Oh yeah I almost forgot...Here's Sophia headed up the steps.

New baby!

Charlie, my brother on the left, is a proud new father! He, along with his wife Valerie welcomed their first daughter, Brooklyn Paige on Wed. June 11th. She arrived at 10:25pm and weighed 7 lbs 14 oz.--Just in time for Charlie's first Father's Day.

Way to go guys!
Grandparents welcoming their 5th grandchild. Isn't little Brooklyn just beautiful? We sure think so!
Sophia Grace had her 9month check up on Monday. She weighed 18 pounds and 11 oz (50%) and measured 29 inches long (90%). She is still our sweet happy baby. I desperately need to get some new photos added to the blog in the next few days. She keeps up with her sister rather well considering her age. Right before we left to go on vacation, she figured out how to go up our entire steps. Maybe I shouldn't have encouraged her, but for bath time, I always let her climb up the steps with me following closely behind. Well now she attempts to go up the steps more routinely and it has become a major "no-no". But instead of listening to me and staying away from the risers, she instead flashes me her dimpled grin and makes a break for it. Usually she's up to at least the second step before I can get to her. It's her new game! Big sister is our watchdog. Maura is really good at letting me know if Sophia is approaching any kind of dangerous territory. I always feared she would be the one pushing her down, but thankfully she shows genuine concern for her younger sister and loves her dearly.

We took the girls to the swimming pool today. It was our first trip this season. (too bad mom forgot the camera :(). Maura loves the pool. You know you're kid is enjoying them self whenever they randomly yell out "I'm having so much fun!" or "I'm doing it!...I can swim! Mind you she had a raft wrapped around her belly for most of the time, but she really was doing a great job kicking and moving her arms. It was a great effort and she was SO proud of herself! Gary also went along which was a major help. Sophia Grace enjoyed splashing and playing with her toys. I think I might even be able to take them by myself when the time comes (see below for our reason).

Other news........Gary is having reconstructive ankle surgery on Monday the 23rd. We sure aren't looking forward to this, but feel that it's best to tackle it sooner than later. Most of you know that Gary played football in high school and college. He was a hard core wide receiver who didn't sit out much. Even when he was hurt he would play with injury. Now ten years later, he's paying for it and hasn't been able to be his normal physical/active self because of the pain. They have told us that he will be out of commission for 10 weeks (but we really don't know exactly what that means). We will soon be finding out! We are praying that surgery goes well and that he has the patience to lay still and recover quickly. :)

Also, the poor pitiful picture of me was yesterday. Let it be known that on Wed. June 18th, I was totally worthless. My eyes were closed for probably 70% of the day because of a massive migraine headache. Ever since high school I might get a migraine on occasion (4 in a year), but when I'm pregnant they seem to occur more like once a month. Usually they aren't too bad, but yesterday was a doozey! Whew! It's also harder whenever your expecting b/c you not suppose to take good drugs you're just suppose to opt for Tylenol (so it lingered and lingered). Other than that, my pregnancy is going great! I don't have any other ailments, just the occasional headache.

Happy Father's Day!

Our daddy works so hard for us. We were glad to have the day to show him our love and appreciation.

Thanks again sweetheart for being such a super husband and father. We love you SO much!

water bug

Maura loves water and she's been spending a lot of time in her turtle pool!
And on occasion she attacks me with water. She was chasing after me, laughing, and having oodles of fun.

Uh-oh....here she comes again.



And lastly I wanted to share another favorite activity of our water bug. You really can't tell, but in this picture it's pouring down rain. Don't we wish we had her energy? :)

Our anniversary announcement!

We celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary today and we thought there's no better time than to announce our big secret.

As you can tell by the picture, our third child is on the way and we are overjoyed!!!! Never a dull moment around here! :) We'll keep you posted on the details.

Love, Gary and Anna

Last vacation shots.....

The happy couple.

We opted for the dolphin cruise instead of the kayaks. Here's the lovely ship. We sat on the top deck underneath the canopy. And yes.... we did see dolphins. A happy couple put on a show in the ship's wake for around 10 minutes or so.
This restaurant was known as the Bubble Room. We ate at many fine eating establishments and relished every bite our food. Our favorite rest. on the island was Doc Ford's. The food was amazing and the waitress literally said you couldn't go wrong with anything you ordered on the menu! We found this to be true. One other cool thing about the island was everything was mom and pop. You couldn't find a hotel or rest chain in sight.




Some amazing tasting cheesecake!

Birds are a common sight on the island. The J.N. Ding Darling Nature Reserve has over 500+ acres of land which is untouched Florida habitat set aside for the birds and other animals of the island. Millions of birds migrate here every year during the winter months. We took a tour of the refuge and saw several different types of beaked creatures, a large turtle, and a small alligator.

These last shots are a last evening on the beach. We just relaxed and enjoyed the view, smells, and sounds of the ocean.

And one last sunset for good measure. Sigh! I miss it already. And if anyone is interested in traveling to Sanibel, please let me know. It was a place that I found people hadn't heard of. I even asked a local travel agent and she had no clue about it. Anyways, I'm always up for sharing good things and Sanibel would come highly recommended from us. Looking back, it was an amazing vacation.

I should briefly mention that we were missing the girls terribly by the 5th day. I'll try to share some pictures of Maura's vacation with her cousins in the next week or so. And according to my mom and our babysitter, Sophia Grace was an absolute angel. It was nice to know they were in such good hands while we were gone. Thanks everyone for your help--it meant so much to have a little time away.