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68 In Life

Scenes from the Weekend

One year ago today we moved into our rental house here on the bay. I thought the kids and I would stay the summer, return to the brown house in the fall and Justin would join us either at the start of school or shortly thereafter. Well, here I am one year later, still wondering exactly when it is that we will return home. I woke up this morning thankful to still see this sight!

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I would be amiss not to admit that we miss our friends dearly and I do miss my brown house. Thankfully we get to visit about once a month, cramming about 28 days worth of things that need to be done in 48 very short hours. But one day we will return and I’ll probably miss the beach, funny how that happens.

I gave myself a pep talk last Thursday to get out my “real” camera and shoot some pictures. I will share those below… but my list today is long so my words will be few today. Also, Sister and I are road-tripping it up big time tomorrow. Our husbands will have the kids and we will sneak away for a few days, back to Louisville, KY, where we spent the majority of our childhood. We hope to have an absolute blast visiting old friends, romping through our old stomping grounds, going to the wedding of a dear friend… and hopefully many little stops along the way! Erika will be driving and I’ll be riding shotgun. I’m an excellent driver but she should be medicated to ride shotgun and thinks anyone who’s driving the car can’t see the car in front of them, the road beside them, the car behind them, the cars slowing down 1 mile ahead {you know the type? are you the type?}. So I’m sure the trip will be much more enjoyable with her behind the wheel.  I look forward to reporting back next week on our little getaway!

Here’s what we’ve been up to …

One day JM colored vertical whiskers on his face and came to show me with great pride.

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The coloring starts early, I think this was around 6:30.

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Number 19 {we have about 482 of these around our house}.

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Breakfast with sleepyheads and Cetaphil {?}.

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While they ate their breakfast I packed their lunches, sometimes we wear our sunglasses in the kitchen when the sun is coming up… it’s a good problem to have!

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School Easter parties were a big hit and this the golden egg I thought I hid up high in a good spot, someone found it in about .5 seconds.

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Rover always sits quietly in the corner at the girls’ class parties, not disrupting.

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Thankfully Paige’s sweet teacher knows about little siblings who wish they were in kindergarten and lets them in on all the action.

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2 beautiful Easter prizes JM made in preschool.

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Over the weekend at the brown house the girls and I dyed eggs while Rover napped.

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We had colorful eggs Easter morning for breakfast, and also tore into Easter “sand pails”!

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Justin’s parents had us for Easter lunch after church. The cousins always have a blast together.

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We had a wonderful weekend celebrating a risen Savior!! Then it was time for the dreaded task of packing up, cleaning out, and loading up… all while trying to make it back to the beach at a decent hour {which we still haven’t mastered yet!}.

Upon on return, we are always so thankful to be welcomed by our “second” home and we try to slide back into life here! Our “traveling” softball team is in full swing and my heart melts when I see these little girls in their full-blown uniforms. We’ve only ever played tee ball and for that we received a shirt as our “uniform”. To our surprise Morgan got the whole shebang… visor, jersey, pants, & socks. The girls look so put together out there on the field! We had an 8-1 victory Monday night… the perfect way to start the season. I’ll have to remind myself of that tonight when I have to travel for our 6:45 game and we probably won’t be home until well after bedtime!

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Ok, time to run… here’s one more!

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44 In Life

I Could Be a Professional Spring Breaker

Before spring break came for our children, it came for many others who have invaded our little town and my grocery check-out lane at Publix, but that’s ok, really. Anyway, since the majority of the people in town were on spring break I pretended for at least two weeks that I, too, was on spring break, music turned up and windows rolled down. I was simply conditioning for my turn. Thankfully my conditioning didn’t include seven cases of Keystone Light like the college guys in line in front of me at the checkout who said,  “You know this won’t even last us a day!” {If I could add an emoticon of a guy puking I would put it in right here but I don’t think such thing exists.} And finally our spring break came, and just like that it’s over! Yesterday my three precious companions resumed pre-k, kindergarten, and 1st grade.

I recognize that I have been allowing myself to get so far behind on posting that even siting down to write a post in attempt to catch up seems to be a monumental task. But I’ve come to conquer tonight. Last time I was here I told you that Justin’s family was coming for the weekend to celebrate his mom’s birthday… well, sadly she came down with a nasty virus, and she & Justin’s dad didn’t even make it to the weekend in her honor. The rest of us enjoyed the weekend but missed them greatly! In a nutshell, we stayed in a sweet condo on the beach.  The cousins had so much fun swimming & playing together. We went to an art festival {where Morgan won a ribbon for  a piece the school submitted!}. We shopped, we ate, and we enjoyed all being together! Oh, and of course, we laughed a lot and I only took a few pictures with my phone…

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The following week I got my braces off! Hip, hip, hooray! It was my second round of braces {this set was bottom only} and will undoubtedly be my last. When they were yanking the brackets off I thought they were going to accidentally pull out a tooth. Looks kinda scary doesn’t it?

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We’ve also been on the road a lot, back and forth between the brown house and the beach. I ride shotgun and try to keep peace in the backseat, but even great attempts at doing so seem to fail sometimes. Speaking of failing, Paige failed a vision screening at school and the scary words they sent home on her report would have made you think her eyes were in serious need of attention. Thankfully our good friend, who the kids call “Dr. Joe”, is a pediatric ophthalmologist and worked us in on a Monday to see if the Raiger had any issues with her vision. She was very brave and did exceptionally well and walked out with a clean bill of vision health & a handful of stickers!

