Jacob Home: Post-Christmas

One word best describes our home today as we wind down from our week long Christmas celebrations with all of our families......CHAOS!!!!!!


Presents are everywhere and the girls are still running 100mph since they have been on the go for the last few days. And even just now Ava is calling out "Let's get this Dora bowling party started right now" (one of her and Reese's new toys that they HAVE to play with right now!) Thanks, S,S,A and Z!


Despite the chaos today, we are truly lucky to have so much family to celebrate the holidays with!


Christmas posts to come! Lots of blog catching up to do!

Every room in our house is filled with Christmas after-math!

Jacob Girls+Super Heroes=Halloween 09

This year the girls followed the super heroes trend and dressed as Super Girl (Ava) and Wonder Woman (Reese). I had no idea super heroes would be so popular this year!!

Here they are starting off their fun filled night of trick or treating with Nana and PaPa Birky.

Shari Stuber was nice enough to provide us 2 big bags of candy! :-) The girls modeling their pumpkin bags.

Someone took their costume and their duties very serious!

This just makes me feel sick looking at it. Sucker in her mouth and bowl full of sugar in front of her.

Working those outfits!

Mid-November - Perfect time for a Tea Party!

This past week we got to be apart of one of Ava and Reese's favorite Aunt's vision...miss Lisa Kay of Happily Ever After Weddings and the wonderful Pam Cooley of Pam Cooley Photography.



For those who don't know, Lisa Ragan has been building her business, Happily Ever After Weddings for over a year, and now she's branching out to new things. Children's birthday parties, events, you name it.....she can plan it and style it!!!



The girls did a lovely job modeling in the outdoor tea party shoot photographed by Pam Cooley. I think you will agree its clearly adorable!!! Check out Pam's blogsite!!

Ava is 3!!!

The 3 straight weeks of celebrating birthdays is coming to an end. Yes, folks, Ava is officially 3! And with that we can close another chapter on the Jacob girls' birthday celebrations!

Instead of thinking of a word that describes Ava, I thought I would just use my new signature collages to portray the kind of girl she has been through the last 3 years! She's one goofy girl, with a head full of hair who knows how to turn on the charm! Yes, she's Aba Jacob! :-) She knows her name and she's not afraid to tell you who she is!



Ava got to have her birthday lunch today at her daddy's favorite hang out, Destihl! After that it was a stop at Target to pick out a game of Memory, and then daddy picked out something "the girls" just HAD to have! The picture below is somewhat disturbing, but he's just so darn proud!


Seth and Ava spent almost 2 hours shooting nerf darts all over the house! My girl Reese put on some bracelets and even shot a few rounds! The girl knows accessories are needed for whatever you are doing, too bad I didn't get any pics of that!! But I did manage to get one of her with my swim suit bottoms around her neck while she loads up her gun! Don't ask....I don't even know why....



The night ended with a healthy Hostess Cupcake as Ava's birthday cake.


Ava, just 3 short years have already compiled so many great moments and memories! You keep us on our toes and smiles on our faces and we wouldn't have it any other way. We love you so much "big girl" Ava!

2009 Jacob girls bday bash pics to come...

Reese is 2!!

Wow! How can it be that the baby of our family is 2!?!?

When I think about Reese and look back at the last 2 years and really almost 3 years, the one word that inevitably comes to mind about her, is SURPRISE!

I think almost anyone who reads this blog, knows that learning we were having Reese was an unexpected, yet truly amazing surprise we received in Feb of 2007. You see, we had just had a baby...who was barely out of the newborn stage.

Pictured below is the lovely Ava, just barely 4 months when we discovered our next bundle of joy was coming!


We spent the next 8 1/2 months planning for the addition of another baby. Reese's due date was Oct. 16, just 2 days before Ava's 1 yr bday. It was around midnight, the morning of Oct. 4, when I decided my sister better come over and stay with Ava, b/c SURPRISE Reese was making her appearance 2 weeks early. We welcomed her to our family at 11:59 am on Oct. 4, 2007.


Here's a picture of Reese on her 1st bday last year. Ava started walking right around her 1 yr. bday, so I just assumed Reese would do the same. Surprise, this girl was not walking until 15 months!


Here she is today celebrating her abbreviated bday. The real deal bday party is next weekend.



Everyday, Reese continually surprises us with all of the things she says and does, and of course the many faces she makes!

Reese you truly are a one of a kind! We love you so much! Happy birthday sweet baby girl!

Lake Geneva

At the end of August we traveled to Lake Geneva with Nana and Papa Birky for an end of summer trip! Lake Geneva is Seth's new favorite hang out. If he has his way we will be going there every year!

We stayed at the Timber Ridge Lodge which has an indoor waterpark. I think it's safe to say the girls got over there large indoor waterpark phobia and had a blast! We don't have a lot of pictures, but by the end of the weekend both girls were going down the toddler waterslides as fast as they could and face first!! I was asked to edit what I posted on here, so I can't show proof, but even Nana went down the waterslide more times than I could count!! The girls loved it!

