I'm back

Wow, I just realized that I havent blogged in 3 months! I guess I have some catching up to do.
Since I blogged last Brayden has started preschool and is loving it. He has learned so much already. They are having Thanksgiving lunch Friday and he's pretty excited about that. Brayden will start Kindergarten next August and we will start Emma in preschool then. We have 2 sets of wonderful grandparents that keep her now so we can save a little money ;)
Also, I have lost a total of 40 pounds since I started my diet in March. I've gone from a size 12/14 to a 6 so I'm pretty excited about that! I would love to loose another 5-10 pounds, but I doubt it will happen during the holidays..lol
Speaking of holidays....I am so ready to put my Christmas tree up, but I'm going to hold off until Thanksgiving...which is only a week away. However, I have already put my Christmas wreath on my front door my 2 trees on the porch. I love this time of year....excpet for the getting dark at 5:00 thing....

Preschool, turning 2 and potty training

I know, I know...I haven't blogged in forever....I've been too busy reading everyone elses...:)
It seems that I don't have 'babies' anymore. Brayden is starting preschool next week! We went yesterday to see his room and visit his teachers and he is very excited. I think he is really going to enjoy it. He will be going 3 days a week. I almost cried when we walked in his room, so I don't even want to think about his 1st day of Kindergarten next year! He is just growing up way too fast. My sweet Emma will be tunring 2 on Sunday....where does the time go?!? We are in the process of potty training her & she is doing vey well. She has had 2 accidents....thank the good Lord both times she was on the tile & not on my carpet! She had a poopy accident in the bathroom, and lets just say she went straight in the tub, after I wiped to poop off of course, the rugs got washed & the floor was scrubbed with clorox wipes (which are the best thing ever!) Ahhh, the joys of motherhood!

Happy Birthday Brayden!

Wow, it's hard to believe my baby boy is 4 today! Brayden is an awesome kid! He is truly a blessing and I consider it an absolute honor that God has allowed me to be a his mom. We have a pretty full day planned. I woke him up singing 'Happy Birthday' this morning. He and Emma are at their Pawpaw & Nana's while I work til 12:30. Then we're going home to play outside in the pool, Bryaden and I are going out for dinner and going to order his birthday cake & finish getting his birthday party supplies for Saturday. Then we are going to go home & when Patrick gets home from work we're going to have some birthday cake and ice cream...well, they'll have cake & ice cream, I'm still dieting....

She's back!

My mom has finally moved back to Tuscaloosa! Woohoo :) She and my stepdad moved Monday and are now officially Tuscaloosians again! I'm going to like being able to just call her up & ask her to go with me to T.J. Maxx or Walmart. I will probably get on her nerves for a while :) Brayden is thrilled and thinks we should be at her house all the time. I picked him up from my dads yesterday when I got off work & the first thing he said was "ok, let's go to Mawmaw's!"
My stepmom asked me what we had planned for Memorial Day. I told her I wasnt sure yet, but my mom mentioned cooking out. She then said "this is going to complicate things" :) Normally I would just run over to their house for lunch, after all it's only 2 minutes away (we can see their neighborhood from our front yard). Now I guess I'll just have to go with whoever asks first :) Too much family - I think thats a good problem to have! :)

My sweet boy :)

I may have to keep my eye on Brayden. He apparently has just skipped over the 'girls have cooties' stage. This is the conversation we had on the way home from church Wednesday night.
Brayden: "Momma, did you see that girl in the striped shirt in my class?"
Me: "No baby, I didn't notice"
Brayden: "She kept following me around....she's my friend"
Me: "You'll have to show her to me Sunday"
Brayden: "She was at The Barnyard too" (his preschool party for church was there)
Me: "Was she?"
Brayden: "and Momma.......she sure is pretty!"

You go girl!

I just want to say for the record that I am 100% backing Miss California! I (being a Christain) personally loved her answer for the gay marriage question. The fact that Perez Hilton (a gay man) is the one who asked it makes her reponse more wonderful. I think it's great the way she answered the question with an honest opinion and she didn't just give an answer that she thought the judges would want to hear. So, in the futre Mr. Hilton, don't ask someone their opinion if your not prepared for it!

Good news!

