We went to visit my family June 5th to 13th. Saturday, we drove to my brother's in Atlanta, spent the night and Sunday morning, headed out to stay with my aunt and see my other brother and grandmother's in MS. After, I ripped my front bumper off my car at Walmart, of course!

My phone had not charged overnight. I had come to terms with having no phone for a 6 hour drive. I did survive the 90's. Then Eric mentioned buying a car charger at Walmart, and I HAD to do it. Leaving there, it was now about an hour past the time I had hoped to leave town. I was too impatient to wait for the cars driving behind my parking spot, and there was no one parked in front of me. Rush forward, and...over a curb!! Only row in the entire lot with a damn median! Also, my spot on the median had a bush stump. I heard the scraping, freaked, and backed back into my spot. My bumper did not follow. Then I threw a temper tantrum, complete with foot stamping in the parking lot. Some guy saw me rip the bumper off, and came to help. He bought some plastic ties, tied the bumper on, and helped me find Pep Boys, where they looked at my car, and tied a few more bits on, at no charge. THANK YOU nice guys! Then I went to MS.

Christian and I drove the kids in the pick-up through the cow pastures, which I'd never actually seen all of them, saw nursing cows, had conversations about baby cows getting milkies from their mama's penises, stopped to fish for the bottom of the lake, and around the lake where we nearly tipped trying to get up a hill to get to Christian's house to pick-up his girlfriend, Kat. short for Kathryn. My brother's first name is Andrew. WEIRD RIGHT?


nursing baby cow!

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Monday, we hung out with my grandmother, Ruby, all day, and did more fishing. Tuesday, we went to the teeny tiny Hattiesburg Zoo, which was a perfectly short little timewaster. And had barbecue for supper. Wednesday, we went to Hazlehurst to see my dad's mom Granny, her husband, and my aunt and uncle. We hung out at Granny's house for a few hours, got to see tons of old family photos.


turning around from here, he forgot he had to walk down some steps, and fell face first onto the concrete. then he had a lovely face scrap & bruise, to go along with his nose scrape of unknown origins.



Thursday, we headed back to Atlanta. Friday, we went to a puppet show in the morning, of Cinderella. It was one of those professional traveling groups, with giant marionettes. It was amazing! After a nap, we went to the Roswell Sprayground, which was so fun! We have some of those around here, which I need to find.





Saturday, we went to their pool. My kids and I played in the 1' baby pool the whole time, but they had a lot of fun! In the afternoon, we hit up one of those self-serve frozen yogurt places, with the 1000 toppings. SO GOOD.
Sunday, we headed back to NC and our Daddy!

It was a wonderful trip, and so good to see my brothers and family!

Videos!

I thought you might like to see a few videos of the kids in action!

Ellie loves to chit-chat and be naked. So... we have a naked chatting baby!



Ellie talking



Andrew is making us repeat the same three Christmas songs over and over and over and over. Turns out, this is an excellent learning opportunity for him, and he's actually learned the songs! Now if only he'd actually learn to the go to sleep and eat his supper lessons in this song!
We now present, with a rare appearance by Andy, Andrew performing Santa Claus Is Coming To Town:

I found out in October that it is pretty common for preschool to start at age two down here. This would've been nice to know a little sooner! I did a little research, but mostly procrastinated on finding a school for Andrew. All the places I liked had classes on Tuesday and Thursday, and we went to music on Tuesday! In hindsight, I know this was ridiculous, music can always be changed, but I never claimed to be a rational person.

I finally called my top choice school the week of thanksgiving and scheduled a tour for the Monday after. I really liked the place, and we decided to start Andrew the very next day, as there was another little girl also starting that day. December 1st was his first day of school ever!



I talked to him a lot about how I was going to have to go, and he was staying to learn. He has been going to Sunday school this year, where this obviously happens, so I think that helped a lot. His teacher, Ms. Jacky, told him to say good-bye to Mommy, come back and get me at lunch time! He told me that, kissed me, and went off to play with some trucks. No tears! I was a little shocked, and yes, my feelings were a little hurt, hehe.

He had a ton of fun. Couldn't tell me a darn thing he learned, what songs they sang or Bible stories they learned in chapel, but he didn't want to go home, so I called it a success.



He seems to be having a ball. He still can't really tell me what he did, but can tell me about the worksheets he brings home. He is singing things we don't really sing a lot, and says some funny new things. As long as he learns to socialize and start to write and color a little better (i have no patience to teach that) I will be happy! Andy, on the other hand, would like him to be doing calculus by May.

Time to Babyproof!

Ellie has finally learned to roll from her back to her belly. She has been rolling from belly to back for a while. She is a belly sleeper, and has always liked to flip herself back over, then throw a fit because she absolutely cannot sleep on her back, oh no!

Well, she's finally learned the other way. Which I would think would solve the sleeping problems, but no. She just gets mad and screams until I flip her. Then she'll shove that thumb in her mouth and pass right out.

She has quickly learned that rolling over in both directions, along with spinning on her belly, can do some good things for her! I'll put her down, and a minute later, she's 10 feet away from where I put her!

