Cake Decorating with my Friends

Oh, I love my friends, they are just too much fun! We have been doing girls night out off and on for 7 years, can you believe it girls?!?!? We have had quite a few come and go over the years and even one go and then come back to us, but Marti, Ash, Jenny, Danna, Stephanie and I are the only originals left....but after 7 years, I think that is pretty good! I have a very talented bunch of friends and we are so diverse in our God given talents, but it is great that we have so much to share with each other! BIG thanks to Jenny and Amy for helping us, it was great fun! As much as we enjoyed it, I think we all agreed to leave the cake making to them.

Here are some new pictures from our recent girls night out, by far my favorite so far. Although, spa night is pretty high at the top of the list as well!!

Unfortunately, I don't have a single picture of Robin the very talented photographer and I don't have one of Amy (she was too busy flitting around helping everyone).

Christy and her beautiful gluten free chocolate and strawberry cake, not to tell stories, but I think she has done this before :)

Ashleigh and her cake tribute to her son. Let me tell you how hard it was not to drag my finger across that yummy chocolate icing.

Stephanie let her kids at home pick out her colors.....I LOVE them, and I am sure they are going to be excited to see them as well!

Oh, yummmm, Marti's cake had technical difficulties.....actually her icing did, but her cake is beautiful and with all that icing....my favorite!!!!

Angela and Emily made this flower cake for their mom's birthday.....ah, isn't that sweet. I absolutely love these colors together. They did a great job, I am sure Ms. Deb is going to be proud.

My cake....I forgot to take a picture of it by itself after I finished it, but we got a picture of the three cakes together. Yesterday was my anniversary so I was trying to put an "S" in the middle of the cake. I think Stephanie is looking over me saying, "why it is taking you 20 minutes to practice your S".

We'll be dancing.....dancing in the the street (or living room)

Oh my girls love to dance. I love music and they have always listened and seemed to enjoy music and since they have gotten older they love to dance. Love music, love to dance!!

Brian's awesome Nanny made some new dresses for the girls and they love them. When I told them there was a package and I told them it was from Nanny, they were pumped! She sent them a dress last week and they were thrilled. Nanny called them dancing dresses and let me tell you that is exactly what the girls did with their new dresses!

Here are some new pictures of the girls and their dancing dresses!

As soon as I put the dresses on, Molly grabbed Sarah's hand and said, let's go dance. The quality of this picture is horrible, but it was too sweet not to post. This is definitely a memory I want to keep!

The girls are dancing to Bluegrass music on DirecTV....Bluegrass....how random is that!

Another picture that won't win any awards, but I love to see them laughing like this!

Posing like cheesiers for Mom. I am not sure when Sarah got to be so much taller than Molly?!?!?!

13 Thursday

Okay, here is a list of Thirteen NAME Brands I cannot and no one should live without. Just so you know I am not a name brand snob! Probably 60% of my cart at Wal-mart is off brand, but there are some things that are just special! This list is in no special order....except Diet Dr. Pepper should be at the top of the list!

1. Diet Dr. Pepper.....Dr. Thunder? What was Wal-Mart thinking?

2. Electrasol Dishwasher Gel Packs......AG turned me on to these and I am telling you there is NOTHING better to wash your dishes with. I am the lazy of the lazy and I hate to rinse dishes....I mean isn't that why I use a dishwasher? To avoid WASHING the dishes.

3. Mach 3 Razors - My beloved introduced me to these and I am hooked...you will never see a lady razor in my shower again. I never did understand why lady razors needed to be Pink and A LOT bigger than the razors they made for men. And you know what they do for men? They put the extra razors in the base of the razor holder so all you have to do is turn it around to get a new razor rather than running across your bathroom floor wet and naked in search of a new blade for your pretty pink razor.

4. Going along with that......Skin Care or Skintimate Shaving Gel. I remember very vividly shaving with soap.....just bar soap when I first started shaving. What was my mom thinking? I think after that we used off brand shaving cream (so you had that lovely Old Spice smell on your legs when you were finished shaving).

5. Bed Head Shampoo. Thank you Brian for using Sauve at $1 a bottle so the girls and I can use Bed Head with no guilt!

6. Lipton Iced Tea.....ever had Always Save Tea?

7. Secret Deodorant - I am sure there are more expensive brands and I know there are less expensive brands, but do you really want to chance body odor for a $.50 savings?

