Monday at Grandma Baker's

The girls got to spend all day in Newberry at Great-Grandma Baker's House--and Aunt Maria and cousin Cadence were there too. Here are some pics:

There are 4 girls in Grandma's Yard. Can you tell which ones?

Well, one of them isn't Mikala, she was sick on the couch the whole time.

Meanwhile, Claire was practicing her parallel parking.

And Cadence was getting down in the driveway.

Amy was found making her mark.

Then the little ones had some bonding time on the swing.

Easter Weekend in Savannah

Amy...
going into a sugar coma.


Kada, Ainslee, Amy & Tyler...
like kids in a candy store.


Amy & Claire...
enjoy long walks on the beach.


Kada...
in her own world.


Tyler & Kada...
blown away.


Ainslee, Tyler, Amy, Uncle Thomas & Claire...
getting their feet wet.


Sara...
just chillin' ... yo


Claire...
gold digger.


Claire & Sara...
having their day in the sun.


Tyler & Amy...
best friends forever.

Take 47

Christmas picture of the girls in their Christmas dresses (with their cousin Cadence).

Top Ten Reasons Why It's Good to Have All Girls #10

#10: It's really easy to make them match.

These are the girls' Christmas dresses for 2007. They had their pictures taken in them, along with their new cousin Cadence (the new daughter of Tammy's sister Maria and hubby Will). Cadence had the same dress as the rest of the girls. When the pictures come in, we will post. I wish that we were able to go the studio, sit for a picture, and immediately walk away with a digital file that we can do with as we please. Instead, the studios are still taking analog photographs, and they still "own" the image, and it is probably illegal to even scan it to post it on a blog. Oh well..

We are all decompressing from the holidays. The kids are enjoying their new things. There is a problem with the train table though. The kids like to take the track apart, and it's so complicated to put together that it just ends up staying apart until a tall person comes along to put it back together for them. We are probably going to just glue sections of it together and leave them a few track pieces separated so that they can be creative.

Sara is slowly becoming more interactive. She has smiled (real smiles) for Mommy a couple of times (all Daddy gets is gas smiles--except for one time that looked like it may have been real, but was still very likely just gas). It is difficult to have to wait so long for the interactive phase. She is almost 4 months old (but only 2 months from her due date). She has beautiful blue eyes, and she's somehow looking more like a Hood everyday. I guess you are what you eat.

Fall

The Hood[1] and Hood[2] cousins spent time together at Virginia-Hylton park with thier dads. The mothers were able to get some much needed time to decompress (i.e. clean the house). The leaves were the rich, beautiful colors of fall: bright red, brilliant yellow, and bold orange.

Thanksgiving

Some of the Hood side extended family gathered at the Hood home for Thanksgiving Dinner. Present: Hood[0], Hood[1], Hood[2], Hood[3]*, Jessica with Fiance Jamie, Grandma Scott, Tiffany with this month's boyfriend, and Janis' kids Hanna and Haley. A few more were in and out during the day. We had an excellent meal, and of course, we brought out the traditional "Sombrero of Thankfulness," donned by Mikala this year.


*Family Array Notation: surname[index], will be used throughout this blog to provide a shorthand method for addressing Hood Family branches. Hood[0] refers to the Root Node (Thomas E., Nancy and family members still at home). Hood[1] refers to the branch of the first born (Thomas N., Heather and their offspring). When a Hood child leaves home--i.e. flies the coup or cuts the proverbial apron strings--their branch will then be assigned an index equal to their birth order. This convention can be extended to future generations simply by adding a dimension to the array, i.e. Hood[2][1] for Amy's branch (or Hood[2,1] if you prefer rectangular array indexing). This convention was officially adopted by the Hoods in 2002, and clarifies statements such as: "We'll meet you at the Hood's House at 6:00, and the Hood's will be Babysitting, and the those other Hood's will met us at the restaurant at 7:00."

...and through the woods

Amy and Mikala spent the day yesterday in Newberry with Grandma and Grandpa Baker. Their favorite part about going to Newberry is the trampoline. "I wanna bounce" is the first thing Amy says when she gets there. The rest of our family joined them after work for a pre-Thanksgiving dinner. The kid's cousins were there too: Ethan, Evan and Ari. Mikala was pretty grouchy (Grandma let her stay up too long the night before--invoking her grandmotherly right to lax discipline). Amy's cousin Tyler has made Amy scared of monsters lately. Every time she would hear a sound, like an acorn falling or crickets chirping, she said that it must be a monster. Some good news is that we were able to drive the van up to Newberry. It needed a repair that may or may not be permanent. Unfortunately, that leaves us crossing our fingers every time we drive it.

Sara Christine Hood

This being our Inaugural Blog Post for our newly created blog Life is Hood, we thought it would be appropriate to post a photo of the most recent addition to the Hood family: Sara Christine. Sara was born September 11th. We adopted Sara on October 8th. She was born two months premature and has been home with us from the NICU since November 2nd. Sara is one of the many reasons why Life is Good at the Hood Home. Three other big reasons are her sisters: Amy, Mikala and Claire. Even though the big sisters are a little jealous of Sara right now, they love her very much and like making her laugh. Between Sara and Claire, we get very little sleep these days. We average about 5 hours per night (weekends are better). We find that good time management is the key to our success. We keep a detailed weekly schedule, planned to 15 minute intervals. Heather has been staying with us for the past week while Thomas is in Savanah working at his new job and buying a house. Tyler and Ainslee are here too, and it can get to be quite a mad house sometimes with 6 kids confined to 1200 sq ft, but Amy and Mikala do have a lot of fun with their cousins.