welcome to spiceland.

We met my family outside Atlanta at Red Top Mountain State Park over New Years Day for our Christmas celebration. Here’s a little video from that.

Christmas portraits are up!

So sorry it’s been so long since we’ve written anything here! It’s been very busy this last month or two. We had a great Christmas. Papa and Nana Spiceland came to visit and celebrate Christmas and Tru’s birthday, then Papa, Missa, Ally, and Kerri came. We had a wonderful time with everybody. We were supposed to travel to Memphis to spend Christmas evening and the following days with Bama and Jessica, but all six of us were sick. We had an interesting but effective Christmas over Skype video conferencing.

Tru had to have two fillings last week and has to have three more in the coming weeks. Her dentist says that the location of the cavities tells him that better brushing could not have prevented these cavities. She’s just inherited Mike’s teeth and may have issues her whole life. I sure hope that Heidi inherited mine! I’ve never had a cavity in my life. Her experience was hilarious, though. We’d told her ahead of time that she’d have to smell some yummy-smelling air during the procedure. Somehow she’d gotten the idea that they were going to stick things in her nose to make that happen, so she was very relieved to find out that it only involved breathing from a small red nose covering. The dentist called her Rudolph the whole time! She got very relaxed and very happy on the nitrous. She kept saying funny things like “Mommy! I looooooooooooooove yoooooooouuuuuuuu!” and “I’m DIZZZZZZZYYYYYY!” After we went home, she bit her lip pretty badly, so it’s all swollen in the only snow pictures we managed to take this year.

We had half an inch of snow the day before her dentist appointment, and amazingly, some of it has stuck around. I believe today is day 6 with snow on the ground. Many lakes iced over, and the temperatures were in the teens and twenties many days. Tru had a blast playing in it. Check out the pictures section of our website for new pictures.

Das pumpkin.

Tru and Heidi had adorable matching Halloween outfits on yesterday that they received from Papa and Nana. I had to get a few pictures, including these:

We went to Atlanta to Ally’s house, and Kerri, Melissa, and Daddy met us there. Here are the pictures from our visit.

We had a great Easter. We’ve been avoiding church this winter and watching sermons at home from Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church to avoid putting Heidi in the nursery during flu season. We did go to church this Sunday, though. We took Heidi to the service with us, which she previously had not tolerated well at all. She was great! She behaved while awake and slept through the sermon. She thoroughly enjoyed the choir’s rendition of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus at the end of the service, proof she is a Pinder after all! Pictures here.

We also dyed and hid eggs and made Easter baskets for the kids. We read the resurrection story out of John and explained to Tru that Easter eggs represent life. Baby chickens come out of their eggs alive just like Jesus came out of his grave alive. We also gave Tru a LeapFrog Leapster game system for Easter. We weren’t planning on getting her such a big gift, but we got it on sale at Target. She loves it.

My birthday is today. I’m 27 years old. We celebrated with some friends last Saturday at Surin of Thailand in Huntsville. It was a wonderful evening full of food and friendship! Mike got me a brand new laptop battery for my laptop, which seriously needed replacing! My laptop is actually portable now. Previously, my battery life was only about 30 minutes. I should get at least an hour and a half off of this new one. Tru got me some very pretty jewelry. We had a crockpot roast for dinner and a delectable chocolate Snickers birthday cake. YUM.

There are also more pictures here of Tru at her friend Fisher’s house on Easter.

Happy belated St. Patrick’s Day! We spent yesterday sick, and not one of us wore green! However, Tru received this card from Missa and Papa and wanted to respond.

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Below is a picture of a bug in our microscope. Tru and I got a microscope for Christmas. We’ve been using it to explore the miniature world around us. This weekend, we’ve been looking at all of the bugs we could find. The picture below was taken from our flip video camcorder.

The first half of the Christmas pictures are up! The rest will be put up on 12/31 after Christmas with my family in Atlanta.