Vacation Part 1

We are back from our vacation. It was WONDERFUL!!! It was even better than we had expected. We had a great time and were able to relax too.

We left out on Saturday morning about 10am.

We ended up driving to Dothan, AL before we stopped for the night. It was midnight when we finally stopped. The kids were all out by about 10pm.



The next day we were up early, had breakfast at the hotel and were on the road again.

Here's Gracie using her potty while we were going down the road. As a young potty trainer, she needs to go pretty often and when she says she has to go, you have about 2.1 seconds, tops, to get her to a potty. So, I put her training potty on the floor in front of her seat and behind the front passenger seat. When she had to go, I'd put my seat back to reach her and help her out of her carseat, then I'd put my seat all the way up so I could help her use the potty. Then I had to put the seat back to get her buckled back in. A lot of work and some near misses on car-sick-ness on my part, but it was totally worth it.


We arrived in Jacksonville, FL around 2 or 3 that afternoon and after checking in to the hotel and resting for about 30 minutes, we put on swimsuits and headed to the beach. We couldn't pass up the chance to frolic in the Atlantic Ocean, now could we?!?!












Gracie was content playing in the sand. She wasn't a big fan of the waves. The boys loved playing in the waves, though!

Jason and I paid for the fun later, he had to spend over 2 hrs in a laundromat washing and drying swimsuits and beach towels because they all had to go back in suitcases the next morning and they were all WET and FULL of sand. I cleaned up all the sand toys and shoes there at the hotel and got the kids clean and in bed and we still managed to get somewhat of a decent night of sleep. At this point, we were wondering if we were ever going to get to relax on this vacation like we hoped!

The next morning, we opted for Room Service breakfast in the room so we could sleep as late as possible. We had to be packed up and out of the hotel by 10am in order to get to the cruise terminal in time. We still had to lock all the suitcases and put the special luggage tags on them. That ended up taking over 30 minutes standing outside in the 103 degree sunshine. Next time, I will do those ahead of time!!



Getting parked, luggage dropped off and through the cruise terminal ended up taking us over 2 hours. Whew! But, the kids did FANTASTIC and were so good waiting in line, etc. We couldn't have been more pleased with them.

Here we are on the ship, at last!
Jason and the boys were watching dolphins swim in the water right next to the ship.

Here's Gracie and I sitting on the deck. This was after we had finished lunch on the deck and were enjoying the scenery before the departure.


During the mandatory lifeboat drill, the ship started heading out of port. Immediately after the drill, we didn't even take the life jackets back to our room. We grabbed all 5 life jackets and headed straight out to one of the top decks so we could watch the ship go under the bridge. We had some friends go on this boat a few weeks ago and been told that it BARELY makes it under the bridge. Barely is the word. I was holding my breath!!
Here's Jason and Braden before we went under the bridge.


Here we are in our TINY little room. It was quite small for 5 of us, but we kept everything well organized and tidy, so we managed.

Here's me and Jason standing out by the deck railing on our first night after dinner. It was very windy! We had just dropped the kids off at Camp Carnival and were all alone for the first time!

Immediately after we took this picture, you'll never guess what we went to do...
Well.... for the sake of curiosity, I'll tell you just what we did.
We went straight back to our room.
And...

Jason began unpacking suitcases and trying to organize the room. We had to get some order established while the kids weren't there because we couldn't even move in there with all the suitcases and everything. He put everything in closets, shelves and drawers and put the suitcases under the bed.
And me? I spent that time in the self-service laundrette on the ship washing blankets from the night before that Gracie had peed on while she was sleeping. While they were washing, I went ahead and ironed all of the nice clothes that we had brought so that chore would be over and we could enjoy the rest of the vacation.
10pm arrived before we knew it and Jason went to get the kids picked up from Camp Carnival while I finished the laundry.
Not exactly the romantic evening we had planned, but when your first priority is being parents, you do what you gotta do. We've been doing this parenting thing for almost 9 years, so we're pretty used to evenings like this.

