A "Blah" Day

Today has been one of those days where I just wanted to go back to bed and start completely over!

First, no one wanted to get up this morning. Don't kids realize how hard that makes life for Mamas?

Then, I get to school and find out that our dear, sweet Mr. Cleveland who cleaned our school plus did hundreds of other wonderful things for us, died last night. I really think he died of a broken heart because his precious wife died a few years ago, and he never got over losing her! To let you know what a wonderful man he was--when I was pregnant with Harrison, I started having contractions at work one day. He put me into his truck and drove as fast as he could to Randy's school so I could get to the hospital. What custodian does that?!?

All that talk at school made me miss my Mama soooooooo much! It also made me realize that even if my Daddy says I am bugging him--I need to keep it up so he doesn't get as lonely as Mr. Cleveland.

But I made it through the day and had a great afternoon cuddling with 2 of my sweeties in my bed while Harrison read us 3 different Dr. Seuss books. Who doesn't love that? All I can say is...I love my family! (Even if they fuss at me to run my regular 4 miles because they know it makes me feel so much better!)

Dance, Dance, Dance (with a little sickness thrown in!)

So I may have mentioned once or twice or a thousand times that we are in the midst of Dance Competition season. I love it, but it is wearing me out! It is so worth it, though, to see my baby girl doing something that she loves.
On Saturday, she had her dress rehearsal for Competition at Westminster. The only thing was...she went home sick from school on Friday with a 100 degree fever! Dum.Dum.Dum! So I wasn't sure if she would be feeling well enough to dance on Saturday afternoon. Was I wrong!! She couldn't wait to get all glitzed up and perform in front of all those people. You could tell she didn't feel like herself because in between her 2 dances, she just sat there. Not like the other girls who were running around. But she did her best and it showed!

Here she is with her Hip-Hop group before they went on. Of course she is the only one mugging for the camera! Their song is "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" and it is so cute!

And this is their "Boogie Shoes" dance. Definitely NOT Wizard of Oz! (I was told that was just too babyish!) Caitlin is the second Dorothy from the left.

All the girls did a great job, but I can't wait to see her dances on stage with the lights hitting all those sparkles.

Now we are back on the couch with a fever again. I took her to the doctor this afternoon, and she has a major sinus infection! No school again tomorrow for my Dancing Girl!

Celebrating My Birthday

So my birthday was last week. I was not looking forward to it AT ALL!! Not because of the number I was turning, but because my Mama was not going to be here to help me celebrate. No cake, no card signed by her, no phone call singing "Happy Birthday Dear Beth."
Randy knew it was going to be a hard one without her here this year, so he planned a special weekend full of fun activites.
My sweet family started my day off with breakfast from one of my favorite places--don't laugh--Bojangles. I absolutely LOVE their spicy chicken biscuits!!! And their Bo-berry biscuits are one of the sweetest things you will ever put in your mouth.

I even had candles to blow out! The flowers in the right-hand corner were sent to me at school on Friday from my sister. It was such a surprise, but she wanted to do something a little special for me too.

We then shipped our kids off to various friends' and grandparents' houses and took off for the big city of Nashville. We always have such a good time there!
Before we go anywhere, we always look on "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives" or "Best Thing I Ever Ate" to see if there is a local restaurant to visit. We found several for Nashville and picked 2 that sounded appetizing. The first place we tried was Martin's BBQ. Guy Fieri ate there, and it looked fabulous! I was really looking forward to this:

a Redneck Taco. It had a cornmeal cake on bottom, pulled pork, and their famous slaw and sauce on top. I just can't even describe how yummy this dish was!!

Of course, it helped that we were with these wonderful friends.

And their husbands too!
We all had rooms in Nashville where they gave me my presents and dolled me up so everyone would know what we were celebrating.

Here we are ready to hit the town!

We ended up eating supper at The Old Spaghetti Factory which was delicious. It was just a restaurant we stumbled across while walking downtown.
That's really all the pictures I have because I didn't want to have to keep up with my camera while out. but we had the greatest time together. I wish I had a picture of the restaurant we ate breakfast at. It was so good too! (Can you tell we didn't count calories this weekend?) I was sang to several times and got wished "Happy Birthday" by more people than I can count. It truly was one of the best birthdays I have ever had!! Thank you, Randy, for putting all of this together!

