A little October for ya

I have been one busy woman since my last post!! I drove out to Hattiesburg to help throw my sister in law, Angela, a baby shower. And I went by myself. What? Yep, I sure did and I enjoyed every minute of quiet solitude on the way out there and back and even though it was strange and weird and at times a little lonesome, I greatly enjoyed visiting and working with everyone with out having to say ‘No and stop that and don’t climb on that and leave your brother and/or sister alone” 1865 times :) The shower was a huge success, everything went off with out a hitch and Will and Angela received some wonderful things to jump start their soon-to-be-always-adding -to baby collection!!

Emily made the cake banner. So cute!

The homemade sugar scrub Emily and I made. And some straws. Haha!

Em, pinning the corsage

Antique cookie jar from Nenie

All the hosts for the shower

Yes, I realize it’s weird that my hand is on her belly. Sorry not sorry :)

Ashley always does beautiful flowers!!

Mommy and Daddy to be :)

As soon as I got back from the ‘Burg I jumped full force into the King fundraising project and I do mean PROJECT. I really had not anticipated the huge amount of work that goes into it and had my eyes opened wide to fundraising. And I do mean WIDE. Hats off to you people who do it on a regular basis. And especially to those who don’t wait until the last minute!! Wow. I plan on devoting a whole post one day to the numerous things I learned during the 6 days I ate, slept, dreamed and panicked those Kay-Row shirts :)

I’ve also organized a little daily shooting project for myself and another good friend who’s starting to get her feet wet in photography. I get bogged down so much with life and the numerous photos that I have and have yet to print that I find myself not even wanting to pick up my camera a lot of times. And my skills are suffering for it. Hoping that having a friend to talk about daily photos with and a little motivation for picking up that camera every day will get me back in the swing of things!

Yesterdays theme was “Shake it off!”

Early morning drama

I wake the kids up at 6:30 every morning. That gives them plenty of time to get dressed, brush teeth, eat breakfast and forget a few things :) Well, Olivia came down stars this morning at 6:30 and asked if she could wake up James and Audrey. I’m thinking that was not the best idea, even if I went up about 2 minutes after her. Within that time frame, Olivia some how managed to stuff 3 of Audrey’s Lego’s into the holes on James’ Lego table which sent my at-times-overly-dramatic-7 year old-daughter into a a sobbing-door-slamming-almost-fit. Which made Olivia drop her shoulders, hang her head and say “I told her I was so sorry Mama. She makes my feelings go away” and then she sulks off down the hallway wailing while Audrey is sobbing and getting dressed in her closet with the door closed. During all this mayhem, James ran into his bed and “hurt” his shoulder which landed him in a ball on the floor sobbing. I guess since his sisters were crying James felt like he was getting left out and needed to join in. I kid, I kid :) All this happened in less than 5 minutes and I was left standing in James’ room very bewildered and trying not to laugh at the breakdown of huge proportions happened so quickly. Life is fun around here and as some comedian that we like to watch said one time “People with ONE kid just don’t count!"

A Mustache’s Lady Bug

The big 7 partay went off without a hitch on Saturday. And there was NO cake drama. Can you BELIEVE it??!! Well, ok maybe there was a little bit, on Friday. I attempted a do-it-yourself tie dye cake and it was horrible. Reeeellly, reeeeellly bad, I tell ya!! But as I get older and more wiser     I know my history with birthday cakes and decided to try my hand at something really different when no one else was around and have a simple no fuss, no stress, all icing out of a pre made tube Plan B. Plan B worked very well when Plan A went to pot. That Plan A cake could very well go on a top 5 list of epic Pinterest fails :) 

They got to play for an hour on the gymnastics floor and just had a wonderful time! All 17 children never stopped running or jumping and there were no injuries which is always a good thing!!

We had an hour and a half at the Y before we had to pack it up and make way for the next party. I wasn’t to thrilled with that, considering what we paid them I felt like it would of been nice to give us at least an extra 15-30 min but whatever! We made it work. It was kinda like, here jam this cake in your mouth then wash it down with a sip of your drink. Now come over here and open all these presents. Do it quickly but don’t loose any thing especially the cards. Happy Birthday now we have to leave :)

The only thing I was really disappointed in because of the rush to get out of there was that we didn’t have enough time for the photo booth like I wanted. I snapped these 1st three before everyone got there thank goodness cause it was just madness and mayhem afterwards to try and get it done.

Olivia’s expression (bless it) just cracks me up. Is this not the typical disgruntled, over stimulated birthday party look? If you will notice in the bottom right hand corner she has a little band aid on her finger. Just moments before she smashed it in the water fountain and then somebody had the audacity to get that princess crown before she did and she had to wait her turn. It is HARD being 3 years old.

p.s. i was also really frustrated with the horrible lighting and i had to deal with some pretty ferocious color casts. my hard headed self worked it out in manual for most of the time and when i switched over to auto it was even worse so the fun processing i had in mind for the photo booth pics was sorta a wash. pun intended :)

Birthdays, Baby Showers, Kings and Another Continent

October is just two days away and I still find our calendar just as busy as it was during the Summer. How does this happen? Does life ever slow down? Granted, we are home Sunday-Thursday nights usually just the 5 of us but every.single.weekend. is filled with company or out of town trips from now through Christmas almost. And it started 2 weeks after school! Don’t get me wrong, we LOVE having people visit us and we LOVE to visit. But it just seems like our life never stops being...busy. Maybe January and February will be slow and quiet months for us. Maybe. And maybe, just maybe, if we didn’t have all these things going on in our lives we would be bored and I’d be blogging about how we never get to DO anything and how bored I am. Haha!!

