Happy Valentine's Day with a little goof up. Dedicated to Jacob Wynn

If ya'll follow my blog then you have probably seen on your dashboard where I started this post last week. It ended up showing my pictures as blank squares and I'm just now able to work on it. I love Valentine's Day! Of course that's not always been true. I especially loved it the years I had a boyfriend on that day, but for most years I loathed it. Ha ha But before boys actually mattered in my book, I loved the innocence of Valentine's Day. When you got ready for your Vday party at school and the night before you chose a special valentine card to give to each individual classmate. It was so special and lots of fun. Back then you were given a Vday card from each individual student because your teacher had sent a list home with all your classmate's names. I'm hoping that's still the policy of all schools because I seen something in the news about a mayor of a certain town proclaiming that each student had to receive a Valentine from each classmate or the exchanging of Valentines wouldn't even be allowed. Why was that even a problem? This shouldn't have been happening anyway. Common courtesy is that everyone should receive a Valentine regardless. Kids can be so cruel sometimes and Parents shouldn't allow it to happen. Why am I on this?????? So back to my post........

My kids had a blast filling out their valentines.  Amelia refused any help at all and Titus wanted more help than he needed and Josiah was having a hard time tearing his cards apart without ripping them and finally I called Daddy in for help and things went a lot smoother.  Since Amelia isn't in school yet she didn't really have many friends to send her cards to so we mailed some off to our cousins and friends.

On Valentine's Day the kids were excited to have their party at school.  They left with their Valentines and a cake pop for each classmate that I slaved over the night before.  Next time, I'm using marshmellows.  It would save me probably close to 2 hours.

While they partied, I was busy all afternoon playing cupid.
And this is when my goof up happens.

When I was in school growing up or even when I worked before having my kids, I loved receiving flowers or gifts.  I just loved everything about it so I like to do that now for others when possible.  Our church is fairly small, but that doesn't mean that the kids we have don't deserve to be treated special.  So I figured since we honor our moms and dads on Mother's Day and Father's day, why not honor our kids on Valentine's Day.  So I had ordered a few treats from Heather Wright, who graciously allowed me to order at the last minute.  God love her heart.

Once we had received our treats, Amelia and I took off to different schools to have those delivered to our kids from church.

We stopped off at our Christian school first to deliver to my 2 boys and our pastor's daughter.  Titus had gotten a balloon and a pretzel rod dipped in nuts and candy.  He was so excited about getting that balloon and "birdseed thing" when I later picked him up.  Too funny!!!

I made a trip to another school and dropped off Candy Apples to some more sweet kids of ours.

Then I had a kid that went to another Christian school so I headed out to deliver our last apple and be done for the day.

I headed to his school and parked.  Amelia and I got out and proceeded to the front of the building.  We even paused to take this picture.

Cupid's Princess Assistant

Amelia insisted on wearing her tiara and somedays it just easier to go along with her than argue, so that's what we did.

After I took her picture I was greeted with a policeman at the door.  He put his hands on his hips and declared:
Cop: "Ma'am, you can't come in here right now."
Me: "Why not?"
Cop: "We have MH in here right now."
Me: "What's that?"
Cop: "Ma'am, look behind you."

And that's when I realized what that big white van was when I first walked up.  I had seen it, but thought it was a van that belonged to the school.

Laurel County Correctional Center

I'm not gonna lie.  I'm still not sure what "MH" is, but I do know what Laurel County Correctional center means.  I did later google "MH" and it seems like it could mean "Mental Health".  I didn't realize that jails had a "mental health" department, but of course I'm not real familiar with jails at all which is a good thing, I suppose.

I immediately feel the "Protector" come out in me.  Even though Jacob is 15 and a bigger built guy, I was scared he was in trouble.  Not only him, but all these other poor kids in this school.  Here they are in class and the jail work release program is in the school and no one is allowed to even go in there???

AMY TO THE RESCUE!!!!!!!!!!!

