A Busy, Busy Saturday

Saturday was a busy, busy day at the Hollingsworth house! We had lots of fun events scheduled. First up was our church's annual Easter Egg Hunt.

Can you tell they are so ready to go hunt some eggs?

Caitlin and her friend since birth, Madelyn. Madelyn's mom and I met in 6th grade at Mountain Gap Middle School. We were also college roommates. We are now in the same Sunday School class. So she is a special friend!

Me and my two egg-hunters in our winter coats. What is going on with this weather?!?

And he's off!! Harrison's Egg Hunt came first at 10:20. (They stagger the hunts so that families can watch multiple children.)

Checking out all the loot

Then we thankfully moved inside the gym for a cool puppet show put on by the 5th and 6th grade puppet team.

Now it was Caitlin's turn to hunt eggs at 11:00. They got to run down the big hill to get to all the eggs.

Is she getting many??

We then separated with Randy taking the kids home to eat lunch, and I went to a very nice luncheon for Babies First, a United Methodist Children's Home in Birmingham for unwed mothers. My good friend, Tami, met me there, and I also got to sit at the same table with a girl whose blog I have been following-Amy. It was so neat to finally get to meet her in person! I had to rush from the luncheon to meet Randy and the kids at Harrison's T-ball practice at Palmer Park.

Hey batter, batter....swing!

In the outfield ready to catch some balls

Look! I caught one! He was so proud and held it way up high for everybody to see!

Gatorade Cheers with Trey. Harrison and Trey go to school together and stay in the afternoon daycare together, so they are good friends. Trey's mom is also Harrison's teacher, and his dad is Coach Ben of their Red Sox team.
Afterwards we went home to rest for a few minutes, get changed, and go to Todd and Laura's to celebrate them selling their house!

Me and my 2 best friends, Laura and Shannon

And then we came home to bed!

Best Mom Award Goes To...

Me: You need to get off the computer now.
Harrison: I really don't want to!
Me: Sorry Charlie.
Harrison: I was having the best day ever, and you just ruined it! Now it's a horrible day!

Remembering

On this day two years ago my life changed.
Not an outward, physical change but a deep-down emotional change.
This was the day that I had a hysterectomy.
Here's the story: I got pregnant in December of 2007 with our third child. What a surprise, but a tremendous blessing! However my doctor had relocated to Atlanta, so I had to find a new OB. So my very first visit to Dr. T was my 8-week check-up. Let me just say it was the absolute worst doctor visit in the history of the world! After taking my history, weight, blood pressure (all the normal doctor visit things), Dr. T and his nurse took me into the ultrasound room. This is where it all went south. He couldn't find a heartbeat. Talk about tears! Oh, and did I mention that I was by myself? They scheduled me a follow-up appointment for the following week, but that had the same result except he did find a large cyst on my right ovary. So I had to have a DNC the very next day-NOT FUN! When I returned a few weeks later for my check-up,the cyst had grown. Dr. T. watched this ugly cyst grow and grow for a month until he decided something needed to be done--surgery.
Needless to say I was scared and very, very mad to have this surgery. We thought we were not done having children, but God had another plan for us. It all went great-no complications during surgery or during my recovery. In fact the biopsy of the cyst came back fine which is exactly what we had prayed for. I just had to learn to trust God which was extremely hard! I also learned that I have an amazing circle of friends who will help out at the drop of the hat.
So thank you Cornerstone Sunday School class, my wonderful neighbors, my fabulous first grade co-workers, Laura, and Shannon for all that you did for me!! You will never, ever know how much all your prayers, cards, visits, and most importantly meals meant to me and my family!!
I also relearned what a great family I have! So really it was not the worst thing in the world but a learning experience which, I guess, is what God wanted me to learn!

Next up...Harrison's Room

While it only took 4 hours to paint Caitlin's pink and green room, Harrison's room was a bit more difficult! After all the taping off, rolling, and edging, it only took us 2 complete days. But it was all worth it. Here is the finished product...

We are still waiting for his bedding, but the Alabama blanket will have to work for now. What matters is that he absolutely LOVES it!!

What Have We Been Up To?

Painting, painting, and more painting!
First we did Caitlin's room...

And here's the finished product with the super-happy girl in her new room. We are tackling Harrison's room next. We've taken a small break to eat these:

We picked them up on our Road Trip earlier in the week, and OH MY WORD!!! They are the Best things I have tasted in a long, long time. In fact, here is what is left of them...

There was Peanut Butter & Chocolate, Key West, Kids' Buttercream, and Chocolate Overload. If you are ever in Chattanooga, you need to visit them and taste the world's best cupcakes!

Road Trip

Since it's Spring Break, it's time for another Road Trip! This year we made plans with our college friends, Charlton and Donna and their two girls Anna Beth and Katie, to meet up in Chattanooga. We left out early Monday morning so that we would be there in time for lunch at Mellow Mushroom (our favorite pizza place!). After lunch we went to the Creative Discovery Museum.

Our happy family

We had to hike over to the Aquarium to get tickets first, and Caitlin and Anna Beth showed off their goofy side on the bridge. Then it was off to the Museum.

Caitlin and Katie were manning the boat...

while Harrison fixed the car and drove off into the sunset.

