After a long blogging break, I'm finally back!

I am so excited that it's summer vacation! It was definitely an interesting school year, but I was ready for summer and getting back to spending time with my own family.

We've been trying to do a few fun things each week that get us out of the house, but I have to admit that all four of us would rather stay home than go anywhere most of the time. It's just kind of nice being able to enjoy each others company and get a few things done around home that we put off during the school year.

On Thursday, I had the chance eat dinner at Fedora's Social House with my friends Wynne, Christy, Kristi, Amber and Lisa. (We were missing two from our group, but hope they will be able to come next time.) We have all taught together at some point and all but one of the teachers have taught Kindergarten with me. I love this group of women and the positive energy that bring to my life. There isn't a time that we get together that I not only feel like we've picked up where we've left off, but also left feeling like a better person. They make me happy because they are so fun to be around and they are all Godly women. I am blessed to have them as friends.

 Lisa, Wynne, Christy

 Amber, Me, Kristi

Getting ready to enjoy some delicious fondue! 

I have a teacher blog that I worked on a lot during the summer, but I hope to start keeping up with this one better--at least over the summer. I have completely quit scrapbooking and I need to keep a journal of things before I forget everything. I feel bad that I didn't blog at all last school year. I may have to post some things out of order just to help me remember. 

Here's to a great summer!

Rosewood Farms Christmas 2010

After school yesterday, we loaded up my van and made several stops to pick up a car load of friends to go to the annual Christmas Open House at Rosewood Farms. I am pretty sure I could live there. It’s such a cute place!  Plus, it is a family owned business so you always see the same smiling faces working. Their customer service is excellent.  I have even seen them hug customers. How sweet is that? 

They don’t allow pictures to be taken inside, so I had to settle for outside pictures. It’s the kind of store you have to go through twice to make sure you didn’t miss anything.

This year was even more fun because John gave me money for my birthday to spend specifically at Rosewood. He’s so sweet!

I got lots of new goodies, but I will have to wait until I start decorating for Christmas to show them.

The best part was going with friends. It has become a yearly tradition. We have now gone together for the last three years. The fun, conversation, shopping, atmosphere, free chocolate, mulled apple cider and caramel mudslide coffee were pretty great, too!

 

I can’t wait to go again next year!

Fun with Friends

A quick trip to Hobby Lobby last week ended with us going not only to Hobby Lobby,  but Michael’s Joann’s and Wal-Mart.  We took Shelly and two of her kiddos. The kids had so much fun and it was really nice to  catch up with Shelly.  Luckily, my kids aren’t mortified that I take pictures of them in the store.

Since Luke and Audrey were little, we have taken pictures of the two of them together in hopes that one day they would get married.

  

 

 

 

This cart was super tiny, but Audrey insisted on sitting in the back. I’m not quite sure it was the fit she was expecting.

Olivia loved this dress.

 

By this point, Audrey was exhausted!

We love to have fun!

Fondue Fun

This past Tuesday, I had so much fun going to Fedora’s with my friend, Kristi. She was Cole’s teacher in 2nd grade and has been a wonderful friend ever since. I am so blessed to have her in my life. She is the kind of person that you can trust to be honest with you even if she knows it might hurt. I appreciate her perspective and consider her a wonderful Christian friend. Plus, she’s absolutely hilarious! I always have a great time when she’s around.

This was how much of our Butterfinger fondue we left. Can you believe we couldn’t eat it all? 

Our sweet waiter was so much fun. He and his wife were expecting their first baby “anytime”. He told us that he was just waiting for a text from her.

One of our fondue pots started getting a little too hot, so we experimented and got the burner turned off with a knife. The waiter asked how we did it and said that most people blow on the flame (Kristi tried that, too, but we would have never admitted that to him). He said, “See my beard? It use to be 3” longer.” Then, he proceeded to tell us that the first week he started working at the restaurant, he blew on one of the burners and singed half the side of his beard and mustache off. He told us the worst part was  he had to continue working like that the rest of the night. :)

During our second round of experiments, we found that you can turn off a burner with a graham cracker. Just a little bit of useless knowledge for you.

Super blurry self-portraits are the best!

