Getting Back in Routine

Well, school is in full swing now. We have our first home football game tonight. Overall things are going good with school. Regular routine has not really been happening though because I have been out of town a good bit in the last two weeks! It is hard to get settled into a routine when the mama is gone so much!



Drew is doing great in school! He loves his teacher and seems to have made the transition to OB schools and the 2nd grade with no problems! He passed the spotlight test, so that has been a new and exciting thing for him. He is making new friends and has at least 3 friends that I know of that go to church with him also. He is also going to Trekkers, the after school program at our church, three days each week. He is really enjoying that and it gives him a chance to get most if his homework done before we get home in the afternoons.




JC is as rough and crazy as ever. In recent weeks he has rolled down the driveway and scratched up his head really good. He is always busy doing something. Here is a pic of the lovely spot on his head . . .



It has healed most of the way now but he has been really bad about picking at it. He is starting to talk more and more clearly every day and gets rather frustrated now when we do not understand what he trying to tell us. He has recently discovered that he loves chocolate milk! His daddy introduced him to that! So now he only wants to drink chocolate milk. He keeps us busy! It is amazing how different two children can be. I never imagined how completely opposite he and Drew's personalities would be. They are both a joy to us and we love them so much!

Jim celebrated his 35th birthday yesterday! We took him out to dinner on Tuesday night and last night we had homemade pizza and some awesome cupcakes for dessert! I got the cupcakes from a friend from high school that I am connected with through Facebook. We had chocolate, red velvet, banana pudding, and carrot cupcakes and they were AWESOME!!!



Here Jim is reading his card from the boys.






Here we a trying to sing Happy Birthday to Jim. As you can see, JC is crying. Apparently he thinks he is not going to get his cupcake or that the candle may burn it up or he is just too impatient to wait all of one minute to get it!




I think it was worth the wait though!




Drew liked them too!




Goofy brothers! JC had to be taken to the tub immediately following the cupcake eating!




Happy Birthday Daddy!

And the party would not have been complete without Leo!



We did have a great night. After dinner and homework and baths were complete Jim and Drew played the Wii for a bit. It was a fun birthday.

Well, as you will see from the signature below I am now blogging from my new iPad! I am LOVING it! All of the special effects on the pics I did on here and it is so easy. I am learning more and more about it every day. I am definitely looking forward to being able to post more often to the blog now!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

First Day of School!

Well, it is here! First day of school! First day of second grade! First day in a brand new school! First day at Olive Branch schools period! Last day that mama takes him tp school!

There are a lot of new things happening for Drew this year. He has made the switch from Hernando Schools to Olive Branch Schools. That is probably the biggest change. We are all excited about it but it causes quite a bit of anxiety too. New schools mean making all new friends. For that reason I am glad we did it now, while he is still so young and can make new friends that he will be able to have all through school. He is also in a brand new school. Our schools only house w grades at a time until they get to Middle and High School. So, he is at Chickasaw Elemantary which has 2nd and 3rd grades at it. He now has to navigate color coded hallways and be more independent. He is ready for it all, I am confident of that, but it still worried this ole mom!

He has a wonderful teacher, Mrs. Samsel, and his assitant teacher is Mrs. Garrison. They share assitants in the 2nd grade so she will not be with them all the time. I am sure it is going to be a fantastic year!

Here he is this morning on his first day!

Such a good big brother! Helping JC get his shoes on!

And now the aggravating big brother, giving JC bunny ears!

Already anxious to pick him up and see how the day went!!

End of Summer Recap

It is so very hard to believe that summer vacation has basically come to an end. It has been a great summer. I have told Jim several times that I think this has probably been the best summer we have ever had! From our trip to Gatlinburg to just the slow speed that we have enjoyed at home in the evenings and on the weekends it has just been awesome! As a result of all our fun times together I have really neglected the blog. Some of that is the extremely sad shape of our computer! It takes forever to do anything on it now. We are getting me an ipad for Christmas and that will make it much easier and leave me with no excuses!

Today I am blogging from home and hopefully it will cooperate and allow me to get some pics on here! I have been off work since yesterday because my sister is on vacation and since she is my day care provided that left me with noone to watch the boys. It has been nice to have this time at home with them before school starts up. Jim has been in band camp this week so we have not had him with us to enjoy the fun but it has been great anyway.