Anna Beth and Caitlin pretended to be doctors...

with Donna as their nurse. Charlton even got to be a patient at the clinic.

We then moved up onto the roof where we played with all the pulleys, levers, and other mechanical stuff.

Randy took a little break...

during the dinosaur dig.

After all the playing, we took the kids back to the hotel for a swim in the pool. Then it was off to another great restaurant, Big River Brewery, for our second delicious meal together. We got a good night's sleep in preparation for our big day at the Aquarium.

Harrison loved being able to touch the fish. The girls--not so much!

A butterfly actually lit on Caitlin's finger in the butterfly exhibit!

Harrison's favorite exhibit--The Penguins!!

Two tired parents still having fun

All the funny kids in the Aquarium

We had such a good time together. Too bad it was such a short trip. Thanks for the fun times, Charlton, Donna, Anna Beth, and Katie! Harrison is already asking when we can go back and see y'all.

Sunday Picnic

Since so many families (and our teachers) from our Sunday School class were out of town this week due to Spring Break, there was an executive decision made to have a Family Picnic during our Sunday School hour. (We go to service first at 9:00, then we have Sunday School at 10:30.) We were forced indoors because of the yucky, drizzly, cold weather, so we just made do in our Sunday School room at church.

Caitlin and her good friend, Madelyn, kept baby Autumn busy while her mommy was setting up the barbeque.

Autumn on her mommy, Heather's back, Autumn's daddy, Erik, Darren, April, and their daughter Kylie.

The Derricks were too busy socializing to look at the camera!

The Ellenburgs and the Busbys enjoying their social time together.

Cheryl was husband-less this morning. (Her husband is manager for a local Italian restaurant and has to work some Sundays.) Ben and Crystal on the right brought out-of-town company along with them, but no kids! Crystal also announced that they're expecting during our game!

I forgot to take a picture of my green St. Patrick's Day cake until we had already dug into it!

We had a good time together (as we always do!), but we missed the rest of our class who had already started their Spring Break adventure.

How Do You Want Your Egg?

Randy started this conversation this morning while he was cooking our yummy breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits, and of course, apple butter.

Randy: How do you want your egg?

Caitlin: Scrambled

Beth: Fried egg white, please

Harrison: FLAT!

This is how he describes fried eggs!

Happy Birthday Pa-Pa!

Today is my Daddy's (a.k.a. Pa-Pa) birthday!!!

This was on Christmas Day after we had opened all our presents. He has always been a great Daddy, and now he is a fabulous Pa-Pa! I love my Daddy so very much, and I hope he has a great day!

Wordless Wednesday (Almost)

Where I long to be....

Our Weekend

Whew! The weekend just flew right by! We had so much scheduled for this one particular weekend that on Friday night we just stayed in as a family.
But on Saturday...
Harrison had his very 1st t-ball practice
Caitlin had Dance Pictures (which lasted almost 3 hours!!!)
Kids Market Sale opened :)
Caitlin had not 1, but 2 birthday parties
And I had the normal errands to run!
By Sunday we were just plain "wore out" as my Granny used to say. I woke up with a horrible sore throat and headache. So we lounged around and went to the late service at church. Then we came home, and I went back to bed. I feel much better now--after sleeping for 10 hours!!
What did you do this weekend?

Wordless Wednesday (Almost)

Can you guess what is going on here?!?

Who Am I?

Today, in honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday, we had Book Character Day at school. Can you guess who Harrison chose to be???
The mouse from If You Give a Mouse a Cookie... and the book, If You Take a Mouse to School...

Here is Harrison surrounded by who else?!? Several lovely ladies from his Pre-K class! The kids had such a good time dressing up and making their favorite books come alive. But the teachers couldn't let the kids have all the fun...

Here I am as Amelia Bedelia (one of my very favorite book characters!) with my student teacher, Ashlee, dressed as Junie B. Jones. It was a fun but crazy day all around with the snow and all!

Say It Isn't So....

I know they forecasted snow for Tuesday morning, but I really didn't believe the weatherman. AT ALL! Until we walked outside to this....

It was so beautiful to watch it falling on our house and in our front yard.

And this is a picture of our backyard. We left for school soon after I took these pictures. It was slow-going, but with a lot of prayer we made it safely there!

Hopefully this is our LAST snow of the year...

Oh CBS, How I Am Going to Miss You!

Dear CBS,
I have been a faithful viewer for many, many years. I can remember sitting down to the dinner table while watching Walter Cronkite on the Evening News when I was a little girl. My mother introduced me to "As The World Turns" when I was in high school, and my husband and I have faithfully watched "Survivor" since its very first season in 2000. We were able to watch "Survivor" with our daughter until the foul language got to be too much! She is now nine years old, and we thought we had found a good family-friendly show to watch with her in "The Amazing Race" since most of the contestants are family members. However after watching only half the episode last night on February 28, we were forced to turn it off due to the foul language from a few of the contestants. I had so wanted her to grow up watching the CBS network, but I cannot in good conscience submit her to such awful language at her age. I am requesting that you bleep out the bad words so that she or any other child does not have to hear them. We do not get to watch much television as a family because of this issue, but I thought the CBS network was better than this!

Sincerely,

A non-CBS viewer now