8. Charmin Toilet Tissue - this is a shout out to my honey, if it were up to me I would use the brand "toilet tissue" that you get 100 rolls for $4. His secret is revealed....hehehehehehe

9. Swiss Miss Cocoa. The off brand doesn't dissolved and you are left w/ milk w/ lumps of powder...yuck!

10. Welch's Fruit Snacks. I do not buy a lot of prepacked food, or individually packaged food I should say because it is so high and you get so much less. However, fruit chews are the exception to that rule. My girls love them, they are lower in sugar than regular chews, and when you chew them......you can chew them and then swallow unlike regular chews that never dissolve. Our favorite is the light blue pkg.

11. Bread - I don't think I have ever bought a loaf of "white bread" or "wheat bread". Ugggg, $1.00 for a loaf of bread?

12. Raisins.....only the best! Other wise they taste as gross as all raisins look.

13. Dawn Direct Foam, I don't know that I have ever used anything other than dawn, but this stuff is awesome. If you MUST wash your dishes my hand, please use this! It creates the foam so you use significantly less. It is more expensive, but I think is it a wash (no pun intended) considering how much less you have to use.

What has become of my life???

There are things that my children do that make me laugh, and then there are times when I scratch my head and think what have I signed up for....this whole parenting adventure. It is that, an adventure for sure. Here are some recent pictures of the girls and some bizarre things that have me scratching my head.

When pigs fly and penguins co pilot.

How many toys do you need to go to sleep???

Grandma gave the girls some "lips" and Molly subscribes to the thinking if a little is good, than a lot is FABULOUS!

Our very expensive window treatments......we had to do something with the sun coming up at 5:45 in the morning. I will work on something permanent that looks a little better, but this was good in a pinch.

Our first writing on the wall. I have always been VERY careful when they have crayons out that they don't walk off with them. However, this was a sewing marker from my sewing room. Ooooopppppsssss, we didn't mention that to Daddy :)

Before you pick up your phone to call Child Services, that is strawberry milk powder, not blood. Notice the pink on the floor, her, shirt and on her sisters foot........and on her dog.......

Uncle Colby Graduates!

Yeah, Uncle Colby, after MONTHS in the fire academy he graduated last Friday night.

We are so proud of him because it has been a LONG process. Memphis is very careful about their applicants so after he put his application in, he had to wait 6 months just to hear that he had been accepted. Then he went through very rigorous training for 8 months. It has been a very long process and we are very proud of him!

Here are some pictures from his graduation. We tried very hard to get pictures, but we had too many kids that didn't want to sit still.

The funny thing about graduation was when Colby was being given his acknowledgement of completion of training. It is very much like a high school graduation. Aunt Joy had us stand up right before they called his name and called him forward. She also told Joy and Jake to yell, "yeah, Daddy". Of course Sarah said, "that isn't my daddy, that is Uncle Colby". Joy told her it was okay but yell "daddy" so he could hear us. They called Colby's name and Jake and Sarah both yelled, "yeah, Daddy". Jake in his very small voice and Sarah in her 'very much like her mom' voice. Then all Colby's buddies thought Colby had 3 kids rather than just Jake. It was really sweet!

And of course we had to get a celebration cake from Amy, yummmmm!!

The Story of The Tree

There was a pretty bad storm that passed through our area Monday night. There was quite a big of wind damage. The girls heard the weather radio going off and we went to the picture window to look outside. I could see the wind moving the dust around in the fields south of us. We have quite a few old trees that drop limbs during bad storms and the one next to my house is one of the worst. Of course that is where I park my Jeep. So I immediately foudn my keys and went to move my Jeep. The girls wanted to go with me so I grabbed them and rushed them to the Jeep and moved it to the end of the drive, free from trees. The wind was very bad on our trip back to the house and I was trying to move them quickly because they wind was blowing everything in the yard and I was worried the girls would get hit by something walking back. As we got to the door and I was pushing the girls through the door the HUGE pecan tree next to my house and parking spot cracked at the base and fell over in my yard. There were qutie a few people in our area with out power.

You can see from the pictures that God had his hand over the girls and I. The tree landed where the Jeep was parked and on the drive where we were moving the Jeep. You can see all the toys that were in the yard....the other side of the yard.

Picture from the end of the drive.
A picture from my back door.

A good thing from the storm.....playing in the puddles in our new twirl dresses from Nanny Jean and Ladybug Boots from Grandma. Good times!!!!