So looking back at some pics from the last few weeks I have not posted the pics from the VBS Family Night at New Prospect. Drew went to it and had such a great time. I was really proud of him when he stood on stage and sang the words to all the songs! He had learned them at our church and we have a cd of the songs so he has been learning them in the car too!

He also decided to get his face painted at the carnival after the program. He has NEVER wanted his face painted, so I was shocked when he said he wanted it done. So then he decides he want fire painted on his cheek. This was a bit of a challenge for the young lady doing it. I think she did a really good job though!

Also, a couple of weeks ago we took the boys to a Redbirds Game. It was so much fun! The boys had fun and it was really nice. I was really worried about the heat but we had nice seats in the shade and there was a good breeze the entire time. It is fun to be at this point in JC's life and being able to take him to things like this and enjoy it!

Now for just some fun shots here at the house. As JC is getting bigger he and Drew play together as any couple of boys could be expected to! ROUGH! They wrestle, they fight, the tattle! And yet, there are time when they are great together and so sweet. Here are some pics I captured this morning of them while they were wrestling around in the recliner.

Today we had a dentist appointment for Drew. It went really great! This is the second time I have taken Drew and had JC with me. Last time we waited in the lobby and let Drew go back by himself. Well, to say the least JC was a handful that day! So, today i decided I would give it a go and take JC back to the room with Drew. I thought that perhaps he would be mesmorized by the cleaning procedure and be good. Well, he was good. He was wiggly the whole time but he did let me hold him and he was contained throughout the cleaning. The hygenist even gave JC a toothbrush too! That just made his day!

After the dentist I wanted us to do something fun so I decided to take the boys to Build A Bear. We have never been there before today. It was a really fun experience. They both made puppies and they are the same but they each put a difference sound in their puppy. JC got a Cars 2 shirt for his puppy so we named him McQueen. Drew named his puppy Bull.

We had a great time and then we went to McDonalds for lunch! Fun, busy day!

Well, that hits the high points of the last few weeks! Hopefully I will have some time to blog again soon!

Long over due blog update

I cannot believe I have not gotten to posting all the fun stuff about our trip! We are definitely all in summer time mode. We stay up late at night watching tv, we sit outside in the evenings while the kids play, we do as little housework, yardwork, cooking etc, as possible! So I just have not been really motivated to even update the blog!

But, back to updating on all that has gone on. We had a wonderful trip. It was long overdue! I will let the pics do most the talking now.

Well, here we are heading into the mountains. The pics taken from a moving car are not that great, but you get the idea!

So here are our two navigational tool! We used the gps on the phone for the most part and it was almost spot on every time! We did have a few wrong directions from it. I think overall the gps made the trip easier though and I did not have to try so hard to understand the map!

This is the beautiful, tree covered roadway that led to the mountain road to the cabin!

Here is a pic of the cabin we stayed in.

This is the view from our back porch. The lighting was not really good but it was beautifully dense with trees. It made for a nice private area in the back.

Our first adventure was to go for an 11 mile bike ride through Cades Cove! It was incedible in many ways. It was incredibly beautiful, incredibly challenging, and incredibly rewarding to finish it! We drove through Cade's Cove when we were on our honeymoon but biking is definitely the way to see it!

Here are some pics of the things we saw through Cade's Cove as we rode...

We completed the ride in 2 hours and 45 minutes. I did not think that was too bad for to non-bike riders! We really did have a great time doing it.

After our long bike ride we went to the cabin to clean up and nap for a while. We went to downtown Gatlinburg that evening and had a wonderful dinner at The Melting Pot. After dinner we walked all through downtown and did some shopping. We also road the sky lift to the top of the mountain. Here are the pictures of that...

The next morning we went to walk up to Clingmans Dome, highest point (6,643) in the Smokies. We attempted to walk up to it on our honeymoon but I chickened out! So I was quite determined to do it this time!

Accomplishing this was one of the most exciting experiences of my life. It is absolutely breathtaking at the top!

After Clingmans Dome we went back to the cabin and cleaned up and began packing. This was our final day on our trip. We went that evening to a dinner show, The Hatfield and McCoys. It was so very funny! The food was really good too. It was fried chicken and all the good southern fixins! Outside of the theater they had all kinds of crazy things set up, including chicken coops! Here are some pictures of the crazy things...

They had this outhouse set up and Jim decided to sit in it!

Then Jim decided to act like he was actually USING the outhouse!

So we had a wonderful trip! We are already planning a trip back next year with the boys.