Catching Up!! Happy Thanksgving, birthday, anniversary

Yes, I got a little (read a lot) behind on my blogging. Life was so crazy the last six weeks of football that I feel like I nearly lost my mind. In fact, there are parts of it that I'm certain are still gone!! So I'm back posting to update the blog so that I can reflect a little on what our life was like over the past month. THEN... it's going to be my goal to blog much more frequently from here on out.


From my last post on Josh's 13th birthday, we followed up by celebrating (very quietly) Kevin's birthday the following day. We celebrated Thanksgiving at Ellie's preschool and then both preschool and "real" school was out for the Thanksgiving holiday. During this time period, I was literally LOST in the making of the Joelton Vikings year-end book. It turned out beautifully. I hope that years from now, these boys will find this accurately captures all our memories from this year as Vikings. Here's the cover.


Hours upon hours were spent finalizing the book, sending me into quite a frenzy so that the day of Thanksgiving I woke up very sick to my stomach and unable to leave the bed. Since I was the designated cook, Thanksgiving was cancelled. I probably slept 90% of Thanksgiving and felt awful that I had to cancel on my parents, husband and kids. I don't even know what any of them ate that day.


The following day was our (sixteen year) anniversary, and we spent the day driving to Birmingham for Josh to play in a post-season bowl game wtih the Donelson Warriors. We were so suprised to find that the teams were playing at Legion Field. The expression on the team's face as they walked in and saw the college-sized stadium was priceless. I may never forget that. My camera broke somewhere during the last several weeks and so there are no photos that I took, but fortunately, my friend Kelly was able to catch a few so we have some to "remember" by.

Josh was #33 on this team.






The Warriors ended up winning the bowl championship on Sunday afternoon. Here is a photo of Josh with the team's trophy.



We had a nice time in Birmingham and there was even enough "down" time for me to get a little "Day After Thanksgiving" shopping in at the local Walmart, Kohls and Walgreens.

And before we knew it, Thanksgiving weekend was over and it was back to school and work for all of us.

There is a TEENAGER in our house!!

I have so many things to finish up tonight before I can hit the hay, but my job as a mom would be remiss if I didn't take the time to capture my thoughts on this most important day -- Josh's 13th birthday.

I cannot believe we have a teenager in our house now!! It seems like such a short time (some days) ago that he was Ellie's age and we had Braiden over everyday playing and we were starting soccer, then baseball and football. Where does the time go?

Last weekend, when we went to Owensboro, I had a cake made that we used to celebrate all the Vikings November birthdays. It was a cool cake.

We took him out on Friday night to eat with his grandparents. He got an Xbox for his present and was excited to get hom and start playing right away! Amazingly enough he "LOVED" us as soon as he saw the present. We were the "GREATEST". :-)

Today I made lunch for him with some of his favorites. After lunch he got some more Xbox time in and then he got to play his last game as a Joelton Viking. It was so bittersweet. I'm happy to be done with football, but knowing that we'll lose contact with so many people that we've spent so many years with is sad. This wonderful group of boys/young men will never come together as a team of Vikings again. The memories will have to be enough.

I begged Josh to let me take just one photo of him today. It was like pulling teeth. My camera has gone KAPLUT and so I borrowed a friends to take some football pictures tonight at the game. It was a bowl game called the Wounded Warriors Tournament. They raised between $6000-$7000 for wounded military, so this was a great endeavor. The Vikings won their age division and brought home another really cool trophy.

It's hard to tell, but this is Josh receiving his medal.

Time is slipping by quickly. He is closer to leaving than he has ever been. There's a lot I stil need to teach and share with him, to make sure he is ready. I suspect the next five years are gong to be way interesting -- in ways I can't begin to (nor want to) imagine. He's a good kid, though, and I know we will enjoy going through all our fun times to come as a family.

I love you, Josh. Happy Birthday, young man. Welcome to your teenaged years.

One Day I'll Look Back and Laugh

I really, really want to look back and laugh, but I suppose I'll have to remember in order to laugh. Today was "one of those days" all the way around.

Kevin had to be at work really early in Dickson today so I was up with the chickens to make sure everyone got where they needed to be. Josh did NOT want to get ready and we spent a lot of time bickering over where his shoes were, his socks, had he brushed his teeth, combed his hair, hurry up we are running late, come on, eat breakfast, oh it's too late, take it with you. And all the while Ellie running her own narrative in the background about blankets and potties and poptarts and juice and cats and dogs and where's daddy and where are we going. And, all of this process took place between 6:30 and 7:00. Oy.

