Saturday, June 22, 2013

Two Years

Olivia Ray,

Sweet girl. I say it continuously but it’s true: YOU have brought SO MUCH joy to our lives and we cannot imagine our life with out you. You are spunky, sweet, feisty, a little stubborn, compassionate, funny, full of life, snuggly.....there are so many more words that could describe your sweet little self.

You enjoy every thing that you do. You are always up for a good time. You are not afraid to let any one know how you feel about something. Which is good but can also be bad sometimes. :) You are not shy but you usually don’t want any body but me to hold you or do things for you. Sometimes that can be exhausting but I know within this next year sometime you will start to grow out of that and I will miss it. You love Audrey to pieces and always turn to her for help and ask for her when you get hurt or are going to bed. You love James too, just in a different way. Kinda like how you feel about your daddy right now :). You and James are a lot alike which explains why you mutt heads often. But you have started to ask for him when you go to bed and just with in the last few weeks I’ve seen you be very compassionate towards him and seek him out to hug him or hold his hand now. Talk about melting a mama’s heart!!

You and your daddy have a comical relationship, to say the least. Most of the time you act like you don’t want a thing in the world to do with him. You run from him and say “No!! MY mommy. Or MY baby.” And then turn around and ask for a kiss when he goes to walk out the door. It drives him crazy most of the time but I know you will grow out of it. Your sister sure did!!

You know all the words to the 1st verse of Amazing Grace and most of the words to the last verse. You love Rock a Bye Baby and ask every night for me to “rock baby tree top” LOL!!!!! You love Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and know most of the words to that too. You can count to 10 which blew us away when we first heard you do it. Just out of the blue one day you counted to 10 and we were like “What?!?!”

When you try to get someone’s attention and they wont look at you, you will put your hand on their chin and pull their face towards you. To get them to look at you. It’s probably my most favorite thing that you do right now. You also have started saying “I wuv it” when you want something. “Pwease!!! I wuv it mommy.”

We have enjoyed this past year with you so much. It’s been a blast to see and hear all the new things you pick up on a daily basis from your siblings. It’s hard to believe that you are already two years old. Seem like just yesterday that I heard you cry and I saw your sweet, chubby little face for the first time. I look at James and Audrey and then at you and have to blink back the tears sometimes. Most days it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that they used to be little like you and that in a few short moments you will be as big as they are now. SIGH.



I’ll love you forever,
I’ll like you for always,
as long as I’m living
my baby you’ll be.
All my love,
Mama

















Saturday, June 15, 2013

Splash into Summer!!

On a whim I decided to enter this picture in Rock the Shot’s June photo contest. It’s every thing Summer. Bathing suits, warm weather, splash pads, water hoses and the best thing about summer, COUSINS!!!! It’s a SOOC shot which makes me really happy. I shot with my Nikon D3200 and my 50mm lens. ISO 100, f/stop 2.0, shutter speed 1/320. 




Wednesday, June 12, 2013

It is June, right?

**Note: Most of these pictures are of Olivia and her red neck swimming pool. Aka: the Coleman cooler! I am in the processing of cleaning up my hard drive as well as trying to organize files into folders in Lightroom and came across these and felt inspired to blog. So much for getting much else done tonight. Oh well.

Audrey Grace came down with Pneumonia over the weekend (no idea how that happened) so we had to skip out on our trip to Birmingham. Sad. And since Daddy will be spending the last 3 weeks of July in Africa, we probably wont make it up there any this Summer. Double sadness. But we have been able to get A LOT of things done around the house in preparation for -wait for it- an appointment we have this Friday to show our house. It could be our only shot so we are working hard. Well, at least Jon is out side. I can’t seem to get 2 things done in 5 hours thanks to 3 little whiny, needy patients.



Three. you say? Yes. Audrey, of course, but then there’s Olivia. Little Miss Ray Ray. She has an upper respiratory infection and a double ear infection. Not to mention she has 4 teeth pushing their sharp way through her little gums. Close your eyes and you can only imagine. But who’s the 3rd one, you say?



Master James. That’s who’s number tress.  Bless hims little heart but he cannot handle it when Audrey is sick. He cannot handle the attention that she gets from me and he doesn’t. He cannot handle that he has to entertain himself and so that just frustrates him even more which makes him even more jealous which makes him even HARDER to deal with. But to be honest, I don’t know who he is more jealous over. Me, Audrey or himself? Is it that he doesn’t want me to give any one else attention? Is it that he doesn’t want Audrey to do any thing but play with him? Lord, if I only could figure it/him out. He’s a hand full, that one. But his little face melts my heart almost every time. And so does his gentle, loving spirit when he’s not got his feather’s all ruffled.



