Randomness and lots of pictures.

We had a holiday weekend...

Sunday night we decided (very short notice)

to invite Konnie and Isaac over for dinner.

I took lots of pics of the babies playing together.

Here are just a few:

Hammin it up!
Lovin the ball popper!!

Waitin to get into the kitchen-'Hey, we're hungry too!!'

The boys playing.

Isn't this typical?? He's trying to get a kiss and

she just wants to talk on the phone!
I actually did get a pic of them giving each other a kiss,

but it was too blurry :(

But, I mean, really, do you think she'll be able to resist this face?!?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Monday, Memorial Day, we all (Konnie and her fam too)

drove over to New Orleans to go to the aquarium.

We saw lots of these:

Emmie was not so enthused about being in her stroller, can you tell?

The boys.

~~

Then we went to the Riverwalk Mall

and stopped here-Cafe Du Monde-for world famous coffee and beignets

(pronounced ben-yays)

SUPER YUM!!

Since we had just had a snack and all, we decided to stop here-

The Fudgery

-and buy a ridiculous amount of Fudge.

And the show is almost as good as the fudge!

They sing(loudly) getting the crowd to participate

while they are working the fudge.

At the end of the show are free samples!

This was our first trip to NO since Katrina.

It was depressing to see how bad things still are.

Just like here, there are so many things that are

still not repaired or replaced.

We had a really good time, though.

I can't wait to go back and do all the things we

didn't have time to do...

the zoo, the French Market, Jackson Square,

and ride the trolley down

St. Charles and see all the beautiful homes!

Can you tell I used to LOVE New Orleans?

Anyway, on the way home we stopped

and ate together at TGIFriday's in Gulfport.

Our waiter was a complete ditz!!

It was really funny.

And then we said our goodbyes and headed home.

What a great couple of days.

TTFN!

Wordless Wednesday-UPDATED (with words! :)

Just a Swingin...

Ok, so I decided I am going to take the plunge and enter

a giveaway over at

Two of a Kind Working on a Full House.

What's the big deal, you ask?

The giveaway is for cloth diapers!

I have never really considered cloth diapering-

and Paul is not really onboard with it yet

(since I do most of the diapering, I'm gonna enter anyway!)

but Dee just makes it sound so easy, and certainly

economical!!

She's giving away 3 Fuzzibunz diapers.

Click on the company name to go read

about them and see if you

might be brave and try them too.

TTFN!

Random Picture Challenge...and why I believe Satan created laundry.

Ok, again with the frustrating spacing...

now I can't center my pictures either. :(

Anyway, I am participating in the

Random Picture Challenge by Brittney over at

4littlemen&girlytwins

This weeks picture comes from

Folder 16 or August 08

and should be the 28th picture.

This is from Ashton's school awards day 2008.

Ashton is in the center. Her hair was shorter then.

She's so pretty. But I might be biased. :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ok, on to Satan and laundry...

I'm certain you all think I'm crazy.

A little background-I loathe laundry.

It is the bane of my existence.

It's kind of like Gremlins-wet it and it multiplies!

Umm...anyway.

Think back to Adam and Eve.

First created humans.

Lived in paradise.

Up close and personal friends with God himself.

Naked.

(That last one is the important one to the story.)

(Don't forget it.)

Ok, so as we all know,

they were forbidden to eat the fruit of

the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

~Fast forward~

Satan slithers

Eve succumbs

beguiles Adam

fruit eaten.

God returns.

{uh-oh}

Suddenly, Adam and Eve are aware of their nakedness.

(See, I told you that was important)

In their need to cover themselves,

they grab some fig leaves and voila-

LAUNDRY IS CREATED.

And Satan laughed.

Ok, so maybe I'm exaggerating just a little.

(and hey-Adam and Eve could just throw the dirty

leaves away and pick new ones, right??)

But I really dislike doing laundry.

I guess my poor feeble mind just needed an

excuse to not do it.

Cause, ya know,

~the devil made me do it~

is never a good excuse!!

