Whew!

What a week we had last week! We went down to see our daddies Saturday and Sunday and spent a lot of time eating good food and lounging around.

On Father's Day, a whole lot of this went on...



and this...


We came home late Sunday and then got up bright and early Monday morning for Audrey's first Vacation Bible School. I volunteered for the first time this year-- they put me in the nursery! The first day we had 15 babies and 2 adults. They split our class and I had 8 babies with 3 teenage helpers. Unfortunately, the church has a policy that no one under the age of 19 can hold babies. SO.... they were not must help. By the end of that first day, 2 other adults came in to help me and it was much easier. I was still ready to quit VBS, though! By the end of the week, we had 5 adults and 6 babies. It was a breeze!!! I may volunteer again next year!

Audrey cares nothing about the swing at our house but fell asleep in the one at the nursery two days in a row!



She also loved playing with Gracie..


..and this activity garden. Just about every time I looked for her, she was playing in this garden!




I helped host a surprise retirement party for a friend from work on Monday night. When I first started working at Liberty Park, Kellie was a life-saver! She told me all the ends and outs of how to survive and be a good teacher there. I love her! She's a great friend. You would think that since I love her so much and that this party was in her honor I would have gotten her picture, right? Wrong. But here's one of the hostesses and another of the party goers..


This is Brooke, isn't she cute? She just had a baby about 5 months ago and she is as big as my pinkie. Just precious. Really- I'm not jealous at all.


I stayed up entirely too late that night visiting with everyone. I didn't get home until midnight and didn't get in the bed until 1:00AM!!! It was lots of fun but this gal is not used to that!!

This sweet child showed up on Tuesday to "babysit" and to go to VBS with us.


She's just perfected her back walk-over so we did LOTS of this all week..


After VBS on Wednesday, we went and did a little shopping. We also met up with Audrey's cousin, Garrett for some ice cream! Gotta love the DQ!

Notice how he has his arm around Audrey, so sweet!

Here's one of Audrey and Gracie. Audrey learned to push this week also! Hee...Hee..


After ice cream, we went to the pool and swam for a little while. Gracie spends lots of time in her Granny and Paw Paw's pool and she can swim like a fish! She was lots of entertainment for Audrey.

Audrey has four teeth now and she likes to put everything in her mouth and practice using those teeth on whatever it is she wants in her mouth. Last week she was pulling on my pants leg, wanting me to pick her up. I couldn't get to her and the next thing I knew she'd bitten my knee. It didn't hurt so I didn't make a big deal of it.

Well.... when we were in the pool Wednesday, she was getting tired and ready to go. She began sucking on my shoulder (gross, I know, but whatever!) and what do you know? She bit me again. This time it hurt!!!! It hurt so bad that I had to pull her off of me. When I said, "No. No. That hurts Mommy!" She puckered her bottom lip out and began to cry! Poor thing! I really don't think she meant to bite me,
right?

She bit me Wednesday and this photo was taken Sunday.


We wrapped our busy week up with my Mom coming up on Thursday to keep Audrey so Clay and I could go to a Sugarland concert. It was a LOT of fun!! They can really put on a show. My favorite song they sang was "Love Shack". HAHAHAH!

Momma stayed until Saturday and we spent Friday shopping and bee-bopping.

We planned to rest Saturday and recuperate from our week but VBS bit Audrey in the booty. She got a fever of 103.6 Saturday morning with a rash. We took her to the dr. and he said it was a 24 hour virus and to just give her tylenol/motrin for the fever. The rash would be gone by Monday. It's still here and she's still fighting a fever. It's not nearly as high (hovers around 100) but we keep her medicated.

Another baby that was in the nursery last week had the same symptoms this weekend and when his momma took him to the dr., he was diagnosed with Hand/Foot/Mouth disease. I have diagnosed Audrey-bug with the same thing! It's supposed to last for 7days and this will be day 4. The only treatment is the tylenol/motrin.

So, please pray that Audrey's little body will be able to successfully fight this off and that she will be back to her cheery little self soon!Hopefully she won't have it for 7 days!

One more thing,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOMMA!! My sweet Momma is celebrating today! Oh, Happy, Happy Day!

2c

2c, originally uploaded by beccadt33.

A girl who is in my Mom's group wanted to take some pictures of Audrey in order to build her porfolio. Check them out!! They are "tu-tu" cute!! Hee....Hee...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11488697@N06/sets/72157619842729814/

If you can't copy and paste the link, try clicking on the picture itself. I think it will take you to her flickr stream. :)

Eight

Eight years ago today, Clay and I were walking down the aisle.

We met at an electric cooperative during the summer of 1997. I was a student worker there (and fresh out of highschool) and he was a co-op engineer. We went on our first date in September of that year. Up until that point I had a curfew of 10:30 and I was not allowed to go out of town with anyone. Being that we only had fast food and the Golden Corral-- that usually made for some pretty swanky dates! When Clay called to ask me "out" I was so excited! I remember taking the call upstairs, listening to Clay ask me, telling him that I would call him back because I had to ask my parents and then RUNNING downstairs to ask them if I could go. I was certain that they would say no because they didn't know Clay's momma, daddy, granddaddy, aunt, uncles, cousins, brothers, etc. and he wanted to take me to a town an hour and a half away. You can't even imagine my surprise when they didn't even hesitate and said yes immediately. A little background-- my daddy also worked at the electric cooperative and he knew Clay long before I ever met him. Clay apparently made an impression on him! We went out a bit that fall and the next year but Clay went back to Auburn and I was focused on being a freshman and doing all that freshmen do! We didn't seriously date until I moved to Troy in the fall of 1998. The rest is history...

