Dress up

My word-for-word conversation with my daughter just now:

Hey Charlie did Daddy dress you?

Yep.

And y'all are going out in the cold to the post office like that?

Yep.


Well you sure look like you're ready for errands.

Yep.


Okay got to go now Mom I a princess today. Okay bye.

Bye.

Flashback Friday

Pairs edition


Early Fall Popsicles


Bonnie took this I think. They were obviously happy playing with her. I was obviously happy because I was out on a date with Sean, which is why Bonnie was there.


My favorite picture of Sean and Joy. He looks so protective and he is. But he's actually watching Elmo with his girl.

Short and sweet (at least to me,) today. I'm off to get ready for Bible study. Happy Friday y'all!

Not exactly on the move

Not exactly on the move yet but we're getting there. Last weekend we rented a storage unit in my hometown to store our attic stuff so that if a possible buyer wants to look up there they can. I also moved all of our decorations, (minus the Easter ones,) there and that frees up a ton of storage space.

We had a great relaxing weekend with family and I got excited again about moving. It took a month off to get me there but that's probably to be expected. Now I'm really ready again. So it's likely that the house won't sell until next Fall. It's just the way God teaches me patience!

While we were all together we took pictures of all the kids and each family.


I wish we had my brother on video doing his "make the kids laugh" dance. It'd be unforgettable to you.


Aw my little toots. There may have been some real laughter mixed with some "if you don't smile right now I'm gonna..." statements involved.


Ty resembles my brother in many ways. Lining up the outside toys=totally something he'd have done.


Baby Sally and her entertainer. Charlie hasn't stopped talking about her favorite cousin. It's a tough contest between Henry and Sally but Charlie now says Sally is her favorite cousin and Henry is her best friend.

Of course.


Oversharing the love


Waiting with my little man for the school bus is a favorite time of mine. He's so excited and I'm happy to have a little time either by myself or just with one of the girls. Today since Charlie was at MDO and Joy took her nap I got an hour and a half by myself.

Amazing.


But the time leading up to it was pretty sweet too.

Thankful today for the chance to be a mother. And thankful for Diet Cherry Dr Pepper to help me be a better mother.

Night y'all.

Gifts are my love language

Good Monday I mean Tuesday morning y'all! In case you missed it, I did a cheap earring giveaway in my Flashback Friday post and only four of you entered. I'm gonna start doing things like this more often because it's fun for me to learn more about YOU and it's fun to give stuff away because gifts are my love language. I know how that sounds...it means I'm greedy or materialistic or whatever. But consider that I can never get rid of something someone gave me because I remember when they did and it made me feel special and maybe it'll make more sense. I also love picking out gifts for other people and feel like I don't do it enough as I'd like to. I work with Blogher (the ads on my blog,) and will soon be reviewing products for you here so I decided to kick it up a notch and do more giveaways of little fun things that I find. It's a win for me since I can give you stuff and it's a win for you because, hello, free stuff.

So the winner of my little earring giveaway is #4, which happens to be Emmy, my sister. She doesn't have a blog but does all of my editing on mine since I need help from time to time. You know, with spelling and grammar and what have you. She will hate that I typed that like that. And she hates that I use the word that all the time. Anyway. I did the Random.Org thing and everything and would happily post the results for you if I knew how to do that without it re-doing the numbers for me and switching the maximum number to 100. It's just way over my head, y'all. That's my only explanation. I know it's pitiful. But I worked as a counselor not an IT exec before staying home with my little toots. Just keep that in mind. :)

Flashback Friday

I just cried looking at one of these pictures.


Not this one, but I came close.


This one. I will forever be thankful that this little toot is okay. Even when she is a toot. (Every day.)


Can you believe how little Ty was? And how much he looks like Joy.


Arboretum pumpkin pictures from two years ago. I was threatening them through my smiling mouth. You sit here right now or...


The Susan Boyle picture. Come on you see it too.


Baby Me.


Baby Joy. Girl, there's no denying who your momma is.


Ty at Cowboys stadium on a tour with his daddy. He's sitting on the Cowboy's bench.


Aww peekaboo I see you.


So here's a question. How do I know you? Did we meet online? Did we go to Elementary school together? Don't lie. I'm from a small town so I'll know. Leave me a comment telling me how we know each other and you'll be entered to win a new shiny pair of earrings from my favorite (cheap) earring place-Forever 21. I'll choose a winner on Tuesday of next week. Until then, it's off to family play time I go :)

This week so far

It's been busy. It's been fun. It's been busy and fun. Monday was Ty's Valentines day party at school and the moms all snuck in to watch the kids for a little while before party time. Story time.


They call these little chairs their colored chairs. Ty always tells me what color he picked that day. I don't know why this would matter to you.


Aww my little Valentine.


Remember me showing you this book and how hard I was laughing while reading it? Well Emmy found out that the Pioneer Woman herself was doing a book signing in Dallas Monday night so since neither one of us had other romantic plans, (did you know babysitters were in high demand on Monday and it was pretty/very impossible to have one? and Ethan just got a promotion and needed to work that night,) we went to meet her.


There she is, live in person. As funny and shy and captivating as I imagined she'd be. I thought if we met she'd recognize that we would be instant friends and so did about 300 other women that were there to meet her. It was like a concert and she was the rock star. Or country star or whatever.


There's the family picture taken from a mile away so you can't see anybody really. Her whole family came with her and it was so neat to see her kids and her husband just beaming with pride listening to her speak. It was a fun Valentines day! I was inspired the next night to make a new chicken dish.


