Wait for it......

Long time, no Blog!

Wow, has it really been since last September since I've posted anything? Woops. Well, after surviving Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years, two pets passing away, two computer crashes... oh, I could go on and on...I am ready to get back on the ball with this. I have TONS of pictures that I need to upload. From Halloween treats to handmade Christmas gifts to make-ahead meals, 1st birthday parties and organization projects, I've got a lot to talk about =) ssssssssssomebody ssssssstop me!

My new years resolution this year is to get more organized and to finish projects that I start. I am desperately working hard at this. So far, I've cleaned out my kitchen drawers and cabinets, went through toys with our kids and picked out what they want to donate (so proud of them, they got rid of TONS of toys!). Right now I'm making meals to freeze so they'll be ready when I need them. Hopefully I'll get at least 30 to 40 meals out of what I'm doing. It's a two day process that I'll post about later.  Unfortunately, I haven't gotten very far on my bedroom but now that the holidays are over, I'm putting it back on my top priority.

The boys are getting so big! Gavin is still is not walking but he stands up on his own all the time. He's so proud of himself. Once he hopped when he was dancing...I guess that's considered his first step, er, dance. He has all of his teeth. The top molars are still making their way in but thankfully we're almost done with the teething process. No fun, I swear he ended up in our bed at some point every single night. Grayden and Liam are playing flag football now, they love it!  We just lost our poor Dellbert a few days ago. The boys took it very hard, it was excruciating to watch them go through that. Dell was almost 15 years old, the best bulldog that ever lived. We miss him so much!

Ok, so I'll be back with more pictures and goodies to share soon!

That's How We Roll

Ok, so, roller skating. First, let me start by saying I haven’t been since 7^th grade…that would be 1987, folks.

Picture it...110 degrees, driving what feels like 100 miles with Liam to...Three Fountains Skating Rink (Ring, which is it?) There we were, just the two of us, about to risk our lives and step on the floor...I was as graceful as a swan on that concrete pond, well actually it was hardwood, but anyway, fabulous nonetheless. Me in my mom pants (didn't you know capris look awesome with big, brown, obnoxious rental skates?). I’m wearing short socks so my ankles were sweaty in old rented skates worn by God knows who. ick. Anyway it was like getting on an interstate, it felt like the scene from clueless, remember it? When Cher's friend Dionne freaks out, closes her eyes, screams and takes her hands off the steering wheel as she accidentally gets on the entrance ramp? You should go see the movie. So finally , somehow, someway, we make it to the back of the rink (thank you very much) where there's an old rusty bar we can hold onto. Thank goodness! Yes, I had rust residue on my hand when we left, tetanus shot anyone? Liam was flopping everywhere like a fish out of water. We decided we didn't want to embarrass anyone with our mad skills so we stayed on the DL (that's "down low," Mom) and hung out by the rusty handle bar and skated back and forth back and forth, back and forth.
Once we'd had enough putting everyone and their "oh so amateur" selves to shame, we decided to crawl back to the front and get off the rink, where we quickly relieved our sweaty ankles from the rented skates and walked down to the mini putt putt course.
We were too cool for those clowns anyway, putt putt was the way to go.

We quickly made our way thru 18 holes of some FAB U LESS golf. There were so many wrinkles in that astro turf, it had to be older than my Grandmother!!! And she's 97, God bless her. After almost getting hit in the head by some rebellious kids with no parents around to stop them from screaming "fore" at every mini putt putt hole and hail a golf ball towards our heads every single time they shot at the ball, we decided to head over to ski ball. Yeah, I was tired of that "whizzing" sound in my ear.

Liam proceeded to get a ball into the "10,000" hole 3 times in a row (You should've seen our faces each time he hit it). 

After we picked our jaws up off the floor, I'll be damned darned if the alarms didn't start going off, bells were ringing, "winner" was popping up in lights and tickets were spitting out of the machine at us. 518 of them to be exact. 

Then, in my excitedness (is that even a word?) I yell, "we won a new car!" in my best Bob Barker voice and the guy that runs the putt putt/ski ball room just looked at me and my Capri pants and gave me a one sided smirkish grin. I’m not sure if smirkish is a real word either but I digress. So, we're soooooooooooo excited and I, being the great mother that I am, am just beaming with pride for my little boy Liam...who I believe is so incredibly talented, he should break out and make SkiBall an event in the olympics so he can be declared Champion of the World...proudly escort my son up the uh hem, "prize" counter

..........only to see............a smooshy, spiky rubberish ball with what feels like a testacle on the inside of it that lights up...some cheap a** inflatable monkies, a pacifier,                     a PAC IF I ER!!! With blinking, neon lights...shall I go on?????????? Too bad he hits the jackpot in a place that has sh*t. literally sh*t, they had fake poo as a prize! What?!
 

