Big Boo Cast: Episode 421
3 days ago
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
Favorite Fridays
I'm playing along with Favorite Fridays over at The Other Mama. This week I've had a lot of favorites: we sold our house! I did a little shopping for the girls and got some adorable dresses...I mean shopping.....need I say more? But I have to say that my absolute favorite of the week is....drumroll please........
Do you see what's in that picture? Those are big boy underwear on my little Henry man. Now, I know what you're thinking....he's three......you should have been having this proud moment a year ago. I know. I know. Truth be told I probably did wait a little too long to train him. My boat was still a rockin' from having the twins and trying to get them sleeping all night and nursing them every three hours etc. etc. Plus we moved right after his 2nd birthday and so came the adjustments: new house, transition from crib to big boy bed, and finally potty training.
Now, in my defense, I have been actively trying to train the child for about 8 months.....yes, I said 8 months. Keep in mind that I had both my other boys trained in a week or two. Needless to say, this has been BY FAR my hardest one to train yet. I got so desperate I ordered a pdf file book off the internet for $17 that said I could have him trained in three days. I'm not bashing the book, but the three-day thing was a little bit of wishful thinking. It basically told me everything I already knew and was doing but it did give me some reassurance that I was doing the right things. (did I mention I was desperate?) Quite frankly, I was at the end of my rope. But after too many "accidents" that weren't really accidents to count we are finally successfully potty trained. Basically I had to sit him down and have a "come to Jesus" meeting about the potty business. And whatever fear of God I put into him on that final attempt worked b/c we've been pretty good since them.
Still with the daytime success I have been resorting to the pullup at night b/c a.) sleep is a valuable commodity to me and b.) just a repeat of a basically. Well, last week was the last of the pullups and since I have been overly lazy this week (I guess I'm still floating from the fact that the house sold and I don't have to keep the floors so you can eat off of them everyday) so I haven't been to the grocery store. I did make a quick Walmart run for necessities: milk, bread, peanut butter, honey buns, those little debbie muffins and diapers (for the girls). I don't consider Walmart the grocery store. In fact, I avoid it like the plague. But that's another post entirely. Anyway, I chose not to buy the pullups and we've been sleeping in the big boys ever since. We've been dry every morning until this morning but it wasn't that bad and it was a morning accident and not a nighttime one. Didn't interfere with our sleep.....nothing the washing machine can't fix. Plus it was time to change the sheets anyway.
I am very happy to announce that I've got three down, two to go in the potty training business, hip hip hooray! And I think the girls are going to be a total cinch! They already like sitting on the potty all the time! If I can just get them talking where I can understand what they're telling me we'll be in business! Mary Collins is already taking her diaper off all the time if it's accessible! Oh, and I found the BEST cotton bloomers yesterday in Dallas and I'm going to stock up and use them for panties b/c it's going to be a long time before we can fit into those 2t panties. I bought them a swim suit a few weeks back from Gap. Guess what size I had to get? 3-6 month! They're t-i-n-y. I also bought the 6-12 month just in case they hit a growth spurt and expand like crazy in the next couple of months and I'll just return the size that doesn't work.
Now that I've rambled all morning on potty training I'm off to clean the house. It's Friday, cleaning day......and if I finish early I'm heading to the mall to return some things and shop Nordstrom for an Easter dress! Happy Friday!
Thursday, March 25, 2010
God Is Good
Know I know that God is in control at all times. I don't really struggle with faith. But God never ceases to amaze me when you can SEE Him in the driver's seat.
We put our house on the market last Friday, the day we left to go out of town for Spring Break. I had worked soooo hard to have it spotless so we could have it shown that week without the headache of constant cleaning. The Lord knew that would be difficult for me, the keeping the house clean part, with the five children. And our house was shown three or four times while we were out of town. As we were driving back home Sunday afternoon my phone rang and it was the answering service for the real estate agent saying they wanted to show our home that afternoon for a second showing. I said that would be great, seeings how we still wouldn't be back in town until late that night. We prayed as a family for the buyers to like our house and want to buy it. Monday morning we got a contract on the house! We were thrilled. They wanted to close on May 7th and we agreed, knowing that school didn't let out until June 4th and that we'd have to do something for three and a half weeks. Clayton's company pays for temporary housing so we just figured we'd live in a furnished apartment for a few weeks and we'd manage.
