Every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man...

All you six year old ladies at Liberty Pines better step off because I am claiming Evan for my Mag!

This is Evan - one of the triplet boys of my friend Melyssa (who also has an older son - don't want to leave him out!). Evan is so sweet, so smart, and so adorable. Evan is Ian as a little boy. When Ian was little he talked a friend's mom into buying him a sport jacket, shirt and tie from the consignment shop. He was about 8 years old, so the story goes. When Ian went to UNC he upped his game even more and started sporting bow ties. I love them. It takes a real man to sport a bow tie, I think!

Anyway, little Evan likes to wear a shirt and tie to work - he wants to look dapper like his dad when he goes to work. Evan decided that he wanted to wear a bow tie so Ian told him he would teach him how. Long story longer, here are the pics. It's tough to teach a kid who doesn't fully know how to tie his shoes how to tie a bow tie, but Evan is no ordinary six year old! He came over one evening this week with his little pressed dress shirt and got Mr. Ian to teach him.

It was adorable. Of course princess Maggie wanted to dress up too so I picked out a few things for her to put on. Instead, though, she went to her room and put on her bikini and her swimming float and pranced herself right into the bathroom where the lesson was taking place. I think Maggie knows that a real little man was in the house and she had to work it too!

Just kidding...sort of.

Oh, and the other pic is of Zo Zo dressing up in The Incredibles outfit. She is really into dress up these days.

And little T has her second round of casts but I don't have a picture yet of the purple princess. I'll get back to you...

Chapel Hill pics

Sweet T

So here's my little one with her full leg casts. We got them yesterday and she'll wear them for about a month, changing them out each week. We are hoping this will straighten out her little feet.

She was an angel while they were putting on the casts. Then when we got home and I put her down on the ground she was TICKED. She's fine until she realizes that she can't get up and go any more. She has learned to sit up on her own and army crawl, but there's no way she's gonna walk with those suckers on.

Good news is that she now weighs 15 lbs! And even more with those honkin casts on her legs. She cracked Zoe in the head with one of them yesterday and I think I'm definitely going to have bruises from her kicking me while I'm changing her diaper. Fun.

Anyway, I was a little frazzled yesterday, needless to say, so my sweet friends Melyssa and Marty decided we could use some park time. The kids all had a blast and Tori just sat there and laughed and chatted while everyone played. Of course she gets whatever she wants for the next few weeks, so Melyssa gave her an entire bag of ruffles that she ate while she sat. So cute! She may not look at all like me, but that kid can eat like a Sloan...nothing's too bad that a bag of chips can't fix.

Though I was pretty upset about it yesterday (because frankly it really changes things for me...what about MY needs?!) I realized today that it's actually going to help me out a bit. For instance, when I need to get the twins out of a room I don't have to grab one and take her out only to have her run back in while I am frantically trying to get the other one out. As a matter of fact, I am thinking of asking if they'll go ahead and cast Zoe's legs too. That way I can just get them up, plop them on the floor in the den, and turn on Elmo all day long. Sounds like a plan to me!

Part 3

This is like the Godfather Trilogy, only part three is really the best. Here are the pics from Nana Feast. It was so fun! As you can see from the video the food was scrump-dilly-icious. Especially the mustard based bar-b-que. That junk is slammin! Thanks Mom for hooking me up.

Basically the afternoon consisted of cooking, eating, frying, snarfing it down, chasing children, hunting Easter eggs, drinking mimosas and topping it all off with sugar shock from 5 lemon pound cake, chocolate cake, coconut cake, and lemon pie. The frying was done by my Aunt Suzy and Aunt Judy. Suzy is sporting one of Nana's cooking aprons, which I love and wish I had! So fun.

BTW, the pics are a little heavy on the Smiths. Sorry guys. Enjoy...

Part Deux

So I am writing tonight under duress because my Mom told me that she keeps getting angry when she opens my blog and finds no new posts. Sorry Mom...this one's for you.

I have been putting it off a bit because I have some great pics on the camera that I want to share from Nana Feast and Chapel Hill. Tonight I was all ready to share them with you when I realized that all the camera gear is in the twins' room and there's no way in the world I'm going to risk baby drama - even for the sake of my Mama.

Let me just say, though, that it was really sweet to get to see friends last week. It was crazy and there were many times that I wondered why we even tried this adventure with a six year old and not-even-two year old twins. Nevertheless it was just good for my heart to see those folks. The McSwains were gracious enough to open their home to us and I slept in sweet Emily's room surrounded by smiling faces in high school photos and Bible verses posted all over the walls. It truly was like being covered by angels. What made it even sweeter is that Emily was in a group I had the privilege of co-leading that we affectionately called "The Freshmores" (because the girls were freshmen and sophomores when we started).

I have to say that I love McSwain-land. It's a crazy house with people always coming and going, phones ringing, people laughing, and some type of yummy carbs baking in the oven. I had a chance to spend about an hour with Susan the last night we were there and it was so sweet. We were both about to fall flat on our faces from exhaustion so we decided to sit on the couch and talk and laugh for a while. So fun.