I finally get Josh and Ellie into the car to leave and the gas light is on. Oh well, no time, gonna have to chance it. I had received a call from neighbor Kelly asking me to take one sock and $5 to her son who had left them at home (see, it's universal) so I stopped by and got it out of the mailbox to deliver. Josh indicates to me, casually, that his stomach is hurting. I figure it's random and pretty much ignore it. We are having a conversation about how horrible his room is and how he had to clean it up when he got home because I am tired of sticking to the floor so I figured he was trying to get me off topic.

Almost there and he says his stomach is REALLY hurting. I asked him if he wanted me to stop at the store to get him some Tums and he said yes. I got those, Ellie some Cheetos (yes, a balanced meal for breakfast) and got back in the car. We are trying to figure how to get back into school traffic when he flings the door open and throws up repeatedly every where. Oh. Yay. Gross.

I swear I probably drove around that gas station parking lot three times trying to figure whether I should take him home, to the doctor ... WHAT to do. Then I got my mind about me and realized he couldn't go to school, and that I still had a sock to deliver. *smile* I delivered the sock and money and told them not to bother to give me the "Your Kid Isn't At School" automated phone call beause I knew it as he was in my car throwing up. [As an added bonus: I go that call anyway]. We had a conversation about the new ridiculous "five parent days per year" policy and I left. At this point, Josh points out to me that there is yuck all over my side runners, the door and the door jamb. I think that I will go out to the car wash and blow it off quickly. I had no cash when I go there. Surprise. I had planned to stop at the Dollar General as we used the last of the toilet paper this morning but I had a puker and a baby. I passed it up. My neighbor Kelly brought me some -- what a good friend.

We get back home and I get Ellie in and Josh in and laying down and I go back out to spray off the car. That was fun -- not. Ugh.

I come back in and begin to get Miss "I will NOT do anything that you want me to if you are remotely stressed" ready for preschool while checking on Josh. I get Ellie ready for school and take her to drop her off. It has been such a bad morning so I stop at McD's to get coffee and a sprite for Josh. I think I'll get him a movie from Redbox. The Redbox machine was broken. Surprise. I got the coffee and spilled it on me before I got it home. When I got back home, Josh was fast asleep -- where he stayed all day.

It's been a crazy day all around -- every time I turned around I did something crazy. At one point, I knocked a cup of cat food into the floor, almost fell and busted my rump when I got up to answer the phone (in socks) on the hardwood floor. This is because Josh though the air freshner was a can of Febreeze dust spray and now the floors are UBER slick.

I've gone through nearly a can of Lysol. Poor Josh slept 90% of the day and finally took a wee bit of Sprite tonight. I'm not sure if he'll be able to go to school tomorrow or not.

His birthday is Sunday. Kevin's is Monday. It's another busy weekend ahead.

Letter H

Last night, Ellie woke up crying and screaming. It was Kevin's night (smile) to get up with her. She didn't want to calm down and he finally took her downstairs where they both fell asleep on the couch. Tonight I had a conversation with Ellie about what happened last night. It was a RIOT!! It went like this:

Me: Ellie why did you wake up last night crying? Were you having a dream.
Ellie: Yes
Me: What were you dreaming about?
Ellie: Letter H
Me: Letter H?
Ellie: Yes
Me: Was it scary? Is that why you had to go downstairs?
Ellie: No. I had to color it.

Oh. Well, there you have it. The thought processes that she has lately is amazing. I asked her today what Santa did. She said, "Brings toys." I asked her what kind of toys he was bringing her and she said, "Princess toys." I asked her what toys he was bringing Josh and she said, after a thoughtful pause, "Boy toys".

They MUST be talking about the days of the week at school because she is FASCINATED with the calendar on the refrigerator and what we write on it. We have to go through the calendar with her telling her what is going to happen on what day. She is very well aware that Josh's birthday is on Sunday and Daddy's birthday is on Monday. When I asked her what we were going to do for their birthday she told me we were having a party with cake and presents and that MeeMee and DeeDee and Nana was coming and Josh was going to blow out a candle. Spot on, that girl!!

Why I LOVE Consignment

One of the local sales has a holiday sale and I worked/shopped this week. I'm going to show you WHY consignment pays at our house!!

I found a Little Tree Train table for $25!! The least expensive "new" train table I found was $94 with many like this one running upwards of $200. This is the one I got. The kids already love it and are fighting over it. We still have all of Josh's wooden train sets from when he was little, so it's been great fun already!

This was my other SUPER HUGE bargain. It's a Fisher Price Kid-Tough DVD player (for Ellie, obviously). It retails for $198. It was in the original packaging with everything included, said it was used once, looks perfect, work perfectly and was .... $35!!!

