Just Checking In

Well, I don't really have a lot to blog about tonight, so I'll just check in and do a quick update.  Today has been another beautiful day!  Tori went to her math lab today even though she doesn't normally go to school on Tuesdays.  Thomas had a great day and came home telling me he had so much fun playing in the centers!  They are having red week at school and every day he has to wear something red.  He has learned the Spanish word for red...roho (maybe that is how you spell it HA!).  He has gotten up everyday and is ready to go!  He is so excited about his birthday that is coming up Friday.  I can't believe he will be 5 years old!

This is just something I want to remember from yesterday.  Thomas and I went on Daddy's old blue truck to work so that we could carry some things to a needy family and we went through the dirt road which Thomas LOVES to do!  This is our conversation:
Thomas:  Mama, why do people put signs on their land saying do not hunt on my land?
Me:  Well, the people that own the land want to be the only ones hunting on their land and they don't like people hunting without them knowing about it.
Thomas:  Well, why not?  All the land belongs to God anyway!
HA!  I think he's got it!  He does listen in church!

Here Tori is working on her toenails and Sparky would just love to help.  He will do anything to get out of taking a bath!  I hope the rest of the week is like the past 2 days...pretty uneventful...that's good!!

Corn Hole

Today was another gorgeous day with a touch of fall in the air.  We went to church and had a really good crowd for us.  We ate lunch with Bon Jean as usual on Sundays.  Cindy grilled steaks and we had baked potatoes, salad and rolls.  It was really yummy!

After church Tori, Bon Jean, and I went to the hospital to see Adam's Daddy and I am happy to say that he was having a much better day!  God is so good!  I just hope and pray he continues to have good days!  We got back just in time to go to choir practice which went really well.  We are working on songs for our revival and Homecoming that is just around the corner.

After church tonight we all ended back up at Mother's for a very intense corn hole game!  Corn hole is so fun and it is so addicting.  We played until it got so dark we couldn't see. Tim, Tana, Lainey, Lindsey and Danielle came over and played too!

Collins had to think about if she wanted to play or not! HA!  She is so cute I could eat her up with a spoon!

Collins and I were just watching the game...she really don't want to be held, she would much rather be crawling around seeing what she can find HA!

Sparky doesn't really get too much into the game yet.

However, others DO get into the game HA!

My two most favorite people in the whole wide world!!! Cora (aka Tori) and Sparky (aka Thomas)!

Stay At Home Day

Today has been a beautiful "stay at home day"  as Thomas likes to call it.  We have just stayed home all day and it has been wonderful!!  Mother made a delicious lunch and I made an apple pie for dessert.  It was yummy!  This afternoon we worked on the beauty shop.  I am cleaning it out and I plan to paint the inside of it and put down new flooring.  It is in pretty bad shape and I am in the mood for a project!  Mother came down and helped me...I threw away a lot of stuff!  I'm not nearly finished but it already looks a lot better!  Campbell got her ears pierced today!  She has been waiting all week for today so that she could go and get her ears pierced!  Cindy said she did really well and they looked so cute on her!  We all ended back up at Mother's tonight and I was able to get a picture of the new earrings!

Campbell is sooo proud of her new earrings!  She kept saying before she left that we better get a good look at her because she was going to look different when she came home.  She said she wanted some sparkly earrings.  Cindy said she kept saying she was a little nervous HA!! Bless her heart....but she did great!

This is my attempt to get a picture of all three of them HA!!! It is just about impossible to do!

Yep Sparky (AKA Thomas) had him a stay at home day and it was right up his alley!  He has played nonstop today.  He has played tractors and trucks, he has played down in Steve's shop, he and Steve flew a kite because the wind was blowing so much!.  He has loved every minute of just being at home!

Tori is with Adam tonight at the hospital.  His Daddy is still not feeling well.  I just pray that God will see fit to heal him!  Adam's family is going through such a hard time right now...my thoughts and my prayers are with them!

