It's Saturday morning and I am blogging from home!!!

I am so excited that we now have the internet at home again! This is a big help to my blogging, obviously! And it is a big help to Jim. He can now post grades and lesson plans from home rather than having to go to the school in the evenings. He has not planning time during the day so he is unable to do those things at school, like most teachers do.

Well, of course, I have some catching up to do!
Last Saturday we had a VERY busy day! We had the annual OB Christmas parade. My friend Stephanie went to the parade with the boys and I. We had a great time! The weather that day was PERFECT! Not too cold, not too hot. The boys had a really good time. Here are the pictures...
Getting ready to leave

Steph and the boys waiting on the parade to begin

Steph's girls are on the top of the firetruck. Scott, her hubby, is standing on the side. He is not the one waving in this pic.

And the highlight of the parade, in my humble but accurate opinion, the OBHS Marching Band!!! Jim actually saw us this year, maybe the first time ever, and actually talked to us!


After the parade Jim and I had to leave to go to my staff Christmas party. The boys stayed home with a babysitter. We had a great time at the party. There was incredibly awesome food and good fellowship with friends. We got home about 8 that night and got everyone ready for bed. Sunday was a pretty low keyed day. We did not have anything special going on and that was nice because the week ahead was going to be a busy one!

Tuesday night Jim had the Middle School Christmas Concerts. They do two of them now, one for 6th grade and another for 7th and 8th. They do them on the same night, they just do not have a large enough auditoriam to have one concert, so they just do them an hour apart. We went to the 6th grade concert at 6pm. We ended up having to just stand on the side because there were no more seats. The boys did great though and seemed to really enjoy the music. It's kinda scary to think that in just 5 more years that will be Drew up there!! We tried to hang out until time for the 2nd concert but it was just too long and too hard so we gave up! It worked out well though because I brought them on home and got them in bed on time.

On Thursday evening I went to the Ladies Christmas Dinner at New Prospect with Stephanie. It was really nice to see everyone from our "old church". I really enjoyed the evening and got to eat some really great food again and enjoy some beautiful entertainment by a gourp of 4 sisters that call themselves All Four Glory.

Yesterday was Drew's Christmas Program at school. It was a western this year. Drew did not have any special parts this year. He did get to sit on the front row though. Here are some pics from the program...

Drew is on the very front row...


This morning Jim is at the Men's Prayer Breakfast at church. This is the first time he has been able to attend. The last one was during band competition season. He was excited about going and was actually picking up a friend from Sunday School so that way he was with someone he knew. The rest of the day is going to be pretty boring. It is raining out today and the temps are a little warmer but there is a massive cold front coming through tonight. The temps over the few days will barely get above freezing and the over night temps will be in the teens!!!!! I am really not feeling well. I have taken a pretty bad cold, which I think I got from JC. He and I shared a spoon one day last week and he has had a running nose going on. I really think that is what started it in me. I am hoping that my body will fight it off without a trip to the doctor. We have our Christmas Program next Sunday morning and while I am not singing a solo or anything I would sure like to be able to sing without being worried about my voice cracking.

I really need to stop typing. JC is getting pretty wild and it trying to get to the computer! I have neglected them for blogging long enough for today. I am snapping some pics this morning so I will try to upload them later today or tomorrow.

I have mentioned that I am excited to have internet at home again!!

Soon to have home internet again!!

And hopefully that will mean more up to date blogging!

There is so much to blog about today I hardly no where to begin! I guess I will just give a weekly run down of what has been going on and hit all the big stuff along the way.