It turned out well as you can see.


Biggest news around here is that Charlie has a new (but not new) bed. A big girl bed. It's her crib without a rail for now since buying a new bed before showing the house again ranks right up there with buying a puppy and trying to train it. Why spend money now since we don't know how big her room will be once we move? That's my logic. Sean agrees since it means not spending money.


I don't remember these two ever wanting to sleep together before yesterday. Ty asked me to move his big boy bed into her room so they could be big kids together.

Awwwww. The other exciting thing this week is that we will see these two squirts this weekend.


Henry and baby Sally, along with Brooke and Freeland and River. Excitement is the word for it.

Oh ok last thing. Yesterday I met Jennie and Carley for lunch with all the kids. I've struggled lately with parking. I'm not sure why y'all but it's as if I got a new car and don't know the dimensions yet. But I've had my car for three years. So after we ate and I loaded the kids into the car to leave the mall I saw this.


It says NICE PARK JOB!

Some poor soul thought it was so bad that they needed to leave a note.

Bless my heart.

Making me laugh so hard I snort

Oh y'all. Go get it. I'm sorry I've got a short post but I have to keep reading this. Talk to you later!

Happy Valentines Day weekend

Enjoy.

I can't believe I forgot...but wait, I can

I forgot to show you the Valentines I made.

My little V-day treats


I made these envelopes for the big kids' classmates but I also made a few for my Valentine


This one is his. Babe, if you're reading this, stop now.

K thanks.


I found some little stamps at Target. The envelopes are from Hobby Lobby.


I wrote little notes in Sean's. I put little valentine erasers in the ones for the kids.


Ooh fire. Stand back.


I've had a wax seal thingy for a long time and used to seal letters with it. I ran out of wax and kind of forgot about it until recently when I found the seal in a box of decorations. It's a heart...imagine that! Perfect for Valentines Day! I found a website that sells the wax and has free shipping so I stocked up.


Fun to do! Easy, and cheap!


It feels good to make something when I have the time. Which, thanks to four snow days last week, ahem, I did have time. And that's all I'm gonna say about that.

Except to say that we are out of school again today and probably tomorrow. Again. Ice. Snow. No driving. Again.

Since Ty has strep, (I'll spare you the details.) Well no I won't. It's bad. High fever. Won't eat. Gets cranky. Cries. Then I cry. Then the girls cry. Then we go to my mother's house. Yep that about covers it.

So thanks to another snow day and Ty's hangin-by-a-thread-ness, we are hunkered down with homemade soup and lots of toys. All you need in life, really.

Y'all have a great day!

So happy we can't stand it

People have made good points about how restless we are as a society that we have a hard time being stuck in our houses. I understand their point I really do. But I'm being honest. This was my reaction to being able to get our car out of the driveway.


I listened to the message at church yesterday and agreed with what our pastor said. We need to listen more and talk less. We should take what happened last week and realize that God allowed the storm to wipe us out and keep us still. I am admitting that while I don't always burn the candle at both ends, I really enjoy getting out of my house. And the kids do too. So basically this week I'm aware of how restless I can be but I'm enjoying the kids and doing fun things with a grateful heart. But, um, out of the house when I can. That's fair, don't you think? Ha!


Little miss got to see her first movie yesterday. She loved it for 35 minutes. Then she was done. Asked to go home. I tried to explain that you don't just leave the movie and told her to sit still and enjoy this fun outing. She looked at me like, "Really?"



Ty with his two best friends. Barney and other Barney. They're the three musketeers.


Joy was not feeling it with the snow. She kept scrunching her nose and going, "No. Cold. Go. Okay."


She, however, loved it.


Ah love again. I posted this picture yesterday but had to do it again it's just my new favorite picture.

Okay we are off to go do something fun. Not sure what yet but it'll come to me.

Love

Love is patient. Love is kind. Love keeps no record of wrongs.



Ex: Ty pushed her to the ground approximately four seconds before I took this picture but there she goes, full body huggin' him. He can do no wrong in her eyes.

Flashback Friday

I've laughed so hard I've cried looking through these pictures. I guess because they bring back some funny memories. I'm not saying you'll find them as funny but you might get a chuckle out of the last one. I'd bet money on it, in fact.



Ty at about a year old. This was one of the few pictures I have from our old house. We moved when he was 13 months old, two weeks before Charlie was born.


Ah baby Charlie


First daughter and granddaughter


Vacation to Santa Barbara when I was tired and hungry the whole time...pregnant with Joy but didn't know it yet.


Another trip, this one to Boston when I went on one of Sean's trips. It was a few weeks after CA so by now I knew I was pregnant. I had not told anyone yet, though. Well, Sean knew but neither one of us could believe it so we just kept it to ourselves. Sean thought Boston in the Fall would be a perfect place for me to tag along. He had a triple overnight there, which never happens. I decided to make the most of it and pretty much slept and ate the whole weekend. So basically I could have stayed home.


Kids first boat ride at Nattie and Popeye's house.


Miss Charlie the day I found out I was pregnant with Joy.


The day I told everybody that she was gonna be a big sister.


Carley (and Cody,), Jennie (and Joshua,), me (and Joy)


Ty at Nattie's house enjoying the resort pool


Charlie got to go to the dinner we had the day Emmy and Ethan got married last summer. She LOVED being the big kid who got to come.

And finally, proof that I once weighed as much as my husband...




I told you you'd laugh.