Saturday Funnies

Here are some funny, cute and a few smart (ish) things the kids have been saying lately. They make me laugh so many times during the day. Many times I even mean to write things down in their baby books but then forget. These are some that stood out to me and I wanted to share.

Lily: Mommy what planet do we live on? Earth I say.

Lily: Do you think we could move to the planet Saturn since it has rings? Rings are so "fancy".


I was humming Fur Elise today when Sean walked in and heard me. He said: " Mommy, I love
Beethoven too"!


Lily: "Mommy, can you take me to China? They have rivers there and I want to see a river"!



Lily has been on an antibiotic. We usually don't have any problem getting her to take it since they are usually pink and taste like bubble gum. This one however is a different . It is thick, white and does not taste good. Twice a day we go through a pleading and begging then it ends by asking her if she is going to take it the hard way or the easy way. The hard meaning we hold her down and the easy way meaning she takes it on her own then drinks "good juice" real fast to make it better. She opted for the "easy way" each time after much pleading. That was working well until yesterday when she outsmarted me. I asked her the same question as she held her had over her mouth .

Me: "Lily, do you want to take this the hard way or the easy way"?

Lily: "I want to take it the none way"! - She thought she could outsmart us huh?

Not Me Monday

This blog carnival was created by mckmamma. It's fun and therapeutic so just join in the fun.
Go over to her site and to see how it's done.

My Not Me's were on time but I accidentally hit save instead of post before going to bed last night so they are a little late: Is that allowed? :-)

I did not forget my regular set of keys when I went out today thus locking me and the kids out of the house tonight.

I did not get dinner on the table after 8:30 pm and get so busy cleaning up afterward that I forgot to read the bedtime story I promised to my precious four year old daughter. Oh, and she did not fall asleep while waiting for me and end up sleeping with spaghetti on her face - what mother would ever let that happen?

I have not put off writing thank you cards another week. I would never do something like that. I would be such bad etiquette.

I did not bring a 5 pound bag of peanut m&ms to work and put my name on it.

I am not engaged in a silly and desperate attempt with my husband to gain more facebook friends therefore searching out and being accepted by people like Hota Kotb. - Not Me!

I did not forget to fold laundry.

I really, really did not fix lunch boxes for the kids for tomorrow! But that is because we are picking them up early and going to have lunch with dear friends whom we have not seen in a long time. Hopefully I will have pics to post. YAY!

What have you NOT ben doing this week?

Update on Arianna's RSV

Edit to earlier post:

The last I heard I think the baby is getting to go home. Thanks for prayers.... She will go home with neb. treatments and some antibiotics. This was tremendous improvement because I know how bad RSV can be especially when complicated with Pneumonia.

Posted earlier:

I have not been able to be around her still due to the kids and I being sick but I spoke with Sabrina (her mom) this morning. I forgot to mention that she has pneumonia. However, Sabrina said she had a better night last night and seems to be getting better. She was waiting for the Doctor to come in and talk to her.

Daddy's Birthday

I forgot to post this last week! Buddy had a birthday. I won't tell which one :-) The kids picked out everything so it was not fancy. But, everyone was happy and daddy loved that his kids picked him out a Spongebob cake. It made him feel quite youthful I am sure. I made him a very nice dinner. Of course, I don't have any pictures to share. It was a wonderful day.

Praying For Arianna

This is our sweet niece Arianna, my brother's newest daughter. She has been sick with RSV this week. Today she was at a hospital in Prattville, but has just been taken by ambulance to another hospital. Please pray for her. She is very sick and only 4 months old. I know RSV has really been ugly this season as some of my Friend's kids have already had it. A few other relatives have had it as well. We have had many on the prayer list. Please add sweet Arianna. Thank You!

Not Me Monday

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

I did not lay on the sofa the entire weekend in the same clothes and not
do one bit of laundry for myself even though I have nothing to wear once again at the start of a work week.

I am embarrassed to say that I did not do any dishes. But, I have been sick so does that count?

I did not put off going to the grocery store. We are out of milk and everything that matters. I did however scrape up some stuff to make up a nice casserole even though I felt bad and I got kudos from my husband.

I have not put off sending Christmas Thank You cards ....

I Did not fall asleep on the sofa early leaving my kids unattended and wake up in the AM hours finding my 5 year old playing on his playstation.

Well, I'm sure there are tons more I did not do today especially since I was not feeling well and laying on the sofa a good bit of the day. But, that will have to do for my very first

Not Me Monday!

Still here...

