Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Cheers to 35 Years!

A long time ago (30 something years ago) in galaxy far, far away (not so far, just about 6.5 hours depending on how fast you drive and how many stops you have to make... it is West Monroe, Louisiana) there was a young boy, and his name was Mike.
Mike was a man (okay not so much a man but a young high school boy), and he was looking for love (I am not sure that he was looking for love, but it sure was looking for him).
That lovely lady,
Yes, that is the gal, Amy.  She was attending her high school, going to church on Sundays and Wednesdays, playing the piano, and hanging out with friends.  She was dating, but no one serious, until she cast her eyes on this looker....
I know what you are thinking... who is that Adonis.. that Greek God of a man?  Well, that is Mike (he is my dad).
Well, the beautiful blonde and the sweet high school boy (with a large blonde fro), would soon begin dating and one day would be married.
Yes, 35 years ago, they said, "I do" and the rest would be history.  Little did they know all of the things that God would have in store for them.
In this 35 years they both graduated from college, moved from Fun-Roe to Arkansas, and have 4 super amazing wonderful smart children (who adore them)....

Caryn, who would marry off to this handsome boy and give them 2 grandchildren

handsome boy (Aron)

The Baby Bear
Little Red
Then there was Jason, the 2nd in line...
he's a looker right...!


This is his best friend Nicole.  We love and adore our Co-Co!  Seriously, the kids pray for her every evening, they just love her.  We were so happy that she was able to come to the beach and celebrate the 35 years of livin' and lovin'!!
She dressed in her best flamingo wear!
Then there is the baby.... Richard.  Our sweet baby brother.  Always a wealth of knowledge (sometimes that knowledge is completely unnecessary to know in your daily life... but he knows it.. such a reader).  We are sure to have fun when Uncle Richard is around!
 This is his girl friend, Mercedees (or Sadies if Red is calling for her).  We were so happy to get to know her better on our family get away!  FYI, the girl can cook like Paula Deen, okay not like P.Deen but better! (For me and mine, Mer is a keeper!)
Then there is the baby.... the 14 year old baby!  Our Katie Grace.
What would our lives be like had God not brought her into this world?  She is the perfect piece for our puzzle.
To celebrate Dad and Mom's 35 years of wedded bliss all of the kids left the condo that morning.  We headed out to the Little Zoo That Could, in Gulf Shores, and gave the parentals some quiet time.  When we got back to the condo around noonish, we found them asleep on the beach (can we say relaxed)!  After a long day of splish splashin' in the ocean, we came to the condo for a fancy steak dinner with twice baked potatoes fluff and corn.  YUMMO!!  The celebration was themed... obviously, it was a flamingo party (hence the flamingo attire and the pink).  (What can I say, Mom and I just love a theme!)
 
 Such a fun time.
 Note to self... this pajama top and flamingo hat may not have been my best look for the whole trip, but since I was with family (and now the 10 readers of the blog) I was feeling pretty comfortable.
Happy 35 years to Mommy and Daddy!
You two sure do make that whole marriage thing look easy!
Here is to 35 more years!













Monday, July 23, 2012

We Going To The Beach!

"We going to the beach!"  "We going to the beach!"
Red has been singing this line for the weeks prior to our vacation.  We have all just been so very excited.  The beach, the surf, family time... Bring It!

Here we are 10 minutes into the trip.  We had not even made it out of town and the Bear takes his nap (a 10 minute nap and it was his only nap, but a nap)!  Pure preciousness!!
You may not be able to tell, but she was very excited to be going to the beach!
I really do like him.  He totally needed this vacation!
Here I am, so glad to be on a vacation with my babies, my man, and my fam!  Happy girl!
Nap time is over and here was my first box of entertainment (zoo talker animals and cars)
See that tiny middle spot of the seat (that has gigantor animal pillows, well that is were my big ole booty would have to squeeze into many times during the trip).

  We finally arrived!  Our home sweet home for 9 days!  The Turquoise Place in Orange Beach!

The Lazy River!  Where we spent many afternoons!




The kitchen
 Our bedroom with an amazing view
Biggest bed ever and it was filled with myself, Aron, and the kids every morning by 5AM!

 Loved all of the windows in the condo!  Everyone's room was so nice and open!
 The dining area.  We loved sitting around the table for every meal or just to play a way to competitive game of Scrabble with our family.  The kids loved the openness of the whole condo to run (this was good late nights to tire them out)!  They would just run laps!
 Living area space.  This is where we would sit and watch television.  The view was spectacular!  There was a grill outside on our patio, tables to read at, chairs to lounge in, and a hot tub to soak in.  It was wonderful to sit and enjoy the beauty of the ocean and every morning you would see the dolphins jumping out of the water.  So relaxing!
 This was the "girl room".  Katie, Mercedees, and Nicole would sleep here.
 Here we are unpacking all of the groceries.  Feeding 11 people!  Sheesh!  Yes, everyone was helping to unload the groceries!  Every morning we would feast on pancakes, waffles, and fruit.  Mercedees even made a breakfast casserole for us.  It has been sad to be back at home, this morning we had Eggos and yesterday we munched on biscuits (BOO!).  Can you tell we were excited to be here?
Off to the lazy river!



