New Blog

Hey y'all, we have a new blog for both kids!

www.spikesandponytails.blogspot.com


Don't forget to become a "Follower" of the kids so you get updates! Love y'all!

time with daddy on the 4th!

My best friend from high school, Jackie, came to visit us for the first time since sophomore year in college. We lost contact, and I got married and had two kids since then, so needless to say we had a lot of catching up to do. Annabell took really well to Jackie for the short time we were there. I was so happy for Annabell to meet her!

We go to B.O.B. as a family every other Friday. We really enjoy it, Annabell follows daddy around the entire time. She has gotten really good about not being afraid of the water or waves...she will walk out in the ocean until she can't walk anymore, on her own! Don't worry, we are right by her side of course....doing the stingray shuffle in front of her.

The fourth of July was hilarious. Annabell did NOT like the fireworks, until just at the end. The noise scared her so much! I think the fact that we light them with "hot" fire and the RUN doesn't help her calm down. I caught a little video of one of her freak outs after a fire work went off. She gets more worked up but then starts to enjoy it after she calms down...she really liked seeing the big fireworks as we drove home. I think next year we will try to go to Red White and Boom in down town cape coral. This year I think it was just too much for Ford, and since we were with family all day the timing would have been difficult.

Big pop was trying to show Annabell that the firework was only a little parachute in hope that she would calm down.
One thing she really enjoyed the same as last year was the snap pop things. She loves trowing those, and stepping on them, etc.

Annabell loves trying to teach Briana "Mana" and Ford how to do things, here is a picture of her showing them how to push a toy.

Oh and we had a breakthrough in discipline, we can now ask Annabell if she understands why she had to go into time out and she will say yes and then explain what she did, i.e. "Push Ford", etc. This makes it much easier to teach her, and she is correcting any negative behavior quickly.
Well that's if for now, love y'all!

Happy 2nd Birthday Annabell!!!!

Annabell has had a great birthday and she is officially 2!!! It is really weird because all of a sudden her brain has just "clicked" and she is doing so much. Vocabulary is off the charts. One of my favorites today was when she said "mommy" so that I would let her out of her room after her nap, and I said "just a minute" because we were rushing to get the cameras for her to see her new gift from Big Pop and Maamaa. She yelled "Mommy, open the door!", it cracked us up. She also now says "Yessss" and really pronounces the s sound, which also makes me laugh. She is growing so tall, she has the longest skinny little legs. She is tall enough for bigger sizes, but is too skinny to wear them. Every kid that plays with her assumes she is older because of her size, but she is still our iddy bitty little girl to me and Daddy!
Oh, she has learned the color "Pink", she knows that she is "two" and according to her, mommy is "four". She prays for everyone in the family...even those she doesn't see very often. She can draw a pretty recognizable circle and knows she is doing so, and points out the star shape when she sees it. She pretend writes like "mommy".


We had Annabell's birthday party on June 13th because her PaPa was in town, and since he lives in TN we thought it would be nice for him to get to be there, which it was.
She had way too many gifts this year. Don't get me wrong, we were VERY thankful for everything, but Brad doesn't want her to expect things, so we will probably try to keep it more low key next year...who knows though. My mom and dad always made birthdays so special for us that I really want to continue the tradition. So today, I kept saying, "this is your birthday!!!" ect...she ate it up.
Well I have put in pictures from her birthday party and her mini party today.
For her actual birthday today I took her to the park and to Chic-Fil-A with her brother and cousin. She had a blast. We were at Chic-Fil-A for 2 1/2 hours. It was fun. Tonight we had small group at our house so she got to play with all the kids at the park for another 2 hours...she is worn out! Something that you might notice on the video is that on both days of her partys, when we sang "Happy Birthday To You" she became shy and tried to hide. It's funny how kids just have that happen to them, a kind of awareness. Really boggeling. It's neat to think back to her first birthday and then to now. She has changed so much, she now uses a fork, talks to us completely, and looks like a little girl instead of a baby, it just amazes me. Oh and you can also hear her say yes ma'am. A lot of times it is unsolicited. I really enjoy hearing her manners! She also says "Bless you" when someone sneezes.
At the party she had two helpers, Rebecka and Mikayla, but they became a little excited and started to open gifts as well which was fine, except we didn't see who gave her what, so thank you to everyone, even if we don't know exactly who gave which gift.

I think I'll let the pictures speak for the rest of the birthday extavaganza...love y'all!


















actual birthday day below...

TN family visit.

(one of Annabell's b-day gifts (dress), I love it on her!)