So lets start with Monday. It had been a good day for all the Mayos. We were doing our thing at home, homework was done, laundry was going, dinner was cooking. Jim was on the phone with his mom and I was busy with something, I cannot really remember for sure what it was now. But, I remember knowing that JC had run into our room and that I needed to go get him. Usually him running into our room just means he is trying to find Leo! So, I finished what I was doing and went to get him. Well I discovered that the bathroom door was shut, not big deal, he loves to shut doors. Then I tried to open the bathroom door, it was locked! I panic! I am running to the laundry room, screaming at Jim that he has locked himself in the bathroom. I pull all the towels and rags from the cabinet digging for the emergency key to the doors. This was where we had kept it before. As I am digging I remember that we had to use the key before to get in Drew's room because the door had been mistakenly locked. After that incident we had put it in the drawer in the boy's bathroom. I tell Jim to look there and he gets the key and runs back to the bathroom to release the bad child before I could even get down from the step stool in the laundry room! I just could not do anything but laugh at this point. He was not even phased by it! Jim was on the verge of breaking the door down! He is amazing sometimes!

Tuesday morning as we were getting ready to leave for the day I noticed that JC's right eye looked really red. We looked at it, cleaned it out really good and put some pink eye drops that we had in the medicine cabinet in it as a precaution. I really did not think that it was pink eye but most likely just allergies. Well, he did not make it at daycare but about an hour before they called me about it. Jim went and got him and took him to the doctor. They said it was mild pink eye and gave us a prescription for drops. He was not going to be able to go back to day care until Thursday. We were not really sure what we were going to do on Wednesday. Neither one of us really could miss an entire day of work. We ended up getting Elizabeth to keep him on Wednesday. This is the first time she has really ever kept JC. He had a wonderful day over there. Elizabeth has been trying to convince me to let her keep JC for some time now. We talked about it a little bit more that afternoon and I told her that we would talk about it more. Jim and I looked at the numbers and it will save us $55 per week! Not to mention that with Elizabeth we only have to pay her for days that she actually keeps him. So if he is sick or if we are on vacation or if Jim is out of school for a day or what have you we will not owe her money. So we will save atleast 2500.00 per year just because of the cut in the weekly amount and having to pay at the day care regardless of whether or not he attends. Of course there will be some extra gas expense by going to her house everyday, but that is a minimal expense and still means a massive savings each week. We are excited about it and she is too. She does not keep very many kids each day now that all but one of her own are in school. He will begin going to her house the week after Christmas. She is going to keep JC and Drew two days that week to allow Jim to get some work done to prepare for the semester ahead.

We will be going tonight to my mom's Christmas program! I am excited about that. We are planning to get some dessert somewhere afterward and visit a little. Tomorrow is the OB Christmas Parade. That is always a fun event! We love to watch the parade. We especially like to watch the OB band and look for Jim. My best friend, Stephanie, will be going with me and the boys. We always have a lot of fun. Tomorrow night is my staff Christmas party. We got a sitter for the boys so they will be able to have their normal routine that evening and be ready for bed when we get home. I am looking forward to an evening with good friends and some awesome food!

Now I am going to post a lot of pictures.

This is sick JC from a couple of weeks ago. He was loving all the attention that he was getting this morning. I had propped him up on his boppy pillow in the recliner with his milk. Such a typical man!!


This is JC on any typical afternoon. He thinks that if there is food in the oven it should be done immediately so he can eat it. So he will stand there and talk to the oven. We think he is telling it to hurry up and get done!


This afternoon he decided to play Peek-A-Boo with me and the camera!



Since the oven was not responding to his demands he decided to sit down and learn some letters!


Our decorated tree! Simple, but beautiful I think!


JC watching the Christmas parade. He is sitting in the storage box for the train track, what better place to sit and watch the parade!


Christmas Card Photos; Take 1


Take 2, probably the keeper. JC would not wear his Santa hat!


The Christmas Ham who wanted me to keep taking pictures of just him!

Sunday

I wrote this blog on Sunday. I just now have had a chance to upload it! I am about to do another blog with more info from the last week and pics.