Friday Eve

Thursday is one of my favorite days of the week, because the next day is Friday!  This week has gone by pretty fast.  Thomas had a great day today.  He even had a great morning...he never once mentioned not wanting to go to school and he ate his whole "Harvey's" biscuit on the way to school!  Tori had the day off, but Collins had a rash, so the daycare called Cindy to come get her.  So, Cindy and Tori took her to Dr. Jim in Wetumpka and she has foot, hand, and mouth disease and she is getting molars!  She is a really good sport about it though!  She and Campbell stayed with us for a little while tonight while Cindy went to a meeting at school and Dodd was also working at the school.  Thomas and Campbell played so well together tonight!

Campbell and Thomas played the Wii for a long time and Campbell wanted me to get a picture of her twirling around...not sure what Thomas was doing!

Tori and Collins were just "hanging out"!  Collins feels bad...but I think it is mostly from her teething.  She was still a very busy little girl! HA!!

They rode the dune buggy a little while right before it got dark and they kept pretending they were on a trip to Alaska HA!!  They kept saying they were going to see polar bears and eskimos.  They have HUGE imaginations!!  Tori left going to the hospital tonight about 8:45 p.m. because Adam's Dad is in the hospital.  He is having some problems and Adam was coming home, so Tori wanted to go be with Adam and his family.  I am praying for complete healing for Adam's Daddy, so many people are praying for him and I know our God is the great physician and there isn't a prayer that goes unheard!

Half Way There!

It is Wednesday....we are half way through the week and looking forward to the week-end!  Tori has now got 2 weeks of college under her belt and Thomas has almost 2 weeks of K-4 behind him!  I got up this morning to a shower full of ants...yipee!!  Tonight when we came home from church Steve had ants in his closet.  You just never know where they will show up next!!  I know God put them here for a purpose....but I mean they have the whole world, why do they want to live in OUR house????  Oh well, we had a great day today and a good time at church.  I made sunshine cupcakes and they were so cute....but they tasted awful!!  Why I didn't just stick with a good ole cake mix, I'll never know.  But no, I had to make them from scratch and they were terrible!!

Mother cooked supper for us and Cindy and Dodd and the girls...it was really good.  It's always good when someone else cooks for you!

I can't believe Mother let me take her picture with Tori...she usually runs when someone gets out a camera HA!!

Tori helped out so much at church tonight!  She did the lesson, helped take care of Collins and cleaned up after everyone went outside....thanks Tori!!!

Tonight at church after we had our lesson and those AWFUL cupcakes we played corn hole.  We were first introduced to corn hole when we went to Georgia to visit Debbie and Charles.  Then Steve came home and made his own corn hole game.  It is very addicting!  Kids of ALL ages love it!!

That is ...most kids love corn hole, but not Sparky (aka Thomas)!  He just really wanted to lay around and grumble about not getting a turn or according to him, everyone was saying he was cheating HA!!  I'm so afraid when he gets his first report card it is going to say "doesn't play well with others!"

Tori and Collins were the spectators for the game.  Collins was pretty entertained the whole time!  Oh well, I have got to go and get Thomas to go to sleep...just one more day until Friday!!!

Cinnamon Rolls

Thomas is really liking him some cinnamon rolls these days!  He asks for these EVERY morning.  It used to be "Harvey's" biscuits (he is saying Hardee's), they are really Kelly's biscuits that he wanted every morning.  Then he discovered cinnamon rolls.  To begin with he wanted them plain with no icing....but now he wants them loaded down with icing!  It takes all I can do to just eat my old boring bowl of Cheerio's HA!  I have such a hard time figuring out what to send him in his lunch box...he is sooooo picky.  There is nothing on the menu at school for the whole month of August that he will even think about eating.  So, this morning I put cinnamon rolls in his lunch along with a Kelly's yeast roll...which he loves.  The boy is a bread lover for sure!  He for sure got that from me!!

