Mignon Kay

Isn't she beautiful?

This last week has been quite the emotional one. My grandma was placed on hospice. I grew up living next door to my grandma. I loved going in her house and getting cookies from her freezer. I loved swimming in her pool, playing dress up, hearing stories of my dad about when he was growing up, watching old home videos, and looking through photo albums. 

As I have gotten older and moved back home I have been able to spend a lot more quality time with my grandma. However, with her failing health it is a lot more of me talking to her than her talking to me. How I would love to go back and hear more of her nursing days and about nursing school. I would love to hear about the births of her 5 children and her pregnancies... Unfortunately those memories have faded. 

I love my grandma with her hard work ethic, her love of my grandpa and her posterity. I remember 10 years ago listening to her say a prayer and she prayed for every single grandchild by name. Amazing. Since then we have added quite a few great grandchildren and they make her so happy. 

Thank you to everyone who has been supportive of me and my family during this time. I am happy to have her on hospice because it is an amazing program that helps the entire family with spiritual, emotional, and physical needs. 

Grandma and girls night

Grandma took us on a special date night for frozen yogurt. Yummy. 

Checkers at Grandma's

One would think that since Rich is so good at Chess he would naturally be good at checkers.

 Right?

 Well, maybe there were some distractions and maybe his ugly movember moustache got in the way, but what can I say??  "I AM THE MASTER AT CHECKERS!!"

 Not really, I only played him once and I won, so I stopped there lest I be humiliated in the next game. 

Thanks again Grandma and Grandpa for the fun house with all the fun toys (like floor size, giant checkers)!

Wagner Farms

We love going to Napa and spending time with grandma and grandpa, cousins, and friends. We especially love picking blackberries, 

 Playing with cousin Dean in his garden, 

 Looking at all the things growing (like the pumpkins!), 

 having snail races, being silly, feeding the goats, 

 and trying to catch the chickens.

We also spent a lot of time picking plums so that grandma could make some jam. 

The plum tree fell over because it was too top heavy and we didn't want the plums to rot, so picking them was necessary. For some reason the girls thought it was more fun to throw the plums and apples over the fence to feed the goats, but they were so cute doing it that we let them go for it.

Visitors

We have been blessed with some fun visitors. 

Grandma loved matching you in her stripes. 

 Grandpa Cochran didn't think he could remember how to hold a newborn.

 Grandma Great, or Gigi, remembered all right, here it looks like he is trying to smile at her!

 Then we tried to get Cara to sit still for a picture, but that wasn't happening... come on, we got better pictures with a 3 day old than we did with a 4 year old. 

 Ryann was more than happy to sit with them though because Grandpa great likes to count your ribs to make sure they are all there. 

Also Auntie Erin came to visit, but for some reason I don't have a good picture of them both today... but this is a pretty cute face Mac is constantly making. 

Fireworks

~~~I don't plan on blogging the day I have the baby, so I am pre-blogging to have new stuff come out each day since I don't plan on having much time once Baby comes. ~~~

This is as far as we got to watching fireworks this year. I am sure glad I didn't buy a 4th of July onesie for Baby Mac. 

Thanks daddy for being in charge of the flames. 

 Grandma and Cara had fun watching. 

Ryann's favorite one was the "snow sparkler" or something like that. That is the one that she got to help daddy light. 

 I thought the rainbow ones would have made her more excited, but playing with fire does have a certain appeal. 

 After about 30 minutes we were done, the girls went to have baths and it was off to bed. Sorry Arizona, next year I will do everything in my power to NOT be in Arizona for the 4th of July. 

Pretty Dresses

The girls got amazing dresses in the mail this week from Grandma!  

She made them matching dresses and they couldn't be happier. 

 Despite what professional photographers have you believe, I will never get a good picture of both my girls together!

 But I will say that someone needs to teach me how to photoshop these pictures, because I don't think I will get a good one without it. 

 You can tell that they had fun posing for the pictures though, right?  

 Ryann doesn't like to smile right now, she doesn't like to show her teeth for some reason??

 Ryann's dress really isn't that short, she just had it all bunched up, but my mom did make her a bigger size, Ryann just refused to put on the other one. 

 I seriously have to pick my battles with these two. 

However, I do love them more and more each day.

Surprise Package

I have an awesome mom (and an awesome brother that ships things for her!)

and I got this awesome surprise package with a giant bag with Hamilton embroidered on it. 

It is seriously giant and amazing. 

Rich said, what in the world will you put in that? Cara?

 I told him it was going to be my bountiful baskets bag. And my church lesson bag. And my grocery bag. And my camping bag. And my roadtrip bag. And my pack the girls crap to take off and go visit grandma mingo bag. 

So amazing. Thank you mom! and Cory!