A night with my girls

You may or may not know that I had the awesome privilege of having a group of high school girls in a bible study for all their four years of high school. I loved all 4 years and each of the girls that I had the honor of being involved with through those years. There were 3 girls that remained very consistent throughout the 4 years and have continued to stay in touch through their freshman year of college. Well, these three are home for the summer and called to see when we could all hang out! It made my day. Soooo, where I am going with this is that they came over last week and we cooked a pizza from scratch, ate brownies w/ice cream, watched a little So You Think You Can Dance and then talked till 1am!!!! I was one tired momma when Eli started calling for me around 6:30-7am the next morning (thank goodness for Sesame Street) All that said, they are soooo special to me and I love the relationship that God has blessed us with over time. They are not just girls I had in a study, they truly are my friends. Here are a few pictures of them to show you just how beautiful they are!!! (left to right Kaylee, Rebekah, Elyse)

Summer summer summer time....(oooo summertime) Time to sit back and unwind

We had the privelage of hanging out with 2 wonderful moms and their boys yesterday. We met up with Whitney, Wilson and Campbell AND with Victoria and Cal. We started the morning off at the River Market and then headed to the pool. It was a nice way to spend the day.

"I KNOW!"

So my poor baby has a horrible diaper rash. I mean HORRIBLE. It turns out that oranges really do a number on him the the general diaper rash area :( It started yesterday mid morning and we are working real hard at getting it all gone. So, needless to say he isn't particularly fond of getting his diaper changed and I feel so bad the whole time that I am cleaning him up. When I am changing him and he is hurting or just not wanting to sit still (which is a lot of the time even without a rash) anyway, I tend to say "I know, I know.." sympathetically over and over. Well, this morning his rash had really flared up and as I was changing him he cried "I know, I know" along with the usual "All done". It was sad because of the pain, but too stinkin cute at the same time.

Memorial Weekend

Wow! We had a very busy, but fun weekend. Big Daddy's baseball team was in town to play the Travelers this weekend. So, we spent Friday, Sat and Sun at the new Dickey-Stephens stadium. When we weren't at a ball game we were hanging out with family. My oldest brother and his family came in from Bentonville and Nathan's dad was with us for the day on Sat. We also got to see fireworks on Sunday night, which Eli was very entertained by and then ended the holiday weekend with a trip to Hot Springs on Monday to play in the pool with some friends. My niece and nephews were here and Eli was so into playing with them this visit. He would look for them and call out their names if they weren't in sight. We didn't even know he knew their names till they got here on Friday! Will is 5 and Eli would follow him around, it was cute. And Drew is about 7 months and when he was in his jumperoo Eli would stand on the side and jump with him. It was too cute. And then when Sydney, who is 9, spent the night, he really enjoyed playing with her stuffed dogs. Syd and Eli both have a love for stuffed animals. As for Monday, we went to the pool and Eli was not so sure he wanted in on the whole swimming deal, but after a minute with Daddy he was way more comfortable and would even "swim" back and forth between me and Nathan underwater! We were nonstop all weekend, but we really enjoyed ourselves. Here are a few photos from the weekend.

3-2-3

Last week Eli and Nathan decided to give our new baby pool and water sprinkler a try. It was fun to watch them play together and it also gave me a chance to get an errand or two done. The sprinkler that Nathan found is a round tube that shoots water out of the holes all over it. It fits very nicely around the pool. This was my mother's day present from the 2 of them. Thank you to my wonderful husband and sweet loving baby boy!

When we play with Eli sometimes we will count to 3 before throwing him in the air or tickling him or whatever is about to happen. He has caught on to this and when he wants something to happen he will put one finger in front of his face and say "t-ree, two, t-ree" This particular time Eli was wanting Daddy to run through the pool.

Sea World

Eli mapping out our route
cute picture till you see my peek a boo belly! Lucy is so low I can't hardly find a shirt that will cover my belly completly! Believe it or not, that is a maternity shirt. I wore the same stuff with Eli and didn't have this problem till like the last couple of weeks. Oh well, a prego belly is much easy to see than a post pregnant belly, right?
Eli has developed a love for his stuffed animals over the past month or so. He loves to have them with him on the couch to watch Sesame Street. He really likes to sleep with them and he also will pile them up and then sit or lay on them. Even though he really likes all the different stuffed animals he has he really has a thing for bears. He can spot them in a store from around the corner. So, anyway, we go to Sea World and I'm thinking after we go to the Shamu show we can go buy a stuffed whale. We have a variety of stuffed animals, but nothing like a whale. We go to the gift shop and look at different sizes of whales and Eli likes them, but nothing big, I mean he isn't squealing and hugging, just looking and then stashing waiting for another one to hold. So we think, maybe we can get a different animal, a dolphin or sea turtle. Again, no big deal to him, he gives it back with no hesitation when we ask for it. So we walk down the aisle a bit more and there is a bear with a hooded sweatshirt that says Sea World on it and he gets soooo excited! "Bear Bear!" He begins kicking his legs with excitement and reaching out to hug one. We hand him one bear and one whale and then say "Okay, say bye bye to the bear" and he says "bye bye", but not to the bear, he gladly hands us the whale. Now, on Eli's behalf I must say that he would have let us put the bear back, we hold and return bears to the shelf all the time in stores, but he hugged that bear like it was his long lost best friend. How could we buy the whale when he loved this bear so much more!!! He hugged it from the gift shop to the car and then fell asleep hugging it in the car. For the next 2 days out of all his animals that is the one he was holding when he woke up and when he went down for a nap or bedtime. He still played and loved on all the others, but gave this one a little more attention. We found it quite humorous that we went to Sea World and got a bear for a souvenir, but what can you do. At least it has on a Sea World shirt. It was a great day. Eli did enjoy the Shamu show, but I guess he just wasn't impressed enough to get a shamu doll.

San Antonio, TX

Well, we spent last week visiting my dad, aka Big Daddy, in San Antonio, TX. It was quite a week. We kicked it all off with the 91/2 -10 hr drive it takes to get there. My mom, Eli and I drove down together. Eli was such a trooper, he travels very well. Having a tv/dvd player really helps!!! We spent the week playing in the apartment pool, on the playground, and going to Big Daddy's baseball games. Nathan flew in on Sat and we then visited the riverwalk, Seaworld and the zoo in 2 1/2 days!!! Very exciting. Thank you Big Daddy and Nana for having us and taking us to all those fun places. We really enjoyed our time with you both. Here are a few pictures from the week.

We stopped at a Burger King on the way there so Eli could stretch his legs and get some energy out. He surprisingly wore that silly crown till we got back in the car!