My mom is moving back to Tuscaloosa! I am very excited about this new information :) She and my stepdad are moving back in about 4 weeks. I'm sure they will miss being so close to the beach! My mom stayed at our house while Patrick & I went out of town for our anniversary a couple of weeks ago & Emma became a Mawmaw's girl so I know she will love being able to see her Mawmaw ALOT more. My mom is very excited about moving back to be closer to the grankids. All I can say is she better get ready, I'm sure Brayden will be calling her everyday wanting to go to her house or her come over to ours! I am very excited about having a walking buddy now. It hard pushing 2 kids in a double stoller who weigh about 60 lbs (combined). Now I will have someone to swap pushing duty with :)

Change of plans

As you know, Patrick and I went on our 1st trip alone since having children. Our plans were to stay on Lake Guntersville in North AL. We drove the 2 hours it takes to get there and when it was time to check into our room we got a surprise.. The room was filthy! I opened the door to walk out on to the balcony and walked right into a huge spider web. I called down to the front desk and told the lady how nasty the room was. She told me that we could change rooms so we did and the 2nd one was worse than the first! Patrick & I walked downstairs and told her we wanted out money back - it was $170 a night! I don't like staying in hotel/motels at all and I avoid it if at all possible. After this experience I had just about made up my mind that we should just forget the trip and go home. So, we started heading back to town. I called my mom and asked her to look online and see how much it was to stay at the Wynfrey Hotel in B'ham. We ended up staying there in a really nice CLEAN room. We ate at The Cheesecake Factory and shopped at the Galleria for the kids, of course. Although it wasnt the trip we had planned on, it actually turned out very well and it was nice to get out of town alone :)

Busy bee

I have a fairly busy week & weekend. Patrick and I are going to Lake Guntersville Thursday for our anniversary. My mom is coming to town tomorrow from South AL and is going to stay with the kids while we are gone. My sister, niece and nephew will be coming to town from North AL on Thursday so Patrick & I will come home to a house full on Friday! Brayden and Emma will have so much fun with Mawmaw, Aunt Christy and their cousins they may not want us to come home. We will be dying Easter eggs on Friday evening. Saturday morning we have a preschool Easter party with church at The Barnyard from 9:00-11:00, then we're having a family cook out and Easter egg hunt at our house at 4:00. Sunday, we will get up to see what the Easter Bunny has left and then off to church where it's my turn to work the nursery. Sunday afternoon will be full of Easter egg hunts as well! I hope everyone has a very blessed Easter!

Finally rid of the stomach bug....

I don't even know where to begin with this post. Emma woke up around 2am Tuesday morning throwing up. She also had extremely yucky diapers, I actually raised the window a few times :) Patrick called me at work Wednesday and told me that he thought he was getting what Emma had. Right after supper Brayden got the bug and the shortly after that I cought it as well. Patrick & I both started feeling better Friday. Brayden still had a touch of it yesterday. I honestly don't have a clue how many loads of laundry I have done this past week. Thankfully my mother-in-law owns a carpet cleaning company and Patrick was able to get the van and clean our carpet Friday. Now, we have passed the stomach bug on to my dad and Emma has a cold. I ahve not been to work since last Wednesday, so I guess I better get back tomorrow!

Praying for Stellan

Please say a prayer for this sweet baby boy!

Anniversary plans!

Patrick and I have decided to go out of town all alone! Can you imagine...:) My wonderful mom (who lives in South AL) has been gracious enough to volunteer to come and stay with Brayden and Emma while we are gone. Thanks Mawmaw! I'm sure Brayden and Emma won't even realize we're gone.....well, Emma may notice around bed time. She has never spent the night away from us. The first time Brayden ever stayed the night away from home was the night before little Miss Emma arrived. We had to be at the hospital at 6am so we decided to let him stay the night at my dads with his Pawpaw and Nana. I have never been more that a 10 minute drive away from either of my children and it completely freaks me out a little to be 2 1/2 hours away. I know my mom will take good care of them, so I'm definetly not worried about that. I just keep thinking that that will be the time that Brayden will run Emma down with his battery powered jeep or possibly the other way around... She's a tough cookie!
You're probably wondering where we are going....We have decided to go to Lake Guntersville in North Alabama. I am not loking foward to leaving my kids, but I am excited about some alone time with my hubby! Oh, and just to ease your little minds.....there will NOT be any eggs fertilized on this trip! :) Have a great weekend!

Remembering...

The other day Brayden said something that I thought was sweet and I almost cried!
As most of you know my Pawpaw passed away in August. It was sudden & very hard on all of us. Brayden and I were talking one day about him & I said something to the effect of him being in heaven and that now when it rains maybe it's Great Pawpaw helping God water the flowers. Last week when it was raining so hard Brayden randomly said "Mommy, Great Pawpaw is watering the flowers for us!"
**I'm trying not to cry as I type this**
I had one of those moments the other day when you suddenly realized all over again that someone is gone. Patrick, the kids and I were in the car Saturday morning going to eat breakfast. I mentioned something about how my Mawmaw (she passed away 10 years ago due to breast cancer) would always cut the crust off of the toast for me and my sister. Patrick said his grandad would always make them eat all of the toast. I told him that she probably gave our crust to my Pawpaw rather than just throwing it away... And then it hit me...he's actually gone. After we ate breakfast we went to get Brayden a hair cut. The lady cutting his hair asked who he got his wavy hair from....... His hair is just like my Pawpaw's.

