Sweet SpringTime :)

Gracie with her daddy...

Gracie and her cousin, Autumn...

Gracie, Daddy and horse Bo...

Sweet...

My Loves...

9 Months... ALREADY?!?!?

Where in the world have the last 9 months gone? Seems like just yesterday that we got a call from our social worker saying, "CONGRATULATIONS... YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN, AND SHE IS ALREADY HERE!!!" (The most heart wrenching moment of my life!) Gracie was 9 months old on Monday, April 4th. She didn't have her 9 month check up until Thursday and I am just getting around to updating it on my blog!... OF COURSE, RIGHT?!?! :) Gracie, here is what you are doing at 9 months...

• You weigh 23.10 lbs and are in the 97th percentile.


• You are 29 1/2 inches long and in the 97th percentile in that, as well.


• You are crawling everywhere... non stop!!!


• You are pulling up on everything.


• Yesterday, Saturday, you walked behind a little stand and push toy. You only took about 4 steps, though. I missed this because I was at work, but your Daddy and cousin Autumn told me ALL about it!


• Today, you walked the complete length of the bath tub while holding on... :) Which doesn't sound like much, but to this Momma, it is huge!!


• You have 6 teeth that are completely in right now and 1 that is little bitty, so a total of 7 TEETH... and you like to bite!!!


• You are really feeding yourself so well. You only feed yourself cookies and snacks, but you pick it right up and go straight to your mouth with it.


• You are talking so much and it is so sweet! You can say Dada, Momma, Hi, Bye, Baa (which is what you are calling our dog, Bailey... and every other dog! LOL), Pa, Gram and Ed swear that you said "Gram" one day, and when your cousin Easton was here, he would steal your toys (which was too cute) and ONE time you took one back and said, "Mine"!


• You are waving all of the time. Every time that we are walking to the car, you wave at everything saying, "Bye Bye"! You wave while we are going down the road until you just get tired of it! You will wave and say, "Hi"... which is my favorite!!


• You clap every time that you do something that you are proud of. You immediately look around to see who else needs to be clapping. We all end up clapping saying, "YAAAAYYYY!!!" You get so excited.


• You are always smiling and happy. You have always been this way since you were born. You are such a happy and pleasant girl.


• We still have to use Dove unscented soap and Eucerin Calming Cream as your skin care because of the eczema. It keeps it under control, though.


• You have just started pulling your hair bows out... THIS IS A BIG NO-NO!! :)


• You love to be outside. It makes you a very happy girl.


• You are wearing mostly 18 months clothes.


• SO MANY people love and adore you. You definitely put a smile on LOTS of people's faces.


• You are such a wonderful child and a blessing to me and your Daddy. You make us smile each and every day. We love you so very much.

My Lovely Lady...

I am kinda behind on posting some sweet pictures of Gracie Ann. These pictures are from Sunday afternoon after church. It was beautiful outside, so we ventured out for a while to soak in some rays while Justin mowed our yard for the first time this year!

Doing a little swinging on the front porch...

Love this picture! She looks so sweet and innocent looking up at the sky...

This picture is one of my faves! It is kinda silly, but it just fully shows her BIG personality. She is always making some silly faces! LOVE HER!

Now, these are actually one of my absolute favorite flowers! I love having pretty blooming flowers, something that I have inherited from my Mother and all of the women on her side of the family. I planted these last year and they have come up so pretty! This is a Hyacinth...

These pictures are from last night. I was in the kitchen cooking dinner and here she came to hang out with me. AND...she found a friend on the refrigerator! Haha!! She was amazed!

She had to give her kisses...

She was just too excited!! Here she is clapping like, "YAY, I have found a friend!" She played at the refrigerator the entire time that I made dinner! :)

Bloggy Questions...

I know I have been blogging for a little while now and I am still far from good at it. So, this post is to ask a bunch of questions that I have, for a while now, not known the answer to!

1. Everyone has such customized blog pages. How do you do this? Every time that I try to put a picture in my header, it is so big that you can only see part of the picture. I can't seem to ever get this figured out.


2. Where do you go for really cute backgrounds? I only really know of one place, and that is Shabby Blogs.


3. How do you insert a website? For instance, say you have "click HERE and it will take you to such and such"...how do you do that?


4. How do you make your name appear as a signature after each post that you do?


5. How do you insert a picture from the internet? I have tried this before but can't seem to really find much.

Now, I know there are many more questions that I just can't seem to think of right now, but any help would be much, much appreciated!!

Thanks in advance...from a not so fancy blogger! :)

Gracie's Milestone

Yesterday I really had to work on my taxes... As much as I absolutely hated to! Haha! So, Gracie's Gram and Grandee came to pick her up at around 10am so that I could get a good early start and have the day to overload myself into the computer with receipts and such. Gracie was in the middle of her morning nap when they pulled up, but of course he dogs barking woke her up. When they first walked in she was still kinda laying her head on me and wasn't too into being social... WELL, that only lasted a minute or so. She then popped her little head up and started waving at them and grinning from ear to ear. She reached out for Gram, so she got her from me. (this is where the milestone part comes in) She then looked at me and started waving and saying "bye bye"!!!! WOW!!! My baby girl is growing sooo much. I went outside with them to buckle her seat in and to buckle her in. Once I got her buckled in, she started waving at me and saying "bye bye" again. She was ready to hit the road with them.
I have been telling them for a while now that there would come a day when she would beg to stay with them and want me to leave!! As much as this made me realize that my baby girl is growing up and getting a mind and personality of her own, I know that she absolutely made 2 people's day... Her Gram and Grandee's!! :) I am so lucky and blessed to be her Mommy!!!
Sent from my iPhone

That's What I Love About Sunday's...