We are supposed to be going on a camping trip to the beach with my sister and her family next week and I am keeping my fingers crossed that no one else contracts the big P!! That would be 2 vacay’s down the tubes. Arrrrgggg. Well, we always have the cooler....



I love learning new things. Especially when it makes my life easier. Something is wrong with the plug in from my Light room to Facebook so I was forced to figure out how to export and then find and then upload to FB. {Please no snickering} In doing that I figured out that I could do the same thing to my blog with out a plug-in and I guess that’s what inspired me to blog. I am sooooo slow in the technology department. But, I feel my self coming along. I hope.



Lets see, what other random things can I tell you? Ah, yes. Olivia got out of the tub tonight, pooped on the floor and got back in the tub. Can we say potty training time?!?!?!! Now, if I could only find someone to do it for me.....



My cousin (in-law) Aubrey Nell Sanders designed my snazzy new logo! I just love it. I am now looking to launch the portfolio building part of my business in late August, early September. I’m excited. Nervous as all get out, but excited still the same.




Missing being in Birmingham right now. Missing not being able to partake in the joys of the sweet summertime. Missing a huge chunk out of my wallet right now thanks to all the office visits, x-ray’s and prescriptions. Seriously I spent almost a week’s worth of vacation money in less than 4 hours for medical schtuff. But I am thankful to be able to see that the Lord always provides for our NEEDS and not our wants. We wanted to go to Birmingham. We wanted to do all the stuff we had planned for the week with granddaddy and Nonie. But Audrey needed medical care. And how very thankful I am that we had that money. Even if it was intended for something else. We are blessed!!

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Disney: Day Two Continued

After the wishing pool and Audrey’s purchase in Castle Couture (which took FOREVER) we headed over to Adventureland to ride Pirates again. James wanted to ride with me since I didn’t ride the day before. And might I say that it is very hard to get a picture at Disney with out someone photo bombing it? And in this case there are two....


Olivia fell asleep while SuSu and Paw went to sit in the Tiki Room so while we were waiting on her to wake up, we crossed over into Frontier land to see what we could see and we ran into Clara Bell Cow, Brier Rabbit and the cast of The Country Bear Jamboree!! We also caught (what I like to call) a Disney Flash Mob and even got to participate!








We went to find the rents and Tookie Baby was still asleep on her grandmother’s lap but got woken up soon after we walked up because it came a flood (how country was that?!) and we had to run for cover. It didn’t rain for to long but during that time Olivia played in some nasTy water and the twins and SuSu played a game where SuSU would sing some theme of a Disney movie and they had to guess what movie it was. They giggled a lot during that time!! 


After the rain, we hopped the boat for the Jungle Cruise. That was a big hit, of course. Olivia is still talking about the hippos and the baby elephants taking a bath. And James is still talking about Steve the head hunter that cut off all the heads.....nice.




After the cruise we stopped for supper. We went back to where we had eaten the night before since it was fairly cheap and pretty good and right there in Adventure Land. I think it was Taco Pete’s or something. Any way while we were there, there was a foreign family (imagine a foreigner at Disney!!) sitting behind us and all of a sudden we heard this weird growling noise. Well, it wasn’t even a growling noise; I can’t really explain it except that it was weird with a capital W. And to make it even weirder the guy was making the noise to his infant son. And to make it even weirder, the kid liked it. It went on for so long we just about busted a gut laughing it got so weird. I couldn’t take it. I know you can’t really appreciate it unless you were there!!

Okay, moving on! Of course, we had to ride the Flying Couch before we left AL.






We then headed over to ride the race cars instead of staking out a spot for the parade again. But once we got over there and I heard how loud they were, I knew Olivia wouldn’t want to ride. So I took her and we went to ride Dumbo (again) and see a few characters. It was a sweet time, just me and her. I got to spend some time with each of my kiddos while at Disney and I am so grateful for that. Special times for a mama!!



My camera died right after the picture with Minnie and Jon obviously didn’t have the camera so you will just have to put up with my narrative from here out :)

While me and Liv were doing our thang, the rest of the crew rode the race cars, the Astro Orbiter and the Barn Stormer 2x in a row!! I kept calling, telling them that there was NO LINE to see Goofy and Donald. But James and Audrey just weren’t interested. I must admit, that was very hard for me to accept. They just don’t stay young enough long enough. I’m so glad Olivia was into the characters and not scared of them. It was the salve on my wound. Haha!! Even thought the pictures don’t really show it, Olivia gave big smiles for the Minnie, Daisy, Donald, and Goofy. She got real shy when we got up there and hugged me real tight but she would touch them and blow them kisses. It was so sweet. Ahhh.

