Happy Birthday Tara!

My sister-in-law Tara is celebrating her birthday today and I just wanted to wish her a wonderful, joyous birthday! Tara is such a blessing to our family and we miss her tremendously.

My heart aches to be able to celebrate this birthday with you, Tara. We've come a long way in a very short time and I would love to be able to be there and enjoy this day with you. This is such a hard post for me cause I feel like we have missed out on so much and I want to have the chance to catch up on some lost time. I want to be there to watch you and Stan unwrapping your presents and blowing out your candles and listening to everyone being silly and laughing so hard they cry. You would love the stupid jokes that Colten and Mahala come up with and you would adore Anastacia's laugh. I'm sure all the kids (mine and yours) would be right there to help you unwrap presents and open all of your cards. It would be a circus, I'm certain, but it would be so much fun.

Okay, now I'm just making myself cry, so even though there is much more I would like to say I'll leave it at that. But I do hope you have a wonderful birthday and I pray that we will get to see all of you soon. We love you and miss you so much!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

I just wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving to all of my fellow bloggers and to all of our friends and family who stop by to view our blog. We love you all so much and miss you more than you can imagine. We will be spending Thanksgiving with our wonderful friends Brandy, Nick, Abigail and Ethan and a few of their family members. We are so blessed to have them here to spend Thanksgiving with. But we miss our family so much and just wanted to let them know that even though we can't be there - we are thinking of them.
We are remembering the last Thanksgiving we spent there (last year) and praying that it won't be long before we can visit again. We sure do miss all of that wonderful southern Thanksgiving food - Aunt Jeanette's fresh creamed corn; Granny McNeal's dumplings, cornbread, dressing, etc; Aunt Teresa's baked cheesy apples; Mama's good 'ol mac-n-cheese, baked ham, sweet potato crunch and all that good stuff. And all of the yummy desserts that Tara and Kay-Kay cook along with the rest of the family (soooooo much food - it's almost sinful). If I listed it all here, it would take way too long, those are just some of my favorites! Oh, man, I'm making myself hungry.


Here are a few pictures from last Thanksgiving when we were there.





Colten giving Bethany a little book from us:

Aunt Tara and Mahala making mini pecan pies:

Mr. Bobby and Mahala picking up pecans:

Granny, Aunt Jeanette and the kids up a tree:

Daddy and Bubba picking up pecans:

Precious memories.....we love you all and miss you so much. Have a wonderful, blessed Thanksgiving and eat some dumplings for me.

Happy Birthday Stan!!!

The Gibbs Crew just wanted to send out a big Happy Birthday to Uncle Stan! We made a little scrapbook page in honor of his birthday - Shawn and I had a blast making it. Just wanted to let him know that we love and miss Uncle Stan. He has taught my little ones so much about loving nature and learning as much as possible about the world around them. I remember just before we left, he pulled Colten close and told him to turn over as many rocks as possible. Uncle Stan has always been there to teach them about God's creation and we are so thankful to have him in our lives. We only wish we could be closer to experience it more often.

Uncle Stan - Head-head and Ma-hoo-hoo love you and wish you Happy Birthday. Anastacia will grow to love you just as much as they do and God will take care of all the details.

Another cute video.....

Here is another little video for the grandparents. If you watch closely in the beginning, you will see Anastacia do the sign for milk. Then when she raises her hands in the air, that is the sign for all done. And when she is moving her hand, she isn't actually saying bye bye, she was just experimenting with her hand - that's what I was telling you about on the last blog. She's been doing that a lot lately.

Six months old

Anastacia turned six months old on November 21!!! I cannot believe she is already halfway to a year old!! It seems like just yesterday that I had her. Well, maybe not yesterday, but only like a month or so ago. Here is a little page I made in honor of her half-birthday:

Okay, so her latest measurements are 27 1/2 inches long and 18 lbs. She has started pushing up on all fours and rocking a little. She still has no desire to sit up, so I wouldn't be surprised if she started crawling before she sits. Who knows?? Still not teeth, although one is bulging through the gum, but it's been that way for a while. It's getting whiter, so I know it's moving, but I have no idea when it will come! She is learning a lot of new sounds and she has said "Wuv you" several times. She says "Da" and "Bu" but I don't think she knows what they are yet. I think she is just experimenting with a lot of sounds. She has discovered her hand lately and it is the funniest thing! She will stare at it and turn it back and forth over and over again. I want to get it on video b/c it is so cute. Not happened yet, but I'll keep trying. She is very alert and aware of her surroundings and everyone keeps telling me she is big for her age and acts much older than her age. I don't know the difference b/c she acts just like the other two did at this age and everyone said the same thing about them.

I do know she is bigger than most kids her size cause I see them at church and in the stores. I cannot believe how much bigger she is than other kids her size!! She looks like she's a year old instead of six months! She is very healthy and happy all the time. And she loves her family. She has gotten more attached to Mahala and she smiles so big when she sees either one of her siblings. I think she gets most excited about her Daddy, though. (Unless she is hungry then I'm the only one who makes her happy - but that's only cause I'm the milk factory) She is getting to be much more vocal than she was. Pastor Randy was preaching the other morning and it was his closing. He got a little quiet and Anastacia got so loud that I had to take her out. Everyone turned and looked at us and I said sorry and took her out the doors!

Lott Baby

I am really getting into this digital scrapbooking thing now that I have figured out how. I wanted to do a page in honor of my sister-in-law's new baby. The little girl on the right is the big sister (Bethany) and she is holding a picture of the ultrasound. Tara said that she hugged it, rubbed it on her face and said "oooh, baby soft." I thought that was so precious and just wanted to share it with everyone. How I wish we could be there when this baby comes into the world!

*For those of you who don't know, you can click on the page and enlarge it to see it better*