We pulled everything out of our garden a couple weeks ago, but we left the carrots for a while longer. One afternoon when we were outside hanging out, Gracie and Rhett noticed that we had a little visitor on the carrots.
Isn’t it beautiful?!
This past weekend was the weekend for little boys and their football birthday cakes!
She saw me watching her about half-way through and started making her “shy faces” :)
The other day, she said, “Mamma, you know what I wanna be when I grow up? I wanna be a singer!”
She is constantly singing. She hears a song once and usually remembers the words. She makes up her own songs, which she actually does really well at!
It’s fun to listen and watch her!
My sweet little nephew turned 4!
This was the cake that resulted in the disaster.
From the front, the birthday boy couldn’t tell there was a huge problem. Thank goodness!
Here he is blowing out his candles while a friend holds the cake.
Poppy- the Piñata holder!
It was a fun day!
Daddy took the boys to their friend Connor’s birthday party a couple Friday nights ago while I was working on cakes.
They came back home looking like this!
Weren’t they just SO cute! I laughed and laughed!
Quotes from the night:
Braden: “I was gonna get the chest hair, but didn’t want to get it all over my nice shirt!”
Rhett: “My eyes hurt from having to scrub so hard to get the paint off!”
Sure enough, around poor Rhett’s eye was really red the next day!
Where there is a water hose and a big spot of dirt where there used to be a garden…there will be MUD!
That would be my good sprayer that I use for my hair that they lifted out of my bathroom!!
The Master Mud Maker! (Lovin’ the silly pose and face, Rhett!)
And of course, this was 10 seconds after Jason had cleaned off the sidewalk and had it looking BRAND NEW! What can we do but laugh?!?!?!
Rhett was chosen to be the Student of the Week for his class last week!
He got to make a poster telling about himself to share with the 2nd grade on Friday. He also got to bring a bag of 10 things in what they called a “Me Bag”. There was a checklist with 10 statements and he brought in something to represent each statement.
Here he is with his teacher when she introduced him to the 2nd grade.
Looking for his next item to share
“Something that represents your family”
I didn’t help him at all. This is what he chose! When the teacher asked for an explanation on how that represented his family, he smiled really big and said, “Because we’re all Vikings fans!”
“Something you really dislike”
“Something that is a special memory for you”
This was the seashell he bought with his own money on our cruise to the Bahamas last summer.
Awesome job, Rhettster! You did a great job presenting your items and telling about yourself and our family. You didn’t seem nervous at all to be in front of all of those people. In fact, I think you liked it! I see much more public speaking in your future!
I love you! Keep up the good work!
The boys played in a weekend tournament in Fort Smith last weekend.
On Saturday, Rhett had to be on the field at 7:20 am! That meant we had to leave the house by 6:15 am! It was EARLY! Braden played right after him at 9:30. Then we had a long break until the next game, which was at 12:30. Then another long break until the last game, which was at 3:30. Whew!
On Sunday, both of the boys had 1 game at 11am. We enjoyed not having to leave the house before the sun came up!
For the past couple weeks, I’ve been in major deep clean/organize mode. The house just got out of hand during the chaos of the busy summer.
I have a small office that is under the stairs that we call my “little office”. I have my scrapbooking stuff and other crafty items in there.
I spend very little time in the room (unfortunately), but over the summer, it became a dumping ground for everything that didn’t have a place.
When the boys came home from their last days of school and brought home all the workbooks from the year, we just stacked them in my little office.
Before I threw them away, I decided to flip through them. They don’t come home throughout the year, so I hadn’t looked through them. I came across Braden’s writing journal and as I flipped through a few pages, I found the sweetest things that he had written!
“We all have someone important in our lives. Would you like to hear of mine. Aculy someone special in my life is my mom. Becose she is the one who makes our food and keepes us healthy and also helpes us when we get sick, And she loves us. That’s why she is an important person in my life.”
“Yippie, I say as we headed off to a hotel. My family and me are going to go to a hotel for the weekend. And are you wondering why I didn’t tell you why we’re going here. Because there is no reason! We are just going to have family time. And if there was a reason then it would be because I had 2 soccer games on Saturday. I play for the Arkansas Comets. Soccer is my favorate sport. I love playing goalie. My coach said I was one of the best goalies they have ever had in my age group. That is the best day I ever had with my family.”
“My family is the best family ever. They’ve done so many things for me. And I’m very grateful for that. These are some things they’ve done for me. They’ve brought my family on lots of vacations.” (He must have run out of time to finish this one!)
“If I had to choose between friendship of two best friends or $1,000 money I would choose friendship because if I didn’t have friendship I’d be so very lonely. If I only had money I would just have items witch will not be good for your future. Most games you need a friend to play with like tag and board games. Then again you can play solatare by yourself but that’s boring. That’s why I would pick friendship over money!”
It’s so neat when your children get old enough to write things like this! I’ve decided to keep this writing journal for us to look back on when he’s older. I’m sure it’ll give us a good chuckle to read this book together when he’s all grown up!
I love that boy!
Well… a little bit anyways!
Braden said they were really yummy!
We’re gonna keep watering them and give them some more time. We’ll see if they end up growing to “normal” size carrots!
(Be sure to read to the end to hear about my very first cake disaster.)
Last weekend I was very busy baking!
There were 3 special people celebrating birthdays and I was blessed enough to be asked to make each of their birthday cakes!
There was a real Thomas the Train that I put on the train track when we got to the party!!
I have to be honest and explain that I learned a BIG lesson in cake transporting with my poor nephew Tre’s cake. Since the top tier was only 1/2 of the cake, it made it a little top heavy and not as stable as cakes that I’ve stacked with the whole round cake as the top tier(s). Therefore, I should’ve put more dowel rods in the cake.
I drove extremely slow (the 1 1/2 hr trip to their house took us about 2 hrs and 15 minutes…) but even the slow and careful driving didn’t save the cake. The top tier rolled right off the back of the cake and it was destroyed. Before the birthday boy even got to see it!
My Sister in Law was extremely gracious about it and the guests didn’t give me too hard of a time, which I was thankful for…. Because I was on the verge of tears/throwing up the whole time. I was just so upset that all my hours of hard work for them was completely in vain due to the cake disaster.
It still tasted good- we were able to eat the bottom tier because it was still in tact.
My first cake disaster.
Lesson learned.
Here was me the day THE letter came in the mail.
I was SO excited! 
Here’s how I REALLY felt!!!
Oh, my goodness. Honestly, I never thought I’d be that in love with a piece of paper.
(Side note: yes, my desk is horrendously messy. No comments, please. :)
Rhett took this picture of me mailing off the CIS approval letter (aka the VERY last thing we needed to complete our dossier) to Kate at KBS.
We were leaving the house to go camping at Devil’s Den for a week on 8-9-10. As we were pulling out of the driveway, I noticed I had an email come through on my phone. When I checked it, I squealed and screamed and Jason thought something was wrong!
It was THE email from Kate letting us know our dossier had left her office and was on the way to DC! We were officially on the waiting list this day!
Jason took my picture!
“Hey, Kids… We’re on the waiting list! What do yall think?!”
I love this picture so much that it’s now the screensaver on my phone.
We are all SOOO excited!!
It’s been 35 days today since we’ve been on the waiting list. I have a feeling this wait is only going to get harder and harder!
On Saturday morning, as I was brushing Gracie’s hair, she said, “Mamma, God needs to hurry up and let us bring my baby home. I MISS her already!”
It’s so hard for the kids to understand the wait. And if I’m being honest, it’s not much easier for me either. I’m so ready already!
