Evie {one year}

Baby girl is ONE!

Momma had a hard time with it for a little bit.

But something happened to her when she passed that year mark.

She got even cuter.

{I know... is that even possible?!}

She also got even more spunky and feisty.

Her little {BIG} personality just cracks us up and we are having so much fun watching her become her own little person.

At one year Miss Evie is:

*still "teacup" sized and weighing in at 18.7 lbs

*walking all by herself! She hasn't figured out how to stand up without holding on to something yet, but she can walk anywhere she wants

*climbing on EVERYTHING

*eating EVERYTHING and stealing your food. She is very very sneaky sir.

*dancing any time she hears music or someone singing

*a mess maker - her favorites are pulling the cushions off of the couch, emptying the tupperware drawer, and pulling all of the clothes out of the hamper

*talking up a storm. Words we understand: Momma, Daddy, Silas (Die Die), Hi, Hey, Hello

She talks constantly but most of the time we have no idea what it means.  She also "fusses" at toys and inanimate objects when they don't do what she wants. That's pretty hilarious.

*She signs please, thank you, more, finished, and sometimes help.  She has also started pointing to things and my favorite to ask her is "Where is Evie?" and she smacks her chest with fervor. :)  The only body part that she is interested in pointing to is her bellybutton.  I go over all of the others with her daily, but the bellybutton is the only one she cares about. :)

*nursing twice a day, morning and night.  She gets cold whole milk in a bottle before and after nap.

*climbing the stairs.  Silas has a hard time remember to close the gate behind him and more than one time I have "lost" her only to find her upstairs in his room giggle like a school girl and looking so proud. 

*still in her infant carseat.  Poor thing might be 3 before she can face forward!

*still friendly to EVERYONE and makes a normal shopping trip take twice as long as it should because she talks to everyone and everyone comes to talk to her. :)

We had a little party to celebrate and it was a perfectly beautiful day for it. Evie enjoyed opening her gifts and she devoured her cupcake.  She ate every.single.bit of it, icing included, except for the tiny bit that got flung on the wall in her excitement. :)

Happy Birthday sweet girl!  We love you and your spunkiness!

Check out the new TANKS!

Rachel added some awesome tanks to the Love With Abandon shop.

They are a flowy racerback tank and I am smitten with them.

And the best part - they are just $20!

Like everything else in the shop, 100% of the proceeds go to orphan care.

Click each tank to view in shop

Don't you want one of each?!

Love with Abandon

Hello friends!

So the blog got a makeover...what do you think?  I still have lots of work to do (like put something other than "coming soon!" on all of the pages!), but I love the new look. More on who did it for me to come.

Today I want to tell you about a very neat project that I had the honor to be a part of recently: the Love With Abandon Project.

My friend, Rachel, started this project with the goal of raising $6000 and dividing it evenly among 6 different ministries/families that are devoted to orphan care and prevention.  She tells the story of what prompted her to start the project here.  I urge you to read it and check out each of the ministries that will benefit from it. 

She has a store set up and 100% of the proceeds go toward this project.  There are shirts (from infant to adult sizes!), stickers, posters, bags, and bracelets.  

How awesome would it be to fill your loved one's Easter baskets with some fun stuff that would help ministries educate and empower families to stay together and also support the care and adoption of existing orphans INSTEAD of (or at least in addition to) candy?

Rachel is placing her first order of shirts today so if you want yours in time for Easter you better scoot on over there and fill up that shopping cart!

To keep from bombarding you with tons of pictures, here is a sample of a few things she has in the shop.

I designed all of these. Click each picture to go shop!

Love with Abandon dolman style tee $20

Speak Up slouchy long sleeve tee $30

Ethiopian hut classic tee - $20 adult, $15 infant and children

Hut tee - infant and children $15

 Speak Up tote bag $20

 All of these come in different styles and colors and don't forget there are other goodies besides shirts in the store too!

SHOP HERE

Thanks for supporting this project!

Hello there.

It's been a while.

Things have been and will probably continue to be a little slow around these parts for the next month.

Changes are coming.  I'm hoping to introduce a new Moonpie Designs soon.  Part of that is a complete blog makeover (a real one).  I already got my own domain name and had the blog re-routed to it.  Did you notice? {probably not.} I'm pretty excited.

We have been so busy living life and enjoying each other that I haven't stopped long enough to actually document it.  Part of me regrets that, but another part has really enjoyed not having to worry about keeping up this blog.

In the future there will be a mix of personal and business posts, just like always, but probably more business stuff.

