Summer School

While everyone else is getting out of school, we have Summer sessions.
We have always worked right through Summer and it seems to keep us on a schedule.

I want to enjoy the Summer too, so this year I was going to make a "Summer Memory Box" .
I was going to put things we can do as a family every day on pieces of paper and then put them in our box. The kids will take turns pulling out a piece of paper once a day to see what we will do to make a fun memory. I thought they could make a scrapbook out of of each day of Summer.

Sound like fun? LOL I better find a big box somewhere. :)

getting ready for Spring :)

I asked Troy to get some more 2x4's the other day and he has cut them up for me to make some more blocks! This time, I'm making some for me! Cute Easter ones :)
Can't wait till this crazy weather is over. I've got Spring on the brain. I did start some lettuce about a month ago in the garden, but we have been talking about what we want to plant this year. I actually have about 8 more feet of gardening space than last season. Dawson has already asked for jalapenos. :)

Any Idea's

I can't believe we just entered March! I still come across Christmas decorations that haven't been put away :)
March is Caitlin's birthday and she will be 4 this year!
I have to get it together and start planning something "pink" by her request. :)
Any ideas out there?

Help!

So I'm starting Valentines day celebrations early. I bought buy 1 get 1 free bags of Dove dark chocolates. Heaven, really!
My 13 wedding anniversary is this Sunday. What to do, what to do. I always give Troy something for us to do on our anniversary. On our 10th year, we had to write down 10 reasons why we love each other. On our 1st anniversary, I made at least 50 hearts out of construction paper and hung them from our ceiling. Each one said why I married him. Last year, we had a "dozen" theme. I told him I wanted to go to a restaurant and order # 12 on the menu. We ended up getting a foot long sub ( 12 inches in a foot...get it) real romantic huh!
I need you help for our 13th year. What should we do?

Happy New Year!

I am wishing everyone a blessed New Year! I love a new start and can't wait to see what God has planned for all of us in 2010! I read this the other day and it made me giggle...

Don't cry because it's over....smile because it happened. (Dr. Seuss)

Some things I will smile about that happened last year......



Birthdays
Anniversaries
Beach days
Pizza/ Movie nights
Family game nights
Roasting marshmallows
gardening
girls night out.....

A challenge

4 places to organize in 4 days....... I'm challenging you to find 4 places in your home to organize in the next 4 days. It can be small, large, a room, a drawer, whatever needs to be done before the new year.

I thought of this because my bathroom drawers are so bad I can't open them! I wonder how many of you have a place like that? We can't start the new year off with clutter in our lives!! Are you with me?

My 4 places will be:

1. Bathroom drawers

2. Caitlin's closet

3. Laundry room

4. under kitchen sink

Now, I'm not sure if I can be brave enough to take pictures of the before, but after might make the cut. :)

four-T-one

I'm officially in my forties!

And no better way to celebrate than with 3 little kiddos who love me dearly! Every time I turned around they would tell me, "Happy Birthday!" Dylan kept asking when everybody was coming over for the party. :) I told him, we're all here!

Since Troy had to help a friend build a deck, and I had some things to get done, we will celebrate after Thanksgiving. ( with a cake ) Notice in the picture a candle in a pizza. Caitlin wanted to light a candle and put it in her mashed potatoes.....

Can't say I'm excited to be 41, but, very thankful to get here. Let's see what this year has in store.....

Job 14:9

This is the only thing left in the garden. This one lonely tomato. I haven't watered it, or moved it to get the best sunlight, I haven't fertilized it or pruned the plant for months. In fact, this plant was from Troys upside down garden he had started. The plant died out months ago. We took it off the post and just left the bucket by the fence. We cut off all the dead branches and that was that.

When the plant started growing from the dried out, cut off twigs that were left behind, I would say to the kids, " should we let this plant know it can't grow here?" Then it started to flower. I thought there was no way we could get a tomato. I don't water it and it hasn't rained in forever! It was even in the shade of the fence.

At the scent of water it will flourish

And put forth sprigs like a plant.

Job 14:9

This is now more than a plant for me. It's God telling me, " Look what I can do with nothing." What I see on the outside as dead, dried up, and finished (aka my life sometimes) God took with just a scent of water ( aka a prayer? a little faith? ) It will flourish. ( notice it didn't say, might flourish, could flourish )

Now I have to say, to me, this is a God thing, because I have tried to root very healthy plants last year with absolutely no success. I couldn't make it happen on my own! Leave it to the Lord to show me such a valuable lesson in leaning on Him right in my own garden!

I no longer joke about telling the plant it can't grow where it did. I now look forward to seeing this little tomato ripen up.....right where God put it!

Halloween Pasts

Sorry about the delay in posting this week, minor scanning problems...

I am going out of order again....

