Addy and Aly

For those of y'all who have been pregnant, you know that when you become friends with someone during pregnancy who is also pregnant, you just seem to bond as if you'd known eachother for years. This is my relationship with my friend Kristyn. We went through those nine months along with the first 4 months of our girls' lives together before Chad, Aly, and I moved back to Farmville. Kristyn and I took pre-natal classes and ignored our husbands as they laughed when the nurse talked about birth. We had free pre-natal massages, and commisserated about our aches and pains. Addy was born just 3 days after Aly: Jon and Kristyn were checking IN to the hospital while Chad, Aly, and I were checking OUT. Once the girls were born, we slept-walked through those first couple months together, met for lunches, and braved our first trip to the mall in Richmond with two newborns. Jon is a pastor at our old church, so Kristyn sat with us: she would make me feel so normal when she walked in on Sunday mornings on the brink of tears because she was so tired! My pregancy and first few months with Caroline weren't the same without Kristyn around.

The Ritner family (they are expecting again!) came to visit at the beginning of this week on their way down to Orlando. The girls didn't remember each other, but they warmed up pretty quickly. It was great seeing these friends whom we shared such a special time with. The first picture is of Chad, Jon, and the girls when they were just a few months old. The second is of the girls at 10 months old when the Ritners visited us in Farmville, and the last few are of this past week. Thank you, Ritners, for such a great visit!