Sunday, November 28, 2010:
Well, the Thanksgiving holiday has come and gone and now as I sit on Sunday afternoon typing this blog post I am wondering how the last 4 days have passed by so quickly! We really did have a wonderful holiday though. It all started off on Tuesday evening. We went to Southaven that evening to go grocery shopping at Aldi and Kroger and we went by my sister’s house to get her old Christmas tree. She decided to buy a new one so we got her old one, which is a 7 ft tree that is very skinny. It is a bit taller than our old one but the thing I really love about it is that it is so much less tree around. So, after we picked up the tree and went to the grocery store we decided to have dinner out at the IHOP. This has been one our favorite family dinner locations. The kids eat free there and they eat well there, so it is great! We came home from there and actually put the tree together. I did go ahead and put the angel on top and the ribbons running down it, but we were not going to decorate it until the next day. Wednesday I did have to work but Jim stayed home with the boys. I got to come home a little bit early and we began the decorating when I got here. We really did not put much out this year. JC is in such an active stage and he has a tendency to get into things, so we decided that it would be safer to decorate very minimally this year. It looks very nice though and it will be fairly easy to clean it all up after Christmas is over. Usually we have all decorated together but this year is was mainly just me doing it! This was mostly because JC was so busy trying to get into all the boxes of decorations that Jim pretty much just had to corral him away from the living room! Drew was just busy doing his own thing so I did not have a whole lot of help. That night, after the decorating was done, Drew, Jim and I sat down to watch a movie. I had gotten A Christmas Carol from the Redbox. It was about 7:30pm when we sat down to watch it. We got to the part just before the ghost of Marley was to appear and the dvd messed up! It was quite frustrating! Jim called the number on the back of the case and the person at Redbox was most hopeful. They gave us 2 codes for free rentals. Jim was able to go and get us the same movie at another location. However, by the time he got home it was after 9pm! It was nearly 11pm when it was over and we went to bed. It was fun though. It was a really good movie and Drew enjoyed it. We all slept in on Thursday morning. We had prepared a breakfast casserole the night before so I got up and cooked that and perked some coffee and we have a wonderful breakfast and then just sat around and watched the parade. It was nice to relax and spend some great time together as a family. We headed to my mom’s around noon and had a dinner there with all my family.

Well that night the real fun began! My mom, sister, aunt, and I headed out to begin our Black Friday shopping at 11pm on Thanksgiving night. We went to Wal-Mart to be there for the sale beginning at 12:01am. We got back to my mom’s around 12:45am and headed back out for Kohls at 2:30am! Yes, you read that correctly, 2:30am. We were there at 3am when they opened the doors. We were in Kohls for quite some time since it took about an hour and a half to check out. After leaving Kohls we headed to Target and after that it was nearly 6am so we headed to the Cracker Barrel for breakfast. By then we were in serious need of some nourishment and coffee for fuel! We headed on to the mall in Southaven after that and then on out to the mall in Collierville. I got home just before noon. So that was over 12 hours of shopping! Oh my, I just realized that as I typed it, I am pretty nuts!! It was fun though. I did get some awesome deals but mostly I really enjoyed the time of fellowship with the ladies of my family!

Yesterday we went to my mother-in-law’s for Thanksgiving with Jim’s family. It was a really great visit with them. Jim’s brother cooked the turkey and dressing and they were both incredibly good! It was a really good afternoon. Jim and the other guys helped get her Christmas decorations out so that she can begin her decorating. Drew played with his cousins and seemed to have a really good time. He is a several years younger than them so he is just getting to an age where they really can play all together. It ended up being quite pleasant outside yesterday afternoon so they were able to play outdoors some too. It is always good for them to be able to get outside and burn off some energy.

Today has been a mostly usual Sunday. We went to church this morning. I went and met some friend’s for lunch. It was so nice to visit with them. We have not gotten together for some time. We sat and visited for hours at the restaurant.

Well, it was a busy but wonderful holiday! I know that before we know it we will be celebrating Christmas. The weeks ahead are so very busy with parties and activities. I will do my best to blog as often as I can. I am trying to type out my thoughts at home and upload them when I am in the office. So until next time that is all!