When I returned back to the room, this is what I found:



The boys had Pirate Night at Camp and Gracie had Space Alien Night. You can barely see her little headband with the silver antennae that she made. They were SO hyped up and BEGGING us to go back to Camp Carnival first thing in the morning. Answer to prayer! I was so hoping they would enjoy it so that Jason and I could have some quiet time with no kids too. We were so excited!
We finally settled into bed around midnight.

The next morning, we ate a nice sit-down breakfast in the dining room.


After breakfast, we took the kids to Camp Carnival and we walked around the ship and even relaxed for a few minutes! Imagine that!

But, before we relaxed, this is what we were doing. Working on work stuff at the internet cafe on the ship. It only took about an hour and 20 minutes that day, not too bad.

We technically only lounged in these lounge chairs for 15 minutes before it was time to pick the kids up from Camp. They closed at 11:45 each day and were closed until 2:00.

Here's the lobby of the ship, looking down at the piano bar from the Verandah deck, which is where the kids attended Camp Carnival.


The kids had been begging us to go to the pool, so after lunch and a very brief resting time, we headed to the pool.
The first one we tried was on one of the top decks. It was a smaller pool than the main pool with the waterslide on the Lido deck.
It was SO windy up there. Gracie could hardly stand up!




After about 5 minutes, we decided to go to the Kiddie Pool that was 2 decks down and on the very back of the ship. It was behind a big wall too, so there was no wind.


Here's a view off the back of the ship. It was cloudy and stormy looking pretty much all day. That evening, the captain didn't even attend the Captain's reception because he was at the helm, trying to steer us out of a nasty piece of weather. We did go through a thunderstorm, but from inside the ship, you couldn't even tell it was raining unless you looked out a window. Getting in a storm was my worst fear and I didn't even know it was going on!

Tuesday night, the 2nd night on the cruise, was the formal dinner. We had fun getting all dressed up!



Jason and I had delicious lobster for dinner that night!
Here we are at the dinner table.


Here was our first towel animal that the kids were looking so forward to!

The kids were having a pajama party at Camp Carnival that night, so we changed them into their PJ's.

Then me and Jason walked around the ship for a while and attended the evening's show. It was a tribute to 80's music. It was like reliving your childhood, live on stage. The singing, dancing, costumes and props were outstanding. We thoroughly enjoyed it! We also took several formal photos with the ship's photographers and went to the casino for a while. That was the first time I've ever been in a casino. I even lost $5 in a slot machine! I've officially gambled. I think at the age of (almost) 29, it's about time I can say that. :)

The kids' pajama party was for ages 2-11 and Rhett won the dance contest they had!
Here he is with his medal!

Here he is showing off some of his dance moves.

He said when he did the "Robot" all the girls screamed. My little heart-breaker!

That's it for the first installment of the Vacation recap. Stay tuned for the rest. This was only the trip there and the first 2 days of the 5 day cruise. There's still 6 more days of vacation to go!!

Vacation is finally here!

We are leaving in the morning for our vacation! We'll be gone for 9 or 10 days.

I can't wait to come back and share our pictures and vacation story with everyone.

Thanks for your prayers as we travel.

Crash and Burn

Ever wondered what it looks like when your computer crashes and you're scrambling to get it back together?
Well here ya go...


Well, if you're me, and you're lucky enough to have such wonderful, caring family. This might be what it looks like.

As I was grumbling along through my day's office work yesterday, something went terribly wrong.
My mom was here visiting because it was Wednesday, Dad's volleyball day, and he was working in NWA so she was able to come and spend the day before volleyball in the evening. The kids were napping/resting and she was sitting in the office with me,keeping me company.
Mom as my witness, I did nothing wrong, but all of a sudden, all of the data disappeared.
We use a web-based system, so it had nothing to do with my computer, or my hard-drive, but basically we had lost every record of all the jobs we've buried in the past 3 years since we started this business.
After pulling my hair out with tech support (more than once) we came up with a game plan and got to work.

"They" were able to restore my data, but not to the place on the site that it belongs. Basically it's all stuck in some barely-accessible folder that does me no good except that I can see it. So, not a total loss, PRAISE THE LORD!!!
We have to re-enter a ton of data,but the rest of the old stuff from 2 or more years ago, we are going to archive in a different way so that it doesn't all have to be reentered.

