Monday, April 27, 2009

Another Birthday!

Saturday was my brother, Ray's, birthday!  Of course he celebrated in Tuscaloosa by going to tons of Alabama baseball games and eating at Dreamland BBQ.  That's no surprise that that's how he chose to celebrate!  I honestly have not met too many people that are bigger Alabama fans than Ray!

Ray turned the BIG 3-0 and I can't believe that my siblings and I are quickly heading toward those numbers.  Scary.

If you don't know my family then you don't know that my brother has CP and you may not know that he was not supposed to live and IF he did he was going to be a vegetable who couldn't do anything or walk, talk, or perhaps hear.  Hmmm....I don't really think so!
Judd, Ray holding JM, and me.
Judd, Ray holding JM, and me.

Here we are at the wedding!


And, Oh, he loves him some John Michael!  He's been trying to feed him chicken or Bar-B-Q off his plate for a couple of months now.  I think he's just excited for John Michael to be able to eat "big boy" food!


Happy Birthday Uncle Ray!  We'll see you in less than a week!

Saturday, April 25, 2009

A Little Catch Up

I caught John Michael trying to pull himself up from under the high chair!  He eventually pulled up but couldn't really stand up under it!



Oh the joys of pulling up, cruising around, and crawling wherever you want! 


I meant to post this next picture a while back, but of course, I forgot.  I thought it was cute!  We went to Rick's Bakery for breakfast and John Michael had a great time.  He was enjoying his spoon!



And, another picture I forgot to post is from the park about a week or two ago.  JM and I walked over to our neighborhood park since Jordan was stuck at work.  Instead of playing on the playground he wanted to push the stroller and play with the wheels!



Have a happy weekend!  We've got yard work, planting flowers, and groceries in our future!


Verse O' the Day:



Behold, God is my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid; for the LORD GOD is my strength and song.

Isaiah 12:2

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Bowl-A-Rama

Eh, the car is in the shop and lucky us, the vin # is NOT included in the recall even though it's doing exactly what the recalled cars are doing.  It's looking like we'll be kissing our sweet emergency fund good-bye right in time to go to Disney World.  As is life!



Last week was Parent's Night Out at church and met friends from Sunday School and ate dinner, then went bowling.  I haven't been bowling in forever and I had the lowest score of one game!  It was "Crazy Shirt Night" and you can see how crazy Jordan and I got:


Oh, we're so crazy, we wore college shirts!  We had a great time but bowled terribly!


Last week was also playgroup and I'm just now getting around to posting the pictures!  I was so excited when I got there and realized that Robin was bringing Caleb for the first time and Kelly was bringing Harper!  What a fun day at playgroup to welcome precious new life!



Robin and Caleb
Robin and Caleb


How precious is Caleb?!  He's so cute and was starting to smile a little at the ceiling fan!



Kelly with Harper
Kelly with Harper


And how cute is Harper?  She was so good the whole time and enjoyed watching everything that was going on.  She even took a little nap!


John Michael and Sarah Kate were also interested in the ceiling fan!  Too funny!


John Michael says Hello!  I hope you all have a wonderful Wednesday.  We've got some great Spring weather today so hopefully we'll be able to take advantage of it and get outside!

Monday, April 20, 2009

Disney and a Garge Sale

What do Disney and a garage sale have in common, you may ask?  Well, if you're us you have a fantastic garage sale in which to make money to take to Disney so that you can eat while you're there! 

To make a long story short, we were thinking about doing Disney in the Fall with a more manageable 18 month old, but for certain work reasons Jordan thought it wasn't a good idea for him to leave for a whole week this fall.

Fast forward to a week ago and we bit the bullet and frantically searched airline tickets, called the military resort on Disney property that we'll be staying at to see if, by some miracle, they had any openings, and aligned our travel schedules with Jordan's mom and Nat and everything worked out perfectly.

