Addison's Belated Birthday Party

Although Addison's birthday was in August, it was a bad time to try and have a party since Kari and Alan were buying their house and still living with us. So, now that they're all settled, they had a party at their house for her.

This is a really good picture I got of Kirsten (Kari's sister) and Presleigh, her daughter. Unfortunately, Presleigh was sad because she wasn't getting as many presents as Addison. It was sort of a joint party. But anyway, this is Kirsten trying to console her and I just think it's precious.

This was Addison's biggest gift. Great, now I have to get Sydney one! Addison hasn't learned the fine art of steering yet and they did run over both my feet at one point. And yes, it hurt.

Sydney, being goofy while Addison opened gifts.

Look at these cute little doggie cakes! Too cute to eat, for sure.

Singing happy birthday to Addison and Presleigh. This was Addison's cake. A nemo cupcake cake. Cupcake cakes are so awesome! There's no cutting, people just grab a cupcake. I did one of these this year for Sydney's birthday.

And this is Kita (I'm sure I spelled that wrong). It's a friend of Alan's pet monkey. She's soooo cute! She was at Addie's party last year too. All and all, it was a very successful party and I think everyone had a good time.

Funny faces

Several weeks ago, when I went to Bowling Green to visit my friend, Chris's mom and dad took Chris, Sydney, and Cali to a local cave that was running an anniversary deal, cave tour for $1.25. Sydney really loved it, she loves anything that involves her older cousin, Cali. She just thinks she hung the moon! This is the gang above.

Sydney has been into making funny faces here lately. She thinks it makes me happy, so she does it alot when she's been bad to try to get me on her side again. These two are my favorites. Cali took these pics on their cave trip.

These pics are from several weeks ago when Addison spent the night with us. Sydney's been on us about it since they moved out and Sydney had stayed over at her house the week before. Addison missed her mommy, but otherwise, all went well. Here's Sydney above with another goofy face.

Awww, Sydney really loves her Mac (that's what we call her).

Sydney amazed me the other day. She asked me when her birthday was and I told her it was May 9th. She said "5-9-04" I said, yeah, that's it. Apparantly, when mom takes her to get her allergy shot every week, they have to give her birthday and so, she hears it alot and now knows it. The other day, she was at mom's house and my dad had to go pick up his truck from having his oil changed. I'm assuming mom took him down there, and they were getting ready to leave, but Sydney said they couldn't leave yet, she wanted to see pepaw pick up his truck. She thought he was really going to pick it up! I laughed so hard when mom told me this. So, once home, mom told my dad what Sydney thought, so he went out and pretended to try to pick up his truck. He told Sydney he couldn't do it and she told him to try the car next. How cute! It's funny how they take things so literally.

Sydney's been taking swim lessons now for a month and a half maybe and she's getting a lot less scared. Could she swim a lap, umm, no, but at least she's not as afraid. And that was really my goal for this class. She went under today for I think the first time in this class and she liked it. Well, then the teacher brought them out in the middle of the pool and wanted them to go under, come back up and paddle just a couple inches to her. Well, she didn't like that and I don't think any of the other kids did either. I have fun watching her though.

Wind Storm 08

We(me, Sydney, Jennifer (my ex sis in law), and Cali (my niece)) went out to eat after church, right after the wind started kicking up. I headed home after that and got within 2 miles maybe and there was a huge tree blocking the road with downed power lines. Now, I had dodged maybe 5 down trees up to this point, but I wasn't getting around this one. So, I had to head back out to the expressway, dodging those trees again, head up to the next city (17 miles), and head back that way, cut over taking back roads and managed to have a clear path (well, mostly) all the way home. Thank God for that. However, once I got home, I realized we had no power and I couldn't get in through the garage door. Now, I had my keys that should have worked for the front door, but apparently, it was never keyed correctly, and it worked for the deadbolt, but not for the knob. So, long story short, about 3 hours later, my neighbor managed to get us in. Our outhouse is now on it's roof, I just can't believe the winds got that strong. Sydney's swingset is messed up, the spindles that were used for steps to get up to the slide were splintered and broken and the whole thing almost blew over, according to my neighbor. Thank God we didn't lose any shingles and there are no trees close enough to our house to cause any damage. Mom said the winds got up to 80 mph, which classifies this as a Category 1 Hurricane winds. Mom had a tree fall toward her house and missed her big picture window by 6 inches, which is what the picture is of. My mother in law had a tree fall on the back of her house and about 5 or 6 more fall in her yard. We were without power until only Tuesday, which I feel very blessed for. Some are still without power 6 days later.