Oh the joys of having 2 small children...

We had an interesting evening......
Ok, let me start off by saying that we have a door knob on our bedroom door that needs a key to open it. This was like that when we bought the house & I have no idea why it's there. I'm not even sure I want to know why they would have needed that. So, for whatever reason, they had that type of door knob & didn't bother to leave us the key to it. Last night as I was vaccuming the living room ( I vacuum the kitchen & living room every night....slight case of OCD I guess) Brayden came up to me & said "I'm sorry Mama...I didn't mean to". I turn off the vacuum so I can figure out what he's done......his sister is locked in my bedroom! He turned to thing to lock it & them Emma shut the door. I could hear her giggling on the other side of the door while I'm having a slight panic attack. I couldn't remember if the bathroom door was shut & I just knew that if I didn't get the door open soon she would find her way to the potty & proceed to splah in the water.... I'm running around the house trying to find a wire hanger that may work, but of course we have none "I hate wire hangers!" . Then I remembered my brother "breaking in" to my house 1 day with his debit card when hubby didn't lock the deadbolt. So I got my debit card out of my purse & voila... The door was opened. I told my hubby this fascinating story when he got home from work last night.....he's going to Lowes today to get another door knob.

Rainy Tuesday.....

This is how we spent our rainy Tuesday afternoon....
***There are more pics of Emma than Brayden -he spent most of the photo session in his room watching cartoons**

No longer a surprise...

My nosey husband as completely ruined his surprise party! He told me last night that he knew I was planning one! I have been carefully planning it for months.... Most husbands would realize that their wife had put alot of time & effort into it & just pretend he didn't have a clue....not my hubby! I told him he should have just kept quiet & went along with it. He had to opportunity to have the afternoon to himself tomorrow & I was going to clean & my dad volunteered to come over & help me cook, but now that he knows he can help me clean & cook is own burgers! :)

The Whistle Stop Cafe

Most of you know what that is. For those who don't...it's the cafe in the movie 'Fried Green Tomatoes'. It is in Juliette, Georgia. I have been wanting to go there for years. I have been asking hubby to make the 4 hour drive it will take to get there & his response is always "I'm not driving that far just to eat". Well, our 5 year anniversary is coming up in April. I told him that I think that would be a great anniversary gift :) to my surprise he said ok!!! So sometime in April we will be making the trip!

Who voted for this man?

As I read the following, one question came to mind 'What kind of people voted for this man?' Is this the kind of change you wanted???


Obama to Lift Ban on Overseas Abortion Funding
President Obama is expected to sign the executive order one day after the 36th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion in all 50 states.
President Obama on Friday is expected to lift a ban on federal funding for international groups that promote or perform abortions, reversing a policy of his predecessor, George W. Bush.
Obama will sign the executive order one day after the 36th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion in all 50 states.
Liberal groups welcomed the decision while abortion rights foes criticized the president, who was long expected to make this move during his first week in office.
The so-called Mexico City policy requires any non-governmental organization to agree before receiving U.S. funds that they will "neither perform nor actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations."
It is also known as the "global gag rule," because it prohibits taxpayer funding for groups that even talk about abortion if there is an unplanned pregnancy.
The policy was first instituted by President Ronald Reagan in 1984 and continued by President George H.W. Bush. The policy was reversed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, and re-instated by President George W. Bush in 2001.
Both Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who will oversee foreign aid, had promised to do away with the gag rule during the presidential campaign. Clinton is to visit the U.S. Agency for International Development, through which much U.S. foreign aid is disbursed, later on Friday.
Organizations that had pressed Obama to make the abortion-ban change were jubilant.
"Women's health has been severely impacted by the cutoff of assistance. "President Obama's actions will help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies, abortions and women dying from high-risk pregnancies because they don't have access to family planning," said Tod Preston, a spokesman for Population Action International, an advocacy group.
Anti-abortion groups criticized the move.
"President Obama not long ago told the American people that he would support policies to reduce abortions, but today he is effectively guaranteeing more abortions by funding groups that promote abortion as a method of population control," said Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee.
Obama has spent his first days in office systematically signing executive orders reversing Bush administration policies on issues ranging from foreign policy to government operations. On Thursday, he signed three executive orders to rein in secretive U.S. counterterror policies and end harsh interrogations.

It's that time....

