Gracie's 3rd Birthday- "Party People" Edition!

We had a WONDERFUL birthday celebration for Miss Gracie's 3rd birthday. We invited only family to come over so we could show everyone our new house. (Some had been over to see it and some hadn't.)
I really enjoyed cooking a meal for everyone and everyone seemed to enjoy it. We had a baked brown sugar ham, homemade mac and cheese, roasted potatos, green beans, homemade rolls and a last minute addition of fresh corn on the cob from Jason's Aunt Cathy and Uncle Guy's garden. YUMMMY!!! I'm pretty sure that most of us ate until we almost popped!
Here's my dad (standing across the room in the shorts with the sexy legs! Love you Daddy!) and my brother (the hairy faced cowboy! Love you too Russy!) That's my sweet mamma (in the plaid shorts) and Jason's dad (all you can see is the back of him). Don't you just love surprise shots?!

Here's Russ and Aggie sharing some PDA (and a carrot!) in my kitchen!

Here's the love of my life cleaning corn in the sink. (I swear, if he were any cuter, I just don't know what I'd do!)

Presents!





Thank you, everyone, for all of the wonderful gifts! You helped to make Gracie's birthday even that much more fun and special!

Tre


Mammaw, Uncle Roger and Braden

Let's get 1 more look at those cakes before they were cut! *Tears*


Gracie with her cake and candles as we sang "Happy Birthday".

Blowing out the candles!


It's hard to believe my sweet baby girl is 3.

I love all of my children more than words can describe, but I am so thankful that God answered my prayers for a little girl after I already had 2 sweet little boys. At this point, I can honestly say that without her, I wouldn't be the same person that I am today. I am so blessed to get to be the mommy of boys AND a girl.
Happy Birthday Gracie Love! We all love you so much!

Gracie's 3rd bday-"Let there be cake" Edition!

Gracie Love turned 3!
Her birthday was last Tuesday and when she woke up to us all singing "Happy Birthday" to her, she was confused as to where her cake was and why her party wasn't that day. (The party wasn't until Saturday.) So, I decided to bake a "test cake" to test out a new recipe that I was planning on using for the real bday cake and I made her a little cake so we could sing "Happy Birthday" to her with a real cake too.
Here's what was left of it before we took a picture of it!

It was strawberry cake with a homemade strawberry mousse filling. Very good and very sweet!
The cake making began on Tuesday with the test cake. Continued into the night on Tuesday with me making gobs and gobs of homemade buttercream. Then each day, I did a little more to try to get as much done ahead of time as possible and I wouldn't be overwhelmed at the last minute trying to finish the cakes.

My hubby loves the fact that I make the cakes for the kids, in fact, I started making them several years ago at his request. I'm glad he suggested it, because now it's just another way that we can make special memories with the kids and it's a tangible way for me to show them how very much I love them. They love them! And that makes me happy and makes it worth every hour I spend on them. Jason took several pics of the cake decorating process. Here's a few.


On Thursday afternoon, Christen (our babysitter who is actually more of a nanny/girl friday to our family. And we love her so!) helped me make all the turrets for the castle's towers. Thank you Christen!




Me with my finished masterpiece. This was VERY late on Friday night!


Gracie also asked for a princess cake to go with the castle. Since she planned to wear her Belle costume for the party, we got a Belle barbie and made a Belle princess cake.
Before: just a blob of cake!

After: Belle!

Here's Princess Belle with her princess cakes!

How old are you Gracie?

I'm 3!!!

More birthday fun coming up tomorrow! We had a wonderful party with our family!

A Late 4th of July Post

On Friday, July 3rd, our neighborhood had a picnic. I made a pan of brownies and we headed on over to the park.

To start the evening, they had a bike parade for the kids.
Here's Rhett on his decorated scooter!(He's in the white shirt)

Here's Braden and his friend Prestun, who spent the night with us that night.

After the picnic, we walked to another park in the neighborhood for a fireworks show.
Here's the kids hangin' out before the fireworks started.

The fireworks show was awesome. It was 30 solid minutes of great fireworks. We loved it!

