A good Christmas!

I think everyone had a good Christmas here. Hannah had been asking for a pillow pet since early November. I actually bought the wrong one and a week before Christmas was scrambling to get the right one, a ladybug. Thankfully Kroger had one left. She also got several other toys and books but her favorite is the pillow pet. Trey enjoyed opening gifts too. He really likes the puzzles his Aunt Beppy got him. He also enjoys the fire house Santa brought him. I have two favorite gifts. The large painting DJ bought me for the new house. He picked it out all by himself. I love it. And the cleaning service gift certificate my MIL bought me. I just hope we can continue it. But not likely. It will be nice to have someone else clean even if it is just once. Hope everyone else had a great Christmas too.

First Christmas Turkey

On Wednesday we had Christmas at my house. My mom and brothers came with their significant others and their kids (Brandon is the only one with kids.) It was kinda of a last minute plan. I had to clean the house in a matter of days and prepare some kind of dinner. I have never cooked a turkey and so I thought this would be a good time to try. If anything went wrong we could always get KFC or Pizza Hut! I decided this on Monday. I have not bought my turkey yet and I was supposed to have it ready for Wednesday night. Now for the ones who have cooked a turkey are probably thinking that I am crazy and don't have enough time to thaw the turkey. Well you are right! I had the turkey almost completely thawed when I put it in the oven. I cooked it according to the recipe and it was beautiful! Until we cut into one of the legs. The breast and other leg was cooked thru, but that one side must have not thawed completely! So now I know not to wait till two days before to cook/thaw a turkey. The cooked portions were really yummy though!


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Eclipse Movie

The Eclipse movie came out last night at midnight. My mom, sister-in-law Betsy and I went. It was great. We didn't have to stand in line long before they started letting us in to set. We arrived at Rave about 9:30, got pretty good seats and enjoyed each others company until the movie began. As far as the movie goes I really enjoyed it. It was better than New Moon. I loved every bit of it. And it followed the story line pretty well. I am very sleepy today and will be taking a nap soon, but worth the girls night and movie!

Where to vacation?

My family and some friends were planning to vacation this August in Panama City Beach. Due to oil spill we have decided not to go this year. I hate how the oil is effecting the gulf. Not because it has ruined our vacation but because it is ruining business there and the environment. I won't get on my soap box, but I sure do hope we can fix this soon for all parties involved. Anyway, DJ still has vacation time set aside for a week and now we are wondering what to do. Going to the lake and renting a cabin/condo is more expensive than going to Florida. We have promised Hannah earlier in the year we would go back to the beach this year and she constantly talks about it. I can't bring myself to tell her the sad news before we make other arrangements. So, my question is for ideas of where to vacation that is fun for all ages, not farther of a drive than to Florida and not more expensive. Anyone have a place in mind?

Hannah's trip to the ER

In Texas I had to take Hannah to the ER. She looked like she had a spider bite but it only ended up being a staph infection. O took some pics with my phone an I have finally gotten around to posting them.



Swollen ankle on the right side. It was very hot and very hard to the touch. This was called cellulitis.


Infected bug bite maybe from a fire ant on left big toe.

Lefty or Righty?

Trey is learning how to use his spoon. At first he would primarly use his right hand. Lately he has been using his left and doing a better job too. I know it is too early to say if he is a righty or lefty, but it is fun to speculate. DJ would love for him to be a left handed pitcher and play baseball. I guess it really doesn't matter to me. I wonder how hard it would be to teach him how to write left handed since I write with my right. I have dome time to figure that out I guess!

Trip to Texas = Disaster (updated)

All my distant family lives in Texas (my side). Since I have been married I have made the 7.5 hour trip to see my family a total of 3 times. I would love to see them more regular but every time I travel there without DJ something major happens.

Six years ago a friend and I traveled down to visit and the morning we were leaving a big, loaded down truck headed to a construction site ran a red light and totaled my car. My friend hurt her arm and went to the ER. DJ and my friends fience rushed down to pick us up. They made the trip in 6 hours and still had on their golf shoes from their game they just started when we called.

