Tyler's Birthday

Happy 6th Birthday to my not-so-little Tyler man! Last Monday was Tyler's birthday and we celebrated the weekend before with a birthday party at Chuck E Cheese. This was our first-ever party away from home! I had one friend ask me if I had lost my mind. It seems that the crowd was a little restless outside the doors at Chuck E Cheese and several of my friends felt as though their lives were in danger. Go figure! :) It actually was slightly intimidating to show up for a scheduled birthday party and find a line of people waiting to get in. Imagine then how those people felt as they directed our party attenders in ahead of all of them! Yikes! Thankfully, everyone made it through the party unharmed!

Tyler had a great time with his friends! His big gifts this year were Legos. As a matter of fact, almost all of his gifts were Legos. As a matter of fact, guess what he bought with the money he got for his birthday???? That's right, more Legos!!! The kid is a Lego maniac and can occupy himself for hours with a Lego set. I fully expect for him to go into architecture and make lots of money to support his parents in their old age! It is freaky really. He sits down with the Lego sets and the directions and goes step by step until he has built his masterpiece!

This child has blessed our lives tremendously, as has Kayla! Tyler keeps all of us laughing and is always coming out with something that cracks us up. You never know what is going to come out of his mouth. It has been an amazing blessing to watch this child grow over the last six years. It breaks my heart that he is growing so fast though!

And now, for your viewing enjoyment... pictures!!!!

What is a U.N.F.O.?

Well, let me tell you what a U.N.F.O. is... it is an Unidentified Non-Female Object that appears at your door one afternoon to see if your daughter can come out and ride her bike around the neighborhood with him. WHAT??? Yep! So, Kayla has boys that are friends from church and once in a while one of them will come over to play, but it doesn't happen very often. So, imagine my surprise when a very cute young man shows up at our door on Tuesday to see if Kayla can go for a bike ride. Um, excuse me, cute young man, who are you???? Well, apparently, he is a boy that goes to Kayla's school and he rides the same bus as she does. Thankfully, Kayla was grounded on Tuesday and has a flat tire on her bike so I didn't get too much grief over not letting her go. However, we did discuss that she will not be going bike riding with anyone around the neighborhood except her parents! Yeah, yeah, call me an over-protective stick in the mud, but... that's just the way that we roll. We welcome all children to come and play in our front or back yard, boys and girls alike, but my child is not traipsing all over the neighborhood with a U.N.F.O.

For clarification purposes, apparently this young man is just a friend, but still...

The past couple of weeks have been rough parenting weeks for Craig and I. We covet all of your prayers and will have blisters on our knees from our own prayers. This is the time in our life when we are hearing, "everybody else does, why can't I". This is also the time when I am learning, really learning, that it is not about being my children's friend, I am a parent. That is a hard lesson, especially when you feel as though your child is continually exasperated by you and your rules. Each new stage brings good and bad with it. Lord, let me focus on the good!

Fridays

Fridays have become my new favorite day of the week! It is the day that I don't work and I just feel so incredibly blessed to have one day a week where I can almost do whatever I want. However, this is also the only day that I have that I cram in errands, grocery shopping, house cleaning, relaxing, a manicure, haircuts, doctors appointments, etc. You get the picture right? I have found myself with not much to do on Fridays the last couple of weeks, and I love it. It is like I have finally caught up or something.
We went grocery shopping last night. I cleaned half of my house yesterday. So I here I sit wondering what I will do today. Hhhhmmmm... the possibilities are endless. But, truth be told, I will probably finish cleaning my house, go to Sams, and probably back to WalMart for the things that I didn't get last night. I think I will throw in a manicure/pedicure today just for relaxation sake!
We are hosting game night tonight. We have two couples that we get together with about once a month or once every six weeks and we play games. Sometimes the competition is fierce!!! We have a great time and we all have kids about the same age. Usually my ear drums are about to explode from the noise by the end of the night and my house is trashed, but it IS fun! Boys will never cease to amaze me. The girls go in Kayla's room and you hardly hear from them during the night, except to come out and ask if they can give each other makeovers. The boys... well, they usually make us dizzy with laps through the kitchen. There is usually at least a couple of fights to break up over who had which gun first. One of the last times we had game night here, I walked into Tyler's bedroom to find that they had completely removed ALL of his bedding from his bed. I mean down to the dust ruffle folks! Where did that come from? Tsk, tsk! Boys will be boys!
Hope everyone has a happy Friday! And, somebody better leave a comment and say that they are proud of me for posting two days in a row!!!