Checking in to say:
Just a little under the weather (or under the covers I should say). I just wanted to let you know that we are all fine and being lazy around the house. Getting absolutely nothing done and enjoying the extra long weekend off. I have literally been laying on the couch since Friday evening. Buddy had a small procedure done Friday morning and is fine. I just seemed to have a terrible head cold. It is getting better but now seems to be draining down into my lungs and I am a little nervous. So, to the Dr I will be headed this week to get myself on some meds.

I've Been Tagged

I have been tagged by Kristi

Go to the 4th folder, pull up the 4th picture and post it, describing it.

Here I am on my wedding day with three very special little boys. My two nephews Spencer and Benjamin and my Great Nephew Everett. I remember the day so clearly and how funny they were. Each of them added their own little flair to the wedding and made everyone laugh. Spencer was so serious, Everett was swinging the pillow during the ceremony and Ben was instructing the Flower girl how to drop the petals in great detail. That was seven years ago and these boys are almost grown but I still laugh when I see this picture.

I'm tagging:

Heather

Teresa

Amy

Leigh

A saturday Full of Birthday Partys

a late post......

Saturday we had five birthday party invitations all for around the same time. Three of them were for 12:00 to 2:00 and the other two were 11:30 to 1:30 I knew there was no way to do them all. One was our niece Abby and that one we were absolutely going to. But there were two others that were very important to us and we wanted to use a little creative planning and try to make it to a little of each of them.

So I called a mommy (Lily's friend Ainslee was turning 4!)to see if we could come over before the party started and spend a little time and bring the gift by. I had called the night before and found out that she would be heartbroken that Lily could not come. And Lily would also be heartbroken if she found out about the party and could not go So I did not tell her. When I realized I could arrange it. I surprised her that morning when we went for a bit.

After that, we ran to the Zoo where Abby was having her party. We had fun riding the train and seeing all the animals. It looked like it was going to rain any minute and was pretty windy but the rain held off and it was nice enough for us to have a great time. When that party was over we called our good friends the Mann's who were celebrating the first birthday of their beautiful triplet daughters. We had also called them earlier and explained our dilemma and decided that we could just drop by late. It actually worked out better because everyone was gone by then and we all got to spend some time together and catch up after not seeing other for a while. In the end, It was an exhausting but very special and fun day!

Here is Sean , Lily, Amy & big brother Seth with the sweet birthday girls!

Triplets: Taylor (in Lily's lap), Dakota (in Amy's lap) & Piper (in Sean's lap)

Cousins: Sean & Sophie with their zoo faces

Lily, Sophie, Sean and Rowan.

Sean with the sweet birthday girl Abby 3 year old....

Sean's new smile

Sean had to go to the dentist today to have a repair of a filling on his front teeth. For the second time since Christmas his filling came off. We decided to and agreed with the dentist that because Sean would be loosing those teeth soon anyway, and that one was week and loose anyway, to go ahead and extract both of the teeth. So what began as a simple procedure today ended with our big boy losing his first teeth. Not quite the way we hoped he would loose them but he is fine. He was not sure what had happened to him and we had to tell him later. He slept a good bit of the afternoon and seemed to perk up later in the evening.

Not sure what just happened and a little medicated in this picture.

Sean showing off his new smile.... We all love it....

Silly Lily had to have her picture taken spaghetti face and all :)

Sean's new room

Indiana Jones room - still border to be added and a few things to be finished -



reading his Indiana Jones book

dressed up as Indy, showing off his new whip

deciding where his next adventure will be......

holding the crystal skull.

We still have some ideas for this room. Maybe painting a bottom wall border of grass and creating two bolder type rocks or beanbags chairs maybe covered in gray fabric made to look like boulders to sit on either side of the dormer window that he has up there. Also maybe a fake tree plant and a large type elephant or zebra or some type animal hiding in the corner to make it look African/safari. At the dormer I am also thinking of putting some netting coming halfway across as a sort of hideaway for him. We put the pictures up today and they really made the room some alive some more. We have a "movie set" looking chair that has been in our family for a few years and it matches so it sits in the corner with the hat and a satchel I made for him.

Thanks for letting me bore you with the details of my boys room. He loves it.........:)

Busy Days - Warning - very long post! Will post pictures soon

I apologize in advance for the length in of this post.

I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas. To my blog buddies, I have been following you all faithfully though not always commenting. Lily is sick again and on another antibiotic but not too bad. She had her four year old check up the day after Christmas with shots. She was always on the tiny side but we were pleased that she grew a whole three inches this year and is now near the average range. We took the kids to Build a Bear just after her appointment with the gift of the bear and gift cards they had gotten from my mom and I will have a post with pictures coming about that soon. That made Lily feel better as she was not to happy about the shots. I have two weeks off work and have been enjoying the time.

