Spring is here!

Well it is certainly spring like or even early summer like outside today! It is a gorgeous 87 degrees today. We enjoyed this morning by going to the zoo with some friends. Well, the boys and I did. Jim had an honor band this weekend. I really missed having Jim around this weekend since it has been so very nice. Yesterday afternoon my sister and I took all of our boys to the park and ate a picnic dinner. That was nice and allowed us to really enjoy the outdoors. Although I think yesterday the atmosphere was more humid and heavy feeling. The boys certainly enjoyed it greatly! The playground at the park we went to was a little too big for JC to navigate on his own so I had to do all the climbing and sliding right along with him. Fun and I am sure quite a sight for those looking on!

With all our fun we have had I am now quite worn out! After the zoo and lunch the boys and I went out to Collierville for me to pick up something at the mall and then to Target to buy a birthday gift for a party that Drew will be going to tomorrow. We are enjoying a relaxing evening now. Dinner is done and cleaned up. Everyone is bathed and ready for bed. The boys are going to bed in about 10 minutes and Jim and I have a movie to watch tonight. It is nice to have him home early enough tonight for us to have some time together. I am going to post some pics and videos now. Some are just from over the last several weeks.

Leo hanging out in the yard

My nephew, Nathan, caught this frog in their neighbor's pond. Some of you will remember that this actually used to be my parents' house and that the pond was dug by Louis. This frog was MASSIVE! And there are many more like him there!

I took this just as we got to the zoo today. I kept telling Drew to smile. He looks like he is in pain in the picture!

Our crew at the zoo today, minus JC who was in the stroller!

My BFF, Stephanie, and her youngest daughter, Becca.

The meercats are always fun because they love an audience!

The sun was in our eyes really bad. But, the flowers were just so pretty and made the perfect backdrop.

The gang again. This was after our train ride. We had a great time all together. Stephanie even had an extra kid with her. They were all REALLY well behaved. One of my best zoo visits ever!









This is a video of JC playing with the dancing Elmo. This Elmo is pretty special to us. Jim's dad, Papa, gave it to Drew for his first Christmas. This also turned out to be our last Christmas with Ray. Drew always loved the Elmo. A couple of weekends ago while Jim was at a band function, JC just discovered the Elmo in the closet and brought it to me. I put batteries in it and he just laughed and got all excited about it. It was a neat moment to see him enjoying it so much and made me feel like he got a little piece of his Papa that morning!

One More Thing

Here is one more video I wanted to post. This is from when were at Jim's mom's house. Enjoy!

One more thing from today...

Here is a video of JC and I singing "If Your Happy And You Know It". He learned this at my sister's house and she had told me about him doing it. He likes the "Hooray" part best! Enjoy!


P.S. I think we finally got him to sleep! Drew had to move to the top bunk and I had to lay there with him for a while, but we did not give up!

Lots and lots and lots to post about!

Last weekend we were at Margaret's(Jim's mom) for the weekend. We had a great visit with her and got lots of things done around her house. The weather was VERY nice. Not quite shorts warm but near to it! We enjoyed some time outside playing. We even took Leo with us for this trip and he seemed to enjoy his brief time as a country dog! Here are some pics of the fun...
Drew and I were playing a little soccer

Beautiful Spring Flowers

Leo enjoying the outdoors

I have been off work the last two days. Yesterday we went to the zoo with some new friends. We had a wonderful time. The weather was absolutley gorgeous!! The only hiccup was that it took us over an hour to get to the zoo! Seriously, we got there in the regular 30 minutes it takes from our house but sat in a line to get into the parking lot for over 30 more minutes. Drew was with our friend's because he has spent the night with their son. They were already in the zoo. I really think that had he not already been in there we would have just left. But, I am glad we did not because it was a good visit. We got a new zoo membership so now we will be able to go as often as we would like. This is the best way to see the zoo because it makes for a really long day if you try to see everything. This was the first time that we have taken JC and he could really enjoy it. He walked quite a bit on his own and we just had to push the stroller. I was glad we had it for the LONG hike out to the van though! Here are some pics of our fun...

Here is Drew posing for a pic, oh never mind, that is a real monkey! HAHA!

After our trip to the zoo we started working on our big Spring Break project, moving the boys into one room! They are now sharing a bunk bed in one bedroom and we made the other bedroom a play room. Here are pics of all our hard work.

The Playroom...

JC took his nap on his mat on the floor of the playroom today.

The Bedroom:

And here they are as we laid them down for the night about 30 minutes ago,

All was good until after about 15 minutes of them being down Drew decided that he needed something to eat. Well now JC has been up and down and up and down. So we have now gotten the spank stick out and are going through that drama! I know that it should be expected to take several nights to break him of this. The easy thing to do would be to give up and set the baby bed back up, but we can conquer this!

The room rearranging has been an all day project. We also had to go through tubs and tubs of clothes to get their summer stuff ready and box up things that Drew no longer can wear and to clean out all the stuff that JC has outgrown. I think we probably went through 4-5 tubs worth of clothing. It was quite a chore but it is done now! We have their upcoming fall clothes in a tub in the back of the closet so we should not have to do this again until next spring really. It is not that bad when you realize it is only major work about once a year. Now we have a huge stack of yard sale stuff in the garage. I have to look at the calendar and figure out when in the next few weeks that we can have a free Friday night and Saturday to do this. It will definitely take an entire Friday afternoon/evening to get the stuff out on tables and priced to sell. We have a lot of stuff to sale now. Some furniture, some clothing, lots of baby stuff. Hopefully we can make a little bit of cash to go towards our upcoming anniversary trip. After our long day Jim grilled out. We had deer steaks wrapped in peppercorn bacon! YUMMO!! I do not know why I would ever go out and pay for someone else to cook me a steak when I have the best right here! It was awesome. After dinner we took the kids over to the parking lot at the school for Drew to practice riding his bike and for JC to play on his 4-wheeler and the Lightening McQueen car. It was just wonderful weather for this. We took the bubbles too and they played with them for a while. We were there probably about 45 minutes, right up until dark. I am glad we took them over there. Drew did great on his bike. Having open space like that really makes a difference in their riding. He is getting more comfortable on the new, bigger bike he got for Christmas. I put the training wheels back on the old bike today and lowered the seat down so that it would be ready for JC when he can ride it. Here are pics of the fun at the school parking lot...