TTFN!!

'I'd like to thank the Academy...'

What a great way to start the day!!

I won an award!!

Kelli, my IRL friend who got us all addicted

to this crazy blog thing, sent me this great award today!

Thanks, Kelli, and right backatcha!!

Seriously, copy and paste it back on your page

cause you deserve it-again!!

Visit Kelli at Random Thoughts of a Supermom!

Kelli's super fun and crazy crafty!

I SOOOO envy admire her

cool talents and abilities!! I wish I had just

a smidge of her creativity! She has three

super cute boys, and Eli might be the

rolypoly-est cutie I've ever seen!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I hope it's ok to pass this award on...I'm gonna anyway!

First, to my IRL friend Konnie at The Dooley's.
We've been friends for a long time.

She has one funny hubby, and 3 beautiful boys,

the youngest of whom she swears will one

day be my son-in-law!! Look out Emmie

(can you say arranged marriage??)She has been

going through alot with her mom's cancer this

year, and I love the updates on her mom

and reading the funny things the boys say!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Next is El over at Profoundly Seth.

I must be painfully honest and say that while

I've followed her blog for quite a while, I have

mainly stayed in the land of the lurkers!

Sorry, El! Ellen has one sweet girl and three

precious boys-two here in her arms, and

one in heaven in the Father's arms.

I love reading about Seth and his

amazing journey, but I also love reading

about Ellen. She is transparent and real.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lastly, I am giving one to Mimi over at He & Me +3.

She was my first blogging friend who wasn't also

an IRL friend! Thanks for hanging around, Mimi!

Mimi has 2 beautiful girls and one spunky handsome

boy! They all have the greatest dimples ever!!

I love Mimi's sweet soul-she has the

nicest personality, and it's fun to read about her

and her sweet family!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In other really cool news, if you follow MckMama at

http://www.mycharmingkids.net/

you know their local news did a story on Stellan

last night. The story was moving and well done!

I was particularly impressed that the news

station made no attempt to take out the 'God angle'

of the story. God was very much given the glory!

And BTW...if you watch the story, pay

attention when they are showing all the

Stellan's name gallery pics. When the reporter

is going through all the things people wrote

Stellan's name with, 'pretzels, candy, blocks, blossoms...'

the blossoms they show are mine!! That's my Stellan pic!
I was so excited!! I saw it at midnight last night!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BTW...

Yes, I have put a LOT of lbs a few lbs

back on...

and YES, I do wear LOTS of empire

waisted shirts (that happen to look maternity but are NOT)

to cover it up...

and YES, we do have a rather impressive

(if I do say so myself)

track record of having babies...

but NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am NOT pregnant!

Please don't ask. Everyone else has already asked.

It's starting to get really stinking depressing old.

We do intend, by the grace of God,

to have at least one more, but I promise,

when it happens, we'll let you know. :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That's enough excitement for now, I suppose...

Thanks again to Kelli.

If you're new here, welcome!

Thanks for looking around.

Y'all come back now, ya hear?

TTFN,

PS...anyone else have MAD frustration over the

crazy spacing that happens when you post a

pic on here?????? I can't fix the double-spacing

and it's driving me crazy!

Wordless Wednesday

Back in blogland...making friends.

Ok, so I totally laid out of blogland all weekend.

Sort of.

I did check in now and again, and read everyone's

new posts. I just didn't do anything of my own.

I'm always excited to do Not Me! Monday posts,

but Emmie let me get so little sleep Sunday night

that I just couldn't wrap my brain around a post

where I had to say everything backward!!

Just too tired, folks!

On that note, however, I must confess that

Emmie slept ALL NIGHT last night!!!

WHOO-HOO

(insert manic happy dance here!)

I think it is the first time EVER.

Did I mention she's 11 months old?

Did I mention how painfully sleep deprived I am?

Did I mention that I adore her anyway?? :)

And she's totally taking steps all over the place!

Walking, already...where did the time go?