Two years ago my brother Matt, Hannah and I flew down for a 50th wedding anniversary. DJ was going to drive down an pick us up and then drive back. On the way down Hannah dislocated her elbow and we went to the ER. The dislocation didn't correct itself until 4 or 5 days later. I can't remember exactly. Also on this trip my grandmother had a blocked bowel and was severly sick and had emergency surgery.

This time was going to be the breaker of all bad things and everything was going to go smoothly. DJ had to work and so once again I was going onle with the kids, my bro Matt and his girlfriend. In Saturday while getting everyone ready for my family reunion I noticed Hannah had a sore on her left toe. it looked infected but I figured it would be fine with some ointment and a band-aid. then I noticed her right ankle was swollen and hard. The swollen ankle made me decide to take her to a doctor. Since I am from out of town and it being a Saturday I decided I would take her to the same ER we visited 2 years ago. GREAT! Turns out they were seeing a lot of staph and said she had MRSA staph. the doc gave her a prescription and sent us on to the reunion.
The rest of the trip was going fine and the night before we were going to leave I felt we were out of the woods. only to find a big tree limb laying on top of my car. My grandmother has several Arizona Ash trees in her yard and they are all about 30 years old and huge. One of the bigger more heavier limbs fell and landed on a smaller one and then both landed on top of my car. Thankfully the smaller limb broke the fall but it was still a big mess. It was around 12:40 in the morning I noticed it and so I called my uncle and with his help ad my mother and brothers we were able to cut off the limb little by little. We finished around 2am and I was finally able to go to bed. I got about 4 hours of sleep before having to get up and drive home. The car survived with only a few surface scratches. We did make it home safely, but I will not be going back with out DJ ever again. and DJ said the same!

How old am I?

I am 26, but feel more like 16. Yesterday I received an email announcing early ticket sales for Twilight's Eclipse. So I jumped on it thinking I would see a showing with DJ that Wednesday or Thursday.

Pause here for a minute and lets go back to last Fall...a friend of mine, my sister-in-law and I decided to see the midnight showing when it came out. However she is going to be unable to watch it with me until opening weekend. So I decided I was too old to go to the midnight showing and settled to see it with my less enthused husband (who is awesome to set thru a movie he claims is torture).

Now back to the present. Tickets when on sale yesterday and I had an idea. My mom has recently read the last too books (after watching the first and second movie) and is now hooked and a Twihard like myself. I thought that it would be much more fun to watch the movie the first time with someone who would really enjoy it so I asked her if she would like to see it with me. She said yes. So I called my SIL and she said yes too.

Now why do I feel so young again? Well like a little teenage girl, my mother, SIL and I are going to the midnight showing of Eclipse. And we are all so excited. (and maybe a bit crazy!) It's nice to feel young again though.

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Trying something new!

I haven't been on here in a long time. most of that is due to not using my computer as much. I use my phone for Facebook and email. I found this app today that let's me post text to my blog here. They said soon they will add picture posting. So maybe I will be able to do a better job keeping this up to date as well.

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SNOW DAY!!!

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The last two times it has snowed (and I use that term loosely) Hannah wasn't allowed to go out due to sickness. So this time I made sure she had her snow time! She was so excited to go out and play. Here are a few pics from Monday.

All smiles!

"Hey, I want to go out too! Mom, don't forget me!"
Pretty!

Snowball Fight!

"HEY...I WANT TO THROW A SNOWBALL TOO!!!"

Time to come in...she wasn't happy!

On Monday it snowed for a couple of hours and then rained the rest of the day. DJ had to stay in Searcy because of the roads and so I was left to keep the kids. Not a big deal unless your oldest wants to go out and play and your youngest is just too small to play out in the snow. I didn't want to get Trey out because he doesn't really have a good winter coat and I didn't want to have to hold him the whole time while trying to take photos too. SO, he stayed inside and Hannah got to play for about 5 minutes. I told her we would come back out when he went down for a nap, but by the time that happened it was raining. I decided to keep her in and she would get to go out on Tuesday! Here are some pics from today (while Trey was napping).

The skinny snowman (I didn't have great snow to work with) I built for Hannah and her new sassy pose.

