Birthday at the Beach

While we were at the beach last week we celebrated Cadence's 2nd birthday a few days early. We had an Elmo Beach Party (two of her favorite things!!)
The Paparazzi singing Happy Birthday (with camera's poised and ready of course :)

Look at that Super Cute Elmo Cake... and it was an Ice Cream Cake!!


Some of the party guests.The Callaway's (this picture of Kagan cracks me up!)
Tearing into gifts!!
Happy Birthday to our Super Cute Niece!!

Selfish, Selfish...

Rage and Shautzie (my mom's dog) are both very territorial over their bags (yes our dogs have overnight bags) and of mine and mom's bags. Last night I was working in the spare room and I heard Shautzie growling. I turned around to find Rage sniffing Mom's overnight bag. Shautzie kept growling as Rage slowly sniffed Mom's bag and eventually climbed up into it and layed down :) As you can see Shautzie was busy protecting her own bag, and was not very happy about Rage being in her Mom's bag!!

Rae Rae just wanted to sleep in Grandmama's bag :)
Selfish Shautzie protecting her bag :)
Rage says "I don't know what the big deal is?"
He's LOVES his Grandmama... and her bag!

* Side Note: Shautzie often hides Rage's toys in her or mom's bags so that she can take them to her house!! What kind of dog does that?!?!

Sisters

We spent the last four days at the beach with my extended family, and I got to spend the last 24 hours with these 3 girls... my sisters! I definitely have the greatest sisters EVER!! Even though we all live in different parts of the country (and soon the world!!) we are closer than we ever were!! (Thanks to Skype and cell phones). They are my best friends and I am so grateful that God has chosen me to be a part of this crazy group... The Singing Wilsons!!

The Wilson Girls

Being Silly....

Emily & I

Ashleigh butting in on a "happy snap" of Liz and I :)

Ashleigh & I

A Mazda Milestone

Well the day has finally come... July 17th 2008... today the Mazda turned over 100,000 miles!!! It has been a day that we have looked forward to with both dread and excitement. Excitement because let's be honest, it is pretty cool to see that perfect 100000!! To know that in just 3-1/2 years you have driven your car more miles than most people drive their cars in 8 years. That is talent my friends :) (A talent that must credit my mom for passing on to me! Her motto is "That's why we have cars, to drive them"!!)

And dread... because everyone knows that once a car turns over 100,000 miles things are usually on the downward slope. This was mine and Luke's experience with our previous car (which we ended up selling at about 125,000 miles). Thankfully we have not had any major problems with the Mazda!!

I thought this picture was worth sharing as well. For some reason I have a fascination with numbers, perfection, and order. There is something totally calming and soothing about seeing 1 of the same number in a row. When our car it 77777 I pulled off the road and took a picture of that as well. I know what you are thinking "sad april... definitely neurotic compulsive."

4th of July

I just realized that I have still not posted any pictures from the 4th of July. Luke and I drove over to his mom's on the morning of the 4th and spent the day with his mom, siblings, and their families. That night we all went to the beach and had a HUGE family picture made. Then we went to watch fireworks... in our matching jeans and white shirts. We seriously looked like a high school singing group :)

The Original Graham Children

Luke and April Graham :)

Baby Graham... he is getting so big!!

Savannah and Aunt April at Fireworks!

Aunt Kim with Aly and Savy

Guitar Camp

While we were in North Carolina Luke and Chris taught a "guitar camp" for several of Chris' guitar students. During the camp Luke showed them a riff, did a little recording (thanks to garage band), and talked to them about life on the road. The first night of the camp Ashleigh and I left for about 30 minutes and when we returned they were asking LG questions about the road and who he had played with. I think they were more interested in road/rockstar life than they were in learning about guitar :)

Luke and Evan

Luke and Cadence (how sweet is that!!)

NC Vacation

The night of July 4th Luke and I rode back to NC with Emily and Robby to spend a few days with our family in NC. Like Emily, I do not have any pictures of our time at Rob & Em's, but Luke and I had a blast hanging out with them, eating at our favorite restaurant "Moe's" and going to visit Rob's work.

On Sunday Em drove us down to Greensboro where Ashleigh met us and picked us up. We spent Sunday to Wednesday with Ashleigh, Chris, & Cadence.

It was fun for Luke to get to spend time with Cadence. As you all know Luke is gone most of the time, so he doesn't get to see our nieces and nephew very much. Cadence enjoyed having Luke around, and walked around the house for 4 solid days saying "ALUUUKE".


On Monday afternoon, while Ash & Chris were teaching, Luke and I took Cadence to the park. She is such a "DIVA" and covered her eyes and asked for sunglasses as soon as we stepped out the front door. The best part is that she kept those sunglasses on the entire time we were at the park :)



During our time in NC Asheigh and I did A LOT of scrapbooking! Ash finished her graduation pages for Mom's "Graduation" album, and I did a small "Beach" scrapbook for Mom's B-day. One day Cadence fell backwards into Ash's scrapbooking box... of course we had to take a picture of her before we helped her out :)


Slang was "Itchy" while we were there, so one morning we came downstairs to find him wearing one of Cadence's diapers... Poor Slang :(

The last night we were their Ash & Chris took us to this really cool restaurant called "Cookout". They had incredible milkshakes in every flavor you could imagine (even Watermelon!!)
But the greatest thing about Cookout was their menu... Take a look at their beverages... We all got a good laugh out of the "Huge Tea". (For those of you don't know HUGE is Luke's favorite word, and Cadence has recently started saying it as well!!)
Luke and Chris did a "Guitar Camp" while we were in NC. I will post those pics soon.