Anyway, the twins have their big birthday party this Saturday. I say big because we decided to do an “event” party and are giving them one at the YMCA in the gymnastics room. It is gonna be a fun day and they are oh so excited! I am making the cakes again, so stay tuned for that drama. You know I always represent in the cake drama department :)

Next Saturday I am helping to give a baby shower for my sister in law, Angela and even though I am not looking forward to the drive I am really excited for the shower! We’ve been brain storming really hard on it and it’s gonna be fab! And it’s always so exciting to celebrate a new little someone being born into the family, especially the FIRST for a new mama and especially when it’s the little brother and his wife who have celebrated 7 nieces and nephews being born into this world. It’s their turn now! We can’t wait!!

Oh and I can’t forget how I volunteered myself to go and read with some 1st graders on a regular basis once or twice a week and how my darling baby boy (that has paws for hands and feet now) was nominated for King “of the whole school” by his class mates again and how I decided that I had to let him do it this year since he was nominated last year and I didn’t let him do it cause it just to much work. But I’m a sucker for punishment so you can find me between now and October 18th on the middle school hall selling pizza at break time in the hopes that those hungry middle school boys will buy enough pizza to crown my son King. Hahahaha!!! More on that to come, don’t worry!

My daddy is heading out for his 6th trip to Africa on the 12th of October. It always leaves me with  apprehensive to think of him going over there but especially so this time it light of all the crazy, dangerous evils and illness that are taking place in that direction right now. We all got to spend some time with him last week and it did all of us a lot of good to see him before he goes, so I am very thankful for that. And I am very thankful for his faithfulness to minister to our people over there. His steadfastness in the faith is very humbling. But I will be glad when this trip is over and he is back home where our lives are still quiet and peaceful. Pray for him, please. For his safety and health as well as for the Brother that will be making the trip with him. And for the brothers and sisters in Christ that they will be ministering to.

I’m NOT lazy!

For years I have been trying to figure myself out and have recently come to the conclusion that it’s an impossibility to do so. I have these spurts of creativity and great motivation where bam bam bam I turn projects out left and right, I never put my camera down, my house stays spotless for days at a time, no body is looking for laundry in the morning rush, I exercise, eat and sleep right, and I put Paula Deen to shame. And then somewhere, out of nowhere, I have 10 projects that I can’t even start, not sure if I even know where my camera is, my house looks like a tornado lives here(or 5), nobody can find any clean clothes in the morning rush, I stay up way to late, I eat ice cream right before I go to bed and the SHRED dvd gets “lost” and instead of putting Paula to shame I’m making my grandmother roll over in her grave. There’s lots more I could add to the “how my week goes wrong” list but I need to draw the line somewhere!

If there was some kind of magical way to make everything go right and smoothly 100% of the time my goodness I wish someone would pass the fairy dust!! But I think I have just come to the conclusion that life is tough and some days are better than others. Profound, I know! And you just have to learn to accept it and when you have bad days, look forward to the good days and when you have good days WORK YOUR BEHIND OFF cause it might be a few weeks before you have another monstrous spurt of energy that allows you to accomplish more than the surviving basics!

All that being said, I have managed to clean up my hard drive, SCORE! But am still working on organizing and then choosing some to print. It’s rather overwhelming but I did it to myself so I shan’t complain. 

As for this here blog, good grief!! SO MUCH has happened that I have not cataloged I don’t even know where to begin. That’s overwhelming as well. Not to mention the crazy summer we had, the busy fall we are having and the even busier winter that lies ahead!! There are just not enough hours in a day. And to think that I even contemplate the very IDEA of homeschooling when I get so frustrated with the ridiculous common core math that my 1st graders are coming home with. Somebody just shoot me now.

Happy Thursday everybody :)

Just a little something

Finally finished up some pics for my sis-in-law that I took over summer vacation. Yay me! It took me long enough, didn’t it? :) So now I move on to purging and organizing and then hopefully printing!!! Then maybe I can actually finish a workshop I started in July. I wanted to blog today but didn’t want to upload any new stuff so I decided to share some of the pics I worked on for part of said workshop. Different editing styles and such and grasping a much more in-depth knowledge of Lightroom. It was an awesome class and I am looking forward to finishing it up!! Anywho, the last picture of Audrey, well, we have ALL laughed and laughed at it!! I am so thankful that my children have such a great sense of humor!! Wonder where in the world they could of picked that up?

Movin on down the tracks

Another Summer is over. All their new clothes are washed and folded and put away, waiting for them to pick which one they will wear on their first day of 1st grade. Their new book bags and lunch boxes are ready and waiting for their little hands to pick them up. We go to open house this afternoon and meet their new teachers and see who will be in their class. Exciting times!

Our Summer has been so busy (as they usually are) we are all ready for a little routine to come back into our lives. Although, the alarm clock is going to be awfully rude in the morning when it wakes me up. I’m not usually a late sleeper or the kind of person who likes to lay in the bed for awhile after they wake up but this Summer I have been. I don’t know if its because we have been so busy or if because Olivia is at the age where I don’t have to get up and stay up with her. Either way, I’ve fallen into a lazy habit and tomorrow is going to come early.

Hard to believe our babies are entering the 1st grade. I’m nervous about this year more than I have been the previous two years. I guess because I’m unsure about their teachers and the fact that 1st grade is going to be more intense than Kindergarten. I am looking forward to seeing their bright smiles when I pick them up everyday though and when Olivia and I go to join them for lunch on Wednesdays. And I am looking forward to some more time with just me and Olivia. I also have high hopes for myself this year on time management and organizing my pictures and printing some of them out to put in books and hang on the walls. Don’t laugh too hard at that last sentence. I’m trying not to :)