Introducing.....

Raylan Derald Rollins

Born on May 7, 2012 at 1:41 p.m.

6 pounds and 15 ounces

20 inches long

We are IN LOVE!!!! He has been such a terrific baby so far and we are truly blessed! He is eating and sleeping well-so well in fact that we are already home! We will post more pictures and details in a few days :)

Everything Green

The kiddos went to Whole Foods for their cooking class last week and had a blast making all sorts of green things! They started out with making a salad dressing with avocado, Greek yogurt, lemon juice, garlic and dill! Then they had free reign of the salad bar and all the different toppings to put on and then topped with their homemade salad dressing of course!

After salad they made fruit and veggie smoothies with strawberries, bananas, yogurt, spinach, kale and apples! Sawyer let me have a taste of his and it was excellent! (Looked a little putrid but tasted D-lish!)

Some of you have been emailing me about how everything is going in the baby department and I'm happy to say that everything is just dandy! I'm feeling really good, just a bit tired in the evenings after the kiddos leave. We are now down to weekly OB visits, which is always a good sign that we are nearing the end! Dr. Simmons bumped my due date up to the end of this month and so we are trying to get everything in that we want to do before our lives switch gears. We have pretty much nailed down a name (that we are going to leave for a surprise) although Sawyer keeps wanting to make last minute additions to the list, the latest one being 'Lorax'. Hmmmmm....I wonder where he got that from?

5 and 55

Last weekend we celebrated Papa Steve's 55th Birthday!!! For the past three or four years Sawyer has been making Papa some very colorful/loud/creative/attention drawing Birthday crowns! Now normally Papa only wears them at home when we do cake and presents, but this year we thought he would REALLY appreciate us bringing his crown to Red Lobster with us so that he could wear it there! (insert devilish laughing) This year Sawyer wanted to put some pictures of Pap on the crown, so we printed some out and he glued them on along with googlie eyes and a nice ring of green tissue paper balls.....Papa Steve just loved wearing it for all to see...(said the narrator sarcastically)

As usual, we went back to Nana and Papa's house to open gifts and eat cake....and for a few piggy back rides!

This is the traditional "Guy's with Glitz" picture. After all of the gifts have been opened, they always accessorize with the ribbon and tissue paper.....

Nana Kathy made these ADORABLE German chocolate cakes! They were meant to be individual ones, but my goodness.....those were big enough to make your body go into shock! They were so yummy!

5 and 55

Happy St. Patty's Day!

Bill and aren't normally huge St. Patty's Day celebrators but this year my good friend Melody was celebrating her birthday with a big St. Patty's Day Bash! To liven things up and make sure everyone was decked out in festive green, she had a gift card for the best dressed of the evening.

We started the night at Old Chicago for some pizza and gift opening (We all went in on a Kitchen Aid mixer for her which she's been wanting for a while now)

*The Birthday Girl and her husband Scott*

I actually won the costume contest! I'm not sure if it was my fake green eye lashes or the green tutu that cinched the deal, but in he end, the gift card was mine!

As you can tell, Bill's outfit was a little more toned down for the evening :)

After dinner we headed on over to the BrazenHead for drinks (well, they all had drinks and I just got dirty looks for being there pregnant....oh well!) and to listen to the live band.

Thanks for geting us all out for a great evening Melody!*

I Love These!!!

I have found myself getting into arguments with Sawyer over trying to convince of things like when I say "Only 5 more minutes till we get there" does NOT mean we will be there as soon as you count to five......or why it doesn't REALLY matter if we wear socks that say 'Wednesday' on them on Fridays.....or why we don't dip our apple slices in our ketchup just because we had some left over on our plate.......these little spats usually happen in the car....when I feel too cold with the windows down but the air conditioner has a weird smell....and I'm about a 4 on the car sick scale....and I can hear my cell phone beeping because it' just about to run out of battery but it's in my purse in the back seat and I don't feel like reaching around to get it....and the Bill has some weird song on the radio.....all these things combined don't usually set a particularly optimal environment to deliver my convincing argument to Sawyer.

It usually ends with Bill saying, "Sawyer, leave Mom alone."

Nathan Ripperger says things to his kids, and then turns his words into posters. They’re so spot-on they make me laugh! Have you ever said something to your kids and then realized just how ridiculous it sounds?

The Biker

You guessed it! My kid can ride a bike! Without training wheels!!! Wahoo!!!!!

My mom had gotten him a bike last year for his birthday and we've been trying ever since in little spurts to teach him to ride it....but to no avail. We realized that he was too short of the bike because whenever he would stand up to catch or balance himself, he would just fall over because his feet could quite touch the ground......So last weekend after yet another afternoon at the park with nothing to show for except bruised knees and scraped elbows, we went on a hunt for a smaller bike. We found one at Target and Bill took the pedals off so that he could just scoot around on it and get the feel for it.

We let him scoot around on it for one afternoon and then the next day the pedals went back on. And look what happened!!!!!!

He was SO proud of himself! Not to mention how proud Bill and I were!

Then we of course had to go over to Nana and Papa's house to show off a bit :)

He is so excited that he can actually ride a bike now that that's all we hear about these days! Which is OK! :) We are looking forward to being able ride some of the nice trails on our bikes now and not have to lug him around in the seat behind us.....he's getting heavy!

Random Updates

We celebrated Bill's 26th Birthday in January with his parents at a steakhouse here in town called 'Johnny's Cafe'. Our friends Joel and Cindy had given us a gift certificate there and it just so happened that Papa Steve used to work there as a bus boy when he was sixteen!

Thanks Joel and Cindy for the gift certificate!!!!!

We headed on over to Jone's Bros. Cupcakes for dessert and gifts :)

Skip forward a few weeks to Valentine's Day!!! We normally celebrate it with our good friends, Brandon and Laney and this year was no different except that Laney and I were/are pretty pregnant! The boys took us out to The French Cafe down in the Old Market for dinner and then to a late showing of, "The Vow". It was such a good time!!!!

Baby Bumps!

Speaking of the baby.....we have been hard at work here at our house trying to get ready for his arrival! Sawyer has moved downstairs to the guest bedroom-he loves how big and spacious the room is...although it does seem like he's really far away from us at night.....it does make me feel better that Mary is down there with him too....and so Sawyer's old bedroom is now the baby's nursery! So we have been sanding, painting and Bill was hard at work building some custom shelving for the closet! It's coming together really nicely (more photos of that later!)

While we were in Brazil, Bill and I had taken some shots of Mary running (she's a die hard runner!) and low and behold......what happened to show up on the back inside cover of "Women's Running Magazine" this month?!? One of Bill's photos of Mary!!!!