USM Golden Eagle Basketball.

David has been able to be a part of some really neat things since we have been in Hattiesburg, one of them being the Rotary club, which meets each Wednesday morning at the Wesley Hospital.  This week, David was in charge of supplying the speaker for the meeting.  Now, it's no secret that my husband loves the game of basketball.  And he was quite the baller in his day.  He may or may not still hold some records in the state of Arkansas.  I'll let you know for sure after the state tournament this spring.  I digress.  Our family has made an effort to embrace all things USM.  In the fall we tailgated at football games.  We also attended the homecoming parade downtown.  Last spring, David and Carter went to several baseball games.  This winter, we took the children to their first college basketball game.  A few months ago, our church hosted the USM men's basketball team on a Sunday for worship and lunch.  Sadly, I missed this event because I was home with a sick little one.  This was David's first chance to meet Coach Tyndall, the men's head coach.  Then, just before Christmas David was in the hospital (I think I shared this before), and Coach Tyndall called him at the hospital to check on him.  I remember clearly because I was the one to answer the phone.  David had not had surgery yet and could not talk very well, but I told him that he was going to want to take this call!  How neat!  Yesterday morning, Coach Tyndall was the speaker at the Rotary Club, and he brought his whole coaching staff with him.  And David got to have his picture made with them!  So fun! David later told me that this was one of the largest groups they've had at Rotary in quite some time.  

Coach Tyndall is the one to David's left.  SMTTT!

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Baller!

Carter and Summer are playing Upward basketball this season, and last week they had their first practice.  It was Summer's very first time, and I was so proud of how well she did.  

I walked her over to meet her coach, and she didn't even bat an eye.  I was so proud of my girl!  

This is Carter's second year to play.  And you'll notice his handsome coach?  Yes, David is coaching again!  Such a good man! 

So for the next few weeks, you'll find our party of six hitting the gym on Saturdays to watch our big two play a little basketball.  

Before we know it, Tilly and Story will be joining them, and I have no idea how we will keep up then, ha!

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We like to party!

This past weekend was full of fun.  Fun parties!  Saturday morning, we started our day celebrating this pretty 9 year old.  

Linlee is party of the "B" family.  I've talked about them before.  We kind of like them.  A lot.  

 Her party was at Planet Gymnastics, and my children had the most fun.  

 They got to run and jump and climb and play.  What more could you want from a party?  Oh, and they had this king cake that was to die for, so yummy!

 Carter and Summer enjoyed the balance beams the most.  Their goal was to walk on each of them before we left, and they did!

 Story and Tilly had run rolling and playing.  

 There was also a really neat trampoline, and Story spent most of her time there.  She was so cute to watch!  

 We sang to the birthday girl, ate yummy king cake, and played until it was time to go!

 Then, we ran home to put the girls down for naps before heading out again, just Carter and me to celebrate a handsome 7 year old.  

 Aidan had a Mario birthday party, complete with a scavenger hunt and lots of time to ride bikes and scooters.  

I enjoyed meeting and talking to some new mommas, and Carter had so much fun having so many boys to play with!  We are again reminded of how good God has been to provide some really sweet friends for us here in Hattiesburg!  

What I'm loving.

One my sweet friends and fellow mommy of four posted many months ago on her blog something that she was loving, and it definitely piqued my interest.  We live in an older home with the original hardwood floors, which I love, but they are so hard to keep clean.  And those of you who know me well can testify that I'm all about some clean.  This is my new toy, the Bissel Pet Vacuum, I bought it with an Amazon gift card from Christmas and some Amazon points I accumulated via Swagbucks.  If you don't know about Swagbucks, you are really missing out! I'd be happy to send you a referral, if you'd like.  Or, you can scroll down to the bottom of my blog and find my Swagbucks widget, and go from there!

I know this sounds super silly, but this vacuum has literally changed my life.  I was spending hours each week sweeping and mopping.  I've vacuumed the whole house twice now since I got my new toy, and it takes me less than an hour!  Awesome!  This got me to thinking.  Because my friend shared about something she loved so much, I benefited from it, greatly!  I thought I would share a few other things that I am really loving these days.  Here's another.  

My mom is always sending me her bonuses from Clinique, and I love that about her.  For Christmas, she sent me a bonus that had this stuff in a little tube, and I just love it.  I typically use their dramatically different moisturizer, but I may have been persuaded to make the switch.  It's not at all greasy, and it makes my face so soft.  Speaking of lotion, here's another product I'm really loving, too.  

Can you tell I'm a lotion fanatic?  I love it, but being pregnant ruined a lot of smells for me.  No complaints here, I just cannot stand the sweet and fruity smells that used to be some of my favorites.  I usually use Jergens, but even that smell seems to bother me.  I'm funny about lotions, too.  I don't like for them to be too greasy.  In the summertime, I use a lighter one, but during the winter season, I want something that is going to keep the dry skin at bay.  This Suave lotion really does the trick, and it's pretty cheap, too!  