Where Have I Been?

Ugh! A horrible blogger I am, I am! I quit blogging because I just didn't feel like I had time to do it and when I did have time I was too exhausted to come up with anything witty to talk about! :) It's true!
However, we happen to be going through an extremely slow period at work right now, so maybe that will give me some time to catch up a little bit. No promises, but I'll try!
So, what have we been up to since the big wedding in November????

Well, the week of Thanksgiving we took the kids on a mini vacation and headed to Atlanta. We had a great time! We went to the aquarium, the World of Coke, and the Foam Factory! The kids had a blast. If you haven't been to the Foam Factory, I would highly recommend it. This place is like Adventure Crossing on steroids!!! Inside the building, they have a three story playground with foam balls and "guns" to shoot the foam balls. It was very cool. Outside they have a lot of rides and I got jerked every which way riding them with the kids, but I loved it!

From Atlanta, we went on to Tennessee and spent Thanksgiving with the folks. My mom and Ruth and I were at Toys R Us in Clarksville at midnight on Thanksgiving night. It was the most insane year of after Thanksgiving shopping that I have ever done. Write this down people - I may NEVER go again. They had to call the police because the crowd outside Toys R Us got so unruly. Let me tell you something - I don't need anything that bad!

Christmas was really different for us this year. Ruth and Ron were in California. My mom and dad went to my brother's house. We had a few friends over on Christmas Eve, but Christmas morning was spent with just the four of us. It was quiet but nice. We had breakfast and enjoyed watching the kids open their gifts. Sometime around noon we left and went to my brother's over in North Carolina. It was one of the worst driving trips that we have ever had. It poured the whole way. Between the wind and the rain, it was a very scary trip! But, we had a nice visit with the family once we got there.

Since Christmas, we haven't had a ton of stuff going on and that has been a nice change of pace! Kayla is playing basketball and has her last game coming up this weekend. She has done really well this year and has scored a few points for her team. She just had softball evaluations and will start that in another month or so. Tyler will be playing T-Ball this spring so we will be spending a good portion of our time at the ball field. But, we love it!

Does this catch me up???

Wedding Pictures

The Wedding

This past weekend we were blessed to be able to attend the wedding of one of our favorite babysitters, Kimberly and her new husband, Brandon. Kimberly and Brandon had asked several months ago if Kayla would be a junior bridesmaid and if Tyler would be a ring bearer, and, of course, they both agreed. This was truly one of the sweetest weddings that I have been too, from the rehearsal dinner to the reception. Brandon is a huge movie buff so the rehearsal was done in movie theme. Brandon's mom and dad outdid themselves with this! Each table had popcorn boxes filled with candy for party favors and then in the center of each table was a BIG popcorn box filled with the movie size candy and popcorn. Tyler ended up winning the popcorn box from our table - you can imagine how thrilled he was with all of that candy! He was also very thrilled when they gave him his "groomsmen" gift and it was a Bible commentary! Brandon's dad is a pastor and Tyler opened the wrong gift by mistake! It was too funny. Kayla was so thrilled with her goody bag that she got!

Kayla and I got to spend most of the morning with Kimberly and all of the bridesmaids and she just had the best time. She got her hair done and her nails done, and ya'll, she looked beautiful and so grown up! I'm so thankful that she loves Jesus and is more concerned with her inward appearance than her outward appearance. That doesn't mean that I'm still not considering locking her in her room until she is old and gray! She did a great job being a junior bridesmaid!

Tyler was basically at the church to torment the groomsmen, I think! I could just see in his mind that here are all these young guys and they are all here to wrestle with me and let me jump on their heads! A very special thank you to Andy and Ryan who I think got blessed with the majority of the torment! He looked very handsome in his tuxedo and I think he did a great job. He only dropped the pillow once when he got on stage and Andy was kind enough to pick it up and hold on to it. Thanks Andy!

Our pastor and Brandon's dad officiated the ceremony and they did a great job. It was very relaxed and I was so glad about that for them.

I don't even know where to start with the reception. It was gorgeous! I'm thinking that Craig and I should get married again just so that we can have a reception like this! The room was beautiful, the food was delicious, and the music and dancing was a ton of fun. The bride and groom left under a spray of sparklers and I hope that they are having the best time on their honeymoon! To Kimberly and Brandon, thank you so much for including us in your special day - we love you and wish you tons of joy and happiness!

Snakes and Reptile Pictures