Been a While

I know it’s been a long while since I last posted.  Things got busy with school ending, etc.

Here’s an update of some P365.  Some of these photos on not on the actual day, but they represent the right time frame in the life of our family, so I’m justifying it that way! 

Day 136: The flowers in our yard this Spring have been so beautiful!

Day 137: In about a total of 90 seconds of me blow-drying my hair, Sadie did this in her brother’s room with markers not labeled “washable”.  Thankfully after a little while playing in the bathtub, it all came off.  She was very proud of it, though!

Day 138:  Daddy and his sweet girl!

Day 139:  Claire’s Kindergarten graduation.  Each class sang one song, then they sang one all together.  They also got their scrapbooks.  It was adorable, and I can’t believe my little girl will now be in 1st grade!

Day 140: Today was a 1/2 day at school, and we decided the previous afternoon to go to the lake to stay the night.  So it didn’t take much convincing for the kids to think it was okay to “skip” the last 1/2 day of school.  Instead, Daddy took all three into town to run a few errands, one of which was going to our friend’s house and getting Claire’s hair cut.  Our friend, Barbara, did such a beautiful job, and Claire was so sassy with that hair the rest of the weekend!

Day 141: Up at the lake, Wes spent quite a bit of time designing a campground.  You would even believe how detailed this thing is.  I got a picture of it here, but he later colored it.  It was really incredible!

Day 142:  Sweet sisters!

Day 143 & 144:  I took the kiddos down to our backyard beach while Sadie was napping.  They had a good time digging in the sand and playing around in the water.

Day 145:  The older two had Vacation Bible School this week in the evenings.  I took this photo of all three one afternoon before they went.  They had such a great time at VBS!!!

Day 146:  Sadie had swimming lessons this week.  I wouldn’t necessarily say she’s a swimmer at this point, but she did very well and had such a great time.  She really loved Miss Lyn!

Day 147:  The cousins came up to the lake to play for a few hours.  Here’s Chandler ready to go tubing!  (Never was able to get a pic of Danielle. :-< )

Day 148:  I’m so terrified of rattlesnakes at the lake right now.  Hubby killed one a couple weekends ago that was almost 5 feet long.  This -now headless- pigme rattlesnake (which I explained to the kids is just as deadly as a big one) was resting in the shade under the tractor in the path that my kids run down all the time, barefooted, to go swim down at the lake. Seriously, this whole snake thing has made me lose some sleep.  Ugh!

Day 149: May 30th was mine and hubby’s 13th Anniversary!!!  Gosh that makes us sound old!  My parents kept our kids the night before, so we drove over to Destin and had a really nice dinner at PF Changs (YUMMO!) and got a few fun little things (nice sunglasses for me; swim/fish shorts for hubby) at Bass Pro Shop.  Then we drove back to the lake for the night.

Day 150:  This is our anniversary.  My parents were still keeping the kiddos for the day, so we just enjoyed the day at the lake together.  Our sweet neighbors brought us breakfast, which is kinda turning into tradition.  Hubby has made it for them for their last two anniversaries, and now they’re returning the favor; and it was SO DELISH!  Throughout the day, we relaxed and/or worked separately some (I’ll let you figure out who did what), and then also went 4-wheeling, golf-cart riding, and jet-skiing together.  It was a really nice day.  Here’s hubby on the tractor (just after killing the snake that was under it), doing some work around the property.

So, while it’s been a busy few weeks, it’s also been really good!

Hope to be back soon and not be gone so long next time!

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Nice Weekend

We decided to spend Friday night up at the lake.  Big surprise, right?  Actually, it’s been a while since we stayed up there.  We’ve been a little busy, ya know. 

We thought we were going to have some friends come stay with us Friday night and hang with us on Saturday, but that ended up not working out, so it was just the 5 of us, relaxing in the beautiful weather.

And by beautiful, I mean it RAINED Friday night and Saturday morning.  I’m not even being sarcastic about the “beautiful” part.  It was like heaven hearing the rain fall on the tin roof and the thunder rolling outside as I was somewhere between asleep and awake Saturday morning – pure bliss!

Also, our wonderful lake that we enjoyed swimming, jet-skiing, tubing, and knee-boarding in last Summer has gone down so much, due to lack of rain, that it is almost 3 little ponds now.  Sad!  So we are thankful for every little bit of rain we get!