We had a cookout thrown for us at the Holahans' and it was great. The girls and I jumped with friends on the trampoline and reminisced about that fateful day in NC when Maggie broke her leg jumping on one at a Business School picnic. Ahhh, those were the days. Inevitably the girls would meltdown around 4:30 or so and it would usually last quite a while. Of course we were never at home base when that happened. Mostly it happened when we would sit down together at a friend's house to eat dinner. I try very hard to make my kids sit at the table and eat, and they do pretty well. When they're "Ahh Dun, Ahh Dun" though, they are truly all done and ready to get up and outta there. So we would let them out, which always meant we were no longer seated either because we were chasing them to make sure they didn't drink dog-water or decorate the walls with Sharpies. Fun.

It was fun, though, because all these people either have small kids themselves or know what it's like. And I think they really truly love us, which is good because when you are traveling with small children there's really very little you can do to mask your frustration/exhaustion. I am so grateful for those friends who took us in and just jumped right in to wipe noses, give baths, and unearth kid toys so my girls could have fun and we could steal a few minutes to visit.

I'll write more later with pics, but I just wanted to say thanks to all my sweet friends who loved on us last week. Can't wait until next time...and by next time I either mean when you come to Florida or when my children are old enough to feed, bathe and clothe themselves!

Nana Feast, Tarheels, and False Peaks (Part 1)

What a whirlwind. First of all Sandy and I caravaned (is that a word? I'm thinking not) from Jacksonville to Columbia last Friday. It was a trip - especially considering the fact that all three of my children were on antibiotics and running various degrees of fevers. Awesome.

Once in Columbia we were joined by Ian who drove down from Charlotte where he had been working all week. It was great to see him and to see my parents. And it takes me about that long too. So on Saturday I went to Target with Sandy and Zoe and as I was romping through the dollar bins I got a phone call from Ian. Tori had just thrown up twice and he needed me to come home. So we did. I called the doc and we figured out that she had just puked up her motrin because she hadn't eaten much of anything that day. All became right again with the world after the vomiting incident and we were having a nice day playing outside with the kids. Then we got a phone call from my sister, Jeannie, who was in tears because her one year old son, Sam, had fallen off the wagon (literally) and cracked his head. I went over to her house and stayed with her oldest son, Watts, who was quarantined because he had 104 fever. Thankfully all was well with Sam, though when I called over to Mom's house to see how things were going with my own children I realized that, well, I just needed to be there so that my kids would make it through the evening. Not a banner night for Ian, though I have those all the time and you all know what I mean. I told him to come stay with Watts and watch basketball while I came back and took care of our own kids. I didn't want to do it, but I did. I mean one child with 104 fever is far more relaxing than taking care of three semi-healthy, hungry, sleepy girls. But I did it and it worked out for the best.

Thankfully to end up the day the Tarheels won and all was once again right with the world.

I haven't really posted much about the Tarheels and the passions they induce in my household. I didn't go to UNC, but married into the madness and was borderline maniacal when we lived in Chapel Hill. Ian, on the other hand, is seriously in a whole other category of fanhood. Being a fan doesn't even really describe it. For those of you who know my husband you know he is SUPER chill. He doesn't really talk about "feelins" a lot and believe me when I say that I have enough for the both of us. But when the Heels come on it's really just a remarkable thing to behold. I don't even know how to describe it except to say this: I know he loves me and our girls so much. I know he is passionate about being my husband and their father. But the raw emotion that comes out of that man when Roy's boys hit the court can only be described as unbridled passion. For example, one of our friends who went to Duke gave us a nice set of Duke glasses for a wedding gift knowing full well Ian would hate them or use them as spit cups if he ever took up dipping. Instead of dipping, though, Ian decided to save the glasses and then break them one by one when Carolina either lost miserably or beat the pants off the Blue Devils. One shining moment in our early married life occurred when the Tarheels lost to Duke. Ian promptly got up from the couch, grabbed a glass from the cabinet, opened the screen door onto our second story apartment porch and shattered that thing onto the pavement below. Wow.

So here we are in Durham now, visiting for the week. We got her yesterday and were able to watch the Heels win the National Championship. We were at Tillet's house, which is basically a house that is a bachelor pad/shrine to the Tarheels. I hope I'm not giving away any ancient Chinese secrets when I say that all the guys sit in the same place each game and wear the same shirts they wore when the Heels won in 2005. The funniest, and I'm sure most effective pre-game tactic though, is when all the guys head out to the garage before tip off and they lift weights...you know, just to get pumped and ready for the game. There are a few other traditions that I will keep underwraps because we don't want to give away all the secrets, but let's just say that it only fed the madness that runs rampant through my husband's blood.

Today we took the girls to the Dean Dome to welcome the team back. It was great to be there with them, though I think it will be a better memory than an actual experience.

Which leads me to the "False Peaks" portion of the post. I'll have to give you part two tomorrow because I'm really uncomfortable sitting here right now and typing. More to follow...

This one's for Martha

Where'd you get those Baby Shoes?

Gotta start em off right with the Target Lady. If you don't know what I'm talking about then just google YouTube Target Lady. My kids crack me up!