My oh my, hoping to be back soon

I really didn't expect to take a week off of blogging, there were fun things to be posting about, I'm sure there were........but we kind of had the "stomach bug of 2008" at our house and didn't feel like doing much except laying around and trying to feel better. Thankfully I think we are all on the mend, and while our appetites may not be completely back to normal, at least we are all eating and keeping it down.

I have to tell you about my sweet little girl though. When I got sick, thankfully I was done puking by the time she got to the bathroom, but she wanted to hold my hair for me, and rub my face - awe how sweet.

On Christmas morning, I definitely wasn't in my prime, she brought me every single one of my presents before she even opened one of hers since she knew I wasn't feeling well. How sweet is that? I never would have expected that at all, but it sure was sweet!!

More to come, I promise and I think there are even pictures thanks to my sis who took them since I wasn't around to do it myself :)

Wordless Wednesday - Merry Christmas from Our Family to Yours

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!!

Pray for us

Riley has the pukes - she woke up at 1:30 this morning and threw up several times for the next several hours. I think I'm up to 4 loads of laundry and she might be on her 8th pair of jammies. She hasn't thrown up in a few hours now, but hasn't eaten anything all day either. Hopefully she is on the road to recovery and it will skip Joey and I and we'll all be healthy for Christmas!!

FFF - Christmas Memories

Man I just can't get back into the blogging thing - it seems like I haven't posted in ages (partly because I haven't had time to download pics which is very unlike me). Maybe things will slow down a bit and I'll get back into the groove.

Since I hadn't downloaded any pictures recently, and Sarah did post a specific theme, I decided to do Christmas memories. Check out more FFF here.

Riley's FIRST Christmas - she was a whole month and a half old and slept thru the whole thing, seriously. At least I got her "Baby's First Christmas" jammies on her, but other than that, she wasn't very festive!!

Riley's SECOND Christmas, she was about 13 months old and boy did she have fun!! I had had sinus surgery on the 23rd, so I wasn't super with it, but it was fun to see how much more she enjoyed everything and to watch her play with all of her new goodies!!

First sled ride - that was actually in a laundry basket - it just seemed safer at the time :)

Boy did she love her kitchen, even at 1, she would play with it for a long time!! I'm glad we didn't wait until she was older to get this!!

Riley opening her stocking with "loopy" mommy.

Riley's THIRD Christmas, she was 2, and she opened everyone's presents, really, I don't think there was a present at our house that wasn't opened by this little sweetie!!

She also loved her "puter" also known as a portable DVD player - Daddy did too that was he could watch something besides Dora on tv :)

This was also the day she decided to empty out EVERYTHING from her drawers, ornery little thing!

Wordless Wednesday - Happy Day

Check out more Wordless Wednesday posts here or here.

We Picked Up Riley's Three Year Pictures

I love pics, I enjoy taking them, I like to look through them......over and over again, I just love them - so it's no surprise that I love taking Riley's picture (nearly everyday) and that I love to go have Riley's pictures taken. Joey and I picked up Riley's three year pictures yesterday and I just couldn't wait to share them with you guys (yeah they take a "few" poses and yeah they know I'll buy many of them, this is just a sampling of the 35 poses they took this time that were our favorites)!!!

Look at those pretty brown eyes - what a doll

Yeah for turning three (sniffle sniffle)

I wasn't crazy about this background - but she was cracking me up. She is such a little ham, and I love it!

Wordless Wednesday - Guess What Time I Went To Bed

So I'm feeling a lot better today and I think it maybe because I went to bed at........
Seriously - and I was awake for around 45 minutes in the night, but that is still lots of hours of shut-eye. Thanks Joey for taking care of Riley and convincing her it was ok for Mommy to be sleeping.

Check out more Wordless Wednesday posts here or here.

Riley's missing someone

Sorry it's been ages since I've posted, I'm just not feeling super so I can't get motivated - I even took the afternoon off yesterday to go home and take a nap and nap I did!! Now if only my head didn't feel so plugged up.........

Anyway, back to my post, my Riley is quite the little drama queen sometimes, but it's just so cute!!! She really wears her emotions on her sleeve sometimtes and you can definitely tell if she's sad or upset during these moments and if you just look at her sternly it's worse than if she got a spanking, trust me, she'll tear up just the same!

When we were driving to Bolivar on Saturday, we were chatting away and then she got pretty quiet. The sun was in her eyes so I couldn't tell if that was it or if she was tired or something else. I asked her if she was ok and she said "I think someone is hurting my feelings." I smirked, I know I did, but I couldn't help it and I couldn't wait to hear her reasoning because we were the only two people in the car. "Mom, I think the trees are hurting my feelings and maybe someone needs to take care of them." Hmm......I'm thinking quick for a response, because I'm totally unsure what exactly she's meaning here. "What do you mean honey, how do you take care of them?" She says "Someone needs to cut them down." Now this is totally not where I thought she was going, I was expecting that maybe a tree had bothered her or something and I told her that we wouldn't have any shade or pretty leaves to look at if someone cut them all down and she said "well maybe just make them shorter so they aren't hurting my feelings anymore." What a girl we have!