Sunday, July 22, 2012

There's No Place Like Home

Looks like the blogging hiatus is over!  We just got back from family vacation 2012, and it was so wonderful!  I was able to spend 9 days with my parents, 2 brothers and their gal pals, my little sister (who is really a teen, but she is still little to me), the kids, Aron, and a partridge in a pear tree!  It may sound a bit crowded, but I like to think of it as the more the merrier (and it was very merry)!  I will have to do a post with all of our fun pictures (so if you are not all about looking at other peoples vacation pictures, then you should probably skip the next few posts).HA!  Hopefully, with the unpacking and cleaning the house, I will find some time to peruse the pics and take out any of the ones that make us look a little nutty (there will be so many of those)!
Down to the nitty gritty of the post.... road trips.  Don't ya just love a road trip with your loved one?  How about loved ones....and two of the four in the car are two and under!  Sweet Jesus!  Yesterday's drive, from the beach to home,14 hours, was no picnic.  There were times when I wanted to cry (but I knew that would not help the situation)!  There were times when I would start to laugh (crazy laugh), and Aron would just look at me like OMG she is going to crack.  Do you have any fun road trip stories?  If so, I would love to hear them!
I am not really sure what happened with Red and the Bear yesterday.  I could tell that things were going to be a bit rocky when we had to say good-bye to the beach, and the dolphins, and the sand, and the sea shells, and the room, and good bye to the lazy river, good bye whales (never saw one, but we did tell them farewell), good bye sharks (once again, no JAWS sightings, but see ya later dorsal finned friends).  So, it starts, 6AM, loading those 2 into their car seats.
Can you see the sadness in his eyes.  Trust me, had I taken my picture, you would have seen my tears!  I hate to leave the beach!  Just pitiful!
We stopped at our faithful pit stop place(McDonalds) and loaded up on breakfast (which I ate nothing), and headed out of town.  Red ate nearly 2.5 pancakes (its a record, she rarely eats breakfast or flap jacks for that matter), then the Bear (o my sweet Bear) he would only eat the greasy ever so delightful hash browns... I know right, so good, ovaly and contained in a wrappers as to keep your fingers clean from all of that grease and the salt (I just adore SALT)!  Well, not even 20 minutes later Red yells, "O MY WUUUURD"!  I turn around to hash vom on the car seat and in the middle of the seat (the seat where I would sit if I had to climb in back to entertain the 2)!  It was horrific!  Such a tiny thing can do such stuff!  I am cleaning the mess, while Aron is driving (yes, going 50 down the road...wha?  we were tryin to make good time, we stop only for pee breaks!)  Did I mention I was leaning over the seat (in a black t-shirt dress (if you have seen me around town as of late it is the black dress that I wear on most days that end with the letter y), well underneath I was sporting the o so attractive granny panty in light pink (they are so old that the color has faded from the fabric making them look almost the color of my skin tone!  Needless to say, the moon was high and it was nearly 7AM!  Sorry, to all of the people leaving Orange Beach yesterday!!  I am sure I was every truckers nightmare!!  Hopefully no one YOUTUBED me!  DYING!
So, the mess was cleaned up, and then started the constant MOMMY yelling!
Mommy, I'm hot
Mommy, I watch princess
Mommy, hi
Mommy, wove you
Mommy, Bubba poops
Mommy, your musics loud
Mommy, I color
Mommy, sticker
Mommy, cookie (here ya go)
Mommy, Cheeto (here is 5)
Mommy!  (Sometimes I think that I would like to change my name to something that my children cannot pronounce, like Mrs. SuperCalaFragalisticExpeAlaDoghShish or Daddy, yes, Daddy, they never yell out his name!  Why is that??
By the time we got to Pine Bluff, I had changed 3 horrible poo diapers, watched Tangled 2 times and the Swan Princess 3.5 times, experienced road rage at its finest (and gave a man the evil eye for trying to take out my ride which was filled with such precious cargo (he gave me the bird, but whatev, I think he was scuured!), taken 1 nap (the Bear had one right when the trip started, it lasted about 8 minutes), dazzled my husband with numerous romantic love songs (some not so in tune and not even the right words and I am not so sure he was dazzled by my vocal stylings (I guess that I do not sound like anyone from the group Wilson Phillips, not even close to Whitney Houston Belinda Carlisle or Celine Dion), cleaned up throw up, coughed so hard and peed on myself (of course we were in a stretch of nothingness and no stop was made to change), missed all of my favorite songs on the radio (one would come on then the static would start... always happens), car danced to Michael Jackson and Bobby Brown's Every Little Step I Take (a classic), and I was informed of the temperature in every town that we drove through (this has now made me realize that my husband is in the wrong line of work and should have been a weather man!)