Oh my goodness!  Have you seen it?  David and I went for our anniversary date, and I love loved it!  In fact since then, I cannot seem to get enough.  I'm constantly playing my newly created Pandora station and reading up on it as much as I can.  I downloaded the free book to my Kindle, but I have not had a chance to read it yet.  I'm ashamed to say that I am a new fan.  I have yet to see it on Broadway, but you can bet your bottom dollar I will one day!  I highly recommend the movie, and if you're looking for a friend to go with you, I'm your girl! Lastly, I will leave you with a Pinterest find.  Who doesn't love all things Pinterest?  Well, I am thinking some have a love/hate relationship with it, but I really love it.  I have learned so much and gotten so many good ideas.  Here's one of my recent finds:  

My friend, Alisa, introduced me to these awesome ponytails holders, but they can be pretty pricey in stores.  I found on Pinterest that there is indeed a better and cheaper way, yay!  The girls over at this blog tell you exactly how it's done.  I'm proud to say that I've ordered elastic from the company they recommend twice, and I've been very pleased both times.  My girls and I are loving these new ponytail holders!  We've given several away for Christmas presents, too.  Here is a picture of one that I made.  

I think they are so pretty, and the greatest thing about them is when you take your hair out of the ponytail, you don't have the awful crease in your hair!  Well, that's clearly enough information for one post!

A weekend full of fun!

This past weekend was so. much. fun.  You know the kind of weekend where the whole time you're just excited about what's next?  Yea, that's us!  Friday, we started our evening off with having catfish with sweet friends.  We call them the B's.  And I didn't take a single picture of us together.  After catfish, our wild group was not quite ready to call it a night, so we took our family date night to the next level.  And the hot light was on, so how could we not?  

Oh, my how I love these five!

Saturday, we started our morning sweating at the gym.  We needed to after catfish AND krispy kreme, ha!  Then, Saturday evening our oldest girls were invited to their first birthday party where I left them!  They were SO excited! 

The party was an UNslumber party, hosted by some of our sweet church friends.  The girls all wore their pajamas to the party, but they didn't spend the whole night.  What a clever idea! 

Summer and Tilly had so much fun.  They decorated pillow cases, painted their piggies, bobbed for doughnuts, ate pancakes and played with their baby dolls.  Meanwhile  . . .

David and I had a double date with Carter and Story.  So fun!  Carter was giving Story the low down about how much fun dates are with Mommy and Daddy.  We took them to supper at Chili's because we wanted to go somewhere we could watch the Broncos and Ravens play.  My love is a little partial to a certain Peyton Manning.  During supper, David asked Carter what he wanted to be when he grew up.  He said, "I want to be a preacher because that's the only one (job) that only works one day a week!"  What!  David and I were rolling! 

After supper, we strolled around Gander Mountain to make room for a little dessert, 32 degrees or as Carter calls it, 22 degrees!  

David and I were sitting at supper with our "bookends," and we were talking about how we are going to blink and our girls and boy will be going to slumber parties, the real thing and out on dates, gasp!  I hope we are doing our best to treasure these moments with our sweet littles.  It just goes by so very fast! 

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They finally got one.

Monday, David picked Carter up from school, and they hit the woods.  The deer woods, that is.  

And they got one!  In the words of Carter: A BIG, FAT BUCK!  He was so excited when we told me.  

How proud do they look? David said that Carter was so much fun to watch.  As soon as David shot the deer, Carter took off running out of the stand across the field to pick up the head of the deer.  Gross.  David had another proud moment when he got home.  Our three little girls, all clean and pretty fresh from their baths ran out wanting to see and touch the dead deer!  He loved it!

And since they finally got one, I can have my boys back for the remainder of the winter!  Maybe!

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You can't spell sugar without UGA!

Well, you can't.  

Anyway, thanks one of our sweet friends from church, we found ourselves with a few tickets to a sweet little game.  We felt like the Sugar Bowl needed a few UGA fans in the superdome! While it would've been much sweeter if our beloved dawgs had been there, it was still so much fun for our boys to go!  

David and Carter went with Ben and Conner Berteau, also big fans of the game.  

I love this picture of Carter.  You think he's a wee bit excited about beignets and hot chocolate?  I think so!  Carter proudly wore his new Saints jersey and according to David, he was a big hit in the quarter.  So cute!

I'm super jealous that they went to eat here.  David was super surprised at how few people there were in the big easy for the Sugar Bowl.  They walked right in Camellia Grill and ate their hearts out.  We have tried so many times in the past to eat here, and it was always packed.  