Anyway.

We were busy most of the weekend, and that probably

added to my tiredness.

We had a great dinner at our house with our IRL friends

Konnie and Isaac-otherwise known in blogland as

The Dooley's

and speaking of Konnie, congrats to her as she is

the winner of a super cool summer giveaway

at another IRL friend Kelli's blog,

Random Thoughts of a SUPERMOM

Great giveaway, Kelli, thanks for the fun!

~I digress~

Back to our weekend...

Then we began the redecoration of our living room

that I have been WAITING for!!

We have been buying things here and there-

when we had a little extra money

and when things were on crazy good sales-BTW,

I LOVE Kirkland's!!! And if you sign up for their

email, they will send you coupons!! Come on,

thrifty moms-it doesn't get better than coupons, right??

We also went to a salvage place in Mobile and got

a 10X13 rug that cost about $900 elsewhere but

because it had a few MINOR flaws on one CORNER

we got it for under $200!

I love saving money!!

(cause we don't have much!! LOL)

The redo is not quite finished, but when it is, I will

post pics.

Ok, I've gotta say, unless my visit counter is

wrong, I've got quite a few lurkers.

I know you're out there!

I love to meet new people and make new friends!
Please let me know if you check my blog

now and again-

leave me a comment, and follow my blog!!

I would love to meet you!

In fact, if I can get 25 friends (via followers,)

I will post a giveaway!

I've got a $15 giftgard to

☺Target☺

to giveaway to a friend. But you've got to

be a friend first!

Hope to meet you soon!

TTFN,

Random Picture Challenge

I haven't done a Random Picture Challenge in forever!!

It's fun to go back and remember!

This week's challenge is;

9th picture folder,

Sept 2008,

18th picture.

Noah was about 19 months, and Emmie was 3 months...

she was sitting in her bumbo chair for the first time,

and I told Noah to give her a kiss.

So he got right in front of the camera

(almost completely blocking the shot, of course!!)

and he did! So sweet!

Not the best pic, but that's what it's all about, right?

Be honest and put up whatever you find!

TTFN,

Wordless Wednesday-Sharing

Emmie's first fudge pop-

It was actually Syd's but Emmie

wasn't letting go!!!

TTFN,

I ♥ Faces Week 18-Laughter

I love to catch my kids laughing!

This week, the folks over at

I ♥ Faces

want to see your pictures of laughing faces!

Join in and link up with your own joyous pics.

No pics to show off? Click on the link above

or on their button an my sidebar and see

everyone elses laughter!

The girls lovin a ride at Wild Adventures!!
TTFN,

So many tears...so few words

Please go read Kayleigh's blog today.

Then pray hard for this sweet family.

I am beyond words.

Thank you Lord that this family knows you.

Thank you that they have the hope of heaven

and eternity with You and Kayleigh to

keep them from devastation.

Send your peace to them,

and let them feel your arms holding them tightly.

Thank you that we know that Kayleigh is

whole and healthy in Your arms now,

and the angels will sing her lullabies.

We cry tears of sadness, but not despair.

We know we will all see Kayleigh one day,

and will dance with her on the streets of gold.

Thank you Lord for the promise of

eternal life the other side of this world.

Amen and amen.

Mother's Day...a day late.

I hope everyone had a wonderful

Mother's Day!

Here is what I should have posted yesterday!!

-My babies-

each on the day they came home from the hospital.

♥Ashton Colette♥

January 28, 1997

♥ Sydney Alexis♥

August 4, 1999

♥Jacob Carter♥

June 13, 2004


♥Noah Aaron♥
January 16, 2007

♥Emelia Claire♥

June 7, 2008

I wish there were words to describe the way

I feel about my children.

I am unconditionally blessed.

And loved.

And thankful.

I love you, my beauties.

And I thank God everyday for the privilege of

being your mom.

~(One of)Our newest family photo~

(My boys almost look like twins!!)