Me:  "Oh my goodness!  Are the kids ok?"
Cop: "Kids???"
Me: "This is Cornerstone Christian School, right?"
Cop: "No, Ma'am.  This hasn't been a school in over 3 years now."

So I am quite embarrassed, but very thankful I didn't shove past the cop to make a rescue mission to save Jacob.  So Jacob, I'm sure you will read this and just know that I've got your back. Ha ha

I was directed to the correct place and Jacob was soon delivered his apple.

Things like that just seem to follow me, don't they???  That's what makes my blog so interesting, I suppose.  If you can call my life interesting!!!!

After Maynard got off work he mentioned taking me out to eat, but I wasn't expecting him to want to because everything was going to be packed and he had to work the next day.  We made a quick phone call to Mamaw and Tara and they agreed to watch the kids for us and even offered to order them a pizza.  Whoo hoo!  Me and Maynard quite rarely ever get to go anywhere by our lonesomes.  So getting to out for Valentine's Day dinner was a special treat.  A big thank you to my Mother in Law and Tara for watching the kiddos for us a couple of hours.  One hour was to wait for our table and the other hour was for us to eat and to make it back to their house.  Everything was packed out, but we sure did enjoy our time together.

Our selfie showing the empty seats behind us.

My valentine gifts from Maynard.

I'm not a flower loving person.  I'm just not.  (unless they are delivered to me, ha ha.  Isn't that awful?)  Maynard got me these beautiful Chevron oven mitts.  Which is really sweet because my old ones were wearing thin and had holes in them.  I thought it was pretty thoughtful of him to think to buy those for me.

After our dinner, we went to pick up the kids and this is how I found them.

Crazy straw glasses



That was our Valentine's Day for 2014.  I hope everyone had a great one like we did!!!!!!


 

Sledding and Swimming all in the same week

 You know what we love?  A big snow.  One that you can play in and build things.  The weather was calling for a big snow during the night, but it never came.  I kept checking out the window and didn't see anything.  It was on a Saturday and Maynard had to go to work.  He left and I checked the window one more time around 7 and here the snow came.  It snowed hard and the ground was completely covered in about 20 minutes.  It continued to snow all morning and we ended up with about 5" of snow.  The kids were chomping at the bit to go out and play, but I wanted them to wait at least until after lunch to give it time to warm up.  Maynard called and said that the roads were too bad and his boss had called all his Fed ex trucks back in.  Yay!!!  We hate that Maynard has to work on Saturdays so we were all excited that he was getting to come back home and hopefully play in the snow with the kids.  I mean us.  Ha

After supper, we all headed outside for fun.  We had a hard time finding all the missing gloves and hats, but soon found out that socks would work just find for one hand.

The snow was perfect.  First off we headed to the side of our yard that has a big hill (not real big, but good enough for sledding) and went sledding.  We were having a blast.  Amelia went down once with me and kind of liked it.  Then she headed down by herself and HATED it and after that she was done.  She wanted to build a snowman.  Which we tried, but I never could get the snow rounded enough to make a snowman.  So our snowman ended up being part of a snow fort.  That was a lot of fun to build.  We used buckets and coolers to make all different shapes for our fort.

 

 Titus was outside longer than any of us.  That boy loves the outdoors.
Amelia was good for about an hour and then she was cold.  She is like an old lady when it comes to being cold.  She hates it!!!  She decided to go on inside and watch from the door where it was warmer.  We were about half frozen and played out ourselves when I told Maynard to come on.  Let's go down the hill one last time.

So we did.

Wish we hadn't, but we did.

We have this on video, but it ain't pretty so I thought I would spare you all.  I went down the hill and ended up hitting a hole and the sled came to a complete stop and I rolled off.  My neck made a horrible popping noise and I thought I had broke my neck.  I was seriously afraid to move yet Maynard was laughing at me.  I ended up being ok, but had a stiff neck for several days.  It's always that one last time that  you wish you hadn't done something, ya know? Ha

We went inside to warm up and I made peach cobbler and snow cream.  It was delicious.

