My first official Pinterest project

I've been trying to get on Pinterest for months. I was sent an invite that I guess was accidentally deleted. Then I was stuck. The system wouldn't let me on because I hadn't registered, but my email address was in the system so it wouldn't send me another invite.
Then one day, while talking with a friend, the light bulb came on! I have 2 other email addresses! Voila! They sent me an invite!
Now I see what all the obsession has been about.... Yawn... I haven't stayed up too late this many nights in a row since I was reading The Hunger Games books :)

I've got lots of ideas brewing, but finding the time and money to do them is a whole 'nother thing.

But, I'm pretty proud of my 1st official "stole it from Pinterest" project.

So, truthfully, lest you be sorely disappointed I should tell you right now that I use the term "project" very loosely...

Pantry door organization





No, you may not see pictures of the rest of my pantry. It is not pretty- take my word for it. But, it is now a work in progress, thanks to this little less than $5 organizing genius.

After I did this, my recycling bin was FULL of flattened boxes. It seriously freed up SO much space.

Gotta go-- there's more little projects to be done!! :)

She's a Beauty Queen!!!

About a month or so ago, Gracie competed in the Little Miss HBHS pageant. She had been counting down the days to this and she was so excited!

It was quite a day. We were at practice for a few hours in the morning, then we began getting ready about 2 hours before we had to be there, we had to be there 1 hour before the pageant started AND the pageant lasted from 7-10:30! LONG day! But it was a very fun day and she was in a happy mood throughout the whole day.

Here she is in the backstage room waiting on it to start:

Here she is with one of her friends from school:

Here's a few pictures & a video of her on stage:

We were just so tickled at how great she did!!!

The first little pageant she did was totally different, but she was really nervous and wanting to back out of doing it all together right before she went on stage.

This time, she was ready for it and not nervous at all. In her division it was K-2nd and she was the tiniest little thing up there! (Except for her sweet little friend- they are the same age)

Here's a video of all of the girls in her division back out on stage one more time.

You can tell that by the end of this part, she was trying REALLY hard to keep that smile on her face :) And she was squinting in the lights trying to find us too :)

And the winner is....

Go Gracie! We were so excited!!!

2012 Little Miss HBHS!!

She can't wait until next year's pageant already :)

New dresser

A while back, Jason and I finally bought ourselves a new set of bedroom furniture. Well, not new, but new to us! We bought it from a friend. It was in great condition and we got a good deal!
And by finally, I mean, we've been married almost 13 years and had never bought bedroom furniture for ourselves. We bought a new mattress in 2001, but were still using our childhood dressers that we stole from our parents when we got married! :)

Some of the kids needed new dressers, so I decided to start by refinishing my old dresser for Gracie.

Before: I had already started taking the hardware off before this pic.



During:



After:



The picture is washed out. It's really a pretty bright turquoise color. You can kind if tell the true color in the 2nd pic above.
The knobs are different on each drawer and we got them 1/2 off at Hobby Lobby. Score!

She loves her new dresser and so do I!!

20.6 down!

Great news to report! As of this morning, I'm down 20.6 lbs!!! 11.4 to go to reach my goal! Feeling good about it! I'm just so thrilled with how the Weight Watchers is working for me and how it's taught me how and how much I should be eating. It really has been so easy. Making exercise a priority isn't easy for me to do, but I know that has been a huge part of being successful with the weight loss. Seeing results is helping me to stay motivated and stick with it.

Weekend trip to LR

Last weekend we went to Little Rock for the weekend. Big B had a couple soccer games on Saturday and we decided to stay the night and have a little family fun.
I admit that I purposely left all cameras at home. I figured that I had already packed enough stuff... And we already have about 95,000 pictures of B playing soccer :)
But, as soon as we got there, I immediately regretted it!
Especially since B played one of his best games ever. Where was my video camera?????!!!!! Bad Mamma!
So-- here is highlights of the weekend via iPhone pics.

Warming up in goal before kick-off. So handsome in all of his matching orange and yellow Adidas gear. Such a little stud. Yes, I'm bragging!
Game highlights: An assist from goal, a penalty kick block AND a goal! Go Big B!! I've decided that I'm going to try to start keeping track of how many goals he stops in total. That way if he ever gets down and tries to blame a loss on himself, I can remind him how many goals he prevented.







Soccer, Krispy Kremes, Papa John's and swimming will wear big boys out!






Visiting the State Capitol























Clinton Library

Here's Rhett sitting in the President's chair in the Cabinet Room.






Three little rugrats on display!!!





Gracie has been learning about Arkansas at school, and was so excited to see the displays of Dizzy Dean memorabilia in the STL Cardinals exhibit. He was one of the famous Arkansans she'd learned about!





And don't worry about Pippa. She was being loved on by our friends!!
I got this pic of her napping while we were gone :)

19 months

Today marks 19 months on the wait list.
Some days I'm totally ok with it. Some days I'm totally not ok with it.
That's about all I can say :) hard to put how I feel into words. The longer the wait, the more I can see some of God's purpose in the wait for me and our family.
I guess I can't yet say with total sincerity that I'm thankful for the wait itself, but I can say that I'm thankful for what that has been accomplished in and through us in the wait. Wow! Does that even make sense? It does in my head:)
This past week, I got to hang out a little bit with my friends/local fellow adoption Mammas. (missed a few to sickness :( )
It just does my heart SO good to be around a group of godly women who KNOW exactly what I'm thinking and feeling. It's that common bond we share that is special.
Especially special was that 3 of my Mamma friends had their children in their arms this time! No need for sharing pictures! We got to smile and marvel at those precious children in real life!
I'm so thankful for what God has done in those families and for the hope that it gives me that one day we will be holding our sweet girl in our arms too!
Happy 19 months!

Another weighty update

Good news on this update! I've still been losing weight each week! Last week it was only .2 lbs. I was discouraged because I've been working out really hard and eating within my plan with NO exceptions. As a matter of fact, I haven't even been using all of my extra points (plus points) that are available for me to use.
BUT-- instead of giving up and eating a cheeseburger and a milkshake, I just told myself to keep going. So I did!
This morning, my weekly weigh in showed 1.6 lbs lost!
That makes a grand total of 17 pounds lost since Jan 1st!
This week I have a lot going on and I'm probably not going to get in 60- 90 minutes a day at the gym like I have been. As long as I watch my eating and exercise as much as I can, I think I'll be ok!
15 more pounds to go until I reach my goal! I'm over halfway! I can do this!!