FYI-the pics of Ash and Syd are so blurry because they

are scans that were taken with a horrible 35mm camera,

and I was HORRIBLE at taking pictures!!

Also, notice they are both wearing white?

We didn't find out the sex with either,

so the outfits had to be neutral!! :)

TTFN,

...and now I have a button!!

Yay Me!!

(insert my own spastic applause here)

I FINALLY figured out how to make a button.

Well, the making part wasn't so hard.

But making it a link and creating an HTML

box for everyone else to grab it was an

UNBELIEVABLE NIGHTMARE!

experience!!

*Sigh*

Ok, now that I'm done venting, I am really happy

with the way everything turned out. I've been looking

at how to make original backgrounds-as frustrating as this

was, I hope think I've got it figured out. I'd

love to make my own backgrounds too!

Ok, so my true stress today came from my computer itself.

It's been a while since I've actually shut my computer down

at night, but last night I decided to.

Bad idea.

Apparently my computer didn't like the idea of me shutting it

down and wanted to extract some revenge. When I turned it on

this morning, it took forever for my desktop to come up.

It kept giving me the message 'preparing your desktop.'

Then when it finally did come up, it was a background I've

never seen before. It then told me that my previous layout

was not properly saved and that it was giving me a temporary

layout. This made me nervous, but at first everything seemed

to be working ok. The first thing I did as soon as it finished

coming up was log on. I was bothered as it made me go through

all the 'new' stuff, like I did when I had just gotten my computer

and had to set up my internet accounts. Then finally when

everything was up, I quickly saw that

everything was gone.

All my logins, all my favorites, etc.

After fiddling with the internet for another minute,

I got a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach as I

realized what I hadn't seen before.

I minimized the internet and my heart stopped.

All my folders were gone. Music-gone. Blog stuff-gone.

PICTURES-GONE!

Now, in my defense, I cleared a lot off my desktop last

night before I shut it down-putting things in folders

(still on the desktop, though)

and throwing away things I didn't need or use.

That's why I didn't notice right away that they weren't there.

Needless to say, I spent several minutes frantically

searching and hyperventilating. I sent Paul a frantic

text at work and he called immediately. He was upset too

because all of our pictures from before Jan are on his

computer as well as mine, and are also backed up on a disc.

The ones from Jan forward, however, were ONLY on my

computer. After we talked a minute about where I had

already looked, he told me to do a general search

in windows. Duh. That should've been the first thing

I tried, but in a fog of panic, I wasn't exactly thinking

clearly!! Anyway, when I searched for them,

they are still here!!!

Thank you, Lord!

They aren't where they are supposed to be, and for

some reason they seem to be scattered and not in any

semblence of order, but they are still here. I will deal with

the rest later. For now I am just happy that

they are still here!

And I'm so glad.

TTFN,

A 'Blog'-over!

If you've been watching my blog today,

you probably feel like you were on a bad acid trip! J/K!!

After MANY background changes and 2 different headers,

what you see is what I finally decided on!

I LOVE IT!

Let me know what you think!!

TTFN,

P.S. I also have a few new signatures that I will be switching

around the next few days.

Wordy Wednesday!

Ok, so I was totally going to do a Wordless Wednesday post,

but as I actually have a few minutes to type a post,

I figured I'd take advantage!

Ok, I have to admit, I was a little skeptical about

babywearing.

That is until my friend Konnie used her sling at

Disney World

and raved about how easy it made things.

Now, IMHO, anything that can make walking

through Disney with a little one must be GREAT!

So I've been trying to get over the prices

and just go out and buy one.

But I just haven't been able to.

Finances just aren't flexible enough for me to go

spend anywhere from $30-75 on a piece of material

that I may not even like or use very often!

Then I was reading in Brittany's post about the Summer Giveaway over at

Meeup Carriers!

(click on the name to visit their site and read about the contest)

Ok, so the colors aren't exactly what I would have

picked for myself, but who's gonna complain about free?

I really hope I win this, cause I really want to try one!!

