Unusual Weather Makes a Beautiful Zoo Day

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous.  I don't know if I have shared but this year I am not homeschooling. My kids are in a charter school.  So far they are loving it!  So today I took my two little ones to the zoo with a friend.  It was so weird because I kept looking around me to see if I was missing any kids. It is the weirdest thing to feel like you are missing someone constantly. 

Ashley looked funny trying to take a huge bite out of a sandwhich. 

We rode the train around the zoo and had fun just totally relaxing.  To tell you the truth, I didn't notice the animals much.  I'm more into the beautiful nature.  Trees and plants around me.  I even hugged some of the plants!  LOL.  I've seen the animals tons of times already because I have a membership there.  For me, going to the zoo means I get to walk in an area that doesn't feel like a desert.

THIS.... is a cool picture though.  Beautiful.  Caught her sleeping on the rock. 

My Boy Turns 10

Whoa, this post is late but my biggest turned 10!  Can you believe it?  Boy, time flies.  When I first started blogging he was 5, going on 6.  I only had 4 kids. 

In that time we've discovered so much about Chaz. His struggles and strengths.  His weaknesses but also his triumphs. 

He's still my baby boy who I still try to cuddle with.  heh heh










His grandma is in pic with Ivy and my baby Caleb below with Kyle to the right.  We met after church at McDonalds. 

This is a neat pic I took of everyone that showed up except you can't see a few of us in it from this angle.

I do not know what Charles is doing in this picture below but I think maybe he is looking for food on the face.  Not sure.  Heh heh

Working At The Polls

Guess where I am?  Working at the polls. Would it surprise you if I told you that in 10 hours we've only had 13 voters??? 

The good news is I am working with my best friend and so time is flying.  :)  I have 4 more hours to go. 

I am excited that I get to finally get to work at a place like this.  I told them to sign me up for future polls. 

I Finally Painted!!!

I finally did it!  I HATE, HATE, HATE painting but I LOVE the results.  So finally I did. It's beautiful too.  After I painted I went to Lowe's and looked at paint for the other two walls you can't see at that angle.  I picked out a sample and the guy making my sample noticed that another paint was gonna get clearanced out and it was almost exactly the same shade.  So I bought the $33 paint for only $5 and went home and finished the rest of the kitchen.  It's feels more homey now to me.  I dislike white walls like crazy. 

Karaoke With Friends

I watched two kids for a week in July and they brought an American idol Karaoke game for their game system.  I had so much fun playing with it I had to buy some for mine.  Then I got Michele in on it (middle), then added Jessica.  FUN!!!  One you get past the "oh, I hope I don't make people roll over with laughter because of my singing" then it's just so fun. 

Ashley had to join in.  She doesn't know what she's singing but she actually sings on key!  When she gets booed off because she doesn't know the words I always clap and say "Yay, Ashley!"  LOL

Michele and Jessica are showing you what snobby people look like.  They don't do it very well (they are way too nice).  Why do some people think just because their parents had money that they are royalty?  I'll never know.  :P 

Meet The Teacher

The last few weeks have been so crazy busy that I couldn't get anywhere near my beloved wifi.  I know I say that a lot lately.  But it's true.  :)

This year my kids are in a Charter school and I had to convince my kids that it was gonna be a lot of fun.  Except Ivy of course. She wanted to go no matter what.

So off we went to Meet the Teacher night and once the kids got to meet their teachers and find out that they each had a friend they knew in their class, they were ecstatic! 

I fell in love with the kindergarten classroom because it looked like one should be.  I've been to some that looked so scary and bland that I didn't want to leave my kids there.   There was actually some toys.  :D

The other kids liked visiting Ivy's kindergarten class too.  :)

My best friend Michele also has her kids there so my kids are so happy to have buddies they know. 

Do you know what I've been doing since they started school?  Well, on Monday I went to Michele's house and help her clean and then on Tuesday she came to mine.  It was fun and we got to visit at the same time.  We are thinking about keeping that routine.  :)  Was super fun. 

It's gonna be fun having my two little babies at home and just cuddling them a bunch.  I definitely needed this year to have time with them.  Homeschooling has awesome advantages but every now and then I like a year where I can just  be with my babies for a few hours.  :)

Late Fourth of July Post

I know this is late in coming. It's really hard not having internet sometimes so I post when I can. But after the God and Country parade, my family headed out to Ms. Carol's house to celebrate on July 3rd. It was great seeing fireworks the day before because we didn't want to miss church on sunday for it.