Ok, here's the deal. I want, stratch that, need to loose weight! We're talking like 40 lbs! I've never been really skinny. Well, there was that 1 time I took diet pills & lost 40 lbs. putting me at 122lbs. Since then I have gotten married, had 2 kids & packed back on those 40lbs plus a little.....so depressing! Now, I never weigh...I avoid it at all cost, but for some reason last week, against my better judgment, I got the scale out of the closet & stepped right up. My first thought was, and I actually said it out loud, "Are you kidding me?" My second thought was "I am offically a 'fat chick'! " And my third....you guessed it - "It's diet time!" I usually can stick with a diet for a couple of weeks & then I kind of taper off - Well not this time. I am sooo disappointed in myself, I seriously cannot believe that I have just let myself go after having kids... So I am now on a diet! I also plan to start walking around my neighborhood. I got my ipod charged & ready to go last night, but when I got up this morning & realized it was only 20 degrees outside I decided to go back to bed. But, tomorrow, tomorrow I will start walking, I don't care if I have to dress in several layers, I will be out there tomorrow am at 6:15 walking!
I'm hoping my hubby will get on board as well, yesterday he brought home Zaxby's & when I stole a fry.....I know, I know....... he said "That's not on your diet" Ok seriously, how about you not bring it home. Couldn't he have eaten in the car in the gagrage before he came in??? Is that too much to ask? Oh, and then my dad brings by 2 50 count boxes of rice krispie for the kids. I told him "Daddy, I'm trying to diet" He said "Oh, Im sorry" Seriously...I need a little help here!

New puppy...

We now have a new family member. Her name is Sadie. She is so sweet & the kids both love her! Anytime she is still Emma hugs & kisses her...and when she's not still Emma is chasing her...lol. Brayden still calls her "doggy" from time to time rather than "Sadie" & Emma just calls her "No" :) She sleeps with Brayden every night. We're working on the potty training, she has had a few accidents, but I just clean it up & go on, over all she is doing very well! Most of the time she will go to the door & whine when she needs to potty. Like all puppies she chews on any & everything so we try to keep plenty of toys around her hoping she will chew on 1 of those rather than my basket with magazines in it next to the couch. Emma likes to play in her food/water bowl. I'll catch her putting the food, 1 piece at a time, into the water side...We have had her 1 week & I still havent taken any pictures. I need to buy new batteries & I forget everytime I go to the store... I will work on that & post pics..

"I would love to!"

I received a meesage on facebook yesterday from the youth director at my church. He asked if I would be interested in helping out in the youth sunday school area & asked me to call him. I made the call & was asked to help teach the youth girls. I graciously accpeted & I am to start helping this Sunday. I already know most of them because my brother just moved out of the youth & into the college group not too long ago. All of the girls are great & I am looking foward to my new "job" at church.

Rowdy children!

My children have become extremely rowdy..... Sunday night while cooking dinner (Patrick at work) I yelled words like "no" "stop" don't do that again" about 4 billion times. Usually when I hear Brayden & Emma both giggling they are up to no good. I walked in the living room just in time to watch little Miss Emma take a nose dive off of Brayden's little chair. She got right back up laughing with a big red carpet burn on her forehead & proceeded to do it again....chair #1 was taken away. I walk back into the kitchen to check on dinner...again I hear giggling....I go back into the living room to see her doing the same thing with her rocking chair....chair #2 ...taken away. They follow me into the kitchen chasing each other. A few minutes later they wander back into the living room....and yet again I hear the giggling. I walk in to see Emma running from Brayden playing "chase" & then ......he tackles her! After sending them to seprate activities Patrick walks in the door... couldn't he have gotten there just 10 minutes earlier...lol

Happy Birthday Cameron!

Today is my brother's birthday. He is 19! He was 3 when my dad & his mom got married. He was 3 & I was 11......now I'm 26 & he's 19! Where does the time go? Several years ago he was somewhat of an annoyance, as all little brothers are ;) Now he is an adult and I am so glad that he is a part of my life! He is a wonderful brother and a great uncle. He is very active with the college group at our church & he will be going to France on a mission trip this summer.... I am very proud of him & I hope that he was a very wonderful birthday!!!

Name that puppy!

We have decided to get a dog! We should have our new family member in the next couple of weeks....Thanks April! She is a choc lab/doberman mix & she is so cute! I'm trying to get an idea of a name for her. Please let me know your fav of these & feel free to suggest more. My pics are:
1. Sadie
2. Zoe
3. Abby
4. Sophie

Brayden's surgery

I just realized that I never posted an update on Brayden's surgery. I was busy taking care of him & then we had to get ready for Christmas. He had his tonsils and adenoids taken out on 12/11. We arrived at the Surgical Center at 6am. They started surgery around 7:30 or so. We had to spend 2 hours in recovery & we got home around 10:00. He did amazingly well! He ate his weight in jello the 1st day. He had ups & downs. There were times he would cry & say his throat hurts & then there were moments I would almost have to sit on him to get him to sit down & stop jummping around! He went for a check up 1 week after surgery & the doc said everything was healing nicely. He goes back for 1 more check up this Thursday (1/8). This surgery was a blessing! He sleeps much better at night & no more snoring!!! Now if we can just work on his dadd'ys snoring....;)