One new thing about this weekend at the lake was that Sadie no longer has a crib there.  The friend we borrowed it from needed it back, and since we’re getting ready to transition Sadie to a big-girl bed anyway (WAAAHHH!) we didn’t even consider trying to find another.  So she slept in the room with Claire.

Apparently, she was talking a little and said something about a “big scary monster”, so Claire got in the bed with her.  But being that Sadie has never really slept with anyone in her bed before, this proved to only be a bigger distraction.  So I had Claire move back to her own bed, and after a few minutes, both girls were off to dreamland.

…..until around 2:30 when, apparently, Claire came in our room to tell her Daddy that Sadie was awake and talking.  So he went in there and laid down on her bed with her thinking he’d get her back to sleep…..um no, same effect as Claire in bed with her.  She was patting him and talking to him, etc.  So he went out of the room and told her to go back to sleep….and she did!

So, for her first official night in a big-girl bed, I’d say it was a success.  I was a little more nervous about her napping in there, since that’s the room where the toys are kept and with it being daylight, she could see them easier.  But she did fine.  Here is a picture of her napping on her big-girl bed at the lake:

(P365 – Day 134)

Hubby spent day trying to straighten up our lake beach and get it swimable (probably not a real word, huh?).  The older two were down there with him swimming.  I spent the day (while Sadie was napping) catching up on some P365 layouts.  They’re not quite ready yet, but I’ll be sure to show them off when they are.  I’m trying very hard to catch up.

Saturday afternoon, we came back home.  We had a babysitter coming and plans to go out (KIDLESS!!!) with some friends.  We ate at Carabba’s (can you just say “yummo!”) and spent a little time chatting and people-watching with some frappucinno’s at Pier Park.  It was a great night.

Sunday was church. We had another great turnout.  One thing that’s going really well is that most people aren’t just rushing out after the service is finished.  They’re staying and hanging out, “fellowshiping”, and just getting to know each other — which is really a wonderful thing!!

After church we went to lunch with some family and other church ‘folk’.  The kids had fun sitting together and chatting it up while the ‘grown-ups’ did the same at the other end of the table.  Here’s a pic (crappy phone pic, but a pic none-the-less) of all the kiddos before we left:

(P365 – Day 135)

The kiddos went to their grandparents and the hubby and I had a nice Sunday afternoon nap.  It was a good weekend!

Hope yours was good as well!

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Wow…

It’s nearing a month since I last posted.  Gosh, it’s been a crazy month, but it’s good stuff.  Thankfully, we haven’t really dealt with sick children or anything.  We’ve just been busy with school (school year is quickly nearing an end, so seems to be busier), baseball, and starting a church.

Haha, I wrote “starting a church” like it was just something else on the schedule, no big deal.  Of course, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.  It’s been a huge deal.

We “launched” (that’s the lingo, ya know, with church “plants” [also lingo, haha]) on Easter Sunday.  I knew there would be a ton of people there.  We had all invited friends and family.  And we had a great turnout…I mean, really, really great…like 175 people great!  I said on FaceBook that we would never be one of those churches who’s focus is on the numbers, but that having that many people there on the first day was really incredible!

We knew that a lot of the people who came were there to support us.  A few came from out of town, many had their own churches already, etc.  So we were very aware that we would not have the same turnout the following week.  We said we’d be happy with half that number the second week……and that’s what we had, a little more than half!

So, it’s been a really great start!  This Sunday will be our 4th Sunday, so we’re starting to get into our groove.  We’ve learned a lot so far, and know there will be so much more to learn.  It’s all really exciting!

So that’s what’s consumed our lives for this past month.  Whew!

I’ll admit I haven’t kept up with my P365 as well as I had planned.  I did a whole post on that on the Sweet Shoppe blog (HERE if you have any interest in reading about it).  Anyway, I’ve filled in the gaps with appropriate photos (stuff that was happening in our lives, just the photo may have been taken a day late or whatever) and I’m all caught up.  You can click on that second page link, right up in my menu bar, just under my header, to see all my P365 photos.

But I’ll leave you with today’s photo:

(taken with my phone camera)

Today, Wesley’s class had a Mother’s Day Tea for all the Mommies!  Yes, I realize Mother’s Day was last Sunday, but the prior Friday, the day for which the Mother’s Day Tea was originally planned, turned out to be Field Day.  So we got Mother’s Day twice!  It was a really sweet time with my boy!

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