Trying Something New

So I decided to just type out what I would have blogged on Friday night on my laptop. I saved the file to my phone and then put the file on my work computer and am now going to copy and paste it! Pretty ingenious I think!

I just watched the most delightful movie, Miss Potter, starring Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor. I got it from the library today. On Fridays I try to take Drew by there to get some movies for the weekend. They are free there and we get to keep them for the entire weekend. This movie was the story of Beatrix Potter, the author of The Tale of Peter Rabbit. It made me laugh, made me smile, and made me cry! I highly recommend it!

Well tonight Jim had the last football game for this year. We managed to make it to the second round of playoffs and played South Panola tonight. Of course we lost, but from the reports I have heard thus far it sounds as though we put up quite a fight. The boys and I stayed home. It is just too cold now to be out at the ball field with the boys. We had a good evening here at home. JC actually took a late afternoon nap because he did not nap good at day care and I really did not want to put him to bed early on a Friday night only to have him wake up early on Saturday morning! So after his nap I fed them dinner and then we did some big cleaning out in Drew’s room. We cleaned out all the toys and put things in there proper place. We filled up a box full of toys and books to give away. Drew was really very good about it. I had prepared him ahead of time that we were going to do this but I still expected the whining and begging to keep some of the silly happy meal toys and stuff! He was so good about it all though, not once did he complain about something I wanted to get rid of. I was very proud of him. I hope this is a result of some spiritual growth in his life.

Well that is it for tonight. I got another movie for Jim and I to watch tomorrow, His, Mine, and Ours with Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda. We will see if Jim can stay awake for it after a full day of house cleaning!

Long time no blog :-(

Things have been pretty crazy lately! I keep thinking that things will slow down soon but I am afraid I am just kidding myself. My blogging is hurting a great deal because we do not have the internet at home right now. We cut it off when the school year started due to Jim getting a pay cut. We do hope to turn it back on after the first of the year. Jim has work that he can do from home if we have it and right now he is having to go to the school all the time in order to do it. So I hope that I will be more current on my blogging then. For the time being though I will just continue to do the best I can! We started off this week pretty rough. Last weekend I went to the Flea Market in Tupelo with my mom and sister. We had a great time. It had been a while since we had gotten to do this. I actually bought the very first of my Christmas presents while there so that was great. I got home that afternoon about 3:30 and just as I arrived home my best friend, Stephanie, was dropping off her girls for the night! I was really excited to have "my girls" to spend the night and to go with us to church on Sunday. I had thought about all the great things we could do together, like paint our nails and all watch a movie! Well it just did not all go like that! Jim was not feeling good at all. He had already been sick for most of that week and was putting off going to the doctor. It ended up just being a non-stop afternoon and evening of just getting dinner ready and getting them all to bed. By the time Jim and I got back to our room for the night we were pretty wiped out. And, by then they had gotten a bit too loud and woke up JC so he was in our room, wide awake! He ended up going back down for us pretty easily about 10pm. I then went into the bathroom to do my normal routine of taking out contacts, washing my face, and brushing my teeth. Apparently as I took my contact out of my right eye I scraped the surface of my eye with the tip of my finger. It hurt soooo bad! It made it very difficult to go to sleep that night. Sunday morning it was still really bad and I of course could not get my contacts back in. We manage to get everyone ready and get to church though. It was not my best Sunday! It was hard to see and my eye just constantly watered. We ended up eating lunch with our friends in order to get the girls back to them. We went home and put everyone down for a nap. We went back to church that evening for our Operation Christmas Child box collection service. Drew sang with the children's choir and did so well. He did not act scared or upset at all. It was a very sweet service as we listened to a woman share about her experience of actually taking the shoeboxes to a country in South America for the distribution. She showed pictures of children living in a dump, an actual dump. It just made my heart ache for the poverty all around our world. We just do not realize how blessed we really are. This year we are not doing nearly as much for Christmas as we have in the past, and Drew knows this. With pay cuts and unexpected repairs to our home we are just not able to do much. Even the little we are doing though is so much more than the kids that will be getting the shoeboxes. I cannot thank God enough for how He provides over and above our needs. Sunday night Jim and I had made the decision that it was going to be a doctor visit on Monday for both of us, as well as JC. JC was all congested and following his typical pattern of getting an ear infection. So Monday morning started off at the doctor's office. It was determined that all of us had sinus infections, Jim had an ear infection, and JC was close to an ear infection. My eye was okay, just scratched. Jim and I both got sinus shots, I got a flu shot, and we all got prescriptions for antibiotics. I am happy to report that we are all feeling much better now. Jim is still having some issues with his ear being closed up but it is improving. It was extremely bad infection in his left ear. He has a football game tonight and I have instructed him that he must wear some cotton in both ears to keep the infection from returning. It has made for a really long week and extra busy at work due to missing a day. Thankfully we have no plans for this Saturday other than cleaning our filthy house!! The house must get cleaned this weekend so that we can begin decorating for Christmas next week. I really don't even care to decorate! I know that is aweful but I am having a really off year when it comes to Christmas. I seem to go through cycles like this. I am either really excited and ready for it or I am dreading it. This year I am dreading it. I can say that I have now just about gotten my shopping done so that has helped a bit with my attitude about it. Also, I think that it is going to be a hard year for decorations with JC. He is quite the mischevious little boy! I think it is going to be a lot of fun for the actual Christmas activities with him this year.
Well, that is all for now. I am finishing up this post on my phone, which is much more complicated than on computer!