The Moon family has lots of fun coming up this spring and summer.  Evie will be ONE in a couple of weeks, Justin's sister, Holly, is getting married in April (yay!), and Justin and I are going to Romania for a week in June.  More about those things to come.

Thanks for sticking around {if there is anyone still here after 3 months of silence}.

Keep your eye out for some fun changes!

And just because...

Sunday Song

FOREVER REIGN

(written by Reuben Morgan & Jason Ingram)

You are good You are good
When there’s nothing good in me
You are love You are love
On display for all to see
You are light You are light
When the darkness closes in
You are hope You are hope
You have covered all my sin

You are peace You are peace
When my fear is crippling
You are true You are true
Even in my wandering
You are joy You are joy
You’re the reason that I sing
You are life You are life
In You death has lost it’s sting


Oh I’m running to Your arms
I’m running to Your arms
The riches of Your love
Will always be enough
Nothing compares to Your embrace
Light of the world forever reign

You are more You are more
Than my words will ever say
You are Lord You are Lord
All creation will proclaim
You are here You are here
In Your presence I’m made whole
You are God You are God
Of all else I’m letting go


Oh I’m running to Your arms
I’m running to Your arms
The riches of Your love
Will always be enough
Nothing compares to Your embrace
Light of the world forever reign

My heart will sing
No other Name
Jesus
Jesus

Halloween 2012

We had like a million Halloween parties/events this year.

Ok, so maybe it was only 4, but still.  I was happy because I LOVE Halloween.

The first was a grown-up party at the Diaz's.  Justin and I went as gypsies, but everyone thought we were pirates.  Either way, we won the costume contest. :)

I had to work the consignment sale that night before the party so we didn't get to get dressed together.  He put this costume together all by himself and when I saw him I fell in love with him all over again.  Apparently the ability to put together and good costume and own it is my love language. :)

YoungLife Rockdale celebrated with our annual Llamaween event - a picture scavenger hunt around town in our costumes.  We are the BEST.  I love these people.

For actual Halloween we went to the Cardozas with the Mays for Chili and trick or treating in their neighborhood.  It was awesome but I didn't take many pictures.  Evie and I were Momma and Baby Jaguar.

Silas was Spiderman for everything - Trunk or Treat at church, his class party, and Trick or Treating.

There are no pics of Justin on this night because he came straight from work (and hitting a deer on his way) and didn't dress up.

Llamaween.

M & M Mountain Trip 2012

I have been a huge slacker at preserving our memories on this blog.  Life has been happening, ya know?

But I'm going to try to catch up today, but that means there will be lots of pictures in no particular order and that the stories will probably be short and sweet (which might be a relief to some!).

*************************************************************************

A few weeks ago we spent a long weekend in Cullowhee, North Carolina with the Mays.  

We were able to stay at an absolutely incredible house that belongs to a friend and it was seriously one of the best trips ever.  The boys all played incredibly well together and they even all slept in the same room without any issues whatsoever.  I'm still in shock.  Not that they aren't always great, it's just that THAT much greatness all at one time was nearly unbelievable. :)

We spent a lot of time just hanging out and enjoying the house and the lake and the boat and the firepit.

The first night we had hot dogs and sausage for dinner and then we went down by the water to roast marshmallows in the firepit.  The boys had a blast with their flashlights (Uncle Zach taught them how to hold it up to their face and look creepy) and everyone enjoyed the marshmallows.  At the end of the night they started throwing whole 'mallows into the fire just to watch them grow and turn into Jabba the Hut.

After the kids were down for the night, the grown-ups got to play.

Zach and Justin were smoking a Butt the next day so they "rubbed" it and got everything ready. There was no shortage of jokes.

{RABBIT TRAIL: When I called to ask Sarah how many/how big of a butt I should get the day before we left, she said, "I think one will be fine for our family."  So I said, "So we need two?" and she replied, "No, I meant our big family.  I combined us."  And that made my heart happy and I wanted to write it down so I remember it.  We ARE family and I love it. END RABBIT TRAIL}

We played Settlers of Catan and I WON THE VERY FIRST GAME I EVER PLAYED. 

There has not been near enough talk about that fact, and when I reminded the guys of it this week they tried to pretend that the whole night was too fuzzy to remember specifics.  Wrong.  I REMEMBER.

We stayed up way too late, laughed a ton, and made great memories.

The next day when I got up to feed Evie, Zach was already outside manning the smoker. Sarah and Justin slept in for a bit (not together, just to be clear ;-) ) and then we made plans to go climb Whiteside Mountain.