I took some artistic liberties with this collage that just look wrong, but it's taken me almost 2 months to get these up here, so I'm just going with it!

We also spent some time on Lake Geneva. This was the girls first experience on a boat. Although it was windy, a little rainy and FREEZING, they enjoyed themselves. As long as i kept the snacks coming we were in great shape....and then the snacks ran out....and the life jacket finally proved to be too much for little Reese and the last 15 minutes were spent hightailing it as fast as we could to the dock, so Reese could get that thing off as fast as possible!

We played lots of games in the arcade too. I think everyone had a good time earning their tickets for prizes! The girls redeemed their tickets for candy bracelets and real bangle bracelets.

Nana and Papa were such great sports! We all had so much fun, and hope to do it again!

This is what happens when daddy's in charge....

Blow-up mattress in the living room, dinner in front of the TV and pretty much anything else you want to do that maybe you shouldn't be doing! :-) Well, with that going on I'm free to load my pics to the computer and work on the blog. I guess I should be thanking daddy!?!?

I know, I know.....

I'm back to that place where loading my pictures to the computer seems like some terrible chore, and if I don't have pictures then I can't blog...in my mind at least!!

I have a much over do post about our fun mini-vaca to Lake Geneva and our trip to Tanners. That's about as many pictures as we've taken over the last couple of months.

We are about to embark on our busy month, Oct! Reese turns 2, Abby Cadabby makes a visit (the girls bday party), Ava turns 3, and then it's Halloween!!

In other news, Ava is pretty much potty trained, yay! And Reese's update....let's see....I'm guessing if we really worked with her she could be potty trained too, but I'm just not ready to go there yet. Hey, when you've been living and buying diapers for 2 for the last 2 years, what's the rush right??? :-)

That's my update for now, more to come...

Jacob Beauties

I recently had the girls pictures taken at Roots Photography here in Bloomington. They did such a great job and few of the pics are posted on their blog.

These pictures made me realize that somehow we blinked and they're not babies anymore they're little girls! Ok, even though we have a lot of daily emotional melt-downs, I still think I'm ok if time slowed down just a little bit!

Dells 'cation!

Friends and Family,
Brace yourself....I've learned how to make collages and I have not held back, yes I'm going over the top with them! And I'm also some technical difficulties, but with 2 girls pulling on me to go, I don't have much time to work on it, so I'm just throwing it out there as is!

I'm finally able to take a minute and blog about the 'cation (Ava's word for vacation) we took a few weeks ago. The Samford/Jacob/Davis families blew into the Dells and I'm not sure any of us have totally recovered yet. It was 100% chaos 100% of the time, but we look back on it with great memories of our 1st trip with the girls and little Jaxon! :-)

We stayed at the Great Wolf Lodge. Thanks to Ryan we got the best unit in the place, so we all had plenty of space (especially when others needed a little break from the Jacob girls!). Ryan and Nicole have Jaxon who is 5 months, so you might think having a baby there would be a little much at times. Ummm, no! I don't think I heard our little Jaxon make a peep the entire time! He's just the "little angel" of the family. That's for you Aunt Cole!


















Thankfully, grandpa brought his camera and captured all of these photos for us! Here's what happens when you hang out with grandpa on the balcony without mommy. I couldn't breath for a couple of seconds when I saw the pictures of the girls hanging on the balcony railing!! Thanks Dad!

Here's the montage of our water park shots. The girls really weren't too into the water, they wouldn't even go down any of the little slides, but they did warm up to the wave pool.

Some hanging out in the room time in the room.

And our last stop the deer park. I've never seen Ava feed an animal and I thought this place might put over the top, but she completely surprised me and didn't mind hundreds of deer hanging out with us.

Thank you to my mom and dad for a great trip! The twist of having 3 kids under the age of 2 brought a whole new dynamic to the Samford family trips!!

Reese's 1st Pony!

Ava was practically born with a pony tail in, in fact when the nurses took her into the nursery after she was born to get cleaned up, she came back to me with a little little pony and pink bow.

Reese on the other hand has never been bald, but her hair didn't seem to want to grow. This summer though she's growing it out and we even got it into a pony. FINALLY! :-) Of course I think she's one of the 2 cutest pony tail girls!

Wisc. Dells pics to come...

It's Potty Time!

This pretty much sums up life as it is now! Potties, panties and snacks of course!

4th of July Do-over

Since the actually 4th of July day turned out to be yuck, there was do-over on the 5th. It actually worked out for the best because PawPaw and Gma Jacob got to join in on the fun!

We started off at the bouncy houses. Once Reese got the hang of it there was no stopping her!

Ava did the big slide all by herself!

We headed over to the Hoffman's to watch the parade. The girls were able to get rejuvenated drinking water and waiting for the parade to begin.

They loved eating their suckers and waving to everyone in the parade!