Andrew was never a roly poly one. This should be fun :) She is already trying to roll over to look at the cats or Andrew or some piece of fuzz if I change her on the floor. I am afraid that she will end up being like Rowan was, with Tara closing the diaper up as Rowan sped away!

New traditions?

If you didn't already know, Andy and I LOVE Christmas! The only reason we don't start decorating as soon as Thanksgiving dinner is cleaned up is because we are too stuffed to move that much! So, we start on Friday morning. This is helped by the fact that we have a fake tree. Judge as you will. We will not be home for Christmas. Rental Property. CHEAP!

Anyway, we woke up Friday morning and pulled out all the Christmas stuff from the storage closet and set the tree up. By this time, it was lunch and nap time. While the kids were sleeping, we discovered our new tradition. Leaf raking!

The leaves had fallen so much later than we are used to, that it hadn't been time to rake until November. It was a gorgeous 65 degree day out. It was very weird to be doing after Thanksgiving and in the middle of our house decorating!

Andrew wke up and joined us for some fun!






We did pretend we were in the cold, white, north for our tree trimming that evening! We lit a fire, made hot chocolate, watched Polar Express, and trimmed the tree. We are so Normal Rockwell. 21st century, NC Norman Rockwell, but hey, you know what I mean.








It is so festive in here now! I am going to be sad when we have to undecorate!

Here are all of our pictures from the month of November

Thanksgiving

We had a pretty nice first Thanksgiving in NC!

My brother, Eric, was supposed to come visit us with his wife and two daughters, but the girls got lice from school and by Tuesday, Jo Ann still hadn't been able to get rid of it. Ick. Needless to say, they stayed home!

We'd already gotten a 20 b turkey (this is what you get when you send your husband on a Sunday evening!) and all the groceries for 7 people, so we felt committed to cooking up a storm! There was a lot of googling and internet research going on!

While I have cooked a turkey before, this was my first time with no adult supervision. After a morning of freaking out that it was still frozen (slightly, but mostly just hard as a breastbone inside, duh) and freaking out over giblets and pulling out necks (ew ew ew ew, this is what moms are for, I decided), we got it in the oven around noon. Andy and I worked together to get green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, biscuits, and sausage/apple stuffing made. We got fancy and opened jarred cranberry sauce and black olives, too. And we both got to watch our Thanksgiving tv - me = Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, him = dog show. just kidding. Andy is a real man and watched football!

Does anyone else want to call it the Macy's Day Thanksgiving Parade, like me? sheesh.

We had perfect timing, and everything was done, ready to go, and still warm at 6 o'clock.





We did a great job! In our humble opinions, of course :) Everything was delicious. Our turkey was moist, our potatoes perfectly creamy, and the jellied cranberry sauce perfection. And so, we stuffed our faces without judgement of other people :) And hardly had any dishes to wash. Not so bad, right?

Ellie was very tired during dinner. First, she thought about falling asleep on my hip in the pouch sling. Then I put her in her bed to see if she'd sleep, but she decided to cry instead. Andy rescued her, and ended up plopping her on the floor by his feet, where she happily rolled all over the place. silly girl!

Meme comes to town

We had a lovely weekend with Jamie, Andy's mom!

She arrived Friday afternoon, which got Andy home from work early :) Andrew was very excited to show her his new house and play with her!
Saturday morning, we got up and going. We introduced Jamie to the deliciousness that is Biscuitville and headed up to the mall in Durham, the Streets at Southpoint. When you come to visit, we will take you there, it's cute! We walked around, got the kids Christmas outfits, and a few random things. At lunch, we were devious, and introduced Jamie to the awesomeness that is Five Guys, without Jeff, hehehe.

We had bribed Andrew into behaving, by promising him Henry the train if he behaved at the mall. Which he did. We headed around the corner to Target, but they didn't have him! After his nap that afternoon, we checked out the Target closer to our house, but no luck. What up Target, why no carry the popular engines? He did get Hiro, who is the train in the new Thomas movie Hero of the Rails. It's his favorite movie, so says Andrew!

We rencently got a fold-up potty seat to use when we are out and about. I made Andrew go at the mall before we left, which was good, since he passed out in the car on the way home. After our second Target trip, we headed out to eat at TGIFridays. While we were sitting eating dinner, he ASKED if he could go potty and use the Elmo seat. AWESOME. and Ellie cried and refused to fall asleep forever. Girlfriend needs to learn to just pass out when she is tired!

Sunday, Andy showed off by making his mama pancakes. After Jamie and Andy went to church, he drove her around the other side of town, just to show her what we've got. Which is everything, except Hobby Lobby :-p I had to take both kids to church with me for 3 hours, and ended up leaving Ellie in the nursery for service, first time! There is a cry room at the back of the sanctuary, where I usually spend my time feeding her, and which has a speaker, so you can still hear the service. But its been broken all but the first week we went there. It was nice to actually be able to sit through an entire church service with no interruptions for once!

At home, everyone but me took a nap. How does this happen?? We spent the rest of the day enjoying some gorgeous weather and playing outside!

Andy took Jamie back to the airport after breakfast on Monday. It was wonderful to get to see her and visit! We really miss our family, and being able to get together all the time.