As I was looking at pictures this week end I came across some Halloween ones of the boys.

Dawson wore the pumpkin costume when it was his first Halloween, I pulled it out of storage and put it on Dylan for his first Halloween.

Dawson loved dinosaurs. We found this alligator costume at Costco one year but they didn't have his size. We bought one that was 2 sizes too big for him. He wore that thing out! He thought he was a T-Rex!

This was our last Halloween that we went Trick or Treating. When we lived in our apartment, we always went to a friends neighborhood to go out. When we bought our home I thought how nice it would be to just go around our own block and be done with it. I remember trying to get the boys dressed up, and kids were all ready coming to the door, I didn't have my candy ready to pass out, it was chaos for a while so I told my mom to take Dawson and start without me, I was just putting Dylan in his stroller and I would catch up. Dawson went to our neighbors house and then started walking to the next house. I come out see where they were and started heading that way. I just caught up with them when he rang the doorbell. The kid that lived there opened the door and screamed at Dawson with one of those ghost masks that they wear in those scary movies. Dawson started to cry and cry! The mom came to the door and tried her best to make him feel better. Dawson said that was it.....and we went home. Never went out again.

At least we didn't have to walk far. :)

out of order

I finally got some old pictures off a floppy disk that I wanted to share first. I wanted to go in order. But.....this computer doesn't have a floppy disk drive and I had to copy everything on a cd from my old computer. That wasn't easy for me :)

This was truly how the story began!

After Troy and I met, he had to move to Ft. Lauderdale for work. We only saw each other on the week ends. Nobody really knew we were "dating", especially his parents. They went down to visit him and asked if he was meeting anyone. He said, "I met the girl I'm going to marry."

*Troy tells me his mom about fell to her knees:)*

My whole life, I always said the man who marries me, will know instantly when we meet that I'm the one. People thought I was crazy, and told me that it just doesn't happen that way. Well........it did happen that way........I just had to wait 27 years for it.

These pictures are my favorite! When I look at these I remember the feeling I had of "We got each other and I don't need anything else!" The excitement of getting married and wondering what life had in store for us, I wish we could have bottled that energy!

We were laughing at these tonight. (Troy is definitely convinced he is loosing his hair! )We had no idea what was ahead of us. I'm so glad we have them to look back on and get to reminisce of a time when it was just us. We don't have many pictures of "just us" anymore. We do have great ones of "all of us" though :)

THE home

Another chapter in our lives was buying our house. It seemed like a big deal to get a realtor and go looking but we did it. Some homes looked so small we wondered how furniture was going to fit! We turned down homes before we even saw the insides of it!

It was Halloween night, around dinner, they called us to see if we wanted to go look at a home, neither one of us wanted to go look at it. We were just about to sit down and eat. Then we started talking.......what if it's THE house? ........but it's never THE house.........but what if it is?........

We went to see it.......and it WAS the house!

Here we are at the signing.....

The morning of signing the papers, we found out, by complete surprise, we were going to have our second baby! I was so excited because we had tried for a couple years and finally gave up hope.

Go figure. Well, I couldn't help with the painting, or tearing up of old carpet or anything else. I was sick! I told Troy to do what he thought looked good. We moved in our home the first part of December.

Dylan came home in July...

That was better than the house!!!

Easter 09

Well I wish I had some great pictures to post of Easter. It's hard to take pictures of moving kids, totally on a sugar high, at 6 a.m.with a digital camera, by the time it actually takes the picture they have moved. So I got about a dozen shots of the back of their head!
Still it was a great day. I thought I had it all together the night before. Clothes put out, shoes by the door, breakfast ready to put in the oven ( homemade cinnabons! ) But somehow it turned out to be a circus act. We got to church on time with a great seat that I had to leave half way through service because Caitlin was having a meltdown. I'm going to have to get the tape because I have no clue what the pastor said.
I did manage to get outside early in the morning and have some time to think about all Jesus did for me. I've had a song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3o3DiMVdOI in my head all week end. It just keeps me in line to what's important. Circus acts and all.
Hope you all had a wonderful Easter!

Well I am glad it's Friday. No real reason for it, just the end of a week.

My kids are playing outside, husband is feeling much better, routine back to normal....except my running which was put on hold while everyone was sick. Ahhh..I can take a deep breath and relax. These moments are what chocolate is for. :)

I hope you all get a little time for yourself today and enjoy a "moment" ( with chocolate)
enjoy your weekend.....