Funny isms

Tonight, I was outside trimming our bushes that someone must have dumped Miracle Grow on. Anyway, I was finishing up and Sydney came up to me and said "thank you mommy, for trimming our bushes." Well, your welcome! She has been saying thank you for some of the cutest stuff lately, and she's always overly excited about whatever it is. Yesterday, she got a new movie, Barbie and the Diamond Castle. She has been anxiously awaiting this movie since her birthday, where I believe she got another movie with this preview on it. Yesterday was the first day it was out and since Sydney did so well at her allergy shot (she's gotten really brave, finally) Mom took her to Target to buy it. She was SO excited! I think mom got to watch it 3 times that day and she watched it twice more at home. I've only seen bits and pieces so far, but I do love all the Barbie movies and I'm sure this one is just as great. It was a good distraction for me to get Barnyard The Movie out of our house. A co-worker let me borrow it and Sydney and I both became slightly addicted. So I knew it would be hard to let her know the time had come to return it, but this worked out well. I'm actually going to go buy that movie, because I love it so much!

Bowling Green

Me and some girls I work with headed down to BG on Saturday to visit a former co-worker, Holly. She's the one in the middle. We headed down and got there about lunch time. We ate lunch at a yummy Japanese restaurant that was not only good, but cheap! Then we headed over to this complex where you could ice skate, play miniature golf, bowl, etc... So, we played miniature golf because it was a personal goal of mine on this trip. It was great, to describe it without pictures would be an injustice. I hope to get some from the girls I work with. Anyway, after putt-putt was bowling, then to Bruster's to get some delicious ice cream! Then we headed to the mall and window shopped. We had the most fun at Spencer's! And for dinner, we ate at Mancino's, which is a special treat for us, because they closed ours down a LONG time ago and I'm still not over it. Then it was back on the road, and back home. We loved seeing Holly again, we miss her, but glad she's moved on to better things. And we're definately going back!

Some photoshop work

These are some pictures I messed with in photoshop, from my brother's wedding. Above is Sydney "helping" Sarah get ready. I've turned it into a sepia toned image, then added the vertical lines to make it look like an old time picture. I love photoshop.

Here's my little punkin' in the only picture she posed for that day. She was being a turd.

And this is my FAVORITE! This is Jana (the bride) getting ready. Unfortunately, someone (certainly not my child) got a hold of my camera at some point prior to this and changed my settings so these pictures can only be printed at 2x3 and still look decent. And who wants a 2x3 picture anyway? So, all I can do is post them here for you to enjoy.

Our new project

When we built our house four and a half years ago, I had a friend's dad come out and do our tile work throughout the house. He'd been doing this for over 20 years, and had also done some work on my friend's house, so I assumed he knew what he was doing. But as you will see, he obviously didn't. And now, we have to tear up the floor in the kitchen and dining area, and the entryway from the garage and put a new floor down. I started pulling up the tiles on Wednesday and finished cleaning up the mess on Friday evening. But now I have to get the backer board up and that's going to be interesting. So, below is what the kitchen floor looked like before I got started. Over the past year or so, these tiles had just come up on their own. First, we covered the area with a rug, then two rugs, and most recently, a tarp.

This is after some demo work...

Dining room after even more demo work...

So, I'm hoping to have it down to subfloor possibly by Monday. Good Lord willing! Then we're gettting pergo. Ooooh...

We also attended a joint birthday party for my friends two kids, Alyssa and Alex. It was at Chuck E. Cheese's and it was a lot of fun. Here's Sydney, indulging in some pizza. Mmmm

And dancing with Chuck E. and the birthday girl.