Now, if you know me you know why I could not book a trip to Florida (that didn't involve sitting at the beach) in June/July/August.  I am the most whiney/complaining person when I get remotely hot or start having frizzy hair issues.  All of that would happen in the Summer walking for miles on end and standing in line for rides at Disney.  Jordan can just hear the "I'm ho-o-o-t, It's hot here" coming from my mouth on a daily basis.

Everything worked out for us to leave right after John Michael's first birthday party.  We'll do JM's party on Friday, Baby Dedication at church on Sunday (with lots of family still here from JM's first birthday to see it!) and then fly out with Gran and Gamps early Monday morning!



Disney World, here we come and we can't wait!  I've gotten several travel books, called to make our reservations for character breakfast, the underwater restaurant at Nemo and Friends, and a special night out for just Jordan and me! 


I'm actually most excited about going to Epcot.  From what I remember it was my favorite place.  This trip will be very interesting with a one year old and we probably won't do all the things we're really wanting to do, but I know it's going to be great and John Michael will be interested in all the sights and sounds.  I'm positive we'll have thousands of pictures by the time we get back!


I'm like a little kid again, waiting on vacation!  Is it sad to get so excited over this?!


And just for fun, here's a picture of Jackson helping us at the yard sale.  He was a big hit and everyone wanted to pet him and know what kind of dog he was!  He was a little nervous because we were selling so much stuff he thought he would be next!  Uhhh...you'll probably only get that joke if you're a Dave Ramsey fan!  Thank you Dave Ramsey for helping make a Disney trip possible for a family with a baby and a stay-at-home mom!



Verse O' the Day:


See to it that no one misses the grace of God.



Hebrews 12:15

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Bump It or Lose It

I can no longer keep quite!  I hide a secret shame of really, really wanting to order an item from an infomercial.  It's for my hair and I have no doubt it will make it look totally fabulous.

The only problem is that I laughed so hard the first time I saw it that I almost peed my pants.  Now, after a couple of times of seeing the commercial I decided that, although it's cheesy, I think it would work!

It. Is. Genius.  It is Bumpits!


Now, this one simple device would take part of the agony of hair drying/styling out of my morning routine.  Because, you know, I always wash and style my hair everyday.


Do I not spend hair drying time with my big red can of big sexy hair root boost, then separate drying of the top section with a round brush, then hair spray, then velcro rollers held in place for at least 30 minutes in an attempt to get some semblance of volume out of this hair??


While you may not ever see me wearing one of these, you'll know I was secretly wishing my hair was styled as so:




Y'all, it's just so darn cute and snazzy. Oh, be quiet my southern heart which longs for big ole Texas hair.  The end.  Have happy weekend!

(All images property of www.bumpits.com)

Happy Happy Birthday!

Happy, Happy Birthday to my best friend, Joan!  Yesterday was her birthday so now she's all old like me!


Joan and I lived down the street from one another growing up and went to school together all throughout elementary, middle, and high school and we even roomed together our freshman year in college.  She got used to my sleep walking ways and I got used to her hibernation-like sleeping habits!


Joan is the mommy to 6 (yes 6!) dogs and lives out in the country now.  It's so quite when you go to their house!  She's always the one person who can make me laugh the most and each of us has to immediately call the other if we find out a really good bit of gossip.  Jordan knows that if we're on the phone he might as well go do something else because it's gonna be a while before I'm off!


Here's Joan and her husband, Clay!  They've known each other as long as Jordan and I have and they also started dating in high school.  Awwww!



Here's Joan and a much more tanned version of myself at Joan's wedding!  We had the best day!



And here's Joan and myself at my wedding, although I've got some sort of "crazy-eyes" thing going on!  That was also a fun day!  Joan took the place of my sister since I don't have one and did all the things your sister would do for you on your wedding day.



Last, but not least, here's Joan meeting John Michael for the first time.  She's never (& probably never will) forgiven me for moving so far away AND having a baby that she can't see all the time!





If I wasn't lazy I could pull out tons of pictures of us through the years, but these are the ones that I have handy on the old laptop!  Happy Birthday, Joan!  We hope you had a fantastic day and a memorable birthday with yummy birthday cake!  We miss you!





