o yes i did

Three words... light. up. boots. I let baby Stella Belle pick out a little early birthday gift for herself. I was hoping she would like some nice brown boots, but there were no brown boots in her size... only pink with colorful sparkly hearts. These pink boots made baby Stella Belle's face light up, so they were purchased. When we got home and she put them on I saw something that I didn't see in the store... lights.  I broke one of my cardinal rules of cool mom-ness (no shoes with characters or lights). I looked at Charlie and he said, "We only live once, just let her have the lights." I laughed. Double hate when he's right.

Baby Stella Belle danced around for a while in her boots, she slept in them, she wore them to church with a beautiful smocked dress, and now she's taking a nap in them. Happy almost birthday beautiful star!

tuesday blogging

Not many minutes for blogging lately. Little Dean and I are schooling this morning and snacking and enjoying the rain. I pinky promise to share more exciting pictures and latest family ventures very soon. I've been preparing for baby Stella Belle's third birthday next week and our Valentine's weekend extravaganza.

Hope your Tuesday is filled with dark chocolate almond milk and a Little Miss Ann cd.

no girls allowed

His sisters leave in the morning to go to preschool. He has about thirty minutes of peace and then the high school girls arrive. He's a little overwhelmed by large amount of girls in his life. Who can blame him? Anyway, look past the misspelled words on the sign and notice the perfect placement of the apostrophe in his name. He's basically a genius.

monogram schmonogram

Sometimes we get beautiful hand-me-down clothes from our delightful friends and family members. I love a good treasure from a hand-me-down bag. I pulled this green dress out and knew it would be perfect for Millie g. The only problem was that the white collar was monogramed with someone else's initials. So I ripped the monogrammed thread out and replaced it with this new (and slightly funkier) homemade monogram...

I cut a circle of brown dotted fabric, cut a pink "M" out of felt and sewed it all together. It still needed a little something so added pink rick rack around the edge. Millie g. was happy and so was I.

Holla for hand-me-downs! And keep em comin!

back to the old grind

My gorgeous students have been back in class for one week now. They are officially starting their SENIOR YEAR! HOLLA! Such big girls!

We've spent lots of mornings in journal time talking about goals and dreams for this year. We also started tackling The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare. It's fun watching them learn.

I hope your days are busy and action-packed. Life is more fun that way. Hearts for Monday!

first bike date of 2011

I will be homeschooling little Dean for the remainder of his kindergarten career. It's a long, moderately exciting story that ends with a silly person telling us that our child has (and I quote) "pastor's kid syndrome." So, until we find another school, I will be teaching him kindergarten.

Today we rode bikes for one hour around St. Simon's Island, picked an orange off of an orange tree, and went to a coffee shop for hot chocolate. I promise to try to ride bikes with little Dean every Friday during 2011. It's good for both of us.

Anyone else making bike-riding goals this year? You really should.

christmas in dixie

Here are a few more precious moments from Christmas in Mississippi. My mother is like some kind of extreme, amazing, warrior Christmas gift-getter. I don't know how she does it, but we always seem to have more than anything we could have ever wanted or imagined under the tree. Charlie got a Kindle... he teared up... I saw it.

Look at Mount Everest of boxes and wrapping paper! My Dad burned it all up in the back yard and we cooked smores on top. Incredible. We also visited with MeeMaw and PeePaw (my grandparents) who never fail to hug us and make us giggle.

I like my family. Anyone else have a sore arm from playing tennis on the Wii? No? Just me? ok.

my sister had a baby and happy new year

His name is Nolan. He's pretty much amazing.

We drove home to Mississippi on Christmas day and planned to stay for a few days. Val had a doctor's appointment a few days after Christmas and found out she was pretty far along so we decided to stay a few more days. On Friday morning (new year's eve) we woke up very early and went to the hospital. Val was in lots of pain the night before and decided it was time to go...

Everything was bright and giggly at the hospital until the labor pains really got bad and she kicked everyone out of the room. She got an epidural, got everyone back in the room and apologized for not being "herself" earlier when she was in pain. Really, she is the most adorable thing ever. About an hour later she was ready to push, so she kicked us out of the room again. She pushed 5 times and baby Nolan was born!

Her hair never messed up, her makeup never came off, her earrings were big and she looked gorgeous the whole time. Rude. I love Val and Dustin and baby Nolan! Baby, you're a firework!

We're back home in Georgia now and I've got lots of blogging to do about our trip. Upcoming blogs that you have to look forward to...
1. Christmas in Mississippi
2. MeeMaw's cats
3. Hamburger scrapbook
4. 2011 goals
5. 2010 recap
Have a nice day! Bring it on, two thousand eleven!