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She unfortunately was under the weather the week following and got lots of TLC, like lunch in bed and popsicles at 2 am!

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Everything tends to run together when you don’t keep up, but one week Justin was away in New Orleans for work and I did my best to let him know I was holding down the fort ok and that we made it to softball practices. JM is a total clown and I fear for his future teachers. We’re thankful for a few more years before big boy school and we hope to have him a little more refined by then.

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We’ve also had many laughs over JM and all his newfangled Nascar gear. A kind reader from Nascar headquarters graciously sent JM a box of official Nascar gear. One night I took him to the softball fields in this… {sporting what he calls his “race car man” face}. You can’t tell from the picture but even the sunglasses are Richard Petty! There’s no doubt he thought he was the coolest kid at the park.

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We’ve had a few rainy days here and there…

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But when it’s not raining we are outside…

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I still have to pinch myself when I walk outside…

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The first weekend of spring break our friends, Krista & Michael came over from Fairhope for an impromptu slumber party. We spent the day on the water and found enough food in the pantry for dinner. Krista and I scavenged clothing for her three children from my children’s drawers and we stayed up until the weeeee hours waiting for our husbands to arrive safely home from sea. Justin and Michael took the boat to a bluegrass festival, left at sunset and arrived home around 1:30 am where we were holding vigil for their safe return {I joke, kinda}. If it hadn’t been for Ricky Scaggs I don’t think they would have made the journey from Orange Beach to Dauphin Island by boat, which is a far shorter distance by sea than by land, but it still took them over 2 hours each way, and Mobile Bay was fairly unkind to them that night. They came home looking a little forlorn and shocked that we were still awake. We were thankful they were home safe, and equally thankful that we weren’t with them being tossed about in the pitch dark. Instead, we were snug in the bed {with a confused baby girl sporting JM’s pirate jammies} catching up on life.  After a very late night, we offered them a small loveseat and some coffee on the porch Sunday morning. They’re about the kindest people you’ll ever meet… but next time Michael may turn down the bluegrass festival by boat invitation!

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The days following I loaded up the kids {with one minor detour to the brown house} and headed over to my sister’s spend a few days with my parents who were down visiting from Illinois. Justin has been very busy with work so we escaped without him with hopes that quiet evenings at the house would afford him a little extra time to catch up on work…  but we sure missed him! We got to spend lots of time with sweet Sloaney B while Sister was away on business. We hit the ice cold pool {I swear kids have completely different thermostats than adults… cold water never, ever seems to bother them}, spent a day by the bay, dined at the Airstreams in Seaside, played on the green in Seaside, celebrated Mom’s birthday, loved on our greatly missed pup who’s in the loving care of my parents while we are renting our house, and spent lots and lots of time outside! The weather was glorious!

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The kids and I journeyed home and made it just in time to meet our dear friends for dinner who came to visit for a few days!  Dr. Joe {who gave Paige a clear bill of vision health}, his wife, Susie, and their three kids were also on spring break and we were thrilled to have them here with us for a few days. We did a lot of this…

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We laughed a lot and caught up on lost hang time over the last year. We almost made a trip to the Florabama but much to my dismay {I jest} we didn’t make it! Maybe next time!

The last weekend of spring break was spent as a family enjoying our “back yard”!

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And before I go…

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Monday’s field trip was a success. But can I tell you that our very kind principle drove our bus and when I boarded I asked him if the air worked better near the front of the bus. He laughed a little and kinda looked at me like I was crazy. It was like a sauna and I really wondered where the best seat was. He asked me if I was joking and explained I could turn on the air by putting the window down. 🙂 Y’all, school buses don’t have air conditioning… still. It’s 2012 and I figured they did by now. I rode a bus to school from kindergarten to 5th grade and for some reason I figured that was decades ago and by now they’d have air. They don’t. And it was hot. But it was fun and I was so thankful to get to spend time with Morgan and all the other little first graders!

Ok, now I’m going to challenge myself to pick up my real camera and see if I can get back into the groove of taking pictures with something other than my cell phone!

 

21 In tshirts

Honey Bee Tees

Good Morning! I stayed up LATE last night working on a post… a very comprehensive post that nearly overwhelmed me. You know, when you get so far behind catching up will do that to you! I made it through the first weekend of Spring Break and then decided to crash. I thought I’d finish this morning but I’ve now got a family to feed, backpacks to pack, library books to locate and an all-day field trip to attend {on a school bus, oh boy!}. My intentions were to let y’all know in my post that there is a whole slew of new inventory in stock at Honey Bee Tees and orders placed near the beginning of this week will more than likely arrive in time to stuff our colorful little tees into colorful little Easter baskets! There are even more new designs than pictured above so be sure to click over and check it out!

I let our Facebook fans know over the weekend that we were restocked with new designs, so if we are out of what you want you’ll have to blame them or follow us on Facebook.  Anything that is low in stock has already been reordered and will hopefully be listed within a week. Also, all long sleeve shirts are on sale, including the pink “Craft Supplies” tee, which is one of my all time favorites. The girls wear it all the time! It’s a perfect weight to slip on for a chilly nights with shorts. One-piece creepers {aka “onesies”, which is a word we can’t officially use} will be listed within a couple days!!

Now I’m off for the day and will hopefully wrap that other post up tonight! We’ve had absolutely gorgeous weather… there’s much to catch up on!

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