Rays of Sunshine: 2014

What another big year for us Myers'!!

2014 Year In Review

January - Garrett and I celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary!! I love Garrett so very much and it is so awesome to think we have been married for a whole 3 years now... almost 4, come this new year! This month, my mom, Grace, and I also celebrated the upcoming birth of Nydia's sweet girl. It was a wonderful baby shower for a wonderful friend!

1.1.11... <3

My dear friend Nydia and I at her baby shower

February - This was an exciting month for us, as this was the month we were able to go see Amanda on the boat. With me expecting number 2, our timeline was limited and we had to move our original cruise to an earlier date because I was not allowed to sail after 23 weeks... fortunately, our cruise fell just inside that timeline and we had a BLAST!! Grace enjoyed it so much as well and it was very cool watching Amanda in her shows... a few times Grace even said "Boo!" and pointed to her, haha. She loves her Aunt Boo and had so much fun with her on the boat. We went to Labadee, Haiti and Falmouth, Jamaica.

March - Grace went peepee for the first time in the big girl potty, LOL... yes, I know such exciting news for parents of little ones, which otherwise probably isn't very exciting. Mom and I also went out to the Barn for a ladies church outing this month. We always have so much fun together! Later in the month, I finally got to meet sweet Lana (Nydia's baby girl). She is beautiful, just like her mama. It was nice catching up with her and big Nydia at breakfast with my mom too.

Mom and I at the Barn... Yep, me, preggers and finally starting to show a little bit

Meeting baby Lana for the first time

April - This was a whirlwind of a month... you may remember from an earlier post I did ("A Day to Never Forget") that Grace's daycare had a terrible tragedy. They lost one of their own, a very sweet girl Lily. She will be always remembered and missed. You can read more about the incident in my previous post. For the positives that month though, we celebrated Grace's 2nd birthday!! Wow, our baby girl is now 2! We did a farm theme at the house. The kids got to enjoy a hay-ride, petting zoo, water gun battles, and loads of fun! This girl enjoyed every minute with all of her sweet friends.

4.9.14 - A day we will never forget!

So happy to have our girl in our arms

Grace's welcome sign at the new center

Grace's 2nd birthday... riding Cambrie and opening presents

Feeding Harry and Bailey

May - We went up to Atlanta this month to visit our best friends. We first stopped at Bryan and Sara's and got to meet their sweet boy, Jackson. It was wonderful to finally meet him and to also catch up with our good friends. The next day we went and met up with my dear friend Stephanie and her family. And, guess what?! She is pregnant too!! It was cool to be pregnant at the same time as my best friend and also get to share that time with her. Grace had a blast with her kids, Karley, Amanda, and Reed... she did not want to leave and Reed did not want her to leave. I wish we could've spent more time there; time sure does fly when you are having fun!!

Bryan with Jackson and Garrett with Grace

Reed, Amanda, Grace, and Karley

Love my best friend Stephanie!

Let's go Braves!!

June - Grace's daycare is back open for business! Grace loves it too :) It is so nice to be back with our "Goldenrod" family. Grace also started gymnastics this month; or as she calls it "nastics". She absolutely loves it! At just 2 years old and the youngest in her class, she sure does hold her own and boy does she enjoy every second of it! Amanda came home this month too!! It is so great to have my sister back home and just in time for number 2 to arrive real soon.

New daycare center... so nice!

First gymnastics class! (Grace is far left)

July - I had my last day at work on the 18th... our baby was due on the 21st. Well much like her big sister, she was quite cozy and comfy in my belly, so we scheduled an induction. However, again, like her big sister, Scarlett was OP (face up) and because she was much larger than Grace, she was not coming out naturally. So, they had to prepare me for a c-section after several hours of labor and pushing. Thank God, our precious girl arrived healthy and beautiful at 8lbs8oz and 21.5" long. She did not cry immediately, so we did not get to hold her immediately and remember she was a surprise baby; so we only knew she was a girl when the nurse slipped up and said "come on baby girl". I was so excited and so torn when I heard those words. By God's grace though, she did finally cry and made her presence known. It was definitely an experience... that whole hospital stay. You can read about that HERE.

August - Grace started her swim lessons this month and got to take them with her Aunt Boo since mommy was unable to after just having Scarlett. That was actually really nice though because I could enjoy watching them and Grace and Amanda could enjoy that one-on-one time together. She loved her swim class! This month Grace also went to the dentist for the first time and did Great!! She sat like such a big girl in the chair all by herself and made it through the entire appointment without a hitch. It was wonderful.

off to her first lesson... bye mom!

Swimming with her Aunt Boo

Love this girl! Well both of them, lol

September - Well back to reality for me, which means back to work. It is hard to have to leave my little ones after being home with them for 8 weeks. However, one thing that does make it much easier is knowing that my mom will be watching them. Yep! My girls are officially started in NanaCare now. Nana watches them during the week and does 'school' for them. She is loving it and my girls are getting so much out of it! Grace really likes it too :) She lights up when it is time to go to school and see her Nana. They do daily lessons, bible studies, outings, and crafts. I knew it would be awesome for the girls and Garrett and I, but we did not realize how awesome it would be! Grace already has two memory verses down, is on the road to being potty trained (fingers crossed) and it allows me to take less time off work if one of them is sick, etc. What a blessing this has been. We also celebrated Garrett's bday this month and Grace made him a cute craft and card at NanaCare, along with a home-made birthday cake!! He loved his surprise when we brought it home for him. Grace also received her first haircut this month at Disney. She did great and loved her stickers and ears. I cannot wait to take Scarlett for her first hair cut in a couple years. It was definitely a fun experience for her and us!

