Home Sweet Home

This is home away from home this week. Isn't it great?! These guys have really worked their tails off and it's gonna show:)!
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Christ the Lord is Ris'n Today A-a-a-a-a-le-e-lu-u-ia

What a happy morning in the Lucas household today!

Molly was thrilled with the basket of goodies the Easter Bunny left her this morning.  And as a comparison...

...same ears, bigger head.  Same basket, bigger baby!

 Bubbles inside in the morning?!  What a way to start the day!  Then we moved to the playroom for an egg hunt.  She found every one all by herself and inside were things like new hairbows, candy, and even some money for her piggy bank.  She would open the eggs with candy and dump it out and say "candy" and she never once put a piece in her mouth...don't think she knows what it is and I'm not gonna tell her:)

 Found all my eggs!

There's nothing like a good baby reaction.  Lots of genuine "oh boys" and "wows"...the best.

 And then it was time to get all dressed up for church.  I pulled this dress out of Molly's 6-9 month storage box with the tags still on it.  It fit.  She's almost 20 months old.  She's small for her age I guess!  She approved;)

Here are Molly and Daddy after church today. 

And for comparison...look at that little tiny baby from just a year ago!

 Dar-ling.

And now for the best part of the day...

 This is the first year in seven that I've actually been in Marietta for Easter and what a Sunday to be here!  We made our way over to Roswell Street Baptist Church for my niece and nephew's baptism.  How cool to be baptized on Easter, with your sibling, by your dad?!  Very.  Mark is the children's minister there and baptized  three more children before he got to Sammy and Marci.  Sammy was first and he was double dipped.  He didn't get fully wet the first time so Mark dunked him again:)

 And then Marci.

 What a special day!  Here's the happy family:

 After church we made our way over to Karma's for lunch.  It was colorful...

Molly kickin' it with Maggi

 Sooooo big!

 She had the whole egg hunt thing down pat by this time!  She even walked around holding just one hand instead of both--first time.  She's getting there!

 Maggi Pie

 I love these kids:)

 She was absolutely spent after this!  So much work.

 And now for my favorite face...

this is how she reacted EVERY time she saw an egg in the distance.  Same face she gives when she hears the Sesame Street theme song!

Picking a flower.

 Sophi's new bike basket from the Easter bunny.

It was a blessed day!  And it's a miracle that I've actually uploaded pictures and posted them too on the very same day.  Craziness ensues tomorrow.  

Link to Laughs

I caught this video the other day while Ryan and Molly were rolling around in the playroom.  Ryan rolled into Molly's shopping cart and said "ow" and Molly thought it was hilarious.  So he repeated it.  Over and over.  I love my life:)

And this one is Molly's new favorite activity as of late--building with blocks.  She will stack and stack for many minutes at a time and build up towers all over the table like a city.  It's serious entertainment.  She's super cool.

Here's one of her tower cities.  (I kinda helped with the one on the far right but only the 2nd and 3rd levels:)

"Look Mommy!  L, B"  she said.

The leaning tower of Molly:

"Cheese"  Look how long her hair is getting!

So proud!

The De-bearding of Boothand Lucas

 So, a couple days ago, Ryan decided to air his face out a little bit.  We determined that Molly's presence was a must because the last time he made a major facial hair change she wouldn't even look at him for at least a day and a half.  Really.  He's been growing this current beard since her first birthday which was September 1st and he's been pretty proud of it.  Molly's a fan too.  So he collected his beard-be-gone tools and perched her on the sink and went to it.

And here's the final result...well almost final...after this he went and got his hair cut too.

And Molly's reaction?  She couldn't care less.  Perhaps if he'd shaved it all off she would have blinked an eye?  Someday when I'm bored I'll have to do a post solely on the evolution of Ryan's facial hair from 2004 to the present.  There's lots of material for it.  Way more,  in fact, than material on this great house we live in now.  Nope, not one picture do I have of what we've accomplished so far--basically moving in and becoming functional for the next three weeks until OKLAHOMA! is over (which is a feat in itself just not a feat with interesting pictures.)
I'm off now to the land of neverending rehearsals.  From now until then (then being when OKLAHOMA!  is over) I'll try to do some short posts from my cell phone.  Love you all!

It's Official!

We're all moved in!  I'm sad to report that I took almost NO pictures of the process (and it was a process!) but if you want proof it's in the emptiness of our old house:( and all over the new one in the form of boxes!  Ryan's parents came for the weekend and after 3 days of hard labor were ready for that drive back to Mississippi for sure!  Our new house has lots of stairs...just ask Mike and Ryan.  I did manage to snap a few pictures on Saturday morning before Molly went over to Becky and Hershell's for the day (THANK YOU!).