One of our friends had bought Ellie the accessory kit for it for her birthday (ironic, huh?). So she is set for trips with her OWN DVD player that I don't have to worry about her dropping/breaking/etc.



Consignment rocks!!

I also picked up some Nike tennis shoes (looks perfectly new) for $4, a Barbie electronic cash register set, $6; a keyboard on a stand with stool (Ellie style), $7, 8 vintage comic books (for Josh) $4, three Barney DVDS (yes, she LOVES them) for $3 each. I LOVE consignment!

Fun with our Kentucky Friends

We've been TRYING for months to get Ellie and "Hotdog" and "Pudding" together to play, but when they have four kiddos and we have two kiddos, the schedules don't often match up.

We were excited that all kiddos were off on Election Day and we could meet up in Bowling Green for the two Tokmok Princesses to have some play time. We were even more blessed that Little #2, Pudding, was able to come because we LOVE some Pudding!!

We met at a indoor play place and spent a couple of hours letting the kids just PLAY PLAY PLAY!! They had so much time and Allison and I got some great adult visiting time!!

Then we had lunch at Wendy's and they were SO GOOD and we had such a nice time.

I so hope we can do it again REALLY SOON!! Ellie loves her BFF Hotdog and her brother Pudding!!







This SO captures the essence of Pudding!! He and Ellie are kindred spirits!




The kiddos ALL loved the train table -- which caused me to purchase one at the recent consignment sale - $25!! -- and played there a LOT!










The playhouse was another big hit:




Jumping Jacks!!





BFFS!!!


My little gymnast!


Hoping to "steal" a picture of the three of them at Wendy's from Allison -- soon!

Halloween 2010

I am behind AND out of order in my posts, but better late than never is my new motto. I've had the annual "fall crud" for about two weeks and have felt TOTALLY overwhelmed with all I have to do and literally try to just get everything done that HAS to be done each day.

Halloween was A LOT of fun this year. Ellie had been talking about Halloween, Trick-or-Treating and "CANGEE" for weeks. We had several costumes to pick from since in Tennessee you can have sub-zero temperatures or 80* in October. We had an Elmo costume and a ladybug costume that never made "the cut" as it wasn't quite cool enough. Fortunately, Snow White and Tinkerbell DID make the cut and we had some fun at a Mother's Day Out party, a preschool party, a party at Grandmother's nursing home, dressing up at Josh's play-off game, doing a Trail of Treats on Saturday night, and then attending our church's Harvest Festival on Sunday, followed by trick-or-treating in Josh's friend Braiden's neighborhood (of course, Braiden's mom is my friend too!!!).

Josh decided he would dress up as CAMO MAN this year and he looked so grown up and handsome. There was a twinge in my heart when I saw the pictures and realized how fast he is changing on me.

We did some serious hair rolling during Halloween!


Snow White's "get-up":


It was early and Cinderella was COLD!!


Ellie and Addie at MDO. Addie kept telling her mom that Ellie was a princess!


Ellie and her fried Caleb. Look at the LOOK on her face:


Cuties!


Ellie's BLING:


At her Preschool party, she dressed up as a Kyrgyz princess. Isn't she beautiful?




Her class party:


Checking out her goodies:


Decorating pumpkins with stickers:






Looks a lot like her mama, I think!!


GRANDMOTHER'S Harvest Festival at the Nursing Home:

Tinkerbell arrives:



Tinkerbell and her brother (who needs a haitcut and maybe a change of attitude from the looks of this photo):


Grandmother didn't want to go outside, so we opened the shades in her room and enjoyed the fun from inside. I was still able to catch some pictures through the window(surprise!):


Ellie LOVED the cotton candy:




Hollywood!!




After a fun day of football, we headed over to the Church of Christ for a Trail of Treats -- an outdoor run through the woods collecting candy! Look at the faces of these two happy kiddos when we got home!








Then came "the sort". Josh has done this every year since he was little. He "organizes" the candy.




Then they put it all back in their pumpkins;


The NEXT day was actually Halloween and we were back to Snow White -- for mama AND Ellie, a CAMO MAN for Josh!

This "hands on hip" look cracks me up:




She was SO SO SO excited about trick-or-treating:


My babies:


Look at how she is squatting like Josh:


CAMO MAN!!






Harvest Festival at Church:


Ellie and Macy:


Ellie and Elaina:


Ellie LOVED this bunny from the Alice in Wonderland trunk:




COOL car:


We stopped by MeeMee and DeeDee's for some Halloween presents (aren't grandparents great??).




It was a GREAT Halloween!!