Life with my sister

Henry loves his Hollye. I think he thinks she is mine and Juju's sister, and I am totally cool with that! Henry had so much fun eating ice cream and shopping the dollar bins at Target in Memphis with her, while Randall and I had our pre-cancer spots frozen off at the dermatologist. A little annual event at our house. Fun times. Henry loved it, so that made our stings and ouchies bearable. We met up with them at Target. Henry was entertaining everyone and had Hollye in stitches. He is truly a funny guy and runs his mouth nonstop (Hollye said she wonders where he gets it?! ha). He scored these blue sunglasses and put them on upside down and performed "chicken, airplane, soldier" in the entrance to Target. I love the laughter he provokes in all of us. Before we headed back over the bridge to go home we stopped at our favorite BBQ joint for a late lunch/early supper. The Commissary is the "bomb-dot-com" and the banana pudding is not too shabby, as you c

After about 15 days of Anna waking up each morning with a countdown of how many days until her birthday, the day finally came. When she woke up on Saturday as precious as I've ever seen her. She came into my room with a sweet smile on her face, so excited about being 9! We all ate donuts for breakfast and watched as she opened her presents. She was so cute! We then headed to Beebe for Awana games. She enjoyed being with her friends so much. She didn't have a party this year because we were busy with other things, but she managed to have a pretty great day. As our tradition holds, she chose where we ate dinner Saturday night. She first chose El Chico and then switched to Outback. We were all very pleased! However, I have a deep deep love for El Chico so that would have been terrific too. Happy Birthday Anna, we love you so very much! Julie

I love the weekends in the spring. They are usually really random for us, not knowing if Randall will be planting or  be at home. It all depends on the weather and lately we all know what that has been like, so he happened to be home all weekend. We all enjoyed going to an opera about Noah's Ark on Friday night at  First Methodist (this is where Henry goes to school).  We then had friends over Saturday night. We love our church and the friends we have made. We grilled burgers and I made a fruit pizza. I must share that recipe sometime. I was left with a clean pan after supper. It was wonderful and super easy! Sunday after church we headed to the Little Rock Zoo. We had never visited that zoo. Randall and I grew up going to the Memphis Zoo and that is the only one we have ever visited. We decided to branch out and take Henry. We loved it. It has just enough animals, more compact and easy to walk with a 3 year old and a stroller. Henry was so cute admiring the zebras. Ju

In honor of birthday week for Anna, David and Daniel, I pulled up some old digital files on my computer. I found this one with Claire in it. It was at my house in Byhalia. They all spent the night with me and we made every large mess known to man. It was a fabulous time and such a precious memory. So, now on to sweet birthday memories with my favorite niece and favorite twins. I have not missed many of their birthdays. I have several pages in a scrapbook of birthdays, pre-digital days, so these are all I have on my computer. They are too cute for words!   Anna loved ducks at this age. I believe it was age 3. Henry's age now. Hard to believe. I made her birthday hat and the hats for all her little friends. It was such a heavy little hat. I have no idea how she held it on her sweet little head. I miss that chubby little face! I belive this was age 7 for David and Daniel. I made this cake. Yes, I did. I have no idea how I ever did it, but I did. I rock. I am the best

Riding home from school this week, while stopped at a stop light, Henry proclaims  with a huge smile on this face, in an excited tone and loud voice: "I'm going to be Batman with my face when I grow up. I'm going to have a mask. See. Like this." (while making mask eyes with his hands) I assured him he was already my little Batman because he in fact was wearing Batman underwear. He then tried his hardest to try to see the back of his underwear while buckled in his car seat. I love these little moments in the car with this sweet child of mine. Never a dull moment and always full of laughter. He proclaimed this about an hour after the bombing in Boston. I thought of how many real life Batman's there were at that moment helping the hurting. So, when Henry says he is going to grow up and be Batman with his face, I truly believe he will. I pray that he will be a helper, a real life hero. Henry of course has no idea what happened in Boston this week, but one