The Big Day

We had a fun anniversary today! I tried my best to keep a "12" theme going the whole day. I woke up Troy at midnight to tell him "it starts now". Don't feel too bad for him, he went to bed at 11:30. :) We had planned the day ahead of us but sometimes things don't go as planned and you turn to plan B.
I wanted to start the day at Starbucks for a 12 oz. coffee. I have never been to Starbucks and I got 2 gift cards at Christmas that I thought would be fun to use. Well we got a call from a family member who wanted to give us there 36 inch t.v.. O.K. no brainer there! So we took the Morning to get that! very cool...Thank you A.T.!!
We're ready to celebrate now, let's get out and go! We head out and while waiting at a red light, Troy said," your mirror looks funny" talking about the drivers side, side view mirror. He rolls down the window and the mirror falls off the car and into his hands! He hangs it inside the car door and asks me if I have a pair of plier cutters.........right! A trip to to PepBoys for some epoxy glue and we are off again! Woo who! Let's get this day goin'!
So next we thought we would get some food......We had our hearts set on Carrabas ( another gift card ) so we head there to find out they don't serve till 3:00. It was 1:00, what to do? Where do we go? Are you ready for this...............Subway, 5 dollar footlongs (hey it's a 12 thing!)
and after waiting what felt like 12 minutes in line, we get our food and eat. While we were sitting there, a little girl about 2 decided she wanted to sit with us. Cute little thing that made herself very comfortable next to me and waited there until, well, until I had to boot her out! I guess her family didn't care that she was with total strangers that were trying to eat their lunch without their own kids?!? geesh! :)
O.k. time for gifts! I always wanted the decals of stick people on the back of my van. You know, the dad, mom, kids and pets. Well I now have them! I got Troy a sign that I want him to put up that says "welcome to paradise" . It's a gag gift with a pink flamingo and it just makes me laugh when I see it.
How about that coffee? Na, getting to late in the day to have coffee. I'm up all night as it is, I don't need caffeine at 2:00 to pull an all nighter. That will have to wait another day, along with carrabas. We had to pick up the kids and get them home. We are thinking Valentines day, we will try again.
Like the sign says, "welcome to paradise"

dozen

Sat. marks 12 years of marriage for me and (what he calls himself) my super duper husband!
I want to have a 12 themed day planned for us. I thought we'd have a 12 oz. coffee at Starbucks in the morning, Go out for dinner and pick # 12 on the menu (whatever that will be) Watch a movie like the dirty dozen or something with 12 in it ( isn't there an oceans 12? ) I need some ideas so help me out and leave a comment!!

Oh how life takes twists and turns! You think not one more thing could go wrong. And then....

We had to call 911 Thurs. morning because Dawson had an asthma attack that was so severe it landed him in hospital. He is doing much better tonight but I have to say, this one was the scariest by far! He is still in the hospital tonight but showing progress!
We found out Dawson had asthma when he was two. It was triggered by a cold. And we don't have many problems with keeping it under control. But this came on so suddenly and I couldn't get it to slow down with the medication we had here. He had great medical attention and the staff at the hospital are really nice but if it was not for the prayer and support of the most wonderful friends and family, I'm sure it would have been much different.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!

Savin $$$

I have been on my coupon kick again. I started a while back and didn't keep up with it for very long, but lately there have been some great deals. At Target I walked out with 2 boxes of electrosol dish soap, 2 sticks of deodorant and 2 bottles of shampoo and cost me $5.oo! At Walgreen's I spent $4.00 for $20.00 worth of items and at Publix I saved $21.00 and spent $30.00. I haven't even gone to CVS yet, ( I LOVE CVS ) The first trip I took to cvs I spent $20.00 and got 6 boxes of cheerios, 5 bottles of Listerine, 2 bars of dove soap, 4 tubes of crest toothpaste, 1 bag of girlie stuff and still had $6.00 in extra bucks to spend! If you live near a cvs I would look into getting one of their cards and start saving some $$. Tomorrow I am sending Troy to walmart where they will actually have to give me money back for 2 bars of soap!

O.k., we are back in the swing of things! School went well, not a lot of complaining. I even made homemade strawberry shortcake for a snack! ( very yummy )

Let's see if this lasts... :)

I can't believe the year is almost over! Today was our last service of 2008 and I had such an emotional time thinking of all the blessings and grace and favor that God gave to me this past year. I could not have gotten this far without Him! When I think of how this year started and where I am now as it ends....it amazes me.

Happy New Year to everyone
The LORD bless thee, and keep thee:
The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:
The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.
And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them.

Who needs a car anyway! We'd rather play outside in the backyard and take pictures.

We had to decide which car was going to get fixed this week end and my car didn't win. I don't have to get up for work tomorrow either, so , I guess that's fair. :)

I have seen someone else do this on their blog and I am going to steal it because I thought it was a great way to show how little things mean a lot.....

Reasons to be happy this Sunday evening:

1. laundry is done

2. kids are happy and healthy

3. kitchens clean

4. Christmas cards ready to go out

5. Troy found my favorite pair of old navy p.j. pants in his bottom drawer today, I am wearing them now :)

6. Gators sec champs!