December of 1997 at Clay's brother's wedding.

Easter of 1998 at Clay's parents house

Christmas of 2000, Clay's parent's house

My undergraduate graduation, Troy University,2001

Our wedding day, June 2001

Clay's Christmas Party at Farley Nuclear Plant, 2002

Gatlinburg,2003

Bridesmaid-- Kim and Jason Jones' Wedding, 2003


Asheville, NC, 2004-- Loved visiting the Biltmore!!


Tybee Island, 2004- A hurricane was brewing in the Atlantic..


Charleston, 2004-- We just about killed ourselves walking all over this city. It was in the middle of July and it was sweltering! We didn't want to miss anything though!!


Valentine's Day, Savannah, GA, 2005


Sapelo Island, 2005


Cumberland Island, 2005


Camping in Helen, GA, 2005


Chattanooga,TN, 2005-- This was at the very end of 2005. We went to celebrate the New Year with two other couples. FUN!!


Key West, 2006


Allardt, TN, Thanksgiving, 2006


Christmas, 2007- We had just told my parents that we were expecting!


8 months pregnant with Audrey, 2008


Audrey's Baptism, 2009

Happy Anniversary Clay!!

Tricks

Audrey has gotten pretty good at standing alone. Now she wants to do it all the time!

Please excuse the diaper-- we have to tie her dress up so she can crawl and we don't wear "panties" at home. It's too much trouble!!


This photo is of her standing and waving "bye-bye".

This is my attempt at a gaussian blur with photoshop. I don't have time to adjust the settings on my camera these days to make the foreground sharp and the background blurry (and honestly I don't remember how to anyway). All those photography classes in college went out the window when I started using a digital SLR. It's too easy to manipulate an image in Photoshop. It doesn't always turn out the best but I'm not a pro so I am happy with what I can get. :)

Before:


After:


Here's a different photo with a bit less blur. I'm not sure which one I like the most. I have a tendency to overdue things with photoshop-- I put too many actions or filters or adjust the color too much. I have to reign myself in frequently-- or better yet, Clay does! He's got a good eye...

Before:


After:



One more thing-- I hope I used "too" appropriately in this post and if I didn't I hope none of my students read this one! I am "to, too" lazy to look it up right now!

Rockin' Smockin'

Before I actually became a stay-at-home momma (SAHM) I thought I would have tons of time to do lots of wonderful projects around the house. I love to paint, sew, smock, decorate, read blogs and books, take photos-- basically anything crafty. I assumed that because I would no longer have a "job" that I would have 8 or so extra hours a day to do those things. I know that you other SAHM are laughing at me right now and you working mommas are rolling your eyes-- bear with me. I do have more time to *think* about the things I want to do but I don't have anymore time to do them. I just don't have the added pressure of having to plan and think about work at the same time. I don't know who I thought was taking care of those babies so that all those SAHM's would have time to sew and cook and do all those other lovely things. I guess I just thought they napped all the time?!? Ignorance is bliss sometimes!

I have actually gotten a few sewing projects from my pile completed in the past few weeks. Notice I said weeks! These would normally take me a few uninterrupted hours to do but I have to space the "working" time out throughout Audrey's naps.

First-- Lesa smocked this dress so long ago we can't remember for sure if she actually smocked it. I know it wasn't me because I just learned how to do those lazy-daisy stitches so it must have been her!



When I found it, it was at the bottom of a box of old fabric. It had been smocked but the dress had not been constructed. I REALLY do not like sewing itty-bitty bishops together (I've only done one and it was a nightmare) so I sent it to a lady in Greenville that does heirloom sewing. She constructed it but didn't hem it.



I finished the hem and ta-da! Audrey has a sweet little blue bishop!


Another dress I found in that same pile of fabric is a dress that I started way back in 2002. It was a dress that was supposed to be Meredith Grace's Easter present for her very first Easter. Apparently I gave her something else!! When I found it I remembered why I made it but I couldn't remember what smocking plate I used. Notice how the sleeves are blue, green and pale pink?



Now look at the neckline smocking.



Odd, huh?
I could not figure out why in the world I would have smocked those colors on the sleeves but only smocked white on the neckline. I put that dress back in the pile of fabric and thought about it for a couple of days. It finally dawned on me.


The smocking plate is called "Party Ribbons" and I couldn't find it anywhere around this house!! I am cutting myself some slack about that though because I have moved three times since I actually smocked the dress. I eventually found a new one in Greenville.

This is the front of the dress. I think next time I will use wider ribbons. Maybe polka-dot? Something fun and less fru-fru I think.


The ribbons hang down about half-way down the back of the dress. I am glad they are in the back because Audrey would love to chew on them if she could get her hands on them!






My next project is to finish some curtains for the bathroom in Tennessee. After that, I need to finish the curtains for Audrey's playroom. I started those when I was still pregnant. Isn't that sad?

I then plan to make Audrey some t-shirts that have an "A" on them. I found some precious fat quarters of Amy Butler fabric on ebay. They are the perfect size to make monograms out of. I also found some tee-niney shorts at Target that were on clearance for a dollar. I think that combining a cute little "A" shirt with those shorts will make an adorable play outfit for Audrey this summer.

I read somewhere that if you write things on your blog it will make you more accountable for those things. We'll see......