Like Pop, like granddaughter:)

I know this picture is about the same but I love them both so much so I had to share!

 Molly got some time in the truck before it was packed up again:

 Then Daddy and Pop did what daddies and pops do:

Those are seriously the only pictures I took all weekend.  Which means there's no record of all the vacuuming, sweeping, stair-climbing (oh, the stair climbing), bathroom scrubbing, shelf-papering, and zero record of the great ketchup explosion (which I may or may not elaborate on...).  And did I mention the thunder and lightening?  There was plenty of that as well.  One thing I know for sure...we couldn't have done it without Mike and Sandra (or without Karma's peanut butter bars) but now I don't know if they'll ever come back after what we put them through!  But we have a secret weapon.  Her name is Molly and no one can resist!  And here she is "brush, brush, brushing her teeth for bedtime" in her new bathroom with her Abby Cadabby toothpaste:

She's super stoked about the new house.  Especially the stairs.  She's never been around many stairs plus she's getting really good at climbing.  With those novelties combined...watch out Captain Planet!  So that's all for now.  Although there aren't many pictures thus far, rest assured there will be.  I'll be stuck (in a good way) in this house fixing things up forever and ever (which I love).  There will be pictures.  Thank you to everyone for your well wishes in our new home and for all the help from our family and friends.

Bits and Pieces

Molly's been really enjoying her new Radio Flyer ride-on.  It rolls nice and easy on our wood floors and swivels in all directions.  "Ride?" she asks.

 Cute from behind!

 Everytime we walk by this chair she asks to rock and then once she's up there she asks for "Bearto" to join her.  (His name is Ro-bear-to)

 Caught packing!  Molly drug an empty box into the kitchen and started filling it with the dishes from her drawer in the kitchen.  She's determined that we don't forget them!

 Look how grown-up she looks:(!

 It's becoming more real every day...

 Our cutie at breakfast this morning.  This is her "cheese" face.

It's almost official...

Come Friday, we'll be taking up residence in this place...

Here are my loves standing in the back yard...

I can hardly believe this is actually happening.  And then I take a look around at the walls of boxes in our current house and think it must be true!  We happened upon this house a few weeks back on a Saturday morning drive after Waffle House.  It happened to be a foreclosure and thus in our price range and after some anything-but-promising negotiations it will be ours sometime after 2:00 on Friday.  The neighborhood is beautiful and seems to be full of children.  And the location??  Paramount.  It is just less than a mile and a half (and just off the actual road) from where Molly and I spend 6 out of 7 days a week and it's the same distance from Ryan's office as our current house. 

So this is one of the many reasons I've been too busy to post lately.  We LOVE the house we've spent the last 5 years in and will be sad to say our goodbyes to it and to our neighbors but we're also honored that God has blessed us with this opportunity to spread out a bit (okay, a lot) and can't wait to see what He has in store for us in our new digs.  So that's that.  I hope to be able to keep you posted a bit more regularly once things have settled down (yeah, right!)

18 Months and Counting!

My sweet Mollypop is 18 months old today!!!  I can't believe it!  And she is incredible.  Period.  I mean it...I am so in love with this kid!  Every day she does something new and mind-blowing...she's hard to keep up with!  She now refers to us, her parents, as "Ryan" and "Ashleigh"--not exclusively, more occasionally, when she finds it necessary.  She's speaking in sentences now, choppy ones.  A favorite is "read books please" and once you assume the book reading position she proceeds to request her favorite titles. I love to catch her reading a book on her own.  She has a dialogue with herself just like when we read to her.  Today she was reading a book of colors with a different animal for each color.  On every page she would say, "Orange! What is that? Tiger!  What it say?  Rarrrrr!  Yellow!  What is that? Bird!  What it say?  Tweet, tweet, tweet..."  She got to purple "What is that? Bu-fly! What it say?  Pretty!"  Sigh.  She's a sponge.  And I like to squeeze her.

It's getting late...onto the pictures:

Here she is, delighted, with a super nifty Sesame Street alphabet book set hand-me-down from her fabulous second cousins twice removed? I dunno. family:)  This girl is CRAZY about letters!  She must say the alphabet 26 times a day...at least...and she can recognize all the uppercase letters.

 And here's Ryan trying to get a headband on that toothy grinned girl:)

 This is back on Valentine's day...

 And I'll leave you with a cell phone pic from today's choreography rehearsal.  She wore her Millie shirt from last year for the occasion...soon to be replaced with an Oklahoma shirt!  She loved being Laura's dance partner!

Three quarters of the way to TWO!  Wow!  Thank you, God, for Molly:)