plenty,

chick-fil-a nuggets,

and this brie-pecan-amazingness.

I’m so thankful for my family.

Tonight we had the privilege of meeting Mr. Landon Jones! Landon is an incredible miracle, and we are so excited that God chose Kris & Jessica to be Landon’s parents! We’ve been praying for little Landon since way before he was even conceived… it’s so exciting to hold him, hear his sweet baby noises, and rub his little head… God answers prayers!

Tanner kept saying “baby!” “baby!”

Sweet boy…

And I went ahead and started teaching Landon about ProPresenter. We’re training him up right and he already loves Macs. Landon’s going to lead the next generation of the technology team at theVine!

Congratulations Kris and Jessica. He is absolutely perfect!