This one hurts me a little......this is Helen's first good friend Emma. This picture was taken over 2 years ago when they got together for a play date. Look how little! So sweet!
Have a great weekend! 
This was the cupcake table! So CUTE!
And if you look closely, the white cupcakes had little brown babies on them! Loved it!
This is a picture of all of our yummy lunch items!
We have been blessed with so many hand-me-downs and wonderful baby items that friends have let us borrow, that we really didn't need anything else for Will. Instead of gifts, our friends wrote notes to our family with their special thoughts and blessings for Will. They used little clothes pins to pin them to the branches in this vase. They also pinned on donations for Hannah's Hope! We received $100 to send to Hannah's Hope in Ethiopia and we are so grateful for that wonderful gift!
Will got a lot of attention! Here he is with Holly, Natalie and Abbey!
They started out in the kiddie pool, but quickly headed over to the big pool! 
A few of the boys kickin' it up on the side of the pool!
Helen getting some love from the big girls....Natalie and Lydia.
Beckett and Matt were a great team when the boys were "chicken fighting" in the pool!
Finally, our Will with our friend Will! 
Thanks again to everyone who came and celebrated with us last week. It was such a fun day! Will is 9 months old today! I tried to get some pictures of him this evening, but I had waited too late and he was not feeling very smiley! Today also marks 5 weeks home with Will, so just to give you an idea of why we love having this 9 month old in our family, here is one minute of fun for you to enjoy! We think that Will is absolutely precious and he is the fifth piece of our family puzzle that was missing! We are so glad that he is home with us forever! I hope you will enjoy this little video of Will as much as we do! He got so tickled when Sean would make funny noises and Beckett would make funny faces! I got a little bit of it on video. This went on for several minutes one night after dinner! Too cute!
I took Will to the pediatrician today for his 9 month check-up. He had to have one vaccination to catch up with where he needs to be! He cried for one moment and then he was OK. The nurse had a hard time finding the injection spot to place the band aid and I even told her not to worry about it since it wasn't bleeding. She went ahead and stuck one of those small round band aids on his thigh.Fast forward to lunch time. We stopped at Burger King for lunch. We were sitting at the table eating lunch and Will was sitting in the high chair eating his Gerber puffs. Everything was rocking along just fine until Will got choked. A baby CAN'T choke on these puffs since they disolve as soon as they get the first bit of slobber on them, but I assumed that he had just put too many in his mouth. I stuck my finger in his mouth to get them out, but he continued to choke. I patted his back and he continued to choke. I un-strapped him and removed him from the high-chair and began to lightly pat his back. He continued choking. I swept my finger in his mouth again. Nothing. Still choking. I knew he was in trouble. He wasn't breathing very well and he was crying and would gasp for air in between his cries. It was AWFUL! I turned his head toward the floor and began hitting his back a little harder and nothing was coming out. I was SO scared. The whole time NO ONE in Burger King was coming to help. That is a whole other blog entry in itself!! My mind was racing and I'm thinking, "How will I get help? Do I start screaming? Do I need to tell someone to call 911?" I kept lifting him up to look at his face and see what was happening. His eyes were closing and he was not breathing well at all. I again stuck my finger in his mouth and this time I caused him to gag. He spit up and that seemed to help. I lifted him up again to look at his face and he was lethargic and his eyes were droopy, but I noticed something in his mouth. Nothing had been there before, but when he had gagged and spit up, IT appeared. IT was the round band that the nurse had placed on his thigh! Evidently, Will had taken the band aid off his leg (or it fell off; those round ones aren't that sticky) and he had put it in his mouth. It was probably while he was riding in his car seat. His hand usually rests right there on his thigh when he is in his seat. I guess that the band aid had just floated around in his mouth, un-detected by me, and then when he began to swallow the puffs, the band aid tried to go down too, and it restricted his air-way! Oh. My. Goodness. This probably all took place in about one minute of time, but it felt like ten minutes! He was absolutely worn out and he just fell asleep in my arms. Of course, I kept checking him to make sure that he was breathing and that he appeared OK. He is doing just fine now and we have ALL recovered. It was so scary!
I just wanted to warn all parents of babies to NOT use the round band-aids under any circumstances! I'll have to ponder a little longer on the fact that no one at Burger King, staff or patrons, offered any help. I wasn't looking around for help, but Beckett even commented (when I was sitting back in my seat and everything had calmed down) that no one had come to offer us help. Just someone moving toward us as if they recognized that we were dealing with a scary situation would have been a little comforting. I was standing in the middle of the restaurant, beating my infant on the back, and it was as if all was fine with the world. I'm just not sure what this says about our society, but I know that there is a lesson there for me....just need to think on that for a bit!
Beckett and Helen said it best when we were on our way home! They said that Will was OK because God was protecting him! So true! Thank you God for your protection over our family today!
Will wearing a baseball cap for the first time. He didn't keep it on for long!
Will's first boat ride! Actually, this was Helen's first time on a boat too! We went to visit our friends, the Davis family at their camp site on Watt's Barr lake and they took us out on their ski boat for a ride! It was a lot of fun!
Beckett, Brady and Helen in the front of the boat!
This boy can sleep anywhere! He fell asleep after about 15 minutes of riding in the boat!
More random cuteness.....Helen and Will in the kid's playroom waiting area at Matlock's Tires in LC. We had to have the oil changed and tires rotated on the van before we traveled to North Carolina. We always get biscuits for breakfast and eat them in this little room so they can eat and play while we wait for our vehicle! Snapped this cute one while we waited!
On our way home from the Beckett Family Reunion in Charlotte, NC, we stopped along several streams in the Smokies so Sean could fly fish and so the kids could play in the COLD water! This was Will's first time in the mountains, so we took a few pictures!
It was a beautiful, cool day!
We LOVE this "bumbo" seat! (Thanks Kathy!) :) I bought the little tray to attach to it and we take it everywhere! Will is sitting up on his own now, but not on slippery rocks beside mountain streams! 
Will loved sitting on the rock watching Beckett and Helen play and splash in the water! 
Not sure that this qualifies as random cuteness, but I thought I would give Sean a little love and show him in his element! He gets in a zone when he is fly fishing. Loves it! He catches and releases his fish, so I hardly get pictures of the fish that he catches because I am watching 3 kiddos and can't get to him fast enough when he catches one. He enjoyed his time fishing that day and we all had a great time!
Stay tuned for my "penguin post" later this week!
Here are all three kiddos at Menchies! Will is strong enough now to sit up in the restaurant-style high-chairs! No frozen yogurt for him! We like to wait until first birthdays to introduce the sweet stuff!
Helen enjoyed her frozen yogurt down to the last drop!