The funny part of this whole story (Yes, it gets funnier!) is that I desperately tried to get a picture of us together with our skates to remember this momentous occasion. The best I got was a full length picture of Liam with me sticking my foot into the picture in the bottom left corner of the shot.

And then a head shot of both of us that I tried to get the disco ball in the background of but I think I got the ceiling instead. 

I'm crying as I’m typing this...I have actual tears. And get this, Liam asks me once a day when we can go roller skating again. REALLY?

The Dresser is du du dooooooooooone.

Finally! We actually finished it several weeks ago but I haven’t had a chance to post pictures so, drum roll please………….here it is!

We got a little scared for a minute when we tried to put the drawers back in. After all that time and hard work, only one drawer would fit back in. But Joey saved the day by sanding each drawer a bit and it worked like a charm.

I bought new glass drawer pulls and I think it looks great! Even better, we have a lot of new storage for the low, low price of $50.

One more look at the Before...

and after...

Now, only 110 more things to do in that room. At this rate, we’ll be done in about 5 years.

To Do List

This is a different kind of "to do" list than I normally have. This is one Liam made for our family. It was everything he wanted us to do together this summer. We hung it on the refrigerator so we could look at it everyday and make sure most or all of it was completed. I think we did pretty good at getting most of them done but there’s a few stragglers we didn’t get to do before school started. There were also extras we added so it all evens out, I think.

Here’s our summer “to do” list: 

And here’s all the things we did:

Go to the library; See, here’s all the kids pretending to read…

Go to the beach…count ‘em, FOUR times.

 

Sleepover at Granmama’s - Done

Road Trip - Roger

Family pictures - We're gonna have a re-shoot soon! Got some great one's though.

Roller Skating, ha! More on this later…

Picnic AND Go to the State house, we knocked these two out at once!

According to this picture, this is the saddest looking picnic ever. We actually did have fun…it was just really hot. As a matter of fact, a guy got toted off in an ambulance because he got overheated.

VBS - We went to TWO! Trinity and Washington Street, best Bible schools ever! They had so much fun, and they especially loved the "cheezits," not to be confused with "Jesus." Thanks Lindy  =) 

Bookstore - I don’t think this actually made it on our list but we’re gonna count it anyway, mmmm kay?

Zoo - Here's a pic with the neighborhood gang from one of many trips to the zoo. Starting from left to right...Gavin, Evan, Grayden, Lindy, Samantha aka the "red neck princess" and Liam.

A little rock climbing, anyone?

Cookie decorating “class”

Soccer Camp for both boys, thanks to Mimi and Poppy!!! =) They LOVED it and worked so hard. 

Visit the Carolina Gamecocks stadium - Go Cocks!

 And there you have it...our to do list for the summer of 2011. I could probably go on and on about all the other art projects we did and play dates we had, capture the flag games, etc. etc. etc. but these are most of the highlights. Needless to say, we had an awesome summer and we didn't want it to end!

The Boys of Summer Have Gone...

…back to school!
Onward to 3^rd grade and pre-school! It’s so rewarding and sad all at the same time. Truly bittersweet. We spent the summer having so much fun, I barely realized we were getting closer to another milestone. That my little boys were growing up. I look back at pictures from the beginning of summer and I can’t believe how all of them have changed in such a short period of time. 

Just before the summer officially started, we snuck in a quick trip to the beach. It was mine and Joey’s 11^th anniversary and we wanted to share it with the boys. The weather was great, the boys played on the beach non stop. Joey spent most of his time trying to beat my all Guinness book of world record shark's tooth. Much to his dismay. We all had a great time.

When school was out, we kicked the summer off with yet another trip to the beach with Mandy and her family in June to celebrate Father's Day. Wow. It looked like fun if you were watching us from a distance, but it was not so relaxing for us that had to partake in the festivities! The kids had soooooooooooooooo much fun but with 3 babies all around 6 months old, in addition to two 3 year olds and an 8 year old….it.was.a.job. Good times. We think next year might be a little easier for us. "might" being the key word here. Oh, and of course Joey still didn't come close in the shark's tooth contest.