Big Things Going On!!

The most exciting news ever!!!

A week ago today Drew ask Jesus into his heart to be his personal Lord and Savior!! This is something that Jim and I have been praying about for a long time, really since he was born. We are so excited that he made this decision. He will begin attending a class for new Christians this Sunday. This is for about 7 weeks and then after that we should be planning a time for him to be baptized. Of course we will let everyone know and hope that many of you can be there with us for this very special time!

The last week has been very busy with activities! Last week we made the big move into the new office! I am so excited to have a real office of my own! The new space is really beautiful. The guys that worked so hard can not possibly know how much their hard work is appreciated. The move was very successful and without great incident.

On Friday I had promised Drew to take him to see my new office. He was very excited to see it. I also took he and JC out on the playground at the church for a little play time. Here are some pics from our time playing!








They had a great time, as you can see!!

Saturday morning we got up and had a very leisurely morning at home. This was Jim’s first Saturday off from band competitions. After getting a little extra sleep and a great home cooked breakfast we got ready and went to Cedar Hill Farms for some great fall fun! See the pics from our fun below…










After all our fun at the farm we went and had lunch together and then did some Walmart shopping. It was a very good day but by the time we got home we were all worn out. I made a nice hot pot of bean soup. The weather was perfect for a relaxing evening in the house with a good fall meal like soup!

Sunday was Halloween. We had our Fall Festival at church so the kids got to dress up and have fun and stay safe. JC was a lion and Drew was Luke Skywalker. Check out all the fun below...










We were really glad that our friends, the Hanks, could join us for the fun. This was our first Fall Festival at our new church home. It was a great time. We are starting to make connections with people and build some friendships. We are so thankful that God has brought us to LHBC.

Yesterday afternoon we took JC for his first haircut! He was so good, really better than I had anticipated he would be. Here are some pics of this momentous occasion!









Well, as usual our days are busy! I was told yesterday that we are only 7 weeks from Christmas. I am now in panic mode! I cannot believe that it is almost that time of year. I am looking forward to the holidays and the time spent with family, but I am not looking forward to the shopping. I seems I go through cycles where some years I am on fire and have everything done before Thanksgiving and then I have a year, like this one, where I seem to be dragging my feet and dreading it all. I think the most important thing I can do in all of it is remember why I am celebratin. It is the time for us to remember the birth of our Lord Jesus! This year will be especially wonderful since Drew will be able to celebrate it as a new believer!

Well, that is all for now!