Yes, I'm a little behind. And I have new stuff from the past week, spending time with Lee's family for his grandmother's funeral and spending time with sweet friends along the way, but that will all come in due time.
(Which, for me, probably means in a month or two. I'm just not one of those bloggers who takes pictures in the morning and has the post up in the afternoon. I'd love to be that pulled together, but that's not in the forecast any time soon.)
On New Year's Day, we headed over to my grandmother's house in Winston-Salem to spend the day with her, as well as my sister and her boyfriend who had come up for a visit. That was a treat because we rarely see each other, other than brief visits here and there.
It was so sweet to actually get to spend a little time with Lis and James!
As as you can see above, even sweet Cady came along.
Cady is willing to share Lis with James, which is saying a lot. She's a rescue dog who was found owner-less after Hurricane Katrina, and she obviously experienced some ugliness at the hands of a man because she's not fond of the menfolk. James has gotten her approval, though!
Cady even got to meet her cousin-in-fur and fellow rescue mutt, Napoleon.
Cady and Napoleon didn't play much together (Cady's a little skittish about other dogs sometimes), but she did just fine with our other pint-sized guy!
They even exchanged kisses!
Because Cady growled once at Lee, though, Daddy's girl wasn't so sure about her canine cousin.
I love capturing her personality on film. (Yes, yes, I know it's not film. But "on SD card" just doesn't have the same ring to it.)
One thing I
cannot pass up on getting on film is loved ones reading books with my children. It's even more rare to get good candid shots of Nana because she prefers to pose formally whenever a camera is in view.
But this?
Melts.my.heart.
While I was able to capture the sweet reading moment, I'm still learning the ins and outs of my camera. I love the picture below, but I managed to get the poinsettia in focus and my main men out of focus. It's still mighty precious nonetheless!
I'm learning more and more about using my trusty DSLR, and it's pretty fun to figure out. Even my okay pictures with it are a bazillion and one times better than most of my good pictures with my old camera. And you've gotta admit that a picture like the one below wouldn't look as cool with a little point and shoot camera, right?
But back to our day with family...dinosaur, anyone?
Our sweet girl insists on opening other people's presents. We restrain that part of her at parties for her friends, but great-grandmothers don't typically mind that sort of thing.
And as for our little man, he might as well have hung the moon in Nana's eyes. She has always favored little boys, and our handsome fella was named after her father and twin brother.
How precious they are!
But who wouldn't love a guy who has his own spinning dance parties in the foyer?
He doesn't suck his thumb much unless he's tired or hurt, but he does occasionally opt for the bored hand-sucking.
While our girl has long since given up the thumb, she isn't too big for her mimi (the purple blankie). Shout out to our friend Heather for giving us the most used and loved new baby gift four years ago! There is no mimi like purple mimi.
Nana was impressed as how well our little man was trained to keep his arms behind his back when we were around all the breakables in her house. (Umm, confession: he isn't trained to do that. That day he just decided it would be fun to walk around with his hands behind his back, something that has amused him a few times since then. We had never seen him do it before New Year's Day.)
And another confession: We didn't tell Nana that we hadn't trained him to do that. We just smiled when she complimented us on that. (And, considering that she still doesn't know how to use a computer, much less how to access our blog, that secret will stay safe here.)
Finally, if you've hung in here this long
(I would apologize for the length, but I'm not really sorry, so I'll keep it real by omitting the "sorry it's so long" mumbo jumbo), here are some of my favorite pictures from the visit. Though Christmas seems like it was more than a month and a half ago, I'm still awestruck by the beauty of Nana's tree. Let it be a reminder to us all to celebrate Christ all year!