Verse O' the Day:

“Because he loves me,” says the LORD, “I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. He will call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.”

Psalm 91:14-15

Monday, April 13, 2009

Easter, Part Two

It still feels weird to us to not be with our families on Easter Sunday.  That's just one weird part about living so far away from family; it just seems odd to not go over to someone's house after church to eat!  Since it was just the three of us we opened JM's presents that the Easter bunny brought, ate breakfast, and then headed to church.  It was a dreary, cold, icky Easter Sunday but we were so glad to go hear a fantastic service. 



John Michael got a few presents and cards from the Easter bunny.

 



He really likes the new drumsticks!


Still playing with the drumsticks.



This squishy animals feels funny!



Luckily we took family pictures before church!  JM fell asleep 2 minutes before we got to church, thus he never napped that morning in nursery.  Fun!  He was a bit unhappy that afternoon because he was so tired!  He finally went down for a long nap later in the afternoon and all was well! 



In preparation of John Michael's first Easter, I made a bunny cake that was ummm...well...you can take a look yourself.  I am no Ace of Cakes.  Oh yeah, and I didn't attach his ears because I was too tired, so he's earless.




Happy Easter!  We hope everyone had a great day of rest and family time!


A Hunting We Will Go

Because we have so many Easter pictures, I thought I would divide up my Easter post into a few different posts! 

I honestly never know how tiresome getting Easter stuff together could be...and I didn't even decorate or anything!  Saturday morning we headed to Fayetteville to get JM's first birthday cake ordered.  It's going to be soo cute!  We're not going overboard for his party, but it's going to be cute and jungely (is that a word?)!

After Fayetteville we headed back home and went to an Easter Egg Hunt!  Stephanie, from Sunday School, had people over for an egg hunt and we had a great time!  Now that JM's a little more mobile he could crawl around and search for the eggs.  Just so darn cute!
Parker enjoying the sunshine!
Parker enjoying the sunshine!

There's some eggs!
There's some eggs!




[caption id="attachment_791" align="alignnone" width="225" caption="Yay eggs!"]Yay eggs![/caption]








[caption id="attachment_796" align="alignnone" width="225" caption="What is this pine straw stuff?"]What is this pine straw stuff?[/caption]



We had a great Sunday even though it was freezing and pouring rain!  The Easter service was wonderful and the music was fantastic.  Our choir and orchestra really outdo themselves every year.  I have JM's professional pictures back, but my WordPress won't let me upload them.  I was so excited to post them but it won't let me.  Maybe I can find another to get them posted.  JM with the bunny is priceless!  Have a happy Monday!

Verse O' the Day:

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.

Colossians 3:23

Friday, April 10, 2009

The Kid Stays in the Picture

Before John Michael started crawling around everywhere I could take as many pictures as I wanted.  He would sit in one place and my pictures usually turned out pretty good.

Well, now it's a different story!  The kid does not stay in the picture so well.  Most of our recent pictures end up looking like this:




It's definitely a lot harder to get good pictures since he's become more mobile.




And of course, here's the two best pals!


In addition to being more mobile and crawling, John Michael is starting to really cruise around and stand up on his own.  He loves his music/activity tables and he can pull up on them now!



I'm gonna stand up all by myself!
I'm gonna stand up all by myself!


For some reason he had an Elvis smile going on in all these pictures.  His lip was turned up in all of them!  This is the best I could do!



I did it myself!
I did it myself!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter weekend.  We've got some fun family activities planned so it should be a great First Easter for John Michael. We wish we were going to be home with family, but we're not.  

I hope we can all remember that Easter isn't about the Easter Bunny, dying eggs, or Reese's peanut butter eggs (ummm, that one's for me) but it's truly about the death and resurrection of Christ, our Savior.  Let HIM be ever near to our minds and hearts in the coming days as we think about what HE went through and sacrificed for all of us.  It's a sad time if you really think about it, in a way, but it's also a joyous time because........THE TOMB IS EMPTY!  HE'S ALIVE!