Lexi had a great time walking on top of the frozen snow.

Sledding! As most Arkansans I don't own a sled. So, I made one from a storage box top and used the frozen over snow on our driveway for Hannah to sled down. She had a blast! When DJ got home around 6 he took her back out and sled some more.

She attempted to make a snow angel, but the snow was just too hard. It made a small impression.

Gymnastics Party

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Hannah's neighborhood friend, Macy, had her birthday party at River City Gymnastics this year. I was super excited to take her because I wanted to see if she would be interested in doing gymnastics on a regular basis. We took her (about 10 months ago) to a free class and she didn't want anything to do with the kids or the coaches. It might have been an age issue or the fact that Trey was just born...who knows. We didn't go back. So, this time was another test for her. SHE LOVED IT!

She is swinging from the bars (with a little help from Coach Kyle).

You might have to click to make the picture bigger. She was so excited about swing and falling into the foam pit!
Here she is jumping thru the obstacle coarse like a pro. I didn't know if she would be able to do some of these things, but she surprised me. She did an excellent job and had so much fun.

Jumping again!

Climbing up the pirate ship to slide down into the foam pit. I was surprised that she could do this all by herself and didn't need anyone to show her how to do it either.

I think we are going to sign her up for gymnastics this fall. I don't know if we will go back to Leah's in Benton or go to River City in Little Rock. RC is much bigger and seems to be a better facility (one she will excel in). But we will have to compare prices and all that stuff. She is excited and said she wanted to go back...so I will keep you posted on that one.

The Wonder Place

I took the kids to The Wonder Place the end of January. Our church paid for the kids and half of my price and so we were not going to miss it. Hannah really likes going there to play in the tree house, the market, the wind tunnels and the sand. This was Trey's first time to go. He had fun chewing on wooden blocks and playing with his friend J. Here are some pictures!

Hannah playing with the wind tunnel

Hannah playing under the tree house in the wooden kitchen
Trey having a good time playing in the "under 2" area.

This doesn't have anything to do with The Wonder Place, but I thought it was too funny not to post. Hannah got mad at Trey for "bugging" her while she was coloring, so she retaliated...and marked on his head with a blue marker.

Snow, Goose Egg, and Teething...

This is the extent of the snow that fell at our house. It started in the morning around 8am and was gone by noon...I mean melted completely. Hannah didn't even really get to play in it...so no pictures of that.

This was Hannah's idea of keeping Trey away from the Christmas stuff while we took down our tree. I couldn't stop laughing. She finally let her prisoner loose!
Trey got his first goose egg on his forehead this week. It scared me to death. It is amazing how fast it swelled up. He wouldn't hold still for me to get a better picture. But this pose does show his teeth pretty well. He has four total and is working on one on the top, but you can't see it here.

This is my remedy for Trey's teething habits. He has started to teeth on the bed rails. I looked online for a solution and found two. There were some soft "gummie" covers that had BAD reviews. They were just too expensive to try. And the other option were cloth covers. They had much better reviews but there were kinda expensive too. And there was no guaranty they would fit right. So I decided to make my own. Here are the results. They don't match his room, but hopefully they will save his crib from being damaged. (Just pretend you don't see a pink sheet, we use Hannah's old sheets in addition to Trey's blue ones!)

Hannah the Cosmetologist

Hannah got her scissors Tuesday night and cut her hair...short. Here is a picture before she cut it...isn't she pretty with long hair!

Here is a picture the morning after...she was so proud! She cut her bangs, sides and top pretty short. The sides and top are all chopped at different lengths.

Not sure why she is frowning here...she was actually quite happy. But here is a side view.
This is after I took her to my hairdresser. She was able to salvage most of it. Her bangs are much shorter and her back is like a bob. She still has places on the sides and top that are different lengths, but there was nothing she could do about it.

I was really in shock...and so sad when I noticed what she had done. But more than anything I was mad at myself (and DJ) for not putting the scissors up when she was finished. Hopefully it will grow out some before her birthday in February. We will see. I am having some cute bows made so she wont look so much like a boy! Maybe that will be the difference.