October - This was quite a busy month for us. It started by me getting to have a girls day with my mom and sister... thank you Garrett for watching our girls! My mom treated me to a day out of shopping and lunch at my favorite restaurant for my birthday. I love the time I get to spend with my mom and sister. We always have a great time! Then for my birthday, Garrett, the girls, and I went to the park in Mt. Dora and walked along the boardwalk. Then we came back home for a wonderful steak dinner and my family came by to join us. Grace made me a birthday cake at NanaCare and a beautiful home-made candle holder that I keep at work now. It was one of the very best birthdays ever!! This month, my mom, the girls, and I also went to the Pickin' Patch to pick some pumpkins for Halloween. We had a wonderful time and Grace even picked out her very own pumpkin... she insisted on the one she picked and I think it was actually a very nice and unique one! We celebrated Grace's first little friend, Bella's 3rd birthday at the zoo and the girls had such a great time! Happy that we still keep in touch with her friend from KinderCare and so awesome to watch the girls grow together. Lauren and Andre also came into town this month and spent some of the weekend with us. It is always so great catching up with great friends... Wish they lived closer so we could get together more often. We ended the month with Halloween and my mom and I did it again!! We made Grace's Halloween costume and it went off without a hit; except that I forgot her Minnie Mouse ears at our house. Thank you to Aunt Boo for coming to the rescue and making her new ears. She looked absolutely adorable and did not want to take her costume off. She wanted to wear it all weekend, lol. Scarlett wore Grace's first halloween costume and was a precious sunflower... they were the cutest kids on the block for sure!!

Birthday walk at Lake Dora

Girls and I at the Pumpkin Patch

Grace with her Pumpkin!

Bella and Grace... HUGS!

Garrett and I with Lauren and Andre

Happy Halloween

November - This month Amanda had to leave for Ft. Lauderdale and begin her job on the boat. It is so cool to see her doing what she loves and being absolutely great at it!! She is very inspiring and it makes the time that we get to talk and see her, all that much better because we have even more to catch up on and makes that time together more special :) This month Scarlett rolled for the first time!! Wow, time is flying. Our baby is growing so fast. We had a church-wide bonfire at our house this month and had a great time with our church family. The ladies from church also had a pottery outing this month and this was the first time that I actually was able to let Grace help me paint and she made a beautiful plate!! My very dear and one of my best friends, Allie got married this month too!! Congratulations Allie and Sean. We are so very happy for you both and are so grateful that we got to be there and celebrate your special day with you!! This was also the first year in a while that my cousin and I were both at Papas for thanksgiving... usually one of us is out of town and we seem to always miss each other... but not this year! It was awesome to get to spend some time with her (Favorite). We went to port this month too to visit Amanda and I took the girls down with me. Grace was very excited to see her Aunt Boo. She knows she is on a ship and will constantly say "I wanna see Boo next week!"; lol... so we try to make a trip to see her when we can. Finally, we ended the month by going to the Christmas Tree Forest and cutting down our Christmas tree. Grace and Scarlett also got to see Santa while there. This was Scarlett's first time seeing Santa and she did pretty well! Love my girls. I can't believe that This is Grace's 3rd time seeing Santa already... wowzers. We had a wonderful time as a family at the forest and can't wait to continue this family tradition each year.

Look... I just rolled from my back to my belly mama!

Bonfire with our church family

Painting her plate... popping the bubbles for special effect

My beautiful girl with her beautiful plate!

The girls with three of their Great Grandparents on Thanksgiving! :)

My cousin and I... haha, love her!

Seeing Boo at Port!

The girls with Santa Claus

Cutting down our tree!

Daddy and Grace with our Christmas Tree

December - Now, we are into this month and just realizing how fast this year has gone... it is crazy how fast time really does fly. We started the month with Scarlett getting her first cold. She fortunately only had it for 24hours and pulled through like a champ. However, in turn, the rest of the house also got sick and Grace and I had it for a full week. We are however all doing much better now! We also had my company Christmas party and went to see LaNouba. Love my date nights out with my husband... I enjoy our one-on-one time together when we are able to get it. This last weekend, we took the girls to SeaWorld for the first time. I had not been in sooo long... I don't even remember the last time I had been. It was so nice to be able to take my girls for the first time and see especially Grace, take it all in. The best part was the aquarium; Scarlett even got wide-eyed and enjoyed watching all the fish. It was a wonderful day!! That night Grace stayed the night with my mom, so she could go to port and celebrate Christmas with her Aunt Boo. She was so excited to see her and when she came home, she immediately showed me her "lion" (Alex from Madagascar) that Amanda got her. I said "who's that?" and she said "lion. Boo gave to me. ROAR!!!" haha. She is adorable!! Thanks Amanda for loving my girls like you do. I know it means a lot to me and Grace sure does love you too!!! Well that about rounds out this year. We still have a couple weeks to go... Christmas is this week and we are actually going to be representing Mary, Joseph, an Angel, and Jesus at our church's Christmas Eve service. I am very excited and so grateful to be asked to portray them. What a blessing that my whole family will get to be involved together for that. This has been a very busy year with many blessings. We (Garrett and I) could not be more grateful for everything that we got to experience this year and for everyone that we got to experience and share it with! I hope that you all have a wonderful and very Merry Christmas, followed by a Happy New Year!! God Bless you all!!