   "I want to get more trucks out, Mama...please?!" My house is dominated by toy trucks. I pulled only these out of the garage and he sat there and whined for the ones in the den, his bedroom closet and in his toy cabinet. Yes, he has that many spots in the house full of toys. It is pitiful, really. His face was priceless as he whined. I had to capture it, of course. How can this not be enough? I guess we are all guilty of wanting more than what we have in certain areas. I cannot get too mad at him about it because I have the same problem sometimes. It is funny how our children teach us lessons. I could do without all the whining, but I am sure God feels the same way about me at times. Ouch! I want to lock this image into my heart forever. Henry LOVES to push and race his dump trucks. This is his largest one and the most fun to push. He giggles and screams with each step. I love his excitement for the simple things. It also teaches me a lesson about slowing down and

      We started our weekend with a little 5K Friday night in downtown Memphis. We decided to do it last minute and had a fun time. I love a night run, especially in the Bluff City. Good times, good times. The start line was on Beale and ended in front of Gibson Guitar and FedEx Forum. Henry liked running by the river the best. I was disappointed in my time but Randall reminded me that it was 7 minutes faster than the Elvis 5K last August. I was all grins then. The simple things, I tell ya.     I love these small people. These are Henry's Sunday School friends. We had extended session this week and they all wanted me to take their picture when they saw my camera in my purse. It thrills my heart to know they are learning to love Jesus together. What a blessing it is to go to church! Henry loves working the puzzles at church but will hardly touch the ones we have at home. Children are so funny that way. I love this little face and all the smiles it brings me ea

You might not think my child is as funny as we do, but since this is our blog...we will pretend you do. I teach his Puggles class on Wednesday nights at church and videoed this little funny. They were acting out our little song and having me sing it over and over again. It is truly the simple things in life! Abby

This is Henry's room. He does not like to play in it alone, but he LOVES to play in there. We have a Sunday School Songs CD we keep in his CD player. He makes us turn it on every time we play in there. I enjoy watching him play and sing but we can get stuck in there for hours. He holds us hostage! So, on this day Randall was working from his laptop and playing. I was sitting on his bed. Parenting is a big ole job of multi-tasking. I love it more than words. We are so excited about spring weather! We were working in the yard and I knew it was quite in Fort Henry.  I looked up to find our little H man playing his games on his daddy's phone. Hey, at least he was outside and not sitting on the couch playing with it on this pretty day! I then captured this photo on my camera and love it. He got in out of the sun and kicked back in his chair. Henry is loving that guitar shirt I scored brand new at a resale shop in town for 2 bucks. I was pretty tickled with it too. I lov

Henry loves playing in his Papa's shop. We were all in there the other night and I glanced over and grabbed Randall's phone off his hip. Priceless. Henry digging for the tin of matchbox cars. He loves anything with wheels, just like his Papa. Score! What a fun photo op in Papa's shop, and Henry had no idea I was snapping away. It was the best of the best! We are so thankful Henry has a Papa and a Grandaddy that love him to pieces.   Abby

Henry was so excited to go to his first swimming lesson. We told him he had to learn how to swim or we couldn't go to the beach this year. It was sort of a lie, but we knew we had to have some motivation for him to learn. If you know Henry, you know it takes some dangling carrots sometimes. The beach and pools that we swim in there are the best dangling carrots for him. It is the best place on earth, according to him. This is how the lesson began. Henry on the side kicking the water, as she instructed, and repeating over and over, "I'm done. let's go!" If you know Henry very well, you can just hear it in your head and can't help but laugh. Randall and I were laughing so hard.  Henry decided that this swim lesson might be fun after all and since we promised him ice cream on the way home, he knew he better participate or it would be a no ice cream ride home. I loved this picture. His excitement beams through. I love that face. He learned to k

   Our Easter week began with a little "egging" fun. We placed a dozen plastic eggs in the yards of two friends. 11 of the eggs had coins in them and 1 of them was left empty, to represent the empty tomb. They loved it and their children filled their piggy banks. It was fun and thanks to Pinterest, I had a free egg printable to tape to their doors with a cute little message on it. Henry had his annual Easter sonrise breakfast at school on Thursday morning. He was all decked out in his Easter shirt. My friend Amy makes the cutest things for us. He was the only one in Easter gear besides one little girl in his class. It made me laugh and realize these days of personalization are coming to a bittersweet end. I will rock the monogram until I just can't or he asks me not too...so hang with me and love me through the end. After his party I had a little interesting eye procedure and while I was there Randall texted me and said we would go south for the night to chec