TIme for a Change

So, a friend of ours was showing us some of the cool things that come with having a Wordpress blog. I had no desire to change cause really I thought it would be sooooo much work. Well, last night I decided to see how hard it would be just for fun. They had my blog name available, so that was easy. Then I went to import my blog and it was soooooooo easy. Like, click on a button and within 10minutes all my post had been imported. At this point I'm thinking "Why Not?" SO, we've moved. I'm going to try Wordpress out for a bit and see how it goes. Come visit us at www.thehappeningsofthejames.wordpress.com I won't be deleting my blogger just yet. If you have any tips for wordpress I would love to hear about it. Or if you have any negatives, I would like to know those as well. See you over there :)

The big 3-0

Sarah and Lucy share the same birthday. It seemed appropriate to have Sarah and her husband, Charlie, over to celebrate with us. We even lit a candle and sang to her :) We lived across the street from each other growing up and our parents still live in those houses. She has always been a good friend. Sarah- We hope you had a superb birthday!!!! We love you bunches and look forward to many more celebrations.

I couldn't resist throwing in an old picture. My options were limited, I only have 3 scanned in from our childhood. Gotta love the puff paint shirt :)

Happy 1st Birthday, Lucy!

It was one year ago today that we welcomed our baby girl Lucy into the world. We celebrated today with a little party. There was pizza and cupcakes and lots of great presents. Honestly, I'm a little tired, so I will just post a few pictures for now and post another time with more pictures and more details. Thanks to everyone that joined us in celebrating lil Lu Lu's first birthday.....to be continued :)

She is so about to be walking!! She can walk, but not "full time" just yet.

lady bug and butterfly cupcakes

I'm thinking she liked the cupcake :)

Eli liked them, too, a lot.Lucy was sharing her last bite of cupcake with Eli. so sweet....or maybe she was tempting him with it......I'll go with sharing it :)

belated bday

My birthday was a couple weeks back and I started to blog about it and had no pictures! :( I was sad about that, but it was such a great day. Why post today about it? Well, my mom was out of town on my birthday, so today she treated me to a day of shopping as my present from her and before we left I made sure to take a picture. My Mema came with us. Rewind to my actual bday......I woke up to Eli telling me he had gone to get doughnuts and kolaches (I love ham & cheese kolaches from Shipley). It was about 8:45! I got to sleep in!! That was nice. Then while we were having breakfast my beautiful, thoughtful husband brought me a bday card. In it was instructions to be ready by 10am. He had arranged for me to spend the day with one of my best friends, Whitney, and gave me some spending money. We went shopping and to a movie. What a treat for him to take off so I could have a day off. We came back to my house around dinner time and Nathan had prepared a yummy dinner and had invited Whit, Peter and their boys to join us. While I was out shopping, and what not, the kids that I keep on Wed had delivered flowers to my house. Since I wasn't there to see them Nathan got the video camera out and got them on tape singing with the flowers. After dinner we had a yummy cheesecake, courtesy of Bekah and she also sent a funny card. He had also packed up toys and put them in the attic for me. That is something I had been meaning to do for some time now. It was a great day. So, there it is on record: How I spent my 28th birthday. I should also mention that I got several sweet cards, phone calls and gifts. Thank you to everybody for being so thoughtful. I felt very loved.

Since we were all there and taking a picture we decided to get a 4 generation one, too.

Muddy Waters

So if you have kept up with our blog you know that we have a muddy spot in our front yard that kids are attracted to. It is where our tire goes EVERY time we back out making a rut and then the neighbors sprinkler water runs straight to it every day making it muddy ALL the time. Well, yesterday it was especially muddy due to the heavy rain. I keep 3 extra kiddos on Wed. We originally went out to have a water balloon fight, but I realized real quick that I should have been more prepared and filled the balloons up earlier. It took like 15-20 minutes to get about 15 full of water and tie them off. About the time that our 45second water fight ended (seriously that fast, the balloons busted so easy) they discovered how much deeper the mud hole was due to the rain. At first I told them they could play, but not to dump it on each other, ya know, trying to keep the muddiness to a minimum. Then after a little conversing with my mother in law we decided that there was enough time for them to really get after it and take a bath before their mom pulled up. It was a wild last hour of the day, but boy was it worth it!!! They had a blast. I think the pictures speak for themselves.

the erff

Eli made a scroll thingy at church on Sunday. Later that day he was showing it to me and told me it was a picture of "the erff (earth) and sea" As we were playing that night he started talking about the "erff" again. I'm not sure where this came from, but I love hearing him say earth. Such a sweetie.......a rough and tuff boy, but still mommy's sweetie.