While the babies were napping, Zach and Justin took the boys out on the pontoon boat and it was a huge hit.

After lunch we headed to the mountain and began our hike.  Evie was in the Ergo and napped most of the way.  Micah was usually just barely within sight because the rest of us were too slow for him. Connor and Silas took turns moving at a glacial pace and getting distracted by every.single.thing we passed. :)

We finally made it to a place with a view, and even though we were nowhere near the top, we told the kids that we were and they were super excited to have climbed a whole mountain. :)

Back down we went and then we stopped for ice cream before heading to the house.

The Butt was DELICIOUS for dinner, and now the guys are hooked on smoking stuff (meat, that is). They smoked ribs for us this past weekend.  This is a hobby that I am happy to support. ;-)

We were pretty exhausted that night (because staying up until 1-2am will do that to old people), so after sharing a huge bowl of homemade caramel corn, we headed to bed.

The last morning we had crepes and bacon for breakfast (mmmmm!) and then we took everyone out on the boat one last time before cleaning up and heading out. Justin stayed with Evie because she was napping (he was happy to do so because it was COLD and drizzly).  We all nearly froze to death, but the boys still had a blast.

We said goodbye and went our separate ways for the rest of the day before heading back to Conyers.

The Mays went to the Goats on a Roof, and we headed into Highlands to walk around their adorable downtown and have ice cream at Sweet Treats.  It was a great day with our little family. We headed home and had a little adventure on the interstate when our front bumber got destroyed by road debris and we had to duct tape it together to make it home. 

Sweet sweet memories.

****************************************************************************

Throwing rocks.  Hours were spend doing this.

 Justin learned how to fly fish.

View from the dock

Sarah and Micah (who was being a goof and refused to smile normally)

Before we went to Whiteside, Silas was convinced that THIS was climbing a mountain.

Preparing to fish (no idea why this required reading)

My love.

Breakfast with Daddy

THE Logi Bear doing what he does.  He loves to boop her on the head.  LOVES IT.

This one makes me laugh every single time. BOOP!

Riding the boat and freezing.

Driving

YAY! A family picture!

 At the "top" of the mountain.

 Besties.  (and a view from the porch)

 Top of the mountain

M & M Mountain Trip 2012

Spookiness by the campfire

happy

This past weekend I got a surprise little treat.

A hummingbird (my favorite bird) got stuck in the top of our garage and it was just flying around and banging it's head on the ceiling because it couldn't figure out that it needed to fly lower to find the exit.

As soon as I saw it I stopped what I was doing (which was cleaning up the MASSIVE mess that Silas made on the carpet with my entire collection of acrylic paint) and determined to help it.

I fixed some sugar water in a bowl and then climbed up on a ladder to try and catch it.  It flew all around my head for about 10 minutes before I even tried to get it because I didn't want to give it a heart attack or make things worse.  There are wires hanging from the ceiling (for the door openers) and one was right in front of my face. She would land on it every minute or so and I took that as a sign that I wasn't freaking her out too badly since it was so close to me.  I could tell she was running out of energy, and all of a sudden she flipped out and was flying stuck to the ceiling in little tiny circles.  I thought she was about to die and so I was freaking out too.  Justin grabbed a broom and gently pushed her over to me and she landed for a second on the wire.  I grabbed her (gently!) and immediately stuck her beak in the water.  About 2 seconds later her tongue started going ninety to nothin' and I was breathing a huge sigh of relief that she wasn't going to die. {seriously - I LOVE these birds and was very attached to her.}

I fed her some more and walked out of the garage and opened my hand up so she could leave when she was ready.  She stayed for about 2 minutes, just drinking and looking at me, and then she flew up to the top of a tree in our backyard.

I WAS SO HAPPY!

I love having up-close, wild animal encounters.

This is not the first time that I have loved on a hummingbird.

When I was about 10 I found one wrapped in a spiderweb on the floor of the gym at the Louisiana Lion's Camp.  I picked it up and ran to the cafeteria to get a bowl of sugar and water.  It was barely alive - lethargic and sad. I picked all of the web off of it (it was a super thick web...must have been a BIG spider) and stuck it's beak in the water.  After a few seconds it stuck it's tongue out and then very slowly it started moving. And then it moved faster, and faster, and faster. Then it stood up.  And then it started moving it's head.  A few minutes later it flew a few feet away and then returned to my hand to drink some more. And then another few minutes later it flew way up in a tree. My heart nearly exploded.

To this day that is one of my favorite memories.