I love fourth of July.  :)  What a neat day.

I luv that little doggy above.  Sooooo cute.

My husband enjoying his Capri Sun!!  LOL

....But A Rough Saturday

I've been hurting a lot lately in my stomach so finally Saturday night my family and I headed over to the ER to see if we can find the problem.  It's been two months and it gets worse and worse.  It never goes away.  Of course my WHOLE family does everything together so my husband and 6 kids came along to see the fun.  That man is a patient man.  Amazing.  Especially being that they just waited in the waiting room for 4 1/2 hours.  He didn't regret it either. He's a keeper.

So they wheeled me back.  When they touched my stomach it made me jump a mile high so he said "Well, we're gonna have to put you on morphine because when you have tests, it's gonna hurt a lot more than that." 

Oh boy. 

I don't like morphine. It is terrible at first, then it feels heavenly, and then I pay the price afterwards.  So when she put it in my I.V. I was like "ohhhh....this is terrible!"  Then I was smiling and was in lala land.  I wanted to sleep.  As soon as I crashed they woke me up for the ultrasound.  (No, there is no baby).  So I was deprived of the yumminess of sleep.  My ultrasound would have went a lot quicker if I didn't have to make friends wherever I go.  So after the lady and I chatted about everything under the sun and told stories for an hour, finally I was wheeled back.  They couldn't find anything so they just released me with pain meds.  I hate pain meds that make me tired because I don't like to be kept down.  So I left the ER with the prescriptions and a referral to see a specialist asap.  That night the migraine hit along with serious nausea so I had to miss church on Sunday.  Man, talk about paying a heavy price just to get some morphine. NOT worth it.  I was down all Sunday.  By late Sunday night I had it and got up and walked around.  No more laying around. 

I'm supposed to be resting but I can't stand to watch my house crumble and become messy.  If I'm not on top of my kids about not being messy, the boat sinks.  Trust me.  6 kids under 10 makes for a busy captain.  I'm not complaining about it because I LOVE being busy.  I just like things to stay under control if possible.

I know these pics have nothing to do with the subject at hand but I can't stand posting with putting pics up.  LOVE taking pictures.  :)

Guess What I Did Over the Weekend??

A friend of a friend was getting married and didn't really have anyone in the area to come and help out.  Well, being it was something quick (but not with the guy, she's liked him for long time), my friends and I helped out. I straightened her hair and did just a little makeup, Jessica did her make up, and Michele did all the harder stuff.  Getting the legal stuff set up.  So Jess and I went to the house and had fun playing dress up with Crystal  and we went down to the J.P to see them wed.  It was fun!  We did this on Friday.

Here is a pic of Crystal and I.











 Below Jessica is doing her makeup.

This is "The Kiss".....

 ....and Crystal with Michele's daughter which is now her niece.  I thought we did a lovely job on her hair and make up.  Dang.  You go girl. 

That was a lot of fun!  I never get to do that kind of girlie stuff with friends.  Thank goodness I have some friends who like do still play dress up.  Michele says I change my clothes a million times before I actually pick my outfits.  Not true.  Only...maybe....30 times.  I came up with this BRILLIANT ideas to take pics of all my outfits after I've worn them and make a folder of them in my computer.  That way, the next time I want to get ready for something, I can just go to my computer, pick an outfit and then go pull out the necessary items from my closet.  Less mess.  Plus, it's a super fun idea.  Therefore I can see which ones are flattering and which ones make me go "Oh my gosh!  What was I thinking????"

God and Country Parade

Our church' float at the July parade.  Beautiful!!!

Did I ever tell you how much I love Country music?  When I heard the band start to play, I just wanted to get up and do the Boot Scootin' Boogie!!!  No kidding!  I don't listen to it often because I love listening to Praise music.  But, oh, when country music breaks out somewhere, I start lookin' for my cowgirl boots.  haha!

We brought 7 kids with us, basically not the ones in diapers.  My friend and I went with the older kids to celebrate!  It was fun traveling together accept for a little rough start to the day.  It was just an awesome day and it felt great to get out of town!

I really liked this part.  The lives that have been lost by people protecting our freedom.  Amazing.....