The boys getting ready to give Joey his Father's Day gift...the shirt they made says, "This Dad Deserves A Pat On The Back."

and here's Joey giving some really bad dance lessons to the kiddos...

and here's us attempting to go out to eat with all these crazy kids...

 
The girls even managed to have the quickest night out ever!

No sooner did we get home, Liam went back to Myrtle Beach with Denise and Cole for Cole’s birthday. They stayed for one night and went to his first water park. We met them on their way back, threw Liam and his luggage in the car, and headed up to Topsail Beach, NC!!!

The beach, 3 times in one week!

We rented a beach house with Krista, Russell, Kyle and Dylan, Gary, Christopher, Mamaw and Mom. The boys were so good. I am always so amazed at how well they get along and how much they love each other. They’re like brothers and it’s so heartwarming. They played out on the beach practically the entire time we were there with only a few breaks to come inside and play with Lego’s and Beyblade on the pool table. Even Grayden hung with the big boys most of the time. I got a glimpse into the future when the boys will care less about hanging with their uncool parents.

Mamaw was able to walk down to the beach and put her feet in the ocean, what a treat!
 

We got a few family photos...

The main reason why we went there was so that we could witness Russell’s “change of command” at Camp Lejeune. It was very cool and the boys seemed fascinated. My favorite part of it was when Russell spoke in front of the crowd and made the comment about Krista, how she’s always there for him taking care of the boys when he’s gone, etc. etc. “It might have taken a few extra glasses of wine to get through it, but she always supported him.”

The time came to leave but we were so excited that the Boyce boys were coming home with us! I had a great time with them, they built a fort to sleep in and played constantly.

 

It looked like a Star Wars convention in our house!

 

 The first morning I wanted to take all the boys on a walk around the neighborhood but I wanted to prepare them for how hot and humid it was outside. The heat in the south is different than the heat in the dessert but Kyle was convinced it was worse in the desert. I’ll never forget the seriousness on his face when we got back in the house, completely drenched in sweat. “Aunt Stephy, I see what you mean about the humidity.” I barely got them out of the house to play again.

The rest of the summer was spent working on our “to do” list which I will post about soon.

Liam and Grayden had chores every morning when we were home and they did a great job. They got dressed, brushed their teeth and hair, made their beds, unloaded the dishwasher (yay!), fed the pets, took out the recyclables on Tuesdays, and cleaned up their toys! It was so sweet watching them work together. They'd race (of course) to see who could finish first.

We spent many days and nights in the hood having cookouts with Mandy and family and Bill and his kids.

We celebrated Grayden's 4th birthday with a football party!!! Gavin cried when we sang "Happy Birthday."

We squeezed in one more trip up to Camp Lejeune to visit the Boyce’s before school started. The boys picked up right where they left off. On our last day, we went to the beach and let the boys swim in the ocean one last time. 

Our trip included some late night shopping with Aunt Krista...

On their last official day of summer I took the boys to a playground. You would’ve thought I took them to the dentist. They stayed right by my side and wanted to leave. Ugh! See how thrilled they look?

It was a great summer but it flew by and now Liam is in the 3^rd grade at Heathwood. He didn’t really get excited about going back until the night before when he started talking about what kids he did and didn’t want in his class. I drove him to school and walked him in, he was so nervous, but put on a brave face….until it turned beet red. I wanted to hug him so bad but I refrained, as hard as it was. The teacher told him to go “pop” his balloon on the smart board as a way for her to keep up with who was there. He half listened to her and had to turn around halfway to the board and ask her again what he was suppose to do.  He was so cute and innocent, it was all I could do not to go help him. I hope his 3^rd grade year is as great as mine was. I had an incredible teacher that made a lasting impression on me. I’ll never forget Ms. Santiago, she was the best teacher in all my years of school. She had long, beautiful hair and I’ll probably always remember the smell of her perfume. Funny how those things stick with you. She believed in me. Thanks Ms. Santiago!!!!  =) I hope my boys are blessed to have a teacher as great as her. 

Grayden was not as excited to get back to school but it wasn’t as much of an adjustment for him (or me) because it was the same classroom and teacher as last year. But in my heart, I know it’s technically Pre-school and it just means he’s growing up.

I call this one, "Tears in my Cereal bowl."

 

So, now we’re getting use to getting back to the grind and looking forward to new adventures this year brings.

Is anyone else feeling this post is getting a bit novel-ish? On that note, I think I’m done.  It’s a school night. Chow baby.