Sophie was even enjoying herself.

Ten Things

Ten Things

1. My girls playing together, I love it! Brian got a pkg in on Saturday and the girls have been playing with the box and bubble wrap. Funny!

Please ignore the chocolate milk mustaches.

2. Team work, they work together all the time....to drive me crazy :) - see above picture of them fighting over the bubble wrap. However, at least they are working together.

3. The girls love to help! I put a picture of the two of them on their laundry basket (thanks to Jon & Kate) so that when they take their clothes to the laundry, they know where to put them.

4. Uncle Colby graduated from the fire academy this past weekend, we were so proud of him.

5. I had a friend tell me she was jealous of my life with the girls, thanks for saying that, it made me realize that I have so much to be thankful for!!

6. That my family is healthy! It seems like a simple thing that I should say "thanks" for every day, but I take our health for granted.

7. Diet Dp.....is it terrible that every other week it makes it to my list? Is that bad, yall??

8. My girls and their vocabulary! If you would have told me a year ago that they would be talking so clearly and plainly, I wouldn't have believed you. Now.....if I could just find a way to curb the 1,000,000 questions a day.

9. Singing! Shout out to AG for introducing me to Veggietales Sunday Morning Songs. My girls can sing almost every song on both cd's. Of course they don't get all the words correctly, that is part of the fun. One day I am going to record that and put it on my blog.......so you all can enjoy it.

10. That the huge pecan tree didn't land on my house last night when it fell across my driveway and that I moved my jeep before it fell. I will post pics tomorrow.

Smart, Very Smart Grandma

I love these pictures of Sarah, they crack me up! We went to Grandma's house and she was jumping on "her" bed and slipped and fell off and scratched her neck in the process. She did cry which is unusual for my tough Sarah. The unfortunate thing was that I was just about to lay them down for a nap. Being the smart woman that she is my mom got her cold pack out of the freezer to put on her neck. She acted like she was paralyzed from the head down. Oh we laughed, and laughed. Of course these pictures don't really do it justice, but you get the idea of how funny it was.

Ten Things

This weekend Brian's mom took the girls for the weekend so Brian and I could spend some time together since his birthday was last week. For the most part we really enjoyed ourselves, but there is something weird about the quiet of being in your own house with no kids. It is TOO quiet!


This week's list......10 things that I missed that make make me thankful my girls are home


1. The 1 Million questions the girls ask in a day. I have come to realize that the reason they ask so many questions of me is that they honestly think I know EVERYTHING! Isn't that flattering?


2. I missed hearing their tiny feet walking (walking, running, skipping, hopping) across the floor.


3. Their toys, their choice of toys always makes me laugh. I found this on the floor this morning (armless and legless thanks to Sophie) and Molly said I couldn't throw it away because she NEEDED it.

By the way, I am not sure what that random part is next to the girl.....but it doesn't look good!

4. I missed hugs, tiny arms = sweet hugs.

5. I did actually miss telling the girls "no" 100 times a day. I think I would pick fights with Brian just to be able to tell him "no"....hehehehehe

6. My favorite time of the day is the morning when I get to go wake the girls up in the morning on the mornings I wake up before them. Their sweet smiles when they see me for the first time.

7. Tiny voices, they are the sweetest sound over the baby monitor. Thank goodness for Video Recorders so I won't ever have to forget what those sweet voices sound like.

8. I really love their morning/nap breath. There is something about that smell that is just so sweet to me.

9. I missed their sweetness to each other:

10. The reason I missed them the most is that I missed being a Mommy. Even though I struggle with potty training and roll my eyes at whining, I love my job and I love my girls!

Going to the zoo

I should have looked back at my titles to see how many times I have used that heading, but I am sure it has been many times. We love to go to the zoo. If we lived in Memphis I am sure we would go every weekend. Here are some recent pictures of our trip with my family. It was a wonderful day, the weather was perfect and the kids were even better!

Still enjoying the stroller.....maybe one day we will be able to go without using one.

The penguins were putting on quite a show for us.

Joy and Jake enjoying the penguins.

Do you hear what I hear?

Catch that train!

Here we are riding a big cow.....with its guts hanging out....crazy!

I am a good egg, I just don't want you to take my picture!

See, mama, I am a good egg too!

We enjoyed a great lunch at Aunt Joy's house after the zoo.