Like his shirt says he is really "digging" cinnamon rolls!  He was ready to go to school this morning.  I thought we might have a rough morning, but it went really well.  Campbell wanted to ride with us and I think that helps him to keep his mind occupied on the way to school.  I love to listen to their conversations on the way to school!

Cindy, Campbell, and Collins came down and ate supper with us.  I tried out a new recipe...Bubble Up Enchilada's.  We had salad too and it was really good.  It was really quick and easy too.  I will make those again for sure!  Collins is so close to walking.  She can get from sitting on the floor to standing straight up without even using her hands...but she still won't take that first step.  It is just around the corner, though!

Tori has been really studying!  I think college is getting off to a busier start than she thought.  Since she only goes 2 days a week, she has those days crammed with classes!  She will be fine once she gets in the groove!

After supper Thomas wanted to go out and swing....I love this time of day, right before dark.  It finally cools off and you can actually stand it outside.  I think I am ready for fall and for cooler weather!!

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

We had a night off from church tonight so after our Sunday afternoon nap, Steve wanted to go work on his food plot to get ready for hunting season, so Thomas and I tagged along.  Tori was still taking her nap, so we didn't bother her...I'm sure she hates she missed it HA!!  Thomas was so excited to just get to ride the tractor with Steve...he is soooo easy to entertain at this age! 

Off to plow the food plot to get ready to kill the BIG ONE this year!

Max, Ruby, and I followed right behind them in the mule.

I can't believe the summer is almost over and Steve is getting ready for hunting season already!

Thomas was loving every minute of the tractor riding...Steve may have him a hunting partner this year!

After we got finished with the food plot, we went to work on cleaning up the inside of the camper to get ready to go camping at the lake in a couple of weeks.  I hadn't cleaned it since our beach trip and I had to put clean sheets on the beds and clean the bathroom and mop and sweep the floor.

Now the camper is all clean and ready to go again!  We will be headed to the lake for Labor Day.  Mother, Cindy, and Dodd and the girls are going too..they are taking the "Wild Cat" as Thomas likes to put it.  We are having Thomas' birthday party there...I think it will be a lot of fun!!

One Week Down

Whew!!! We made it through our first week of K-4 and college!  To celebrate, we promised Thomas we would go riding in the boat at the lake at night.  He has been wanting to do that and we were going to take a riverboat dinner cruise, but that didn't work out, so we just had our own dinner cruise last night at the lake!  It was a lot of fun.  Dan-Dan and Pop were already at the lake when we got there.  Dan-Dan had gotten all the "fixens" for turkey and ham sandwiches.  We made them on the boat and set up the table and dined on the pontoon dinner boat cruise.  We just had only one mishap...the boat quit Ha!!  But, Steve got it cranked right back up and we were back on track!  Thomas got to pull in a couple of fish!  Tori didn't make the cruise with us...I believe "lame" was the term she used about our dinner cruise HA!!  Oh, well she had already made plans to go to the ballgame and she and Adam ended up hitting up two ballgames in one night.  She spent the night with Bon Jean and we spent the night at the lake.  We didn't go back out on the boat before we came home.  We wanted to get home early because Steve had some things he wanted to get done. 
                                 

This was right before we left for our "cruise".  Thomas caught a fish!  Actually, Pop already had the fish hooked on the line, but Thomas didn't know that and he said he caught the first fish of the night! HA!

I just had to get a picture of these birds in the trees on the lake.  There were hundreds of white birds roosting in the trees.

Thomas LOVES helping Pop drive the boat!  He really thinks he is driving! He also likes to ride in Dan-Dan's lap!

It's amazing to me how good food taste when you are having a picnic, or camping, or on a pontoon boat out in the middle of the lake....those were some really good ham and turkey sandwiches!

Another thing Thomas likes to do at the lake is play in Pop's storage building.  It was soooo hot this morning, but Pop went out there with him for a little while so he could play.

