Abbi & Sarah Kate spend the night!

Cousins Abbi and Sarah Kate came up this weekend for their VERY FIRST spend the night party with Anna Beth--the excitement (and squealing) was just too much! Of course, Aunt Amy and Uncle Ray stayed as well, and we all had a good time visiting and catching up. Unfortunately, we were having so much fun that I didn't take a lot of pictures.

The boys loved playing with Uncle Ray's new Guitar Hero 3--so much fun! The girls enjoyed sleeping together in matching sleeping bags and then waking to a chocolate-chip pancake breakfast complete with bacon, sausage, fruit, eggs and grits. After eating, we were treated to a complete fashion show of everything in Anna Beth's dress-up box (and there is quite a lot, by the way!) Then they headed out to try their hand at fishing, where Sarah Kate caught her very first fish! Later they enjoyed some time outside, riding bikes and playing in the hot Georgia sun.

Time with family is limited since we live a few hours away . . . Thank you for coming to visit, Amy, Ray, Abbi & Sarah Kate! We had a blast and hope you come back soon!

The Long Awaited Carrot Cake . . .

For months now, Anna Beth has been begging me to help her make a carrot cake. I love carrot cake but have never baked one (not since she has been alive, anyhow!), so I wondered if she REALLY knew what it was. She insisted that she tasted it at preschool and loved it and wanted to bake her own . . . in fact, it was so important to her that it was on the list of things she wanted to accomplish this summer!

So, since her aunt, uncle and cousins were coming to visit for the weekend, it seemed like the perfect dessert option (to Anna Beth). We headed to Publix for some fresh carrots and got started. It actually was a lot of fun, and the boys got involved too. Anna Beth is a VERY particular child and had a VERY specific idea of what it should look like when it was done--thus the carrot decorations I had to add at the end! We had a great time and the end result was both cute and incredibly YUMMY--we all loved it (minus Graham , of course, my picky son)!

Great idea, Anna Beth!