Well last night Clayton ran to Walmart and called a few minutes after he left the house. He said, "you're never going to believe this." I was thinking okay, I'm going to have to wake five kids up to come pick him up b/c he's either a.) had a wreck or b.) ran out of gas. Well, then he said he had just gotten off the phone with our realtor and that she had talked to the buyer's realtor. The buyer's realtor had called to tell her there was a problem. (my heart sank) The wife of the family that is buying our house is a doctor and she's having some trouble getting her state licenses completed by the close date of May 7th so they were going to have to push back the closing date to the 1st of June! And just for the trouble they offered to pay our mortgage payment for the month of May! Ain't God good? So we no longer have to worry about moving into temporary housing! It is so amazing to me how God's plan plays out for our lives when we spend time in prayer with Him and are seeking it. And when He answers in such a short amount of time you just sit there and saw, "WOW!" He is totally in control! Oh, and the relocation company signed off on the offer so our house is officially sold, to close the beginning of June! Now I'm just trusting that He'll lead us to the right house to buy in east Texas! God is good all the time and all the time God is good!
We put our house on the market last Friday, the day we left to go out of town for Spring Break. I had worked soooo hard to have it spotless so we could have it shown that week without the headache of constant cleaning. The Lord knew that would be difficult for me, the keeping the house clean part, with the five children. And our house was shown three or four times while we were out of town. As we were driving back home Sunday afternoon my phone rang and it was the answering service for the real estate agent saying they wanted to show our home that afternoon for a second showing. I said that would be great, seeings how we still wouldn't be back in town until late that night. We prayed as a family for the buyers to like our house and want to buy it. Monday morning we got a contract on the house! We were thrilled. They wanted to close on May 7th and we agreed, knowing that school didn't let out until June 4th and that we'd have to do something for three and a half weeks. Clayton's company pays for temporary housing so we just figured we'd live in a furnished apartment for a few weeks and we'd manage.
Well last night Clayton ran to Walmart and called a few minutes after he left the house. He said, "you're never going to believe this." I was thinking okay, I'm going to have to wake five kids up to come pick him up b/c he's either a.) had a wreck or b.) ran out of gas. Well, then he said he had just gotten off the phone with our realtor and that she had talked to the buyer's realtor. The buyer's realtor had called to tell her there was a problem. (my heart sank) The wife of the family that is buying our house is a doctor and she's having some trouble getting her state licenses completed by the close date of May 7th so they were going to have to push back the closing date to the 1st of June! And just for the trouble they offered to pay our mortgage payment for the month of May! Ain't God good? So we no longer have to worry about moving into temporary housing! It is so amazing to me how God's plan plays out for our lives when we spend time in prayer with Him and are seeking it. And when He answers in such a short amount of time you just sit there and saw, "WOW!" He is totally in control! Oh, and the relocation company signed off on the offer so our house is officially sold, to close the beginning of June! Now I'm just trusting that He'll lead us to the right house to buy in east Texas! God is good all the time and all the time God is good!
Monday, March 22, 2010
Remember Me?
Wow, has it really been two weeks since my last post? Well, lots has been going on around here. Here it is in list form, um, sort of.
1. We're moving.....again. I know we just moved. And we're doing it again. This January Clayton's company went through a big restructuring of the company and Clayton is no longer the manager of the Dallas North team. He is now the manager of the East TX team or something like that. Anyway, he went from a sa-weet 45-mile radius territory to I don't even know how many hours span of distance territory including all of east Texas all the way up to Texarkana pretty much down to Shreveport and down to some other places I've never heard of (Lufkin maybe?) Anyway, that's way too much driving for me. And so we are moving to Tyler, TX which is in the middle of the geography so he can be home for supper before 7 pm every night. Plus his company offered us a relocation package and you're just pretty much stupid if you don't take those when they're offered to you. They take care of everything, the movers, the closing costs, etc. It's a nice deal.
2. So when you have to move you have to sell your house. Okay.....if you've been in my house then you know it still looks like we just moved in yesterday, bare walls and all. Well, I decided instead of dragging pictures up to the attic I'd get off my lazy tail and hang some on the walls. I must say, I should have done it a long time ago. Here's my living room. Can you see that thing by the couch? That's a lamp! Finally got one and plugged it in so it didn't feel like we were in the waiting room of the health department.
And I read somewhere you should hang a mirror across from the windows to make the room "feel bigger".....so I did. I don't know that it really made the room feel any bigger but at least the mirror is off my dining room floor.