The field during the National Anthem. Love the red, white, and blue.  

And there are the boys!  With their cotton candy!  

I love how my fellas are making fun memories together.  I mean, how many kids get to go to the Sugar Bowl when they are only 6?! So cool!  Meanwhile . . .

The girls enjoyed a yummy and somewhat crazy supper at Newks!  

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Something is missing.

David took Tilly last Friday to get her cast off!  She has been so excited for this day.  

I asked David to take some pictures of her because this is so blog worthy, and this is what he sent me.  Nice!

Anyway, they took another xray, and her arm is completely healed.  She wanted to keep her cast because it has lots of sweet autographs on it, but boy does it smell pretty terrible! 

Tilly did get a nice little brace to wear for the next two weeks just for precaution for our little busy one. The nice thing about the brace is that she can take it off for baths, yay!  No more plastic bags!  We will go back in one more week for our final appointment.  So thankful.  

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Christmas in Georgia.

David and I spent a lot of time before having children talking about what we wanted our holiday time to look like with children.  We readily agreed that it was important for us to have traditions with our little family, but we also recognized the importance and our desire of seeing our extended family during the holiday season as well.  Because (and I'm thankful, ha) neither one of us married the hometown boy or girl, our families don't live in the same town or even the same state, so this makes holiday time tricky!  Once Carter was  born, we set our plan of waking up at our home on Christmas morning into motion.  David and I both have great memories of waking up Christmas morning and running out of our rooms to see what Santa brought!  We also have sweet memories of having Christmas with our grandparents, and we want the same for our children.  While we have been known to travel on Christmas afternoon, we typically wait until the day after to hit the road to see family.  That's just what we did this year.  Christmas Eve, we had a beautiful service at our church.  David had all of the children come forward, and he read to them the Christmas story from Luke 2.  After church, we went to see the Lewis Lights with some dear friends.  Christmas morning the children woke up a little after 7:00 (I'll take it!), and we opened presents together.  Just us.  They were so much fun and so excited and so thankful!  Shamefully, I did not take any pictures Christmas morning.  What kind of momma does that?  I guess the one who was tearing off tags and opening boxes and brushing doll baby hair, ha!  Christmas evening we had some sweet friends over for Christmas supper.  We hosted, Mrs. Ward, one of our adopted widows and Josh and Lucy, our college minister and his wife.  It was so much fun to have people in our home who did not have any other family in town.  We've been that family before, and it is so nice when someone else includes you for a special meal.  I'm so thankful we were able to do that this year!  The next morning we were up and at 'em ready to head to Georgia!  We spent three days with my sister and her family.  While we were there, we did get to see my mom and her husband for a bit.  My mom's husband is a huge Notre Dame football fan, as his brother went there, so he and David had much game to talk about.  My mom had surgery the Friday before Christmas, so she is still recovering.  We are so thankful everything went well, and she is expected to make a full recovery.  David and I also saw some special friends along the way.  We spent one morning at Mall of Georgia to let the kids play.  While there, I spent time with my college roommate and her family, what a treat!  I also saw another sweet friend in the mall, Stephanie.  And then, out of the clear blue (pun intended) David ran into his BFF, Blue Bryan, who just happened to be passing through with his family.  I later told Blue's wife, also Heather, that I really wish she could have witnessed the reunion as I did, it was really precious!  Those two are quite a pair!  

Friday morning, we took the children to this place.  Cabbage Patch Kids were my favorite dolls growing up.  I must have had at least 8 of them.  My mom and grandmother took my sister and me to Babyland when we were little, but it sure didn't look like this!  I love the new location and house, so pretty and beautifully decorated from Christmas.

How cute and peculiar!

Mother Cabbage and yes, we were able to witness the birth and adoption of a cabbage patch baby while we were there; it was awesome!  And hilarious!  My favorite line was : Mother Cabbage is dilated approximately 10 leaves, so funny!

The next few pictures are some of the sights you can see at Babyland.  

They do it up right, as you can plainly see.  Just before the live birth, we spotted one of our seminary friends, Mark, (who worked FUGE with me in Charleston the same summer I met David) and his family.  It was so much fun to meet their children and catch up for a bit.  The Lord just really ministered to our hearts on this visit allowing us to see such dear friends.  Isn't He sweet like that? 

I love this picture of the cousins, they are saying Peanut butter and jelly!  

Another cousin shot!  These guys had so much fun playing together during our visit.  Carter is a real trooper with all these girls!

Our little family.  

We left Georgia the next morning and headed home to Mississippi.  It's so good to be home.  We had just a few days at home before the children all went back to school.  It was wonderful to have so many days off to spend together and with family.  We hope each of you had a very Merry Christmas, and we wish you a very Happy New Year! 

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