We ended the night watching fireworks with Gpa and Bebe. Ava was a little scared and Reese mostly just wanted to play in the dirt!

It was a great do-over day. The girls can't wait for their next parade!

Happy 4th of July!

A few weeks late......

Since the weather turned out to be a bust on the 4th of July, we had to stay indoors. Luckily aunt Sandy brought glow sticks and the girls modeled their creations for us!

Zootacular Bday!

Let me start out by wishing Aunt Cole a happy bday!! Today is her bday even though I'm going to write about mine! Pretty typical, wouldn't you say Cole? :-)

On July 3rd I celebrated my 30th bday, dun, dun, dunnnn!! I haven't had any 30th bday meltdowns, so I think I'm doing pretty good!

We spent the day with Nana, Papa, and Uncle Josh at the Glen Oak zoo and got to see the very cool Africa exhibit!

We started our day by getting to be right up close to a horsie (Ava and Reese's favorite animal)! Being close enough to touch it pretty much freaked Ava out and here she is still holding on to me.

We made our way over to the camels for a quick photo op

The girls really did think the Africa exhibit was cool, but they didn't want to spend as much time as daddy and Uncle Josh appreciating it, so you won't find many actually any pictures of the girls checking out the exhibit. Here's their favorite animal of the day.

Waiting on the guys...getting restless, but taking pics with Nana!

At this point Ava had informed us all that she wanted to go to Busy Corner and she was pretty much done!

Family pic without Seth

Family pic with Seth

And by now, we've hit zoo meltdown! Ava's pulling on my bag wanting to go and now I'm able to see Reese was just hanging out on her own...nice! :-)

The day ended with the girls chilling out and helping Josh on the computer!


Thanks for a great birthday!!

Posts Coming.....

To all my blog fans (Sharon and Jan :-)) I know I'm overdue on posting our trip to the zoo, 4th of July do-over and the latest craze in our home "panties". Yes, Ava has started wearing panties, she prefers referring to them as panties rather underwear and it's tons of fun of pee and poop and talking about the potty non-stop! Needless to say, we've been a little busy, but I'm hoping to get some pics up soon! I try to keep this blog rated G, so no worries, I don't have any pics of Ava actually going potty, but maybe that's because she doesn't always make it to the potty!!! I actually think Reese might be potty trained before Ava, just to spite her big sister! Yes, the sister rivalry has already started.....

Girls Night!

Daddy is out and about tonight, so the three of us had Girls Night! What does that consist of with a 2 and 1 yr old? Well....watching movies daddy is not fond of, (Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake), eating dinner in the living room and playing with our ice cream set and microwave set that mommy had been saving for a rainy day and tonight turned out to be that literal "rainy day"!

If only Reese could have looked up instead of down!

It wouldn't be right if we didn't get a random picture of Reese!

Cooks prepping

Cooks creations....BELICIOUS! (as Ava would say)

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to all of the dads in our lives! We wouldn't be where we are without all of your love and support!

Thank you to this daddy (pictured below) for being such a great dad through the tears, fits, smiles and laughter! Love you so much!

Miller Park Zoo Fun with Grandma and Paw Paw

On Saturday Grandma and Paw Paw Jacob escorted us to the Miller Park Zoo. We had a great day of looking at the animals, playing at the park, having a picnic, experiencing the local culture at the Miller Park pond and by local culture, I mean, people and their dead fish staring at us out of buckets and my most favorite memory Reese picking up a cigarette butt and smooshing it all over mouth! ICK!!! I'm getting sick all over again just thinking about it!!

It really was a fun day though, and the girls did great! They even went stroller free!

Here they are with the Wallabies

Ava was anxious to see every exhibit!

Reese was mesmerised by the River Otters and probably could of stayed there all day!


What I thought was a cute picture of Ava and Paw Paw at the Sea Lion area actually turned out to be an X rated pic. I'll let you find that on your own!

Here we are checking out more of the Sea Lions. I could barely get Reese over the rail to see!

The fam in the rainforest exhibit

Reese and Grandma were checking out the bears, they must have been doing something very interesting based on their expressions!

These are my favorite pics. Reese and Ava were SO excited to go into the petting zoo and you can see it on there faces

Then....total disaster! A goat has approached them! Check out how Ava had retreated back into the gated area and was not letting go of that fence.

No worries though, they went over and grabbed some brushes and got right to work! Daddy took a little time out to pose!

Next up was the Carousel

And then the ride ended and someone was NOT happy!

We moved onto the park where Ava climbed these bars all by herself. She then wanted to come down...I panicked so Daddy had to step in and help.

And I had to panic again....this time you can see it on my face. How could I let my baby go down a big kid slide???? I did finally release her and she did fine. What can I say I have problems letting go and they are only 2 and 1!

Sorry no pics of the fish or the cigarette butt incident.

We all had a great time and appreciate Grandma and Paw Paw making the drive over!