THE young FAMILY

Things have been so busy since we returned from NYC! Getting in the spirit of the holidays, I guess! The Thursday after we got back, we were fortunate enough to have tickets on the floor to the Garth Brooks concert...the first one of the 9 flood relief concerts he was doing in Nashville. And even more fortunately, our dear friends Paula and John Chesworth and their precious son Jack came to Nashville to go with us! (well not Jack...he and Carrie had a babysitter!) The concert was the best concert I have ever been to. It was SO fun and Garth was just amazing. He sang all his hits and was so fired up as was the crowd and the energy was like nothing I have ever experienced. Even Trisha Yearwood came out and sang "She's in Love with the Boy" which was great. We had such a great couple of days with the Chesworth family being in town. I had not seen Jack since he was 3 days old and now he is 5 months old! Wow. And they had not seen Carrie since she was maybe 9 months old so it was time to see the kids and most importantly, get them together! Since Carrie is baby crazy, I knew she would love Jack. At first, I think she was really confused. A real baby staying in our house?! But after a short time, she loved him! And he loved watching her busy around the house. Jack is SUCH a happy, adorable and fun little man so he was a treat to have around. Friday morning, Paula was reading Jack a book and Carrie wanted to get in her lap, too and this is what came of it...only the cutest pictures ever...


I mean little buddies! Look at them.

Then before they left Saturday, Jack was laying on his belly trying to scoot so Carrie got down on her hands and knees and tried to show him how to crawl and he really tried to follow her lead! It was precious...

"C'mon Jack, you almost got it!"
We were sad to see them go, but hope to get to Knoxville soon.

Something that I have been really hoping for lately is that Carrie would be a little better at playing by herself. She always has from time to time, but I wanted some bigger chunks of time because I think it is healthy for her to enjoy playing by herself and it gives me a few extra moments to get things done. Well in the past week or so, she has really been much better about it! The other day I was changing the sheets and saw that she had left the room. I snuck around the corner to check on her and she was in the den, flipping through People magazine sipping her milk...it was so cute I had to get a picture...
So I went back to what I was doing and 10 minutes later she was still in the den so I snuck back around and found her chair moved, her sitting in it and reading a toy catalog haha. She kind of heard my camera so started turning her head, but I got the picture anyways...
And she has just been spending more time in her room and in the playroom reading her books and playing. It is a wonderful thing and I hope once Santa drops off some more gifts, she will be even happier playing.

The other day the dogs were having a dispute over a piece of ice. Well Carrie got right in there, picked up the ice and put it in Shammi's mouth. The dogs weren't being at all aggressive with each other so I wasn't worried about letting her do it and it was just too funny.
And she had her first round of gifts on Sunday night when the Abernathys and the Easons came over for our annual family gift exchange. I think even in just 3 months since her birthday she understood presents a lot more and she liked it! Here she is opening a precious DOG book from the Abernathys (which we have now read 100000 times)...
And the Easons gave her this adorable Bunny hat and she, being the hat lover she is, immediately wanted to wear it. She thought she looked pretty darn cute and loved all the attention she got when she wore it.
So proud.
She even had to do a run to the mirror to make sure it looked as good as she thought it did. It cracks me up how she books it to the mirror whenever she puts something new on. What a little ham.
So there are just a few random updates. I felt like the blog was getting away from me so I just strung together a few things for this post, but I didn't wanna fall behind!

Many more activities to come and posts to follow. Forecast says snow in Nashville on Christmas so my fingers are crossed!