Here is my Red.  For 2 hours, she rode with all of her toys on top of herself.  She amazes me with her talents!  Just amazes me!
So, the trip was fun to say the least.
Then it happened, Red got car sick, and all of those cheetos that I was feeding her all came up and were everywhere (including my hands.. I tried to catch it...I have tiny hands)  Trust me when I say, we will not be able to eat that snack for awhile!!  After stripping the child in a gas station parking lot and throwing away all of the things that were hit with Cheeto splatter, we were back on the road!
At one point, I even tweeted (do you tweet?) that I thought about throwing myself out of the car, then I realized that the doors are all child proof, so it would have never worked!
It was such a long drive to end such a wonderful super amazing vacation!
I just had to blog about it, because towards the end I realized that all of the things that were happening were kind of humorus, I could so tell that I was being tested (BIG)!  My patience was being tested, my thoughts were being tested, my tongue was being tested (i thought about saying some nutty things, just thought)!  God... he is such a funny guy!  I am glad I was able to keep it together, my children and husband FO SHO did not need to witness a cray cray lady having a break down.  I just had to pray... ALOT!
Please friends, do not think that I was really thinking of throwing myself out of the car (I would have never done that!  I told you we were trying to make good time and Aron woulda probably kept on driving.... remember we only stop for pee breaks!))
Are your road trips like this?  What kind of things do you do to entertain your bunch?  Colors, stickers, movies, songs, what?  I must know!  Maybe I can do some research on that Pinterest!
We made it home last night around 8 (14 hours of fun filled togetherness time).  We stopped and got some dinner (since our cabinets were empty and I would have only been able to make pork n beans and mac n cheese (no butter or milk though;(), and some juice boxes.  We got a pizza and me a salad from a local restaurant (won't say where) but when I dumped my salad onto my plate and ate about 1/2 of the salad, a medium sized bug just walked right out of it.
Thank you and have a nice night!  I just put my fork down, and Aron (without missing a beat) reached over and crushed it with his finger (his bare finger, guess I should not judge seeing as how I just thoughtlessly caught hand fulls of Cheeto-yak hours earlier).  I just sat there wide eyed, and he said, "eat your salad."
I got up and went to take a shower, a 20 minute shower to wash off the remnants of the BIG DRIVE of 2012!
There's No Place Like Home!

FYI, if this post makes no sense it is because I am still a little sleepy from the trip, and I am not proof reading my stuff!!  HA!  Just me and my ramblin!


Monday, July 9, 2012

A Few Things

I have so many things running through my mind today and I have soooo many things that I really should be doing (like preparing dinner, finishing the laundry, start packing up my family of 4 for a 10 day vacation), but NOOOO!, I blog.  So I am able to continue on with my day, here are a few things that must be discussed.

1.  Happy Birthday to my Uncle Robert.
Such a wonderful man, and I am so proud that you are my uncle!

2.  And a big shout out and a thank you to Mr and Mrs Robitussin.


My cough and I appreciate you.

Have a nice day!

Friday, July 6, 2012

Some days.......

Do you ever feel like this?  Or is it just me?

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Happy 4th of July!



We were so lucky to spend the 4th of July with the fam.  In the morning, I slaved while unpacking the McDonald's sacks to set out our yummy fast food meal.  Nuttin says happy 4th like a sausage biscuit and an order a hot cakes!  After breakfast, we went to Mama n ems house for a lil barbecue action!   G-Daddy grilled out lunch and then the kids played outside in the water.  The afternoon in the sunshine left us worn out and we all headed back to the house for a 3 hour nap!  It was amazing!!  Last night, we met up in town to watch the fireworks, and I am not sure where you live, but our towns firework extravaganza was just beautiful.  The kids loved it, I ooed and ahhed (I am sure the sitter byers were going crazy when each firework we would point and say ooooo and then what color is that Sophia!)  Haha!  I love a good color lesson!!  Here are a few pictures of our evening.  The night was very special, getting to see SIL and my niece Annalee, watching the fireworks with the grand-parents (Bucky and Moss) and my Aunt Cathy, and my parents and baby sister.  Happiness!

Aunt Cathy and Bray
G-Daddy and Brayden
Aunt Kitty entertaining Red before the fireworks!  What did people with kids do before I-Phones!?
Moss, Aunt Cathy, Bucky
Ma and Pa
Annalee and Bray- he just adores her
love that she just places her little hand on his back.
Red and Mama
I like him a whole lot
happy time on a quilt