Then yesterday on the way home from the sitter, I look back and she has her little head down and looking really sad and she says "Mom, I just really think that Andy (my sis's boyfriend) needs to be here right now." I told her that Andy was at school and would be here in just a couple of weeks, plus I didn't know his phone number. She says, "I do, it's 276884259321" now if you know us, you'll find the humor in this because our number is mixed in with several other random numbers that mean absolutely nothing (and we're so proud she knows our number and I have a video, but the mean old hubby won't let me post it). Then she says, with real tears in her eyes, just seconds from spilling over "and Mom, Aunt Sarah is all alone and I think she's very sad." Poor girl, she sure does have a heart of gold. Man am I glad that Aunt Sarah will be here in a couple of weeks and that Andy will be here just a few short days later.

Can you imagine what the emotional teen years are going to be like at our house?

FFF - Battle of the Christmas Tree

So a few years ago, the day after Christmas, I fought the crowds and got a really nice Christmas tree for a really nice price. It was big and full and exactly what I wanted, and much closer to the price I thought I should be paying. It was prelit - which my lovely friend Jenelle warned me about, but I had never had a string of lights go bad so I had to think that it would last many years.

Fast forward 2 years, seriously, to Christmas 2007. I'm excited, my baby is now two and totally loving the Christmas lights and ornaments, etc., and I plug my tree together and bam - 1/3 of it lights up. I do everything I can, I change every fuse, I try every set of lights plugged into an extension cord as opposed to each other thinking maybe that will help and nothing does and I come away with scratched arms. I sigh knowing Christmas trees are at their peak demand (and price) and go to the Dollar store and buy some strands of lights to "light" my pre-lit tree.

Now it is Christmas 2008, I still can't justify spending the moolah on a tree, ours isn't that old, it's pretty, I like it, I know what I'll have to pay to replace it, oh yeah and only one of the strands of lights worked when I plugged it together this year. I get the bright idea, to take all those strands of lights off of my prelit tree and make my own prelit tree.

Don't mind the fact that the tree is sitting on my sewing machine box, I'll never understand why they make the branches go all the way to the ground. Also keep in mind that I haven't fluffed any branches yet so this tree really is very full and beautiful - well except for the lights not working thing.

This was my tool for this endeavor - which I'm thinking will be a piece of cake - hahaha, if only I would have known.

I begin with the little tip top section thinking I'll get it all figured out on this section that way the bigger, harder to work with sections will be a little easier. I'm thinking it won't take long to get them off, but that since the lights are all clipped on I will have to snip some here and there.

See all those little pieces, see the fact that it probably took close to an hour, this is why people buy prelit trees and don't make them. Every single tip has a light, every single tip has a clip that the strand of lights is attached to, I think I might be perfectly fine, at least for another year, ghetto non-working lights on my tree and the strands of working lights strung right on top of them!!

Anyone want to come help?

I'm not sure if this post really qualifies for FFF, but since there's no theme I guess it can, since it's friday. Check out more FFF posts here.

Prayer Requests

Please pray for a few things:
One of Joey's co-workers is having a pretty stressful time. It's with family, it's the holidays, that makes it extra hard!!!

Another one of Joey's co-workers might be facing some very serious, and unexpected, health issues.

My parent's across the street neighbor is a great guy, he may have cancer in his spinal cord/bones, seriously not good and very scary. They did get news from one doctor this week though that thought it might not be cancer - please pray this is the case but also for answers, the unknown is so hard!!

Turkey Day Recap - only a week late

Thanksgiving Day was a great day. The weather was nice, we got to see some family we don't see very often and the kids all played wonderfully together (which is pretty awesome since they don't all see each other very often). We had too much food, which is always the case at family gatherings I think, and were definitely ready for a nap by mid-afternoon! We did have a couple of family members that couldn't make it who we missed, but hopefully everyone will be together for Christmas!!

Krystina & Patricia
Christopher showing off

So this is a repeat, but I just love this pic of Riley!
Why does she so often have her tongue out?

"Hanging" from the tree and showing me how strong she was

Hmmm.....I think Riley knows she's probably not supposed to be doing this, but hoping she'll get away with it since Patricia was ahead of her.

Cousin Cayman
A typical pic for these too - it's very hard to get them to be serious for a photo!
Silly Christopher

The girls entertained themselves for a very long time with this wagon. They all took turns pulling each other and I was very impressed that they all took a turn pulling - seriously they did!

The next most popular activity of the day was building this "Sand Castle" in Papa's yard

Patricia, Cayman and Riley worked on it for probably a good half hour before Krystina joined them and they still worked at least another 15 minutes. Can you guess who needed baths that night?

Riley just kept playing and playing, she wanted to get it "Just right"
Christopher was kinda upset they wouldn't let him help, but he wanted to poke holes in it and stick sticks thru it and try and write Indian symbols on it. I backed them and told him to find something else - he opted for a gravel castle of his own with lots of semi-dirty looks in their directions.
At the end of the day even these guys knew it was naptime.