People behind me on the courthouse steps.  Thank you Pastor Mitchell for starting here with your ministry and reaching out to see souls saved.  Because of it, my dad and mom were led to Christ and now me.  Now I have the opportunity of raising my kids up in Christ.  Thank God for people that aren't afraid to share the Good News. 

Hot Summer Days

Wow, it is so incredibly hot this summer and we are always, always indoors.  My favorite time around here is spring, fall, and winter.  I can't wait!  For now we are inside 90% of the time.  The other times we are swimming.  :)  lol.  Here is at my husband's mom's house. 

Thank goodness for kids stuff like this.  I bet the person who invented this is rich.  It has no wheels so Caleb can't just take off and fall into the pool.  He was happy in the shade watching us.

Man, Caleb loooooves the water.  He was so happy.  What you can't see here is him kicking and being so cute in the water.  He looked like a little froggy in the water. 

Aagh, love the water!  The kids kept wanting their daddy to throw them over and over into the water. 

My sweet Kyle eating pizza.  He is my third and he is silly and affectionate.  I love this boy.  :)

Ivy jumping off the diving board.  I so love those coast guard approved swimming vests because I can relax a little more.  Of course I'm in the water with them but I enjoy it more knowing the shaky swimmers will be safer! 

My Girl Turns 5!

Yesterday Ivy turned 5.  She has been counting down since there was still 234 days left.  Almost everyday I had to tell her how many days left till her birthda.  She is so, so, so excited that she is going to be a kindergartener!  I threw her a big party because it's a big birthday. 

It was HOT in the house! Even though we had the a/c way down low, it was so hot in the house.  When I left church (rushed) I got locked out of the house.  I was trying to get there first so that I could decorate and surprise her and her friends.  I had to climbed my fence in my church clothes to find my way around inside.  Because we always, always are diligent to lock our house up, of course there was no way through.  LOL.  I felt like such a nerd standing there with my friend telling her we were locked out.  For some reason I found a spare on me and we got inside.  We were only inside for 15 minutes before the door bell rang and I had just got started.  Yikes!  I didn't even have the food started!  Then we started to cook the food but the cord got unplugged to the grill and I didn't know for a long time.  I didn't realize it till after the food was cooking properly for some time.  Oh my goodness!  Haha.

It was actually quite funny and through all of that we still had fun.  She got blessed.

I had all the littler girls dress like princesses with even princess shoes.  It was so cute.  Wild but fun!! 

Can you believe her Grandma found a Barbie Big Wheel?  Do you remember riding those when you were little??  I loved those.  She rides it all over the house.  It was so, so worth it getting tile all over my house.  :D

Ivy's Nana got her this bed spread.  It is so pretty and really comfy!  I might have to sneak a sleep on her bed some time.

Friends!  It is so cute seeing them all together.  These are Ivy's 3 best friends and she gets along with all of them so well.  It's rare to actually see them all together like this.  Really cute.  :)

My Best Friend's Wedding

I remember Diana when she was in fifth grade.  They had just moved from Saudi Arabia.  My mom invited them over for lunch and my mom asked if I would get to know Diana.  We went back in my room and I tried to get her to talk because she was really shy.  Her mom made the most delicious middle eastern food.  To this day I'm totally hooked on it and we go to the restaurants as a family every now and then.  Well, years and years down the road, I am married and now Diana.  She is a total sweet heart who deserves the best.  We are still friends and she's still the sweet Diana I met over 18 years ago. Diana is one of those friends who'll you'll have for life.  Even if you lose touch for a time, when you do come back together, it's as if no time has passed.  I remember a long time ago, her and I heading to the theatres to see My Best Friend's Wedding and we still quote that movie!  lol

I brought my best friend with me of course to the wedding.  We are both goofballs so we have lots of fun together wherever we go.

This is Diana's dad.  Being the camera lover I am, I love to take lots of pics of odd things.  No, her dad isn't odd.  I'm speaking of the glasses.  Heh heh. 

This is the court where Diana got married.  The sun had already gone down once I finally got to take a picture.  It was still beautiful.  :D

Ahhhh.... the kiss.  My kids' favorite part.  If they had been there they would have been cheering very loud.  Which of course is why I didn't bring them.  Ahem.  Haha!  They did tell me they were bummed they couldn't come and see the kissing part.  I remember being like that too when I was a kid!  I was the loudest cheering person in church.