For 4th of July, we went to my Mom and Dad's house. They live right on Beaver Lake. It's so beautiful out there and we love to visit any chance we get. Thank goodness they let us come over!! My Aunt Kat, my mom's sister, and Uncle Thomas were here visiting for the weekend and we really wanted to see them too, so we asked if we could come spend the day.
My brother and his kids ended up coming too, so we kind of had a little family reunion going on!
It ended up raining most of the morning, so we just hung out around the house and had a great time visiting.
After lunch, it quit raining and the sun came out, so we decided to go jump in the lake!
Rhett and Ela got their life jackets on and were ready to go!

Here's Gracie and Rhett

We had LOTS of fun on the water!
Here's my brother, Russ, telling Jason to jump in and he'd catch him.

Here's Jason's feet going into the water after he dove over Russ' head. I was a little slow on the trigger speed!

My sweet, precious boys. Aren't they getting SO big?!?!

My nephew Tre was trying to push his doggies into the water!




My two favorite Daddys-- my daddy and my babies' daddy! They were trying out the new super duper noodles that my mom bought. They sure were buoyant!

After swimming, we went back to the house and ate a wonderful meal. My mom had smoked some chicken and it was yummy! I made a cheesecake earlier in the day to have for dessert and it wasn't half bad either.
My sister in law, Aggie, ended up coming over later after she got off work so we got to visit with her for a while and then, we ended the night with fireworks in the front yard. I didn't get any pictures because I was too busy making sure none of the kids got burned! (Braden actually got a spark that flew up and hit him on his hiney, which made quite a little boo-boo...so I guess I didn't do that well!)
What a great way to spend Independence Day. I'm so thankful for family and our freedom!

Vacation Post #4

Here's the last few days of our vacation. I hope you've enjoyed reading about it. My grandma sent me an email and said that she got a sunburn just reading about it. I thought that was too cute!

This was our last day on the ship. We had a Fun Day at Sea. Here's Jason and I out on the deck.

Rhett in the hot tub.

Braden spent most of the afternoon in a ping pong tournament. Here he is in action.

There was always music going on the lido deck. Here's Jason and Gracie dancing to the music.

Here's Jason and Rhett at dinner.

Here's Braden, Gracie and me at dinner.

On the first night of the cruise, our waiter asked all of us if we were celebrating something special. We told him we were there celebrating our 10 year wedding anniversary. On this, the last night, after dinner, he brought us this piece of cake with a candle in it and he and our waitress and all the surrounding tables sang "Happy Anniversary" to us. It was so sweet!


The next morning, we were up early. The ship was docked by 7am and people started debarking at 8am. We got off around 9:30. After we got to our car and got it loaded up, we drove to Jacksonville Beach and drove around looking for hotels. Preferably with an ocean view. We ended up calling several and they were all sold out. This was a Saturday. We finally found one though. It was a wonderful hotel and the people were very nice. We had an awesome ocean view from our room!!

Here's Braden relaxing on our balcony looking out at the Atlantic Ocean.

We got dressed and headed straight for the beach!

We rented an umbrella, a table, 2 chairs and 2 boogie boards. We were ready for the day!











Jason helped the kids dig a big hole in the sand. They dug down until they reached water. They made a little kiddie pool for Gracie to swim in!


Rhett decided he was going to dig a trench all the way to the ocean.




Jason had been diving down into the waves and letting them carry him back to the shore. He did this when we were there the previous Sunday and he had been doing it all day. This was after his "one last time". The wave drug him down to the bottom and he hit his head on a rock. Ouch! He said it didn't really hurt that bad, but it sure looked bad. I was so thankful he didn't hit any harder because he could've easily been knocked out before I even knew what was going on. God was watching out for us!

When we got back to the room, we all showered and then ordered Papa Johns, our favorite pizza.
Here's the boys right after they finished their pizza and root beer. They were SO tired! We had to move them and pull out the couch bed for them.

Jason got up early and took this picture of the sunrise from our balcony on Sunday morning.

Then he and the boys took one last walk on the beach.

We pulled out of the hotel parking lot at 10am and headed for home. We drove all the way to West Memphis, Arkansas before we stopped. It was close to midnight before we got there.
The next morning, we only had about 5 or 6 hours to go before we got home, so it was nice to be able to get a slow start and we still made it home by 2pm on Monday.
It sure was hard to leave the beach, but once we got home, we were glad to be home and get back to "normal". We are all still looking at the pictures from our vacation every day and talking about our trip.
We've already been talking about our next cruise. The boys vote for Mexico next time. We'll see... :)