We had so much fun catching up and chatting about everything that’s been happening since school started. It’s so nice to have good food, fun and great friendship. By the way, I highly recommend the Carbonara fondue. It had chicken and bacon in it and was soooo yummy!

Bubby’s back!!!

Yesterday, Cole finally made it home!!! John had to get an alignment done on my van, so he went to pick Cole up. I thought I would have plenty of time in between when he picked him  up and when I had to leave, but he ended up getting home, they picked up Audrey and headed to drop her off at Granny’s while they went to an auction. I am pretty sure that we about knocked Cole over when he got out of the van. It was so nice to see him. He seemed bigger. Boppa took him to get a haircut. He spoils him with the VIP treatment which includes not only a haircut but a steamed towel and a massage. :)

Last night, I was able to meet up with a few friends from high school to eat at Garbo’s and go to the movies. We enjoyed talking over dinner and laughed a lot during Letters to Juliet. The movie was cute. The movie kept cutting out and muting the voices and it was so funny to hear the reaction of the crowd each time it happened. Stacey said it was like going to Bingo and someone yelling Bingo and everyone ripping their cards off in disgust. :)

Amy’s baby is due in September and she and her husband have chosen to wait until the baby is born to find out the gender. I don’t think I could ever do it (because I’m weak and when I was a child I use to unwrap and rewrap my Christmas presents because I couldn’t handle the suspense), but it was fun hearing her talk about the different things they are going to try to do to reveal the gender to the baby’s siblings once the he or she is born.  What a fun surprise!

Stacey spent all day in the crazy heat at baseball championships for her son and he won! She must be so proud of him. Now his team gets to go to state and hopefully win there, as well!

Amy, Stacey & Me

Today, Audrey and I went to church and then met up with John and Cole at my mother-in-law’s house. Lunch was so yummy! She had fixed roast, gravy, mashed potatoes, home grown tomatoes and corn. Audrey and Cole enjoyed painting and drawing pictures with Granny.

Cole was pretty tired today from the weeklong festivities with MeMa and Boppa and from standing through a hot auction last night. His eyes looked so sleepy.

We took my van back to the mechanic tonight. We are keeping our fingers crossed that it will be fixed tomorrow so we can head out on a little trip on Tuesday. When we got home from making our rounds, I had to mow the yard. I finally finished at 9:00 PM, but only because it was lightning. It was so very hot, too! I was so very ready to come in and shower.

Audrey crawled up on the couch with Cole to watch something on Netflix.

She was getting VERY sleepy, but still wouldn’t give it up. I think she missed her Bubby.

I’m so excited about my day trip to Arkansas tomorrow with Wynne & Kristi. It should be a great time. I hope to take lots of pictures, share lots of laughs and hopefully find some cute things for the house.

This picture has absolutely nothing to do with this post, but this was Audrey yesterday. She keeps bringing me her bible and she wants me to read stories to her. It’s so sweet! She loses interest quickly when I can’t pronounce any of the names that she insists I read from random verses in chapters of her choice. I’ve tried asking her if she wants me to read to her from her bible stories books, but she says no. I think she mostly enjoys looking at the maps in the back. ;)

Catching Up with Great Friends

Yesterday was a great day. I woke up early, got a few things done around the house and felt completely in the moment with my kiddos. That doesn’t always happen the way I envision it, so it was nice to be able to say yes to their quirky whims for awhile. We started by filling up lots of water balloons and having a water balloon fight.

This picture cracks me up! Audrey is very serious about chasing Cole with this balloon. This is definitely the face of someone who is trying to get a little revenge. Can you tell?

That’s a little better!

It was hard to take pictures of the part that I was involved in, but let’s just say that I was the most wet when we all went inside.

Then, we played in the gravel pit. Audrey and I dug the gravel (soil), dumped it into the wheelbarrow (garden) and planted seeds (leaves). Magically, carrots grew before our very eyes and we even pretended to eat them with ranch dressing. It is so much fun pretending with Audrey and Cole. They are both so imaginative and curious. The conversations we have while playing are priceless. Audrey even called me her Sweetie and Pumpkin Pie. Those are terms of endearment in our house. :) Never mind that John told me she called him the same thing that evening.