---------------------------------------------

The past few days since Christmas have been very busy and productive ones for us. We have spent our time off doing some cleaning and organizing and putting our Christmas decorations away (though some say we may have bad luck now).
We decided to test Sean's Independence by trying out an upstairs bedroom for him. We have two rooms upstairs one of which is a study. The other one we had tried as a guest room before, and then as a playroom last year after Christmas when the toys were overwhelming. But, it just did not work out. Toys were constantly being hurled down the stairs and fights were breaking out between numerous play dates, siblings and such, and toys were being destroyed. It was just a disaster. Not to mention the fact the night after night I was bringing basket loads of toys back up to the playroom that had made the way down stairs to overcrowd their bedrooms again. So midway through the year the playroom fizzled. In it remained remnants of broken toys, yard sale hopefuls, giveaways and a full size bed that we hoped would be used for Sean soon instead of the 50 year old twin he was in.


We knew one day Sean would be ready to move upstairs, we just had no idea he would be ready so soon. He is such a brave little boy. He just gets right into bed and tells us "goodnight"!
He loves Indiana Jones so we decided to go with that theme. Instead of going with the character bedding we just went with Browns/Khaki animal and muted earthy tones in the bedding and pillows. There are a few chairs and a dark brown throw. A small bookcase beside his bed holds a globe in matching tones and an Indiana Jones play set and Mr potato head. His Lego table is set up with all his new Indiana legos he got from Santa. The upstairs room is more then double the size of his old room and he has his own bathroom so he really does love it.


We are taking Sean's old room and attempting another playroom. It really will be more of a Lily's toys/television and game room. And since Lily has such a small room I thought she needed some extra space. They will still share it though and it will allow Sean to be down with us and not feel secluded away from the family.


We are searching for themes and are open to suggestions. We are thinking of Disney since we have so many posters, and pictures and because it Will be mixed gender but we are still open.
So far we have a Mickey mouse T.V., a kid size rocker (girly), easel/chalkboard, 2 doll houses, a Disney castle a toy box (girly), some pop out play tents and a few other things that could take up some space in there.


We really want to do this on a small budget. It will get a paint job and probably a border (not sure yet). Any creative suggestions would help. (hint for Melissa or someone with her equal talents). I think I want to keep it simple and classy. I thought of yellow and blue for colors and maybe a simple light yellow/blue panel for the windows.

Anyway, after all of that work we felt we all needed a little break. Especially Buddy & myself. We rarely ever get any time away without the kids. We hate being separated from them but we know it is essential for a healthy marriage so we took our opportunity since we have the entire Christmas Holidays off. My mom kept the kids and we drove to the great big city of Birmingham (ha). One of our favorite spots though. A trendy area that we often like to visit just for a nice overnight getaway. A nice hotel and great places to eat there. We went shopping at the Galleria and ate lunch at another one of our favorites J. Alexanders. Nothing extravagant, but just enough for us.

I have lots of pictures to post soon. Sean's room, Build a Bear trip, Birmingham and a few others. In the mean time Happy New Year to all of you! I hope 2009 will be a better one for all of us.

Christmas Morning and Christmas night

We are pretty lucky I guess, because our kids actually let us sleep in. It is great on the weekends when we are off. But not so good on school and church mornings when we have to drag them out of bed. Anyway, on Christmas morning we actually slept in a little and when Buddy woke me I briefly forgot it was even Christmas morning at all. We had to wake the kids like we have every Christmas for the past 5 years of Sean's life and 3 of Lily's. It did not take them long though as they are getting older now and more into it.

They were very excited to see what Santa brought them. Lily did not seem to totally overwhelmed. Of course, she is a lot like me. Always contented with just about anything you give her. Sean on the other hand walked into the room and was very excited over everything very briefly and then realized that Santa forgot to bring him a bicycle. He got over it quickly though.

Indiana Jones Lego's were the big hit for Sean and an Authentic Disney Castle play set and a real doll crib were the big hits for Lily. Lily had only asked for one thing: Dora saves the Snow Princess DVD and Sean asked for the Lego's. We did not know until the night before Christmas when we saw Santa at the zoo that he even wanted a bicycle so we really missed the boat on that one. It was a great Christmas though and our kids got more then they needed:)We got some new Pajamas from maw-maw so we came home and got ready for bed. The big gift from her though was the Build a Bear Workshop gift cards, money and a bear that she pre-bought for each of the younger kids. We have a trip planned for Friday (today) and I will post pictures soon. It was pretty chaotic but tons of fun.

Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas

This year we hosted the Christmas Eve party for Buddy's side at our house. We rotate each year having it at alternate houses.
We usually do this on Christmas Eve and then on Christmas Morning I do a Breakfast and have Buddy's brother and sister over and then we head over to my mom's house for my side of the family. It all makes for a pretty fun but usually very exhausting few days.

I try to remind myself who it is really all about. This sweet and gentle prayer from a child reminded some of us.


I was worried there would not be enough food to feed us all. Ha! We had enough to feed an army! I felt guilty.

Then I worried if we were going to have enough gifts for us all to feel we got our fair share in the gift exchange. Ha! Seriously, just kidding. This picture does not capture the massive amount of gifts that covered our great room. I truly felt ashamed.

Sean said the blessing for us at Christmas breakfast that went a little something like this: "Dear Jesus, Happy birthday and I hope you have a Merry Christmas, Amen".

The wonderful Christmas chaos

This is what Christmas Eve gift -unwrapping chaos looks like in our family -

We got it all cleaned up and then Santa came!

We crashed........

Teacher Gifts

This year for teacher gifts I decided to steal an idea from a very creative fellow blogger Melissa Lester. She had the idea of these beautiful cake plates. I added the hand painted spreader with a little note attached: "Don't spread yourself to thin this Christmas". The teachers really loved their gifts and much love went into making them all.

For Heather - Merry Christmas

My sister Heather has been wanting to get a blog started but never seems to be able to figure out how. She has been asking for help and I have been telling her I would. But you know how busy we all get? Time just got away from us and we just did not seem to get around to it. She did get one started a few years ago just for pictures but never did get the hang of blogging and forgot her passwords. Ha! That was the end of that one. Anyway, I thought I would create her a blog and surprise her with it. So, I started her one with just a neat header that I thought she would like and a few gadgets. She can change anything she likes and add all her own stuff. Add her if ya like. She is funny and cool. I hope she will come along with me to the next blog luncheon girls....

Heather & myself on Christmas Eve about 28 years ago.

A Christmas Party on Lake Jordan

All I want for Christmas

All I want for Christmas is this Lake house.......
(and this is just the back deck)


and this view of the water......

On Saturday we were invited to the lake home of a friend for a Christmas party. It was for the Sunday school class at Frazer which Buddy teaches. We were excited to be able to bring the kids. I think they were more excited actually. We don't bring them to much to do with the class usually, and the members are always asking about them. They were all very glad we brought them and the kids were very well behaved. The food was delicious and the weather was perfect. We went outside and took some great pictures and had a nice fire inside. The place was decorated beautifully and we all had a wonderful time. Thanks to Roger and Jo Turene for sharing their beautiful home with our class once again.

Christmas Plays

On Sunday The kids had their Christmas programs at church which consisted mainly of singing. Sean's 5 year old choir was asked to sing 2 songs in the 2 morning services which was exciting because it was the 9:30 am televised portion and my dad who lives in North Carolina was able to watch. We have not seen him since spring. We are hoping he will be cleared by his doctors and we can pick him up next week so he can spend the holidays with all of us.

Then, today Sean had his kindergarten program. He had a line to say and did very well. I was so proud of my big boy. He was an Englishman (quite fitting since Buddy has taken about 25 trips) and said the words "plum pudding is served with little treasures inside".

Buddy is not feeling well and is now the one on antibiotics. It is no time to be sick though because it is such a busy weekend for us. We have a few parties to attend. Actually between the four of us we have four parties to attend this weekend. One will be a Christmas party at the lake home of friend which is always very beautiful. The decorations are stunning and we will surly have some great photo ops. We are taking the kids with us. It will be a trip on a bus with a group which will be fun for them I am sure. An adventure they are looking forward to.

Tomorrow (Friday) night I am going to my boss's home for the annual Christmas party. I am looking forward to the party but it is without spouse's so I am not really looking forward to going without Buddy. I have really fun co-workers though so it will be fun I am sure. I just really love my family time and hate being away especially around the holidays and when weekend times are precious. Daddy will do fine though. They will bake cookies and watch a movie. They already have it planned. And mommy is NOT staying at this party too long.....

Pictures of the Church Christmas program:

Christmas Parade

Last night we went to the Christmas parade.
It was very cold. We enjoyed it though.
We are looking forward to going to the
zoo lights, Calloway Gardens, candlelight
services and quite a few other events to make
this Christmas season magical....