Titus was a bit leery of the snow cream.  He just didn't get it that I was gonna let them eat snow out of the yard.

Oh, I just have to add this picture of him while he was praying for lunch.  I meant to video him, but instead took a picture.  His prayer was cracking us up and at the very end he said, "Dear Jesus, Please help all those that are cold today and don't have air conditioners."  Ha ha  Isn't that the sweetest????

 After our snow was about gone and the temperatures were staying in the single digits, Mamaw and Papaw paid us a surprise visit.  They were on their way to Tennesse for a Ministers Conference and stopped by to eat breakfast with us.  The boys were at school so Amelia had them all to herself.

She wasn't real happy when they left, but the boys were even more unhappier when they found out that she got to eat breakfast with mamaw and papaw.

Friday afternoon after the boys were home from school there was a knock at the door.  YAY!!!!  Mamaw and Papaw was here.  We ate supper with them at Cheddars and then Papaw said he had a surprise for the kids and they needed to stop by his motel room.  The kids had no idea what it was, but I already did and was prepared.
They thought they might get to stay all night with Papaw, but they wasn't sure.  Papaw whispered in their ears and told them that they could go swimming.  Yay!!!  What an awesome surprise.  They quickly changed and in the pool they went.  Me and Mamaw swam with them and that made it even more fun.  I believe my kids are part fish.

 

We didn't have floaties and she decided she wasn't afraid of the water this time.  What a perfect time, right?

I couldn't keep the boys out of the 5ft water.  They can swim some, but I'm afraid that if they panicked they would all of a sudden forget how to swim.  A fear of one of many of mine, I'm afraid.  They done great.  They swam and flipped and jumped.  Had a great time.

We swam for a couple of hours and by this time it was getting late so we had to get out, dry off, and change.  Then we had to make a run from the pool to the car and not freeze to death.  The kids went straight to their rooms and went to sleep.  They didn't even take time to change into their pj's.  Swimming will wear a person out.

Thank you Papaw and Mamaw for letting us swim and we had a great time.

So whether its snow or water, we will have a blast either way!!!

 

The Princess turns 4 not 16.

Now that's a fat baby!!!

My 11.5 and 22" long baby just turned 4.  Jan 5th actually, but I'm just now getting to blog about it.  Once again we didn't do a party.  Her birthday was on a Sunday so she was happy with just going out to eat and having cake.

Amelia woke up and was excited to see those big red bells hanging on her ceiling fan.  And then she ran into the living room to find her presents.  She lives in footed pj's this winter.  I can't get her out of them as long as we are home.  I guess I can't blame her as cold as it has been.

This was her favorite present.  A pink DS.  Ever since she was tiny and all her cousins at Mamaw and Papaws were getting them for Christmas she has always cried for one.  The kids would walk by her and she would start crying and trying to grab their DS.  Ever since she could talk she has asked for a Pink DS.  We have put it off because we didn't think she was old enough for one anyway.  Finally I found a good deal on Craigs List and she got her beloved Pink DS.  She was in love at first sight.  We also got her a Hello Kitty Pez dispenser because I found Chocolate Pez candy at Walmart.  She was upset at Christmas because the boys got Pez dispensers in their stocking and she didn't.  All I had ever seen before was the Pez with artificial dye so I was excited to see the chocolate Pez candy.  Then we got her a Hello Kitty DS game which is her favorite.

We got ready for church and headed to Sunday School.

Our church does something really special for all the kids at church on their Bdays.  They get to come up front and hold the offering basket and the church gives them an offering.  They absolutely love this.

Too bad the adults aren't included in getting to do this.

You will never guess where she wanted to eat at on her birthday.  I know you have to rack your brain real hard to figure out that she wanted to eat Mexican food for her Birthday.  This is where she always wants to eat.  Every Sunday she goes around and asks people if they are going to go eat Mexican after church.  I craved Mexican food while I was pregnant with her and she loves it.

