man lessons

My sister-in-law is due in exactly one month! Here is Travis showing his brother how to change a diaper. Look at how serious Todd's face looks. He was asking questions like "how do you know where the front is" and Trav was answering them like they were perfectly normal questions to have. It was hard not to giggle at their brotherly love.

lil' sis, big sis

curls

jr gardener

4 1/2 years old

Today is Audrey's "half birthday". So far she has told everyone she has seen and also keeps telling us "I can do whatever I want because it's my half birthday". I wonder what her reason will be tomorrow.

***Also, today begins the 2 month countdown to DISNEY WORLD!!!***

bingo

Friday night I went to play bingo with Nickie and her friend Holly. I came prepared with my lucky troll and bought a dabber at the door for $1.

After you pay they give you a pad of 3 x 3 bingo games, I think there were maybe 10 games total.











Here Nickie is explaining how to play the different games to us.

We had about 5 minutes until 7:00 so we asked this old, old, very old lady sitting next to me to take our picture. It took the entire 5 minutes for her to work the camera.

She kept doing this! It was so freakin' hilarious. I'm sure you had to be there but we were laughing so hard that we were crying.

Which dabber should I use?

I spent the entire night torn between making fun of all of the crazy people in the crowd and loving bingo enough to see myself becoming one of those crazy people.

Nickie almost won the first blackout game - she only needed one number.








"O 69" We were laughing like teenagers...we got shhhhh-ed several times.








By the end of the night I had decided to name her Esther.







And here is Esther's bingo bag. What color do you want me to order you?

new camera

This week I (finally) got my new camera!!! It's a Canon G9. I am so excited!!!

girls night at the royals

Thursday night was girls night at the Royals. I went with some girls from work we had a great time.

Brandi and Me

Me, Larissa, Sarah and Brandi not letting the free drink tickets go to waste

Can you believe Mr. Kauffman groping Larissa like that?

Finally making it to the actual game

swing swing

Because of the direction our house faces, the only shade we have in the evening, from the house itself, is in the front yard. The main disadvantage to living in a new neighborhood is the lack of mature trees. We make up for it by having extra "driveway toys" but nevertheless, the swing set in the back yard is awful lonely. The baby swing that I bought last year for Lucy was still sitting in the garage until one day I came home from work and my Dad had come over and hung it up on the front porch!!! Lucy loves it and Audrey still gets in it from time to time. Thanks Grandpa for thinking of your girls.

finally

My mellow yellow roses were the last to make their debut in the garden. Maybe they took the longest because they are so laid back.

tee hee hee.

milestone

Mark this day on the calendar. Today was the first time that I had to put down everything and leave the store because Lucy was throwing a fit. The Carter's store to be exact. I even had a coupon. Come to think of it, maybe her Daddy made a deal with her to try to get me to stop going there, they are tight like that.

mornings

This is the last thing I see before I leave most mornings for work. It just makes me want to crawl back in bed and snuggle up. I walk out the door before the sun comes up and Trav does an outstanding job getting the girls up and showered and fed and dressed. Then off to Grandma's. He wins the morning routine award - hands down. On my mornings, when Trav is at the fire station, I prefer the "scoop and run" method. I take them to Grandma's in their jammies and leave the rest up to her, it allows them to get a little extra sleep and me to still get some alone time. Somehow, those are still the mornings that I forget to do things like pack my lunch or put on mascara.

to be continued

Surprisingly enough I'm still loving my roses. This is the first year that I have ever watered the flowers past June let alone take pictures, read books, and BLOG about them. I even used mulch and edging folks. I think this is the real deal.

The other night, while I was over in my "garden", I called out for Trav to come over and look. And then these words actually came out of my mouth:

"This one is pretty enough to enter in the fair".

kudos

That husband of mine, he makes the best spaghetti in the whole wide world.

rain

literally

Audrey: "Liar, liar pants on fire!"
(leans over and whispers to me - Mommy, pretend your pants are on fire)
Me: "Oh no, my pants!!!"
Audrey: "Oh you silly, your pants aren't really on fire!"

little dipper

Lucy loves to dip. Her favorite combo is chips and salsa. But I'm thinking that cookies and milk is a very close second.

olympic typing

Trav: did you see that lady that is going to the Olympics 2 years after she had a baby?
Me: yeah, what about it
Trav: that means you have 8 months left to make it to the Olympics honey
Me: no honey, you are looking at it all wrong.
Trav: how's that
Me: it took her 2 whole years to get back to work...and I was able to start typing again after only 8 weeks.

i almost forgot...

Sunday we are at Dillard’s and they are having a huge bra sale and have all of their bras in the bins like VS does. Audrey is standing there with me and she is putting bras on over her shirt and putting her hands on her hips and sticking her chest out and people are walking by and laughing. Then she finds this cute little bra that is like a 32AA and it is polka dot and she is trying to convince me that she NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDS it. And I was all like “Audrey, I buy a lot of crap for you that you don't need but I am not buying you a bra until you are older. You don’t even have any boobs yet” to which she replies: “but I still need something to cover up my nipples” right as this MAN AND HIS SON are walking buy. It was awesome.

(I wasn't going to blog this to save Trav from embarrassment but since he doesn't read my blog he'll never know - right honey???)

quotable weekend

Audrey was quite the character this weekend. I decided to put it all in one post since I do not have any pictures to accompany the stories. Kinda hard to supervise a 4 year old and a 1 year old while their Daddy is playing with fire and take pictures at the same time.

1)
Me: Audrey, I already told you not to do that twice, why are you having so much trouble listening to me today?

A: I guess my ears just aren't working very well Mommy.

2)
the neighbors had a DJ at their 4th of July party, so on the 5th of July we are sitting outside finishing the fireworks and:
A: I want to have a party
Me: Well this is kinda a party, look, all of your friends are here
A: no, a real party...with MUSIC
(great, does this mean that we will have a DJ at Audrey's 5th birthday party?)

3)
Those of you that know Audrey can imagine how much of the weekend we spent convincing her that fireworks were fun and that it was ok to stay outside in the noise and that we wouldn't let her get hurt....Only for her to watch her Daddy stomp out a small fire in his flip flops which caused his leg to catch on fire. So all day yesterday, approximately every 4 minutes, Audrey asked Travis in a very loud voice "Daddy, why did you catch your leg on fire?" I can only guess what the total strangers around us were thinking...

be prepared

Audrey suspects that her Daddy is going to get her with the hose. With good reason - he is pretty predictable like that. So she goes inside and changes into her...galoshes. Her kitty cat galoshes. Because a swimsuit would have been way too obvious. And even after she comes out in her rain gear she is still yelling at him "don't you get me daddy".

Looks like all is forgiven - again.