So, I got to work rebuilding websites and Mom stayed until 1:30 AM helping me reenter the crucial data. Jason helped as well and he stayed up until 1AM before we begged him to go to bed since he has to get up so early in the mornings.

I went to bed at 3AM and the kids were up by 6:30am. Not good. I'm taking time out to blog about this now, despite the substantial work load I have in front of me for today because I wanted to show my gratitude for those who helped before it was too late.

Thanks MOM!!!! I don't know what I'd do without you. Seriously.
Thanks JASON!!! Wow, this self employment thing just never gets easier does it??? What a krazy life!!

And thanks to Julie (Mammaw) for showing up at our doorstep this morning with a box full of our favorite and very much missed ham and cheese rolls from the BV donut shop. And a big batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies.

What would I do without family that loves us so much?

Lots of Blog Update Requests

In the past week, I have come to realize that I have more blog readers than I thought! I had the neat opportunity of having random friends and acquaintances approaching me about it. How neat is that!? And I've been getting lots of requests for pictures of the house. Well, I hate to disappoint, but I only have 1.

This is the foyer. What you see right when you walk through our front door. It's not perfect yet. As I'm not much of a decorator, I just don't know what I want to do to "complete" the area. The flowers in the pic are the flowers that I posted earlier. They were Jason's anniversary gift to me. I love them here. They are dead and gone now, but I think I'm inspired to get a nice silk arrangement to go here. I always wanted an "entry way" and now I have one!!
I really will post more pics soon. It's just that there are still several boxes around and I've been so busy and so exhausted that getting everything perfectly clean and in picture ready condition is something that I've had to put on the back burner. But soon, I tell you. Soon. After vacation posting, I will get up house pics. I promise!

The other day I was folding laundry in my bedroom and I heard Gracie in the kitchen. I looked out the bedroom door into the kitchen and this is what I found.

I always dreamed of a big kitchen. Now I have that too! I have a kitchen big enough for my kids to run laps around it. Does God care about the details of our lives? I wholeheartedly believe he does! This video just makes me super happy!

Did you catch that reference to our vacation to the Bahamas (or the "hamas" as Gracie calls it) on that video? It's pretty much all we can think about or talk about around here. We are leaving in 5 days!!! Come Saturday, it's "vacation, here we come!" I have many, many, many, many pages of to do lists that I'm merrily crossing more and more off of each day and I'm determined not to let stress or anxiety get the best of me over this!

But let me just tell you about today's adventures... First of all, had ANOTHER late night working in the office and around the house. Went to bed around 1:30. Got up a little before 8am, got myself and kids ready and headed to Carroll County. Had many things to do. At the top of the list was going to the bank and getting into my Safe Deposit Box to get all of our Birth Certificates and our Marriage License. All documents that we need to board the ship.
Here's the play by play.
Can you believe that my birth certificate was NOT in the box?????? Mini-heart-attack.
Take a deep breath.
Look again.
It's STILL NOT in the box.
Composure is the name of the game. Very busy day. Kids in tow. Finish banking stuff.
Call Jason and ask if he has a girlfriend he would like to celebrate his 10 year wedding anniversary with since it appears that I'll not be able to go on the trip. He makes me feel better by saying, "Now babe, if that's the biggest thing we've got to worry about, we are gonna be ok. If I need to make a flying trip down to Louisiana to get you a birth certificate, I'll do it. Don't let this get you down. It's no big deal." (Don't you wish you could look at life like him? I sure do. He's just so stinkin' optimistic ALL the time. Sure am glad I'm married to him!)
Updated my facebook status to reflect crisis at hand.
Just as I expected, many sweet friends wrote to say that they were praying for me.
Felt a million and one times better.
Have a mental image of the birth certificate. I specifically remembered the last time I saw it. Or at least I thought. I had 1 really good idea of where it could be. (Thank you Lord for bringing that to my mind at just the right time!)
Between the prayers going up for me and this vision, I DID NOT have a panic attack of any kind. This.is.a.small.miracle.
My mom called and said she had been looking through all her papers to see if she had another certified copy. She only had a copy of a certified copy. Made me feel better that she cared enough to try. Finished my many errands, headed home.
Went right to my hope chest, opened it up (after clearing all the stuff of of it).
Grabbed the white envelope of travel documents that I saved from our honeymoon to Cancun 10 years ago.
Opened it up.
Grabbed the first paper closest to the front. Said a little prayer for God to have mercy on my tired soul.
Opened it up. Smiled. Praised and thanked the Lord.
THERE IT WAS!
Just like the little vision I had. Looks like Jason will have to cancel the plans for the stand-in girlfriend! Ha!
I was so thankful, you just have no idea. And I was so proud of myself for holding things together. I never even cried a single tear. That is big for me. I'm normally pretty emotional when things like that happen!
Does God care about the details of our lives? You bet he does!!