I intend to work up a post on prayer soon...MckMama posted about it

when Stellan was in Boston and they were blessed by so much prayer!

I enjoyed the post, but felt a little discontented after reading it.

I realized that I didn't agree with everything she said,

and I want to put my understanding of prayer out there and see

what you think. I'm still sorting things out in my head, and

praying for guidance,

but hopefully I'll have it through in the next day or two!

Anyway, that's enough for today.

This would've been my Wordless Wednesday picture...

TTFN!

I ♥ Faces Week 17-Hats/Kelli's 100th

Ok, this week over at

I ♥ Faces

The pictures have a hat theme!
Put up your best hat pic, link to their site,

and maybe you'll win!

No pics to share?

Go check out all the cute faces-with their hats-anyway!!

This one should be familiar

(since it's from about 3 posts ago!)

It is Emmie in her hat from Mimi.

So sweet.

In other blogging news...

I wanted to mention that today is Kelli's 100th post!

Hop on over to Random Thoughts of a Supermom

and check out her totally cool summer giveaway!!

I know I did. :)

Congrats Kelli. Hope you feel better soon.

The return of Not Me! Monday-YAY! (actually posted LATE Sunday night)

I think we are all not glad to be back to our NMM admissions!!

Unwelcome back, MckMama! So totally not glad to have you back! :)

Check out what MckMama and everyone else have not been doing this week at

http://www.mycharmingkids.net/

Miserably not happy that you and Stellan are home and well!!

Having boys is really not a continuing adventure-with no surprises or comic relief in sight!

That said, I did not have the joy of saying,

"Jacob, we do NOT karate chop our little sister in the head!" or,

"NO, Noah! Emmie cannot have grapes!

But thank you for sharing-that was sweet!"

Also, I did truly did not have to clean human poop off my PORCH because

Noah totally does NOT take his diaper off all the time once in a while-

especially not when he has poo-poo! He also would not smear it on the porch

or proceed to walk through it! And I would never just wipe it up with a baby wipe.

I totally did not let the boys watch Mulan over and over just because they love to

sing the songs and do the karate motions-

and it is not completely cute or funny or sweet.

I have not been trying to tape it ALL week!

They do not seriously become camera shy as soon as I try!

Even with my phone!

I did not take ALL 3 of the little ones for shots on Wednesday-

to the Health Dept, no less!

It was not FREE immunization week at the Health Dept and we were not totally

in and out of there in just an hour! I was not completely amazed and thankful!

Free and fast!

No way I'm grateful for that!! However, all 3 of the little immunized ones

have not been OVERLY fussy and sometimes just downright miserable ever since.

They do not all have huge, red knots on their legs,

and have not been running fever off and on.

I am not more exhausted than I ever knew a person could be

because I do not have an (almost) 11 month old baby girl who absolutely refuses

to sleep through the night. She does not want to nurse EVERY TIME

she wakes up-which some nights is every 2 hours or so-

and I am not so unbelievably zonked that I just give in and nurse her.

Nope-NOT ME!

I would never cave so easily! I have also not discussed with Paul about:

1. Moving ME out of the bedroom (sad that Paul and I would be giving up our bedroom-

he hasn't been sleeping in there since Dec!)

2. Moving Emmie upstairs cause I totally want to run UPSTAIRS every 2 hours at night!

3. Moving Emmie into the laundry room

OR

4. Investing in lots of Benadryl

(Come on, folks-give me a break-it was a JOKE!)

Seriously, though, ANY advice on Emmie would totally not be appreciated!

I truly am not the most tired I've ever been in my life! And, I'm not

thinking that maybe I should stay off the roads cause, you know,

zonked driving is drunk driving!

And on that note, Emmie is just not already fussing

for the first time this evening-

just 2 hours after putting her in the bed.

Paul did not volunteer to go try to get her back to sleep,

which is not very sweet. I do not wish him the best of luck-although I'd love

to not be a fly on the wall when he decides to give in and just nurse her!

LOL-NOT!!!