this morning

This morning came about 4 to 5 hours too early for me. Eli started calling out "MOOOMMMMYYYY!" around 6:30ish. I had gone to bed way too late, so even though it wasn't much earlier than usual, it was because I hadn't slept long enough. So, I get up and lucky for me Eli is in a great mood and is putting up with his very slugish mommy. Then Lucy gets up and I give her some food and sit down to check my email (my computer is in the kitchen) Lucy starts to belly laugh, so I turn around to see what's going on and Eli has pulled a chair up in front of hers and is being silly to make her laugh. It was such a beautiful moment. He has really started to interact really well with Lucy. He still has many moments that he pushes, hits, trips, bumps, snatches, etc., BUT he is adding more moments like this a little at a time. I pray that they will be good buddies and play well together as Lucy gets bigger.

Fourth of July, 2008

We had a fun 4th of July holiday. We were picked up Friday morning by our friend Whitney and headed to Hot Springs. Eli experienced head phones for the first time and thought they were pretty cool. We ate good food and did lots of swimming. Eli was like a fish! He was none stop. It is fun that he is so comfortable in the pool, but o so tiring!! Lucy had a blast, too. She took several steps all on her own!! She has been taking 1 here and 2 there, but she had never done that many. Wilson and Campbell were great host. I can not believe the difference from last summer to this summer with Wilson and swimming. He was all over the place. Nathan taught him to dive and he caught on pretty fast. It was fun watching him. Campbell spent a good portion of the day pretending to be a pirate as well as swimming around in his floatie. He is too cute. Thanks for having us over. We had a blast.

shout out

So, one thing we haven't really ever blogged about is our wonderful community group. We have been meeting with most of the group for like 2 years? And one couple started coming in the past few months. We meet on Sunday's after church, share a meal and then discuss whatever study or book we are reading at the time. It has been such a blessing. Our church has just started a series on 1 Peter called Hope is Here. They have handed out little paper books of 1 Peter and asked for everyone to take a picture with the book somewhere in our day. It could be on vacation, in the kitchen, at the pool, where ever. Our group decided we would take ours this Sunday. We are missing one person, but I think she is going to take her picture somewhere in San Diego, so we got her covered. We will definitely take another group shot when everyone is here. It's funny that we have been meeting for quite some time and never taken any pictures. My Mema was and still is the queen of taking pictures. Growing up we weren't always excited to stop to take pictures and she would tell us "When you get old you'll want to know what you looked like" or "You will thank me when you are older" I couldn't agree more. I would be real sad if in like 10 or 20 or 50 years we had no pictures of this group. Enough rambling, here is our picture!

sweetness and sleep

I went to my room to get ready for the pool and as I was walking toward the playroom I heard the tv. Eli had not only turned it on, but he found the movie he wanted and put it in the vcr the right way. I decided I would let him watch for a minute before we left for the pool, but I wanted him to know it wasn't okay to just turn on the tv or a movie without permission, so I paused the movie and said "From now on you need to ask before you turn on the tv, okay." My intention was to then press play and let him watch. He turned the tv off and looked at me real sweet and said "I watch tv, paweese" in such a sweet little voice.......I just want to pause those moments. They are such small things, but mean so much to a mommy. I should also add it was good timing cause yesterday he was quite the whiney little boy! I believe it has to do with his sleep. I don't know about you all out there in internet land, but I have found that if we get behind on our bedtime it shows! I'm not a rigid scheduler and probly wouldn't have figured this out had Eli not started having night terrors, but really his sleep makes a hugh difference. We were leaving his room at night by 7pm and things were going great, but for the last 3 weeks or so it was turning into 7:30 or 7:45. It doesn't sound like it would make that big of a difference, but it does! He is whineyer (sp?) and irritable. So because we have become aware of this with Eli I started watching for differences in Lucy depending on sleep. Because we have a 2 1/2 yr old, Lucy doesn't have much of a set nap schedule and usually does okay, but yesterday she was so tired that she couldn't go to sleep! She maybe had a 15min nap all day. So we put her to bed at 6:20, she slept till 7:20 and then went down for a morning nap around 9:20!! I usually don't put her down for a nap before the pool, but after yesterday I didn't want to push her again. Momma needs those 2 hours to herself when they both nap!!! Ya know!?! Anyway, not sure why I ended up sharing all that, but it's typed, so there ya go.........