W-W-Watermelon

It's that time of year again when I see buses coming and going in front of the house--and one of these beauties comes home with the hubby.....
We started loading this week (praise the Lord!), and the boys always eat the first one from the field! It's a tradition. And you know how I feel about tradition. You don't mess with tradition. Cecil took the boys out on our back porch and they cut open the melon........


And let the eating commence!!!!!!!!!!




Happy Watermelon Season!

~CB~

Reading!

I LOVE to read! It's no secret that when I was growing up if my Mom couldn't find me, she would come look in my room and I'd be lying on my bed reading! I still love to read! When I found out I was having boys my heart (sort of) sank because what boy do you know that prefers reading to frogs and snakes? Yeah--not many! ha-ha........

Nolan's teacher had been telling me that he could read, but I had not seen him in "action". Since then, he's had reading homework every night and OH MY can he READ?!?!?! He is reading fairly hard words too!

Here's what I caught him reading tonight!
Let me tell you how my "Mama heart" swelled with pride when I heard him reading books and getting the words right! He has a wonderful Kindergarten teacher and I'm so excited for him to move to First grade!




My "baby" can READ!!!!!!!!

~CB~

A SPONTANEOUS trip--

Yup--the title said SPONTANEOUS. I've never done a SPONTANEOUS thing in my life. By nature, I'm a planner, an organizer, a director, of sorts. If it doesn't go on my schedule, it doesn't get done. Yes, most of the time, I miss the roses--I'm too busy doing "more important" things to stop and smell the roses.

On Friday, I decided that my week had been "rough". And ROUGH it was. Too much to write about here. Suffice to say that I was about to check myself into Vista and BEG them for a 6x6 padded room. My insurance company even covers that kind of thing. I've looked. See? I'm even planning for that?!?! Ha-ha! I like to be prepared.

When I got off work Friday, I called the hubby and said "let's go to Disney for a few hours." And his response was "are you serious?" The man knows me well. What can I say? He knows if it's not planned, then I don't do it. Nope--no siree. No plan--no action. It's how I roll. We have passes to Disney, so we can go anytime we want and to be honest, it wasn't the hottest day of the year, so I knew we wouldn't die of heat exhaustion at 7pm!

Anyhow. I got home and we decided that I needed a break from reality and so we loaded up the kids who were beyond excited at this point--and headed to our favorite, the Magic Kingdom! We took the Ferry over the park and were ready to hit the rides!

ALL my BOYS ready for the Magic Kingdom

too much to ask for them to look AT the camera?

One of my kids' favorite rides is Thunder Mountain Railroad....we discovered there were no waits for any of the rides (thank you LORD!) and we were able to get directly on several rides with NO wait! YAHOO! We rode Thunder Mountain twice in a row!




After a few more rides, it was time to settle in for the FIREWORKS! My boys were SO Excited because they have only seen the fireworks ONE other time! (it's past their bedtime and you know that I PLAN to have them in bed when we're there overnight, so they never get to see the fireworks)...no comments on how I'm a bad mother please....I know--mean momma!

The boys picked the perfect spot to see them....and were READY!



And I cannot explain to you how these next several pictures just melt my heart!! I know in 10 or 15 years when we're having an exceptionally bad day, we'll look back on these pictures.......and remember our SPONTANEOUS trip to Disney!





~CB~

Field Day Snacks

This week is Field Day at N's school.

Do y'all remember Field Day growing up? Ugh. I do. And. I.Hated.It. I think I hated it because it involved non-girly things like running and tug-of-war and sweating. I always came home with lots of blue ribbons (I'm the best 3-legged racer out there) and jump hurdles? Girl--I could do it! Not now that I'm 942 pounds heavier, but I "used to could" clear some hurdles. Now my hurdles are BIGGER. Much, much BIGGER. Either way, I'm excited to see if N comes home with any ribbons and such. There are TONS of boys in his class and his teacher is very excited about Field Day, because she says she has the MOST competitive boys ever!

Back to the story.

I volunteered to bag up 300 or so bags (yes, I wrote 300 and no, it wasn't a typo) of "Jungle Mix" or something like that--we call it Chex mix, but apparently since Field Day has a jungle theme this year, it's Jungle Mix or Monkey Munch or some such thing as that.

This is what I've been staring at all weekend.....



And here are about 250 bags full of Monkey Munch, Jungle Mix, Fish Food, or whatever you want to call it......and I only have another 125 bags left.......I should go now.

~CB~

Goooo Gators!

A few weekends ago, my hubby and his brother took the boys to a Gator baseball game. We have season tickets, but the boys don't get to go very often because of the times of the games. My brother in law chided me this past weekend because the pictures he took didn't make a blog. So, here you go Edward!

This particular day....look who came to visit the boys at our seats.....



Yay for Albert! and double Yay for Uncle Edward for having his camera phone handy!

~CB~

P is for Purple....

I love the color Purple. I like The Color Purple too, but that's another story......hee-hee-hee.....this post will be WAAAAAAAYYY less dramatic than The Color Purple because it's about the color purple. You get all that?

Our friend's daughter was having a birthday last week and I just didn't really know what to get her for her birthday. Too old for little girl stuff, too young for big girl stuff.......so....out came my creative genes and here's what I decided on.......

I took this.....

and this......
and this......
and made THIS:



What do you think? I think it turned out really cute! The birthday girl thought so too!

My mind is now going haywire thinking of all the ways I can paint these crates for people....primary colors for teachers filled with all sorts of school year goodies ; painted to match a baby's room and filled with diapers and practical items.....can you imagine all the ways this can be done?

How exciting!

~CB~

Lord Bless 'Em

Lord Bless whoever invented antibiotics. I'm sure I could have done a bit of Internet research on exactly who this was, but to be honest, right now is the first time I've been out of bed since Friday afternoon.

I woke up Friday and went to work, like any other day....about half-way there, my throat was aching....and hurting bad! Hmm...that's weird, I thought......then, the fever and chills hit. I stayed at work long enough to get a few things done and then left around noon to come home and crawl in BED.

4am Saturday morning. My youngest, Carter, comes into our bedroom crying that his neck hurts....we thought he was just being dramatic and sent him back to bed (I know, I know, bad parents)....5am Saturday morning, Cecil leaves to work cows. 6:30am Saturday. Carter is back in my bedroom crying.....oh no...not him too?

He cried and cried until 8:00 when I could call his Dr. --they saw him at 9:00 and sure enough, his rapid strep test came back immediately positive and he has an infected lymphnode. Poor thing, the side of his neck is HUGE! As soon as we left his Dr., I was feeling AWFUL so I decided to go to a walk-in urgent care center (which I was a little nervous about) to have myself strep-tested. Sure enough, almost immediately, mine came back positive too.

Needless to say, we're both on antibiotics (insert Hallelujah chorus here) and Carter is on antibiotics AND a narcotic for pain (which I've been tempted to dip into).........I was BEGGING the husband to take me to the ER this morning to hook me up to an IV with Penicillin......it hurt so bad to drink, swallow or anything! I haven't really eaten anything since Friday and I've been living off this:

Carter, of course, has bounced back in a day's time...me on the other hand, got much worse before I got any better.

Have a great week!
~CB~