16 Months old is such a great age to be!

Well Mallory turned 16 months old on the 20th of March! I still can't believe how fast time has passed!! Here is a look at the past month!

She loves dancing to music!! Her favorite songs are "If your happy and you know it clap your hands", "I'm a little tea pot", Itsy Bitsy Spider, and "Old MacDonald had a farm".

She is still wearing size 3 diapers and some size 12 months clothes and some 18 months. We also, finally turned her car seat around and she loves it except when they get her out of the car for play school. We are back to crying now... I guess it's cause she can see me!

She had her 15 month check up a few weeks back. She got 3 shots and only weighted in at 20.5pounds, which according to the doctor was in the 5%(lowest we have ever been). We were also told to try and get her to drink more milk even if that required adding Chocolate or Strawberry syrup!!! I will go ahead and tell you that we are drinking more milk, but it doesn't include any extra syrup!!! Ha!!

She is still not eating meat at all and loves her starches!! Her favorite food is still Mac-n-Cheese and Mash potatoes.

She has started talking more. Her new words include: Eyes, Yes, uh oh, cheese, more, and please. She can also, show you how old she is, give you five, and knows where her nose, feet, toes, ears, mouth, teeth, and eyes are. She knows a lot more than she speaks!!! I can ask her to go get most things and she comes back with them.

Her favorite playtime includes doing puzzles, playing with her tea pot, shoes and purses, and riding the old horse I had when I was a child.

Mallory has been caught getting her purse and walking to the door ready to go with whom ever is leaving the house!! This is so funny to watch and even funnier that I never taught her to carry a purse. I guess she just saw me grabbing mine to leave the house!

Every meal now she goes to her highchair to wait to get in when she is hungry!

Mallory still take 2 naps if we are at home. One in the morning and one in the afternoon. If She is at play school then she only gets one nap, which is usually a long one!

Recently, after being in the car for over 9 hours on our trip to Dallas, we were sitting in Dallas traffic and Mallory started fussing. I preceded to ask her if she had a stinky diaper and to my surprise she said "YES" very softly !! I honesty thought she had no idea what I was talking about, but we pulled over and after checking her she did infact have a dirty diaper!! I guess toddlers know more than you think they do!!

All in all she is doing great and growing up way to fast!! John and I are truly blessed to have such a sweet little girl!! Here are some recent pictures! Enjoy!

Baby shower and family are a great combo!!

Back in February, Mallory and I packed up the car and headed to Alabama to visit John's family and attend his cousin Kelly's baby shower. I was really excited about going and seeing all of John's extended family. Some of his family had never met Mallory and some had not seen her since she was 5 weeks old! We had lots of fun. I ended up making her gift myself. This was a first for me to give someone something I had sewn besides my nephew Ethan. One dress I even attempted my fear of sewing useing zipper!! I sew Mallory stuff all the time, but it was fun to give baby Emma some stuff too! Here are a few pictures from our trip and peek at some of the things I made for baby Emma! Oh and just to clarify I didn't make the pink pants, I bought them to go with the onesie. Enjoy!

More posts soon about my cousin Jon's recent wedding in Dallas, and Mallory turned 15 months! Hopefully, I will catch up before Mallory turns 16 months old, which is only a week away!!

Be still and know that I am God.

Psalm 46:10 is one of the verses that gave me peace over the last year while our house in Tallahassee was on the market and would not sell. In December of 2009, 4 weeks after Mallory was born, we decided to put our house on the market. We knew that this was a long shot selling a house in the state our economy was in, but at the same time we also felt it was what we needed to do.

Over the two years we lived in Tallahassee, John never once got peace with his job and felt like it was just dragging him deeper and deeper into a rut. We both felt like he gave it plenty of time to get better, but the atmosphere never changed. Working 60 hour weeks, a commute of 50 minutes one way, a negative environment, and being on call 24 hours a day were just some of the stressful things that came with management at this particular plant. After Mallory was born, my wonderful dad opened the doors for us to move back to the great state of Mississippi where I grew up!! If you could have seen the smile and excitement on John's face, it was priceless! I was very excited to be moving back, but a little nervous about John changing careers! However, once again I had no reason to be nervous cause John loves his new job and loves working for the family business!

So now after 7 months of the house being on the market we still had no offers! It was time for John to start his new job working for my dad so, we packed up our special items and necessities, drove 6 hours to Mississippi and moved into my mom and dads upstairs! Now, if you can only imagine, bringing our stuff on top of the stuff my mom and dad already have, lets just say we are busting out the seems!! Aside from the clutter and stuff everywhere, we are truly blessed that they allowed us to move in! It's so great to get to eat dinner with them every evening and for Mallory to see them everyday!! I can honestly say I have some of the most giving and generous parents and I am so very thankful for the example they have taught me and will teach Mallory!

I guess it was sometime in the fall of 2010 we finally had our first offer! To our surprise it didn't go as we thought and the guy backed out within the first 15 days and even got his deposit back. Now, as disappointing as this was we moved on and I still had a peace that it would sell in God's time! The amazing thing was this whole time I never worried about it selling at all! I guess I just knew it would sell, we just had to be patient!! Now patience is not something John had an easy time learning at all with this house, but towards the end I think he finally got it!! It's amazing how God uses tough times to teach us powerful lessons!!

Come December, we had another offer and not surprising to us this time it also feel through. This time the couple's financing fell through. And although it was a little disappointing, I was glad it happened for the couples sake especially if they couldn't really afford the house.

Now our house had officially been on the market over a year now, and we got our 3rd offer!! The amazing thing is the same day this happened we also got a 4th offer!! Now, two offers in 1 day is pretty amazing in this economy and in Tallahassee!! After lots of counters, we were finally under contract again, but due to our past contracts we new not to get to excited until the papers were signed. After the 15 day period, everything was still going great and God just gave me this peace that it would sell. Now fast forwarding to the day we signed papers, our realtor told us she new God had been looking out for us. The roof and appraisal were two things that she was really concerned about. Our roof was original to the house (1993) and didn't have much life left, which in the past had been issues with buyers, but this time it didn't' even come up!! In the words of our realtor "It's a total God thing, He was looking out for you!" As for the appraisal, a house in our neighborhood recently sold for a really low price and we were all worried about how this might affect our house value, but God once again came through and we had no problems!! Another God thing!!

Now I can't say everything went our way with selling this house. I mean we lost a ton of money and had to pay money to sell it, but the fact that we are once again debt free and it sold means more to us than any amount of money we lost! I can honestly say not only was God good to us but he also taught us what true patience means!! We are now looking forward to starting over in Mississippi!! God is good all the time and all the time God is good!!!