We have had a super busy weekend! It rained ALL DAY on Saturday... so we just stayed in and played and cleaned. Got alot of laundry done, which I always hate doing! :) Sunday we went to church, went to eat afterwards, went home and put on comfy clothes and then we all went to my brother's house for supper. Justin has been helping my brother put tile down in his bathroom this weekend, so he had to help him get that finished up while we were there! Here are some pics of our day on Sunday...

My sweet baby girl right after church...

Gracie and my niece, Autumn, who stayed the night with us on Saturday night, so she went to church with us...

We all went to Publix for stuff to make lasagna while the guys were working on the floor. Gracie and Carson were LOVING the race car buggies! HAHA!!

He was really loving on her in this picture! It is just so sweet!! :)

Yep, my life is pretty simple! THIS is what I love about Sunday's...

Here is another video...check it out!!

Check out this video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R204vAvovBk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Sent from my iPhone

Check out my cousin, Aimee...

Check out this video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi0FI6L8oxY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Sent from my iPhone

My cousin is the one on the right. She has been singing since she was little. She really has an awesome voice! I think they are doing another video soon and I will be sure to post it!! :)

My Love!!

Yesterday I got off work early!! So, when I went to pick up Gracie, Carson wanted her to ride in his Jeep with him. So that is what we did. It ended up being a perfect evening!! These pictures are coming from my phone and I haven't figured out how to upload more than one at a time, so bare with me! Haha!

Look at these beautiful babies!!

Adoption Day...YAY

Yesterday we finally got to finalize our adoption!! It was perfect in every way and most definitely worth the wait! Remember when I said that Justin was not the only one who got to enjoy the court date for his bday?? Well, Sunday was my birthday... So, it was a perfect birthday gift for me, as well! How could this have worked out any more perfectly? We had 10 family members that showed up with us to celebrate this amazing day! Here is a picture of them minus one that was video taping...

This truly was one of the best days of my life! Court was supposed to begin at 9am, but the Judge was tied up in a murder trial in a different county, so another Judge was going to come, but he got tied up...SO, about an hour and a half later, our Judge showed up and we were so blessed to get this Judge. He was awesome in every way. We said that simply getting this Judge was well worth the wait. He asked our whole family to stand up and swear in with us. He told us to bring Gracie right on up there with him so he could hold her! He was GREAT!!! He kept telling us just how blessed we were to have as much support as we had. As we were walking out he said, "Mr. Nichols, could you turn around here for a second... Just so that y'all know, I have never done an adoption with as many family members as y'all have had. You, your wife and tht sweet baby girl are truly blessed with an amazing family!" We were so very happy!!

These pictures are after we were done. Gracie's faces are just so darn cute...

How blessed are we??? Our daughter is finally ours FOREVER... she has always been ours, though!

Meet our sweet Gracie Ann

Yep... Our adoption is now final!!! Details and more pics to come!!!!

Crawling Madness...

Little Miss is now on the move!! She is a fully mobile little girl now! She has been getting around on her own for several weeks now, but just not going forward on her hands and knees...Well, that all changed Wednesday night. I saw her crawl forward about 4 or 5 steps, then Thursday morning before I took her to my sister's, she crawled about 10 steps or so. By the time I picked her up Thursday evening, she was a full blown crawler. I just love watching her do this. It is so sweet. My little (or I should say big) 9 lb baby is now a 23 lb mover. Gosh, how she has grown. I can honestly say that I have loved every second of being a mommy. I truly think that God knew that I didn't have any patience, so he made having a child a trial for me. Now, since it took me such a long and hard time to get her, I don't really get frustrated or aggravated. I have all of the patience in the world with her, which I normally do not have. I now know why Justin and I had to go through all of the hardships of trying to conceive a child...It was just so that when we got blessed with OURS, we wouldn't ever take for granted what we have. Everything that we went through was a blessing in disguise!!!

Valentine's with my Valentines...

Happy Valentine's day to you all!! :) We have had a wonderful Valentine's Day! I have got to spend the entire day at home with my little sweet pea! We ran alot of errands and had quite a few visitors! Our first visitor was Little Miss' Pop and he brought her 2 balloons. She loved them, but loved the string that they were on so much more! Her second visitor was her Granny and Pa and they brought her a balloon, as well! :) Third, Gram came to visit and brought her a little bunny that flops his ears and sings. She loves this thing. She got a dog for Christmas that flops his ears while singing too, and she has always loved when they get to floppin'! :) Fourth, her Mimi came and brought her a bear and a card! Last but not least, her Hee-Hee and Carson came for a visit and brought her 7 balloons. She has had a busy day, but she has loved every minute of her 1st Valentine's day!! :)

My baby girl gave me the very best Valentine's day gift of all... She is now giving kisses!! I thought all day that she was trying to, but tonight, all I have to say is, "Give Momma kisses" and she will come at me with mouth WIDE open! Haha! I JUST LOVE IT! She is so sweet and just makes me melt! Here is a little pictiure of her clapping her hands. If she does something that she thinks was something special, she will start clapping like crazy! If she is sitting there and I say, "YAAAAYYYY!!!", she will look at me and start clapping like crazy. BLESS...

Hope you all had a great Valentine's Day! I am fixing to settle in with my 2 Valentines and tune into The Bachelor... :)