 

When we came inside, we put together a few puzzles and then I had to get ready for a reunion lunch with previous Kindergarten teachers I have had the pleasure to work with.  We ate at Mille’s and it was great, as usual. We met at 2:30 and didn’t end up leaving until after 6:15. It was so great to catch up with each of them. They all hold a dear place in my heart. It was great to feel like we just picked right up where we left off. No awkward silence. No feeling judged. No topic left uncovered. We talked politics, religion, friendship, marriage, dating, school and many other topics I cannot discuss. It was wonderful! I am so blessed to have these wonderful friends.

On the way home, I picked up a birthday cake for our neighbor since I wasn’t going to be home in time to bake one to take it over to him. Cole and Audrey walked over to his house to give it to him. They were so proud, as was I.  They love our neighbor, Gene. I believe that he is fond of them, too. He always shows a genuine interest in them. He has even give them several $2 bills. I think that is pretty special.

We like to have Gene over once in awhile for supper and family gatherings. We take him cookies and dessert when it’s fresh out of the oven. He comes to our house when there are tornado warnings. He calls to check on us when he hasn’t seen us outside or about in awhile. He’s such a great neighbor and we are lucky to have him looking out for us.

(Don’t look at the weeds. I am scared to mow them down for fear of killing what little green we have left in our yard.)

Our dog, Copper, had to get in on the action. I’m pretty sure she smelled the chocolate cake. :)

I am going to miss summertime.

Mysterious spots

On Saturday, Cole woke up with spots all over his belly and back. We were hoping that they were just some kind of bug bites or a reaction to his sunburn. However, in the back of my mind, I remembered reading about several friends kiddos having chicken pox within the last week. Plus, he did have the low-grade fever the day before.

I had agreed to watch John’s cousins kiddos the week before, so they were to arrive around noon. We decided to hit McDonald’s for lunch before a day of swimming and playing.

I called John’s cousin to tell her there was the possibility that Cole had the chicken pox. She did not seem too concerned. He had been vaccinated.

So we went along with our day as planned. I called my friend and she told me about two of her kiddos having spots and that she took her daughter to a nurse prac. who diagnosed her with chicken pox. She had all the symptoms that Cole had, too.

After reading several messages on Facebook about some of the other kiddos who had the pox, I called our doctor’s office and they referred us to the ER since Cole was having eye pain associated with the spots.  After about an hour and a half of isolation, Cole was diagnosed with ‘possible early chicken pox’. I was a little surprised at this because that was my diagnosis when I walked in the door and had him admitted. I guess I was expecting something a little more definitive.

He ended up with a prescription to be filled if/when the spots turn into blisters. We are hoping that they don’t.  They also said that his eyes were fine and gave no explanation as to why they were so red and hurting. We were glad that his eyes were fine. There was talk of blindness and things that tend to scare the momma. ;) We prayed for the best case scenario and got it!

Since they weren’t sure if he had chicken pox, they treated him as if he did and he was isolated. All the triage ‘stuff’ was done in a room. Here he is getting his vitals checked.

We had to wait a long time before the doctor came in, so the nurse gave Cole the remote and told him he had his choice of two channels—the patient channel and Cartoon Network. It was funny because when he finally decided to turn the TV back on the second time, he said, “Watch. As soon as I turn the TV on, they will come back in.” Sure enough, they did. :)

  

The nurse took the BP cuff off his arm and forgot to turn the machine off. It inflated and inflated until we thought it was going to blow up. He decided to pretend like he was dead when they came to check the machine. (He has his grandpa’s sense of humor.)

I looked at my arms and told Cole I was a freckle-potamus and he was a spot-a-potamus. He looked at his arm and said he was a hairy-potamus and I changed into something inappropriate and we laughed for probably five minutes. The off and on inappropriate for our surroundings kind of laugh that you can’t help but do every time you look at the other person. He started giving me the evil eye because we couldn’t stop.

All in all, Cole is feeling pretty good. He’s tired and hasn’t had his normal voracious, growing boy, appetite, but his spots are minimally itchy and he has only had about 3 spots turn into blisters and they went back down to regular spots.  We are so glad he is okay and glad that this happened to him as a child and not as an adult.

We are actually kind of excited about being forced to stay home until he’s better. I’m pretty sure he did this on purpose. :) I love my little homebody.