Well friends, as you can see it has been one busy, exhausting day! So, I will bid you farewell for now! Until next time!

Well, it is officially Spring Break!! WHOOP, WHOOP!!!!!

I think I am probably just as excited about Spring Break as Jim and Drew because a week off of school means a week off from homework for the mama!! Seriously, in the first grade homework is really a job for the parent, not the kid!!

Last weekend Drew had his birthday party. He had a sleep over. It went really good, probably better than Jim and I expected. We had 6 boys total at the party and 5 of those spent the night. They stayed up until 1am! And they were up before 7am! They really were good though. We never had to really get on to them for not sharing the games and toys. Noone was rude or unkind to anyone else. It was a really good experience and I am sure we will repeat it next year!

So here is the entire gang...

doing what they did for most of the night, playing the Wii! I looked back at the user log and it was played for almost 5 hours on that day! YIKES!
They had a great time. Here are some more pics of the fun...

It has been a busy week, as usual. I have been trying to do better about getting the camera out and taking just everyday shots of the boys. I had really gotten out of the habit of that. Here are some pics of the brothers being brothers...

Drew, perfecting his goofy face for the camera.

I love this one! I cannot remember what he was doing but I just love that face! This was before the big booboo to the head.

Bubba Lovin'!

This is one of their favorite things to do. They like to get on the computer and watch shows on the Disney Junior Channel online. Drew likes to play the games and stuff too. This evening they were watching Imagination Movers. They kept getting up and dancing when they would sing, it was HILARIOUS! But, I did not get the camera out and capture that, maybe another day.

And you can see from this picture that he actually ate dinner after his bath since it is all over his pj shirt! This is not our typical routine but Jim had a meeting that night so we did bathtime early. You can also see that the glue has come off the wound and it is healing nicely. It does look a little bit more like a scab now. That is mostly due to him messing with it some, I think he is going to be a picker! Also it seems that the wound spread a little after that glue came off and that is causing some of it. But it looks really good and I know that with time there will barely be a scar.

Well, we are heading to Memaw's for the weekend! I will have the camera and plan to capture some pictures of them enjoying some outdoor time in the country!

Until next time...

Busted Head

This is how our Monday started! JC fell into a toy at my sisters and busted his head open! So we had to rush to the doctor to see about getting him sewn or glued shut.

He was not even phased by it! The expression in this picture has absolutely nothing to do with pain or discomfort but simply his temper flaring because Jim and I would not allow him to run all over the doctor's office! He was great through the entire procedure of glueing the the wound shut. Jim held his arms down and I held his head while the doctor worked. He laid there perfectly still and only got antsy toward the end of it all while we were just waiting on the glue to dry. Jim and I were both very calm through it all. YES ME, I actually did not freak out! I think I have come to expect this sort of thing with JC. He is very destructive and completely fearless. I dare say this will be the last of our incidents with him!

Here are some after shots. I waited until after we had cleaned him up for the night because he looked pretty grimey and his hair was all crazy, I am sure from them cleaning the blood off of him.

7 years ago

7 years ago today at about this exact moment I was getting ready to push. For those of you that know the entire story, you know that the pushing never got me anywhere and that at 11:30 that night they delivered our 6lb 11oz baby boy by c-section. I was barely even awake to see him for the first time. But the moment I saw him I loved him. This year Drew's birthday is extra special to me because he is not just 7 years old now but he is 7 years old and has Jesus in his heart! I would like to take a few moments to just describe Drew to you now so that one day he can look back at this and read about who he was at 7.
Drew is a very sensitive young man. He likes to please people and do things well. He does not like to fail at things. He is always full of energy, from the time he gets out of bed until he goes back into it at night! I would say that one of your favorite things to do is play video games, especially the Wii since you got it. You still have a beautiful singing voice and you love to sing in the car on the way to and from school. You have one very good friend at school, Elijah. And you have a very good friend at church, Dominic. And, your cousin Ben, is still your best bud! You are a great big brother. You look out for JC and are quick to alert us if he is doing something dangerous. But you are also a typical big brother that LOVES to aggravate. You are doing excellent in school, straight A's. You are pretty good about doing your homework and do not really struggle with your classwork at all. You are a happy, healthy, fun little boy! We love you!!

Today I took lunch and cupcakes to Drew at school. It was fun and he was very excited. We had enough cupcakes leftover to have a little "party" tonight at home. We took Drew out to dinner at the Cracker Barrell. It ended up being a pretty late night, but it is his birthday and it only happens once a year. We came home and had cupcakes after the boys took a bath.

This is Drew with his birthday card from us. It said "Catch a load of fun for your bithday. Would you like flies with that?" He thought it was funny!

JC was not happy because we would not just let him have the cupcake. They had just finished their baths and he would have required a second one if we had allowed him to just have it. Jim was trying to help him eat it and he was throwing a fit. He almost went to bed without the cupcake but he finally gave up and let Jim help! The joys of an almost 2 year old!