My family came down from Tn to visit for a little while. Annabell was SO excited to see KK! They played really well together when Annabell wasn't hitting or pulling on KK. We are trying hard to teach her not to hit/pull/poke/slap/scratch other people! But it is a work in process. Half the time she is doing it to play around, and the other half she is getting mad because they are in her territory OR playing with her things. So we are now telling her that EVERYTHING belongs to Jesus so we share the things he is letting us use. She is learning, and getting better, but to me it feels like a slow process.

We went to the new Chick Fil-A fast food joint in Cape Coral while they were here. They have a GREAT indoor play area for kids! It's clean, air conditioned well, and most of all sound proof from the windows around it! I love it! KK and Annabell played so much! They were dressed in their matching outfits compliment of aunt Kari for their pictures together!
Papa loved spending time with his grand daughters! The girls would sometimes get jealous if the other was sitting by papa or in his lap, so you can see that they both decided to cuddle up next to him! Too cute.

Annabell learned how to be silly in a picture from KK! This was her best effort at the time.

We went on a boat ride with everyone while they were down here. It was a lot of fun. Annabell was a LOT more fearless this time on the boat. She would walk around while Brad was driving which was making me a nervous wreck! She would listen okay though, it was more her getting too close to the edge of the boat and leaning over to look out that was making me freak. I could NEVER take her on a cruise until she is in Middle School or High School...way too nerve racking.

Annabell has finally come to a GREAT hair age. She likes watching me do other peoples hair, like KK and Briana, and then allows me to do hers. She let me put "Princess Balls" in her hair for the pictures! I use to do KK's hair like that all the time so it was nice to put Annabell's hair in them!
Annabell got an awesome pool from Big Pop and MaaMaa for her 2nd birthday (which is June 29th). So she isn't quite 2 yet...I'm holding on! They grow up WAY TOO FAST! As you can see Annabell LOVES it. She goes down head first, belly down, Belly up, backwards, forwards and sideways! It was a great gift!

This last video shows Annabell being a little aggressive. This is the "play" aggression that is the most common type I have to deal with. She is just trying to rough house, and it's fine with KK, but with kids her size, sometimes a little bigger, and smaller, it's typically not fun for them and they get upset thinking she is "fighting" as Kelly's cute daughter Emma would say.
Well that is it for the pictures of the visit...love y'all!

Magical Treat!

Well we finally took Annabell to Disney for the first time. She really enjoyed it. We spent 3 days there and went to Magic Kingdom, Epicot, and Animal Kingdom. I think one of her favorites was Animal Kingdom because all of the Animals she got to see. Her favorite ride was Nemo at Epicot, which was awesome and we even rode it twice.

It was so cute to hear her yell out all the names of the characters on the ride. She also rode her first ROLLER COASTER! I'm telling y'all she is fearless! She barely made the height requirement but was all about it! She held on SUPER tight the entire time and screamed...and then when it stopped she asked for MORE! MORE!. She makes us laugh so much!
Annabell met many characters from her favorite movies/books and even more that she didn't know. She really liked meeting the princesses. She yelled "ELLA" when she saw Cinderella.

But of all the things she did, having her face painted was the BEST memory. Her cousin KK was getting her face painted at Animal Kingdom and Annabell stood up in her stroller and said Face and pointed to hers...so I asked her if she would like to get her face painted and she exclaimed "YES". She then jumped up into the seat just after KK was done and sat there focusing and trying not to move very purposefully. The artist was very impressed with how well behaved and still she was for her age. She was staring straight ahead trying not to move. He told her to close her eyes once and she only made them "sleepy" looking...too funny.

This is a picture of the kids playing the drums in "Africa", she also really enjoyed this.

As you can see, Aunt Kari, bought KK and Annabell matching shirts and bows. They looked so cute! Every speaking character asked them if they were sisters. You can really see the Armstrong in Annabell when KK's around.

Papa got Annabell a great birthday present,
Here are some pictures from the ride "it's a small world after all"


Papa got Annabell a great birthday present, thanks for the trip to Disney! It was so nice going with KK, aunt Kari, Papa and Sharon.
So all in all it was a great experience. She did really well and didn't have too many melt downs. Annabell also Loved her "first time visitor" pin that they gave her! She wore it proudly until she learned how to take it off, then mean mom took it away.
So we went to Disney for 3 days in a row and then would return to the hotel and try to get to bed before 930, the kids anyways, which is late for mine, but they did great considering we were all in one room and they are not use to having anyone sleep in their rooms. By the last night they adjust well, or the adults did....love y'all!