The one thing that I didn't get marked off my to do list today was to get the yard mowed. We don't own a lawn mower anymore and we've been having a nice older hispanic gentleman mow our yard since Spring. When we moved into our new house, we gave him our new address and thought he understood that we wanted him to continue mowing for us. We've never seen him. Needless to say, with all the rain and heat, the grass is way too tall. I have been stressing about it a little bit because we live in a neighborhood where that isn't looked upon too kindly. There are standards, I guess you could say. I've prayed off and on all day that I would stay calm about it and that it would all work out without me having to put too much time into it. Shortly after we got home, I was sitting at my desk looking at the list wondering what I was going to do to fix this problem tomorrow. Then my door bell rang. I opened the door and it was a lawn mowing man there to give me his business card. He's coming to mow tomorrow and he'll mow it again while we're on vacation. Does God care about the details? OF COURSE HE DOES!!!!! Such little, mundane things that consume our minds... but he cares about all that stuff too because He LOVES us. Wow. That's why I serve him during the hard times. Because I know he's always there and he cares. He gives the smallest blessings to get me through each day.

I will leave you with this:

This will be our home at sea next Monday thru Saturday!

And this: As I was working in my office the other day, Rhett and Gracie walk in looking like this and holding hands. Rhett informed me that they were Cinderella and Prince Charming. He had dressed himself (did you notice the snow boots!) and had helped Gracie get dressed. She was so proud and insited that they hold hands the whole time they were doing this pretending. He was sweet enough to oblige. As they were walking out of the room to head back upstairs to play, Rhett turned around and said, "Hey Mamma, make sure you put this on the blog, ok?" Yes, my kids know all about the blog and look forward to checking for updates about and pictures of themselves. They are proud to have a mamma who loves them so much and is so proud of them. Now THAT makes me happy!

This Weekend Posting is becoming a habit...

Here I am again... posting at the end of the weekend. I really have to much to do to be on here, but at the request of the two sweet grandmothers, here I am.

Warning: long post ahead. We've been very busy!

This past week has been...well...krazy. For lack of a better term. (Yall know how I love that word!)
My MaMa Dennie was visiting from south Louisiana this past week. We've only seen her once a year for the past several years, so it was nice to see her. She came and spent Tuesday morning thru Thursday evening with us.

Jason left for work early on Tuesday morning and we didn't see him again until Friday evening. We have recently been entrusted with 4 more counties on our contract(from Fayetteville to south of Fort Smith basically). This is a HUGE blessing! And quite a bit more work and responsibility. We're estimating a 30% increase in business. The area down there is behind on getting drops buried, so Jason and his 4 guys spent all week down there getting as much done as they can. We have until this Thursday to catch up all the late ones. He is planning to spend 2 or 3 more nights down there this week. I'll be a lonely mamma again...

Ok, so back to last week. It was nice to have MaMa here visiting and she gave her undivided attention to the kids. They took walks around the neighborhood. Played at the park. Fed the ducks. She watched the boys play Wii, which they loved. She played dress up and stuffed animals with Gracie. It was awesome. I was able to get so much work done!!