In my breakfast room I've had this group of four pictures that Mike Logan took of us over the years. They didn't really look right in there and I've been meaning to hang this picture where they were for almost a year. I finally did it last week.
And I hung this in the entry way across from the table and mirror ensemble.
And the pics that were in my breakfast room are hanging in the hallway to our bedroom and they look great there!
They just invite you right on into the master bedroom.
3. We had Spring Break last week. We went to visit both sets of grandparents. We headed to Tupelo and spent the weekend and Amy, Steve and the kids came down and spent the weekend too. The kids had a blast playing with their cousins and sleeping in the camper. It was nasty cold weather but they played anyway. The only pictures I took the whole week were some of the girls swinging. We headed to my parents and spent the week in Dothan. We had a great visit, even though we had nasty weather there too. We got to visit with several of my aunts and cousins that we don't get to see very often and had the best time. And I got to do some shopping with my friend Meredith and that is always a treat. We headed back to Tupelo for the weekend b/c this week is the spring consignment event and I'm selling some of the girls clothes and had to drop them off on Sunday. We wanted to drop by our old sunday school class but we had to leave as soon as I dropped off the clothes in order to make it home before midnight. Clayton and I did have a date Saturday night and went to the mall and ran into Jim and Candise at Gap. Candise took our picture with her phone. You can barely see it on here.
That's her newest addition, Carrie Ann......soooooo cute! I would say it made me want another baby but then I quickly thought about Candise being up all night that night and the thought very quickly faded.
4. When selling your house you have to make sure it is spotless so I busted my tail to get it spic n span, and ran out of it for the week so it would be in pristine shape for buyers. Guess it paid off b/c we got a contract on our house today! So unless something catastrophic happens we sold our house, yeah!!!!! Now we have to find one to live in come June!
5. Just some random FYI: don't let your husband turn on the disposal on the sink while your hand is down in it. It hurts real real bad and has the tendency to tear off your fingernail if it hits it just right.
6. And also, I cooked supper tonight...if sending your husband to KFC and opening a can of baked beans, a can of English peas, cooking a box of easy mac and putting some sister shubert's yeast rolls in the oven counts as cooking. If you think it doesn't count then you've never spent 10 hours in a van with five tired children who refused to nap the entire trip, except for a brief 30-minute cat nap at the beginning of the trip while you were having a major case of PMS and your husband was complaining about how the dog wasn't staying on her blanket, as she might mess up the carpet in said van. Then you spent the entire next day dealing with the same tired and wild kids, still with the case of PMS and trying to keep the house that you're selling in one piece. If you've been there and done that then you TOTALLY know that using that can opener counts as cooking supper.
1. We're moving.....again. I know we just moved. And we're doing it again. This January Clayton's company went through a big restructuring of the company and Clayton is no longer the manager of the Dallas North team. He is now the manager of the East TX team or something like that. Anyway, he went from a sa-weet 45-mile radius territory to I don't even know how many hours span of distance territory including all of east Texas all the way up to Texarkana pretty much down to Shreveport and down to some other places I've never heard of (Lufkin maybe?) Anyway, that's way too much driving for me. And so we are moving to Tyler, TX which is in the middle of the geography so he can be home for supper before 7 pm every night. Plus his company offered us a relocation package and you're just pretty much stupid if you don't take those when they're offered to you. They take care of everything, the movers, the closing costs, etc. It's a nice deal.
2. So when you have to move you have to sell your house. Okay.....if you've been in my house then you know it still looks like we just moved in yesterday, bare walls and all. Well, I decided instead of dragging pictures up to the attic I'd get off my lazy tail and hang some on the walls. I must say, I should have done it a long time ago. Here's my living room. Can you see that thing by the couch? That's a lamp! Finally got one and plugged it in so it didn't feel like we were in the waiting room of the health department.
And I read somewhere you should hang a mirror across from the windows to make the room "feel bigger".....so I did. I don't know that it really made the room feel any bigger but at least the mirror is off my dining room floor.
In my breakfast room I've had this group of four pictures that Mike Logan took of us over the years. They didn't really look right in there and I've been meaning to hang this picture where they were for almost a year. I finally did it last week.
And I hung this in the entry way across from the table and mirror ensemble.
And the pics that were in my breakfast room are hanging in the hallway to our bedroom and they look great there!
They just invite you right on into the master bedroom.