She ate her beloved rice and beans and then we was ready for cake.  Before we went in I promised her that they wouldn't wipe ice cream on her face.  Last year they freaked her out when they came up behind her singing to her and she screamed bloody murder.  She hadn't forgotten about that.  She said they could sing to her, but they better not touch her face.  Ha Ha

I was busy serving cake when the servers caught me off guard.  I had forgotten to ask them not to sing to her.  Here they came.  Behind her.  I waited for the scream.  It didn't come though.  She just clamped her mouth tight shut like she does when she's mad and turned her face from them.  They did try to wipe whip cream on her nose, but she didn't let them.  Boy was she mad.  I had to tell her sorry that I forgot to tell them not to do that.  She did handle it better this time though.  No tears and no screaming was involved.

I ordered Amelia's cake from Krogers with special instructions for it not to have any dye on it.  Only white and chocolate icing was to be used.  Her cake turned out pretty pitiful, but at least it was one she could enjoy and she was happy with it.  She had her heart set on a Dora Cake and the only one we could fine was a Dora Beach scene.  The only question she asked me was where was the sand.  I told her that some sand is white at the nicer beaches so Dora's sand was white on her cake.  Nice save, I know. Ha

Amelia was so confused at how old she was.  I told her to show me how old she was and she held up 10 fingers.  At church when Bro. Darrell asked her how old she was she told him 6 in front of everybody.  Titus said he couldn't believe that him and Amelia was the same age. Ha Ha

For fun, I asked Amelia a few questions and this is exactly how she answered them:

What is your favorite color?  Pink and Purple.
What is your favorite food?  Rice and Beans and that's all.
What is your favorite dessert?  Pie like you make. (I don't make pie, but I did make peach cobbler the other night.  Maybe that's what she meant.)
What is your favorite cookie?  Peanut butter like you make, Mommy.
What is your favorite pair of shoes?  My sparkly Pink boots. (DUH)
Who is your Best Friends?  Hailey, Rachel, Lydia, and Myia. (Only Myia is close to Amelia's age.  The others are teens)
What is your favorite song?  Yes Jesus Loves Me
What are you going to be when you grow up?  A Princess
What is your favorite toys? My baby dolls
Who is your favorite Aunt? Hannah (She's actually her cousin, lol)
Who is your favorite Uncle? Mamaw and Papaw  (She's my smart one, Ha ha)

I thought that was fun.  I need to remember to do that again next year and see how much her answers have changed.

Christmas 2013

Well Christmas has come and gone.  The decorations are finally down.  Ummm..... like last week.  Don't want to lead you on thinking that I actually took it all down when most everyone else did.  I am going to do probably the quickest post ever for our Christmas since I have taken so long to get it posted.

Maynard had to work a half day on Christmas eve so we didn't plan on heading to my Mom and Dad's until Christmas eve evening.  While I was packing everything up I looked out the window and it was pouring the snow.  So exciting.  And then I find out that Etown had no snow.  How unfair of me to have to leave a white Christmas behind, but that's just how it was.

We got to Etown and then had Christmas eve supper at a Mexican restaurant with my parents and 2 of my sisters.  We left there headed back to Mom and Dad's to get ready for the big day.

With 7 of us kids plus about 17 grandkids there wasn't a whole lot of room to find to put our presents somewhere.  I grabbed us a spot under the coffee table.

The next morning we actually got to sleep in until 8 before the kids were up begging to open presents.

 They were all tickled to death with their presents and that makes me happy.

Favorite gifts!