Wednesday was kind of cool and rainy, so I asked her to make me a big pot of seafood gumbo so I could freeze it and have a few meals. Lucky for me, she agreed! So, we went to Wal-Mart to get the ingredients I didn't have and came back and she got to cookin'. The whole house smelled like gumbo for 24 hours. It was heavenly!

After I had 2 big bowls of it, I have 5 containers full of it in my freezer. Each container will be just enough for me and Jas to each have a bowl. Will make a nice meal when some hot, buttered french bread is added!

Wednesday night, we went to watch my Daddy play Volleyball. He plays over here every single Wednesday night, but during the school year, it's just so hard to go watch him. Now that it's summer, we plan to go more often.
Gracie asked me to get a picture of her jumping.


Wednesday, my bff since 4th grade, Tasha came to visit with her kiddos Jaiden and Trenton. MaMa Dennie watched all 5 of our kids while we went to Target and I shopped for a baby shower gift for later that evening.
Then, we all ate sandwiches for lunch and got dressed for the pool. We had lots of fun. Silly us, both of us forgot our cameras. Hello?!?! We decided that we definately have to do it again to get pictures!

After they left, we all got ready and headed East. I had a baby shower to attend, for my friend Cassie. Since Jason wasn't home, my mom and dad were sweet enough to volunteer to keep the kids for me so I could go. So, I dropped them off to my dad at the end of their road and went to the shower. It was so nice to see so many of my BV friends! Reminded me how much I miss everyone. It's really weird to move to a place where you know no one after having lived almost your whole life in a place where you know almost everyone. It's good to go back from time to time.
After the shower, I headed back West. I went all the way down to the lake house to visit for a while and get the kids. We headed home around 10 and it was about 11:15 when we got home.
I was nervous about getting home after dark, being by myself with the kids. I never like it much, but being in a new house in a new neighborhood, I was a little more weirded out than usual. I had prayed for God's protection as we were driving home several times. When we were pulling up to the house, our next door neighbor was outside with her poodle watering her flowers. God is good! He had answered my prayer and set my mind at ease too. Having her out there made it easier for me to feel safe.
All 3 kids had fallen asleep on the way home, so I had a grand time trying to get all 3 of them out of the car, in their jammies, in their beds, etc. Braden weighs 90 something pounds, so I wasn't about to carry him! He was sleep-walking with much assistance from me, but we made it. Rhett weighs over 50 pounds now. There was no rousing him, so I carried him. UP 17 STAIRS! Whew! And even Gracie stayed asleep during the whole ordeal. YAY!!!!!

Friday afternoon, I took the kids to the pool and just as we were getting ready to head home, Jason showed up!! The kids were so excited! We stayed 2 more hours. We were there for over 4 hrs that day. We are all getting nice and tan. No sunburn on the cruise for us!! (We hope!)

Saturday, we had Braden's last football game (update: we decided to pull Rhett from playing the past few weeks. He was much better off...)Here's Rhett and Gracie being silly during the game.



Braden's team won!! They ended up having the best record of the season.
One of the little boys on the team's big brother is London Crawford, a real live Arkansas Razorback football player. He came to several of the practices and games and even helped coach some. They boys loved it. Saturday, he came prepared with a Sharpe to sign autographs!!
Here's Braden getting his autograph.

Braden and London

Rhett and London

Here's Jason and Braden with his trophy after the game


After football, we went to Rogers to the International Fest where Uncle Jeff had his Big Yeti's Pizza trailer set up. We had some yummy pizza for lunch and ice cream for dessert.


Then we went back home and had 30 minutes to get ready for church. After church, we ate at Jose's. Mmmmmmm!!! I got my chicken enchilada fix and feel much better about the world in general now.

Today, Sunday, I got to sleep in until 9am. Holy Cow! That's the latest I've slept since we moved into our new house. It felt wonderful. Thanks to my sweet hubby!

We spent 12:30-3:30 at the pool then came home for lunch, resting, and in my case, laundry. Loads and piles of it.

Here's to another wonderful week... Christen starts this week and will be coming 3 days a week to help me with the kids while I work. I am so excited! I feel a weight off my shoulders already!