3. We had Spring Break last week. We went to visit both sets of grandparents. We headed to Tupelo and spent the weekend and Amy, Steve and the kids came down and spent the weekend too. The kids had a blast playing with their cousins and sleeping in the camper. It was nasty cold weather but they played anyway. The only pictures I took the whole week were some of the girls swinging. We headed to my parents and spent the week in Dothan. We had a great visit, even though we had nasty weather there too. We got to visit with several of my aunts and cousins that we don't get to see very often and had the best time. And I got to do some shopping with my friend Meredith and that is always a treat. We headed back to Tupelo for the weekend b/c this week is the spring consignment event and I'm selling some of the girls clothes and had to drop them off on Sunday. We wanted to drop by our old sunday school class but we had to leave as soon as I dropped off the clothes in order to make it home before midnight. Clayton and I did have a date Saturday night and went to the mall and ran into Jim and Candise at Gap. Candise took our picture with her phone. You can barely see it on here.
That's her newest addition, Carrie Ann......soooooo cute! I would say it made me want another baby but then I quickly thought about Candise being up all night that night and the thought very quickly faded.
4. When selling your house you have to make sure it is spotless so I busted my tail to get it spic n span, and ran out of it for the week so it would be in pristine shape for buyers. Guess it paid off b/c we got a contract on our house today! So unless something catastrophic happens we sold our house, yeah!!!!! Now we have to find one to live in come June!
5. Just some random FYI: don't let your husband turn on the disposal on the sink while your hand is down in it. It hurts real real bad and has the tendency to tear off your fingernail if it hits it just right.
6. And also, I cooked supper tonight...if sending your husband to KFC and opening a can of baked beans, a can of English peas, cooking a box of easy mac and putting some sister shubert's yeast rolls in the oven counts as cooking. If you think it doesn't count then you've never spent 10 hours in a van with five tired children who refused to nap the entire trip, except for a brief 30-minute cat nap at the beginning of the trip while you were having a major case of PMS and your husband was complaining about how the dog wasn't staying on her blanket, as she might mess up the carpet in said van. Then you spent the entire next day dealing with the same tired and wild kids, still with the case of PMS and trying to keep the house that you're selling in one piece. If you've been there and done that then you TOTALLY know that using that can opener counts as cooking supper.
7. We are now the proud owners of a full size van.....not a minivan......a full size van......the kind that looks like a church bus, only nicer inside. I'll take pictures later. Right now I have to bathe kids and get them to bed. I've had all I can handle. Oh, we got our van 2 weeks ago. It made the trip much more comfortable. Like I said I'll take pictures later. I know you're just dying to see it! If I ever had any coolness about me it is now all gone. I am driving a bus to the carpool line from now on!
Sunday, March 7, 2010
A Blessing
Our family sat at the dinner table this evening and Henry blessed the meal before we ate. Here is what he prayed:
"Dear God, thank you for this happy food. Thank you for my family. Thank you for my bowling pins. Amen."
Classic.
"Dear God, thank you for this happy food. Thank you for my family. Thank you for my bowling pins. Amen."
Classic.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Just For the Record
The last time I remember him letting her up on his chest like this was when we first got her! I tried to find a picture to post when she was a puppy -- I have one where she's laying on his chest in our bed one of the first nights we had her -- but I can't find it and even if I did I doubt it is in digital form. You see I just broke down and went digital not too long ago. I know, I'm so behind. I still an under the opinion that my 35mm shoots better than any digital anyway. But just for the record on a VERY rare occasion Clayton gives the baby girl some attention. Since this only happens once in a blue moon I've taken the pictures to prove it, ha! It's not that he never gives her attention it's just that most of the attention he gives her he's pestering her about something. He really loves her I think he just acts like he doesn't. She chose me as owner and I'm really the only one she listens to. I think he'd feel differently if she had chosen him. By the way, did y'all know dogs did that? I didn't until we got Belle. I grew up with cats. Cats aren't so picky.
Anyway, here's Clayton and Belle:
Oh, yeah, Dad, that's the spot right there!
Anyway, here's Clayton and Belle:
Oh, yeah, Dad, that's the spot right there!
When the Cat's Away the Mice Will Play
Our kids know that Daddy's office is off limits.....which makes it all that more appealing, ha! The other night I was busy as a bee in the kitchen getting supper ready. When I went to call the kids to the table here is what I found:
Caught red-handed!
Caught red-handed! Wednesday, March 3, 2010
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