Ready for breakfast at Dennys

After we opened gifts Dad was chomping at the bit to go eat breakfast.  Josiah went dressed as Santa and Titus went dressed as an elf.  Amelia wanted to dress up too so she wore her Dr. McStuffin costume.  Just in case someone needed medical attention while we ate, I suppose.  Ha ha  I'm sure they were a sight, but everyone laughed and smiled as they seen Santa and his elf come in for breakfast.  We heard many comments such as, "Are you wore out from a hard night's work, Santa?" Ha ha

After breakfast we headed back to the house and waited until 5 p.m. for all the chaos to begin.  Oh, I mean wait for all the rest of our family to get there.

We had a great time playing Dirty Santa, White Elephant and exchanging gifts.

All too soon it was time to go.  Maynard had to be up at 5 a.m. the next morning for work and we needed to head home.

We had a great Christmas and hope everyone else did too.

Baby it's cold outside

I'm 35 years old and still get giddy at Winter weather advisories. Even though we seem to be getting more rainy cold weather than actual snow. Each year I can't help but hope we will get that big snow and can actually take the kids sledding. I think about 4" is the most snow we have had in awhile. We still try to make the most of it.

How exciting is it to wake up in the morning and look out the window to see a fresh blanket of white snow covering everything. And then check the news to see if they have canceled school yet or not. And in my kid's cases, probably not. More than likely there will be school, but occasionally they may get a snow day. We will be thankful for that in the summer no doubt.

This last bit of weather included what they call a Polar vortex. It gave us below temps for the first time in years.

The bad weather started Sunday, January 5, 2014.  Which also happens to be Amelia's birthday.  I will do a separate blog for her for that though.

We had church Sunday night at 5 instead of 6 because it was supposed to get bad that evening.  It was hard to believe the weather was going to get bad though because Sunday was such a warm and pretty day.  After lunch we went to the grocery store because we were in desperate need of food anyway, but especially knowing the weather was gonna get bad.  I couldn't believe how bare the shelves were.  I mean they were ridiculously empty.

Sunday night I kept looking out the window.  In 15 minutes our yard and vehicles were completely covered in snow.  The wind was awful.  It was so scary yet exciting at the same time. 

Monday morning weather

Monday morning, I got a text from my friend Sarah letting me know that school had been canceled and that I could go back to bed.  And that's exactly what I did.  Except I did pray for awhile for everyone's safety that had to be out working and driving in this mess.  Especially Maynard that had to drive a fed ex truck.  I felt so sorry for him working out in that cold, bitter weather.  But I must not have worried or prayed too long because soon I was snoozing away.  We had a very lazy day and we enjoyed it to it's fullest.  We had gotten a day's extension on Christmas break and it was wonderful.

Tuesday morning we woke up to this.

Tuesday morning temperature

Keep in mind that -4 is the actual weather, but the wind chill was worse than that.  Even more amazing is that the kids had school Tuesday.  A 2 hour delay of course so Titus didn't have school, but Josiah did.  I'm sure the 2 hr delay helped some.  Not sure it made a whole lot of difference for us.  The roads were pretty bad including the school parking lot.  This Momma was thankful that Maynard had an unexpected day off from work and was able to drive Josiah to school.

This cartoon cracked me up.

 Since the weather was so freezing cold we tried a few experiments.  Once was where you throw boiling water outside and watch it turn to vapor.  It was pretty neat.  I took a video of that  so I'm gonna try to post the link so you can watch it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_myDKrVDdo

We also made water balloons and added food coloring to make frozen marbles.  They turned out pretty neat.

Our Marbles.

The weather finally warmed up by Thursday and everything was beginning to thaw out.  I managed to get the kids to school and back the rest of the week with only a couple of scares.  Wednesday morning Titus forgot his back pack after he already went in.  Before I drove off I happened to look back and see it in the van.  I drove back up and set it inside the office, but almost fell as I was coming back out.  Then as I was going down the driveway my van started sliding.  I slammed on the brakes and nothing was helping and I was terrified.  I was fixing to slide into the main road.  As soon as my tires hit the main road though I finally stopped.  I was also thankful there were no cars coming at the time.  I can't help but think that maybe the reason Titus left his back pack was God allowed that to happen to give me a few more minutes to wait for clear traffic because I was gonna slide into the highway.  Maybe?  Maybe not?  All I know is I'm very thankful for God's protection.