Happy Birthday Randy! (a little late)

My dear sweet hubby, Randy, had a birthday last week. I won't say how old he is, but he is 2 years older than me:)
We started off his Birthday with presents first thing in the morning.

Can you guess whose present is the one wrapped in robot paper?!?

He had fun opening all of them while eating his request for breakfast: sausage and gravy biscuits.

And the cards were quite funny too!

The Birthday Boy with his 2 precious children
We then all went our separate ways to our different schools for the day.
We had quite the surprise that afternoon:

IT SNOWED!!!!

We only had a slight dusting, but it was still exciting!!
We then picked Caitlin up from Dance (January and February are exhausting Dance months because it's Competition season! I think we might just move her in to the studio next year to save on gas!!) and went to eat at Outback--another request from the Birthday Boy.
After that we came home and ate his very favorite dessert: O'Charley's caramel pie! I have tried making it at home, but he likes their version better. (One less thing I have to be responsible for)

They couldn't wait to dive in!

I hope he had a good birthday! I know I had fun shopping for just the right presents and making sure all his food requests from sunup to sundown were honored.

1st Tooth Gone! (And a Surprise)

In anticipation of Harrison losing his baby teeth this winter, we had this cute pillow made by "Gram" back in October.
Some little boy has been waiting, and waiting, and waiting to use it!

We noticed right before Christmas that BOTH of his bottom teeth were loose. We wiggled and wiggled every day, but they just weren't coming out! That is, until last Saturday, January 7. I had taken Caitlin to her extra dance practice, gotten myself and Harrison dressed, and was upstairs ironing when I heard Harrison running up the stairs yelling, "Look Mommy!!" He had a blank space at the bottom of his mouth!!! I screamed and hugged him and asked him if I could see his tooth.
Harrison replied,"I don't have it."
To which I said, "What do you mean you don't have it?"
H: I spit it down the drain.
Me: What?!?
H: Well, I was brushing my teeth, and it came out so I spit it down the drain.
We rushed down the stairs as fast our feet could carry us to try to find that tooth! I was hoping that he hadn't had the water on while brushing, and the tooth was just in the sink. NO SUCH LUCK!
Daddy was in the shower, so he said that he would look for it after he got dressed. No big deal-we just took a few pictures.

My sweet toothless boy!

Daddy had to take apart the pipe underneath the sink to look for the tooth. After dumping out the contents, we sifted through the bucket, and found the tooth!!!! (Excuse the mess, but we had to completely clean out under the sink.)

And here he is with that 1st tooth putting it in his little tooth for the Tooth Fairy to pick up that night!

So after all that excitement, we picked up Caitlin from dance, and went to eat some lunch. We had a few more errands to run so we spent quite a bit of time in the car that day. As we were driving home, Harrison says, "Here's my other tooth!" He had pulled the other wiggly tooth out too!! I guess he couldn't stand the way it felt.

So here is my 2 toothless big boy as we drove into the driveway.

And here he is placing the 2nd tooth of the day into that little bitty tooth!

I tried to get a picture of him in bed with his Tooth Fairy pillow, but he wouldn't cooperate with the flash on. And this is what it looks like when my camera takes a picture without the flash. Oh well! We have the memory.
So we had a very tooth-filled eventful day the first Saturday in January!

New Year's Eve 2011

We had a fun date night for New Year's Eve. It's been so long since Randy and I had an actual date, not just one where we watched a movie together in our Movie Room after the kids went to bed, that we almost didn't know how to act!
We started our date off at Wentzell's where we met our friends, Todd and Laura.

We thought it would be fun to get all dressed up for once!

Me and one of my Best Friends in the Whole Entire World! People often ask us if we are sisters--do you think so?!?

We have a joke about our husbands and crab traps, so we thought it was funny that they decided to stand under a real, live crab trap at the restaurant!
After we finished our yummy meal of seafood gumbo and shrimp, we left and went to an actual party at our friend, Marcus's house. And we actually stayed up until midnight to see in the New Year!!

Me and my friend, Karen, that I don't get to see very much at all!

We had a great time on New Year's. Hopefully it won't be another horrible, awful year for 2012! We are hoping for a new year, new luck!!!