This is Pop's pineapple plant and it actually has a little pineapple growing in it!  It is really a pretty plant! This has been an extra long post.  I hope our next week of K-4 and college goes as well as the first week!

Kid Say the Darndest Things!

I'm back-tracking since I was so busy last night I didn't get to do a post.  Wednesday nights are one of our busier nights because I try to cook when I get home from work before we go to church.  Steve and I have the children on Wednesday nights and we have a lot of fun with them.  Last night was no exception.  Every week we have our lesson and while doing our lesson we either make things from our lesson with play-doh or we study sign language with our lesson.  The kids really love making things from play-doh.  Last night our lesson was on Samson and how he became a slave.  Thomas asked the question "what is a slave?"  Campbell said I know what that is...that is what Santa Claus rides in..HA!!  She thought he said sleigh!  We all got a really big laugh!  Kids really do say the darndest things!!

After we get finished with our lesson we usually have a snack, but the air conditioning in the church wasn't doing right so the adults had to come over to the new building with us to do their lesson, so we didn't have snack.  We went outside and played bowling.  Thomas came up with the idea to set up paper cups and use a basketball to bowl...so that is what we did for a little while.

Steve is loving this....Collins is such a sweet baby!

Just Another Day

The weather has been gorgeous today!  I love being able to walk outside and not feel like you are walking into an oven.  Mother cooked supper tonight, so since I didn't have to cook and the weather was so great, Thomas and I stayed outside for a while for him to play in his sandbox.  He had a good day at school and was eager to tell me all about it.  He brought home his work for me to look at and he is doing so good!  I get so tickled at some of his stories.  He can say some of the funniest things.  This morning he asked me if this week would be the last week of school.  I told him that he was just getting started and he told me that he wasn't even five yet (Ha!  He has a good point).  I told him that he was going to K-4 and that was for kids that were still 4.  Then he looked at me and said OOOOOHHH!  Like he finally got ! Ha!

This is Thomas "in his element".  He is doing what he LOVES to do....play with trucks and tractors.  He has got the fake smile going on!  HA!!

And this is Tori in her element....doing what she LOVES to do...text!  She had a day off today.  She has a great schedule!  I think her day consisted of sleeping late and laying out in the sun and she did have a perfect day for that!  She did help me out by doing some things around the house for me...that helps me out soooo much!  It will be back to school tomorrow for Tori, but she is really excited about her classes, I think she is going to really like college!  I'm soooo proud of her!

First Day of School

Today was the first day of school for Tori and for Thomas!  Tori started college and Thomas started K-4 and they both had really good first days!  Thomas was pretty sad when I left him this morning, but he didn't cry and neither did I!  I was really proud of myself.  Tori is pretty excited about her classes too!  I think Thomas is going to be a great K-4 student and Tori is going to be a great college student!

                              

Tori was still getting ready and Thomas was already to go!  He got up bright and early for his first day.  Cindy, my sister, said she saw him in the lunch room today and he yelled "Hey Aunt Cindy".  She text me and told me that so that made me feel so much better.  He might have started out pretty sad but he ended up having a really good time and he is ready to go back tomorrow!

Campbell came down for pictures before she headed off to her first day of school.  I thought they looked so cute!  I think Campbell is going to really "take care" of Thomas at school! HA!  Thomas told me that he and Campbell held hands this afternoon to walk to Aunt Cindy's office and when they got there they got to draw with magic markers...he said that was "so Cool"!

Thomas was doing a little posing while we were waiting for his teacher.  The weather was really beautiful this morning while we were waiting.  I can tell there is a hint of fall in the air!

                                      
He was trying really hard to be a big boy!  He kept saying "bye bye mama" and waving his little hand.  That got to me A LOT!  But I held it together and blinked back the tears!  I am always glad when that first day is over.  I still remember those first days with Tori and now she is in college....so I'm going to cherish these days with Thomas too!!!