We closed the park down that night and it was so sad to leave. None of us wanted to.

I must give a shout out to my amazing mother and father in law. Them going with us and helping so much was a life saver. Our trip would not of been nearly as enjoyable had we not had them there with us. For 2 reasons: Their company and their physical labor!! Seriously, we can’t thank them enough for all they did and for helping us make this trip such an amazing memory for our kids. So, THANK YOU SUSU and PAW PAW for going with us. We love you and hope to do it again soon!!!

Monday, June 3, 2013

Disney 2013: Day Two

We made it back to the hotel Tuesday night a little before midnight and crashed. We were meeting our ticket friend at the gas station across from Hollywood Studios so she could get us free parking!! We were going to Hollywood to ride Toy Story and then hop back over to Magic Kingdom. I knew from mine and Jon’s trip there last May that the Toy Story ride would fill up quick and made it there as soon as we possibly could after the gates opened. But since we had to meet up, park, ride the tram, get a stroller, tell our friend goodbye and how much we appreciated all she had done for us and go the long way around the whole park to check it out (aka: the wrong way!) we made there about 9:45. The wait was already at 85 minutes long and the fast pass was all the way at 3:30. Gah. We did not want to make a trip back over there in the afternoon so we decided to tough it out in line. The wait ended up being way longer than they had posted and we ended up waiting close to 2 hours. I know. At one point I looked at my father in law and said “Do you feel like a fool?” With out hesitating he answered with a “Yes!!!” Haha!! It really was crazy, waiting that long, corralled in there like a herd of cattle. But, it was fun and the kids really enjoyed it! Olivia couldn’t take it though and fell asleep after pitching a little hissy fit. She woke up just before we got on the ride so hers was in a perfect mood!













After the ridiculously long wait at Toy Story, we stopped to eat lunch before heading back to Magic Kingdom. As soon as we got to MK, I had to run to the bathroom and on my way I found Snow White with out a line. I was frantic to find Audrey before the line filled up. But luckily SW wasn’t very popular at that hour and we didn’t have to wait. Olivia was hilarious, she just kept staring at her and didn’t want to leave. Later when her daddy asked her about seeing SW she said “Uh huh make up.” So the make up was what had her so enthralled. I was just glad that Audrey was interested in seeing her!




I’m not real sure at this point if it was then that we split up to take James to do the rocket ship or not but it’s what my pictures show is next so we will just go with it. It seemed like it took forever to finally start doing stuff on Wednesday but after we got back to MK close to 2 PM, we did not stop the rest of the day. Back to the point. James has been talking about going to space in a rocket ship for forever so when Jon saw these he knew he had to take him. I wanted to go too so SuSu and Paw Paw stepped up and took the girls. Not sure what all they did but I know they rode Dumbo. I digress. We took James to do the Rockets and when we got up there I started wishing I had stayed below. I don’t have a fear off heights, per say, but I do tend to freak for some reason if the ride extends out instead of straight up and down. Dumbo gets to me. I don’t like to move the control that makes you go higher. I don’t know. But I kept having to remind myself that I was 31 years old and if the 5 year old was cool with it, I should be too. I was the only and I do mean only rocket ship that did not move during the ride. I stayed on the bottom while all the other’s went up and down. There were a lot of people laughing that were waiting in line. Glad I could amuse them for the time.






When we got out of there I wanted to take James to do the Buz Light year thingy. We thought it was one of those simulated rides and Jon can’t handle those (see I’m not the only baby!) so just me and James ran over there. We lucked out because as soon as we got in line a lady came up and gave us her fast passes so we were on and off in less than 15 min!! It was not simulated and you could make it spin if you wanted to so Jon could of come :( Oh well. It was a good mother/son bonding time!



Oh yes, now I remember. The grandparents and girls also went to ride the carousel and were currently trying to tame the 2 year old that had a melt down because she couldn’t understand why she couldn’t just stay on her horse and keep riding!! We met them at the wishing well. Aren’t they cute?




At this point I realized we had not yet taken a group shot so we stopped in front of the castle.


I love how Mr. Ronnie is the only one looking and smiling!


I am done for the night. Check back tomorrow for more!!