jesus meets... rapunzel?

I snapped this grainy picture with my cell phone because I wanted to catch this particular moment.  Elliott was "reading" a story to Cade from a small New Testament Bible.  According to her, in this story, "Jesus said to her, 'you have loooooong byooful hair.'  And she said 'Thank you, Jesus.'"  Hmmmm.....  Well, she may be a little confused, but Cade seems to be enjoying the story!

(BIG) little gifford news!

As most of you know, the little giffords have been wannabe missionaries for a long time now.  We're happy to say that we're well on our way to going from wannabes to a family in action.  I'd love for you to check out our missions blog to find out more about our upcoming move to Santiago, Chile!  Find us at http://www.missionchile.com/!

easter

I had one simple goal in mind for this Easter: get a picture of my whole brood, including mommy and daddy.  Every Easter this task gets a little more daunting, and I always get a little Easter-picture anxiety.  Am I the only one?  Turns out this year my anxiety was well warranted.  Do you know how hard it is to get ONE picture of six people all smiling (or at least not unsmiling) and looking in the right direction with their eyes open??  I can show you how hard it is...   Go ahead.  Click on the pictures and make 'em bigger.  Some of these you gotta see close-up to appreciate.

This one's our bad.  The kids are essentially fine (Kellen would disagree), but my hair and whatever that face is Sean's making... Wow.  

How can ALL four boys have their eyes closed?  And again, my hair.  Thanks, Mother Nature.  And Sean, if you were wondering, was mid-sneeze.  It was super pollen-y out that day.

In case you were starting to think Elliott was perfect...

It didn't take long before Cade was totally over it.

We thought a change of location might help, so we went behind Sean's mom and dad's house.  It was less windy, but more sunny.

Did I say it was less windy?  Never mind.

I assumed, incorrectly, that one of the gazillion pictures Aunt Allison took would be good, so I let Sean go inside and change.  I was wrong.  I made him get his Easter duds back on, and we went out side and tried again.  This time I pulled my hair back to see if we could at least eliminate that issue.  And though Cade is asleep and Elliott is barefoot, we managed to get one sorta decent shot of the crew.

As if it weren't hard enough to take pictures, this was the kind of stuff going on between shots:

I did take a few individual shots of each of the kids.  These are much, much easier.

After I was done torturing them with family pictures, the kids had their annual Easter egg hunt.

Little kids hunted in the back yard, just like last year.

And big kids were in the front, engaged in an all out egg-battle.  Wyatt even wore gloves for better hand traction.

Cade, of course, was just hanging around.

And I have to include a pic of our little nephews, Gavin, Nolen and Cohen.

I guess I should've started the post with these pics, since this was from first thing Easter morning.  I wanted you to see what Elliott's hair looked like, if only briefly.  I hot-rolled her hair for the first time.

When we were done she looked like she was pageant-ready.

Don't worry - we have no intention of entering her in any pageants.  Absolutely NOT.  But I bet she'd win if we did.  ;-) 

first road trip/cousin Addison turns one

We took a road trip last week to visit some family in Mississippi who hadn't yet met Cade and to celebrate the first birthday of my miracle niece Addison. 

We had a great time seeing everyone, even though we were there in the midst of some awful weather (including a tornado which touched down in Clinton, where my parents and one of my brothers live).  And of COURSE they had a great time seeing Cade and the rest of the little giffords. 

Addison, the birthday girl, with her mommy Chami.

  

Cade was partying like a rock star.  He just likes to party with his eyes closed.  (I mean really, how much fun can you have when you can't even eat cake?  Wait... I can answer that one myself.)

Addison with her mommy and daddy.  And cake.  

Uncle Jon with baby Cade (see... he woke up.  Eventually.)

Grammy and Cade.

Uncle Robert and Cade (seeing a pattern?).

Uncle Jon and his girl Elliott.

 Pepaw with Emma Grace (Elliott's cousin) and Elliott.

Me and my bros!!!

babe cade is 3 months old!

Our little Cade turned 3 months old on April 10th, and what an exciting day it was!  Two of his GREAT-grandmothers were celebrating their birthdays with us.  

And Cade got to take his picture with his coincidentally-matching cousin Cohen!  This one is honestly the only picture where Cohen wasn't smiling (he's such a happy baby), but Cade has an adorable grin, and hey, it's my blog, so sorry Aunt Ali.  :)

All right, to be fair, here's one where Cohen's smiling, too.  

Aren't they the cutest cousins? 

Cade is getting so big.  I know it doesn't look like it next to his giant cousin, but he's growing so fast.  We're still having some GI issues, but he's gaining weight and chunking up.  I absolutely love his cheeks and chins.  He's super ticklish and his giggle is the best sound I hear in any day.  He's a rotten sleeper, but I know too well that one day (too soon) I won't even remember how tired I feel right now.  In the mean time I try to cherish our middle of the night snuggling.  

Just for fun, here's a pic we took of him looking all punk and thug.  Ha!

Love you like crazy, baby Cade!

sweet 16

The little giffords ventured to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch Florida take on BYU in the Sweet 16.  And, being the diligent blogger I am, I forgot my camera.  Of course.  But I snapped a few shots with my phone.

Our friends Darsi and Ben, who live nearby, came to join us.  It was great to see them, even if they do cheer for the [ahem] wrong Orange and Blue (they're Auburn fans). 

Elliott, as you can see, was incapable of being still.  ALL evening.  I'd like to say it's the Gator spirit in her just bubbling over, but more likely it was the red icee she drank pre-game.  

Baby Cade, on the other hand, was the opposite of a handful. This is what he did the entire game:

The evening ran a little long when the game went into overtime, but the kids were troopers.  Now it's on to the Elite 8! Goooooooooo Gators!!!

milk!

All of these kinds of milk are currently in my refrigerator:

 Let's see, that's: dark chocolate almond milk, organic skim milk, coconut milk hazelnut coffee creamer, vanilla almond milk, single-serve organic chocolate milk, rice milk, Mayfield 1%, and oh-so-yummy Homestead Creamery chocolate milk (literally THE best milk in the world).   That's a crazy lotta milk. 

The reason for all this variety is my baby Cade.  He's milk and soy allergic, and since he's nursing, mommy has had to remove all milk and soy proteins from her diet.  That's why the almond milk (for drinking), coconut milk (for my coffee) and rice milk (for cooking).  It's been a few weeks now since we got this all figured out (after a trip to the ER for yellow/green bile in his vomit.  I know.  Gross.) and now I can talk about it without getting frantic.  It was a little - or actually a lot - overwhelming at first.  There was even a trip to the grocery store involving almost no purchases and some tears (mine).  Milk allergy is not new to us, but avoiding soy is H-A-R-D.  I spent a couple hungry days eating practically nothing.  But I've been doing my research, and there are great sites out there for folks enduring the same challenges (Intolerant Offspring and MSPI Mama are a couple of my favorites).   And this book is my new best friend. 

Dining out is next to impossible - especially fast food - so I pack my own meal a lot.  Luckily I love to cook and bake though, and once I got my pantry appropriately stocked, modifying some of our favorite recipes became pretty simple.  Quick fix meals are out the window (since pretty much all of them involve cream of chicken soup for some reason), and desserts have to be made from scratch as opposed to boxed mixes, but I'm getting used to it.  On the plus side, the baby weight's making a more rapid exit than predicted.  Maybe those skinny jeans are in my not-so-distant future after all.