The weather is in the 50's right now, but the forecast doesn't seem to be done with us yet.  Here's hoping for some more snow next week!!!!!!!!!!!

Our adventures with Christmas Elves 2013

This was our 2nd year having the Elf on the Shelf.  We decided to do this last year and my kids loved it so we thought we would try it again. 

The only problem this year was that Maynard surprised them about a week earlier than I had hoped that they would show up.  I know most elves arrive the day after Thanksgiving, but our elves are so bad I was hoping they would show up just a tad later.

So at 3 weeks until Christmas the kids woke up to see this happening in the living room.

There was toilet paper strewn all over my living room with a note announcing the elves had arrived.  The kids and I were all surprised.

So once the elves arrive than it is important to the kids that they do something every single night.  Because Maynard had started the escapade I had to see to it that it was carried out.  So every night for 3 weeks I had to make sure the elves didn't let the kids down.  It was many a late night waiting for the kids to go to sleep before they could move.  The downside to all of this mischief is that the kids were waking up at 5 a.m. and couldn't sleep because they were so excited to see what the elves had done.  I'm gonna share a few pictures with you and let them do the talking mainly.  These are in no certain order.

This picture is hard to see what they are doing so I will explain.  The elves are lifting weights which happen to be q-tips with marshmellows stuck on the end.  The note says enough treats now its time to get back to dieting and exercising.

The next picture is where the elves replaced the kid's pictures with a magazine ad saying what they each wanted for Christmas.  The boys had pictures of underwear and Amelia's included a picture of a Chocolate baby.  (Which she really did want and got.)

snowball fight

Christmas parade

white water rafting

barricaded doors with ribbon

The elves had fun face painting the kids while they were sleeping.

ice fishing

head elf threw into the lions den

Head elf protecting the kid's gingerbread houses.

Elves ate Titus' chocolate advent calendar (not really)

The elves bought a new toilet seat, but they had to try it out first.

There was a few more, but I must have done video clips instead of taking pictures of them.  One of the kid's most favorite was the underwear carrousel.  I can't believe I don't have a picture of that.  I tied each of their underwear to the ceiling fan blade and put their elf in it.  Then turned the fan on low so the kids could see their elf riding in their underwear.  We called it the underwear carrousel and the kids really loved this one.

The chocolate calendar was funny too, but I thought Titus would get mad, but instead he got his feelings hurt and that backfired.  The kids had advent calendars and each day they got to eat a piece of chocolate to help them with counting down the days of Christmas.  I bought an extra one and it just so happened to be like Titus's.  One morning I had emptied out Titus's (fake) calendar and Josiah and Amelia's didn't get touched.  I was going for anger, but got tears so I had to quickly give him back his actual calendar. Ha ha

The picture of the head elf protecting the gingerbread houses was for Amelia's sake.  Last year the elves finished off the kid's gingerbread houses and they didn't forget about that.  So this year Amelia kept eating and eating hers.  She refused to go to bed because she was afraid the elves would eat the rest of her gingerbread house.  And to be honest, that is exactly what the elves had planned.  But since Amelia was so pitiful, I had to have compassion on her and protect her gingerbread house.  Bummer, I know.

We had a lot of fun, but I am so happy that it is over with and they are gone for another year.

Disclaimer:
Ok, here is the disclaimer I think I do every year.  We do not teach our kids about Santa Claus.  They know the real reason for the season.  I just don't think it hurts to have a little fun with them.  There is so much our kids aren't allowed to do that I think it's a good idea to make things fun for them in it's place.  So did they know that the elves wasn't really going to Santa every night and telling on them whether they were bad or good or not?  Of course!  But we sure did have a lot of fun doing it.

I will hopefully be on here next week to do my Christmas post.  I've run out of time.