Yesterday when I got out of the van a hummingbird flew in front of my face and hovered there for a few seconds.

I like to think it was my friend from Friday coming to say Hi.

:)

{and I have a feeder hanging right in front of my kitchen window.  there are 2 that come around quite frequently.}

Wherein we attempted to sleep in the same room as our 2 year old son

So, in JANUARY we decided to take a little mini-vacay with Silas before Evie arrived.

We went to Charleston, SC and got a hotel room.

This was supposed to be super exciting, as Silas had never been to a hotel before.

It was exciting (for us) for about 5 minutes and then we discovered that Silas could unlock the deadbolt on the door and let himself out.

It was a regular hotel room with a King bed and we asked for a roll-away for the kid.

Mind you, I was 8+ months pregnant and hadn't been sleeping well for a few weeks already so WHAT MADE US THINK WE WOULD SLEEP IN THIS SITUATION is beyond me.

Bedtime on the first night rolls around and it is apparent that Silas is way too excited to be away from home to go to sleep at any decent hour.  Also, he didn't want to stay in his awesome bed with wheels.  He didn't want to STAY in our big bed with us either.  He wanted to CATAPULT himself from one to the other over and over and over again.

I had just picked up my Rx of Ambien (thank you sweet baby Jesus for this wonderful drug!) but was afraid to take it in case it made me sleep so hard that I couldn't hear Silas trying to escape the room.  I kept having visions of him getting out into the hall, then in the elevator, and then finding his way to the pool. 

Yeah.  No sleep happening with THAT going on in my head.

The first night he finally fell asleep around 11pm but since we had never slept with him before we didn't know that he is a mover.  I mean, the kid rolls and kicks and flails.  Again, no sleep happening for the grown-ups.

I was MISERABLE.

So miserable, in fact, that I had decided that we were driving home first thing the next morning.

I don't do well with no sleep so no sleep + 8 months preggo + not being at home = very cranky Mommy.

I just wanted to cut our losses and head out before anything got worse.  

After eating a bit of breakfast, we decided to go on with the plan for the day and if we still were miserable (because Justin was too) then we could drive home later in the afternoon.

We had lunch with Jason, one of Justin's friends and a groomsman in our wedding, and then we all went to tour an aircraft carrier that is retired and docked in the bay.  It's been so long that I can't even remember the name of the thing.  Wait, yes I do, it's the USS Yorktown (thank you Google). It's been turned into a floating museum and it was very interesting.  Silas LOVED getting to see a real life "hopterdopter" (helicopter) and even though there were about 1092384610293864 stairs (and by stairs I mean nearly-straight-up-very-narrow-staircases), me and my belly managed to do just fine (though my sciatica made quite a fuss later that day).

We decided to go ahead and stay there that night.

I decided that Justin was going to be on Escape Prevention duty and I was taking an Ambien.

Apparently Ambien makes me do weird things.

Things that I do not remember AT ALL when told about them.

This night I asked for 8 glasses of milk (and I was serious) and kept asking if there were more people on the TV than were really there.  

But DANG did I sleep!

_____________________________________________________

Rabbit Trail:

Another time that I took Ambien I stayed up for another 2 hours watching zit-popping videos on youtube on my phone. In bed. Justin finally took my phone away and when he told me about it the next morning I thought he was lying. And then I checked my youtube history.  

He wasn't.

_________________________________________________________

The next day we met Kristi and Avery (Jason's wife and daughter) for breakfast and then we went to the beach to play before heading home.

It ended up being a fun (yet exhausting) trip and one that we can laugh about now.

Here's a ton of pictures in no particular order (but what did you expect? It's nearly September and I'm just now posting a trip from January.)

Enjoy.

Silas and Avery

I forgot to mention that we went to the beach by ourselves the first day there.  Silas IMMEDIATELY ran into the frigid water and so the next day we had to buy him new shoes.

Picking up shells with Daddy

Last picture as a family of 3

Freezing (because he was soaked) but trying to pretend he wasn't.

I love this one.

The USS Yorktown aircraft carrier

HOPTERDOPTER!!!

A big gun.

  See that boy scout in the background? There were about 500 of them there that day and they were super annoying.  I wanted to push a few of them over the side of the ship.

WHAT?!

Hormones.

I can't remember what part of the ship this was. Classroom?  War room?

Just riding a missile.

when he finally fell asleep the first night

barefoot because we weren't about to ruin a 2nd pair of Nikes

Jellies!

 (probably the number one reason I do not swim in the ocean)

Charleston, South Carolina

January 27-29, 2012