This is Hilarious!

I tried posting this video back in April when we celebrated Kendal's birthday, but I had issues with uploading the video to the blog. I am going to give it another try after going through my videos this morning and realizing how funny this clip is. Watch Kendal's face when Bayley blows out 2 of the candles....I love it! Enjoy and don't forget to also check out my new post under this one!

Memorial Day 2008

Bayley, Kendal & Trey with Baby Spence
The Girls with Grandpa and Grandma "G"
Baby Spence
Bayley at Field Day

Jeff tossing Bayley around in the pool

Uncle Spencer with the Girls

Another crazy and exciting week has flown by. We had a lot of fun and we were able to get a lot accomplished. The highlights included:
-Bayley's field day at school, which included inflatables and water games
-Kendal and Bayley's end of the year dance recital
-the Boy Scout Spaghetti Dinner and Auction
-Grandma and Grandpa "G" coming to help and spend time with us Friday and Saturday
-Spencer, Leigh and Baby Spence coming for the girl's dance recital
-Jetskiing at the Lake
-Swimming in the pool...it looks great after a couple of weeks of hard work

The girls did a great job on their dances. It was fun to have Grandpa and Grandma "G" as well as Spencer, Leigh and Baby Spence here to watch the girls and spend time with us as a family. We had a great week and look forward to spending tomorrow as a family.

My Boys!

Dance Preview

This upcoming week is devoted to dance and making final preparations for the girl's upcoming dance recital. Bayley and Kendal take dance at the same studio and their spring recital is this Saturday May 24th. They are both extremely excited about their costumes and their dances, so it will be fun to watch them show off on Saturday. My girls love to dance and look forward to their classes each week. Bayley has her class on Tuesday, which has caused some major meltdowns from Kendal who feels like it is unfair that Bayley gets to go to dance earlier in the week than her....I'm thinking that when I enroll them next fall I will take this into consideration and do my best to ensure that Kendal either has dance on the same day as Bayley or earlier in the week than Bayley. Bayley doesn't really care...her main goal in dancing is to be able to wear toe shoes. At six she walks around on her toes without toe shoes, which has to be painful. As I know absolutely nothing about dance nor the progression of a dancer, I can only tell her that her teachers will let her know when she is ready for toe shoes...HELP! Anyway, they both look beautiful in their costumes. Check out these cuties:

Illustrates perfectly the meltdowns we have on Tuesdays when Bayley gets to go to dance and Kendal has to wait until Thursday

Jeff has a busy week as usual. Today he had another EGD done...which basically is surgery to check his esophagus. He has been having to go in every 2 months to have an EGD as a result of the diagnosis of Barrett's Esophagus last fall. We have learned that Barret's is basically precancerous cells that have developed in his esophagus as a result of his acid reflux. Every two months his gastroenterologist goes in and burn off the precancerous cells. We did receive good news this time around. The doctor did not see any noticeable Barrett's so he only had to biopsy Jeff's esophagus. This is great news as it means that he does not have to undergo another EGD for at least another 4 months. These EGD's really haven't been that bad other than Jeff is comatose for a day as a result of the anesthesia and he does have slight discomfort in his throat.
What a great way to start a week?
I do have to say that I am so thankful for great friends. Today did not go as smoothly as I had hoped...starting with the fact that we all got up at 5:30 am to take Jeff to the hospital only to find out after we had dropped him off and returned home that his surgery wasn't until this 12 pm. So my plans for the day were quickly rearranged and after 4 round trips to the hospital we are glad that today is over. To add to all of the travel to and from the hospital we decided today would be the perfect day for me to have the van worked on because Jeff didn't need his car...well that didn't go very smoothly either. The technician has somehow messed up the wiring and the alarm system will go off for no reason at all...what a day...I'll deal with that tomorrow. The one reprieve to my day was that Jeff's nice co-workers brought us dinner tonight...at first when they offered I felt bad accepting because I didn't think I would really need it, but after the way the day went it was a huge HELP. Then for dessert a secret someone rang the doorbell and left the BEST brownies at the door. It is amazing how a day can turn around from really bad to really good in just a few moments thanks to a few very kind acts.

You Know Your a Mom When....

We planted tomatoes for Family Night last week in our homemade garden box

Bayley our Biker Girl

Kendal and her friend Ali preparing for the race

Trey loved the cake Leigh made for Spencer's dedication luncheon

My friend Lisa had a post entitled "You Know Your a Mom When..." a couple of weeks ago and after reading her post and the comments from her post I decided to steal the idea for my Mother's Day Post. Before I was a Mom there were a million times that I saw Mom's do something gross or let their kid do something obnoxious or crazy and I would say those famous last words of "I will never do or let my kid do that". Well, now that I have 3 kids and a little bit of experience in parenting, I have to say that I have eaten my words about a million times over! One of my favorite "you know your a Mom when..." moments has to be when I am forced to use my own hand to wipe one of my children's snotty noses because there are ZERO Kleenexes around...and guess what I don't even dry heave anymore as I do it! How about those times that I let me children get away with murder just to keep them quiet or behaving during a social outing...you know kids can sense these moments! I have been blessed with 3 wonderful children and I love my FULL time job of MOTHER. I have to say that I have some great women who I seek to model...my own mother, mother-in-law, sister-in-laws, grandmothers, aunts, and friends. Thanks to all of you who make me want to be better for my own children. Now, I would love to hear some of your "you know your a mom when..." moments.



Blogging has not been a priority the last couple of weeks. I feel like I have missed chronicling a chunk of our lives, but at this point I will just have to give a brief synopsis of what we have been up to. Bayley just completed swim team for the year. She is going to take the summer off which will be a good break for her and for me from the twice a week practices. She still loves swimming but it will be nice to do it in our own back yard. Speaking of our pool, I have been busy trying to open our pool for the year. Last year we had someone do it for us and he really didn't do anything. So this year I did the same thing the pool man did last year and we have had all kinds of issues. We've had equipment malfunctions, algae, a leak...but hopefully we are turning a corner and this will be the week that everything comes together and we can enjoy our pool for the rest of the summer. Bayley has just 13 more days of school, so we are definitely gearing up for our summer break. Kendal has been busy working on learning how to write her name. She can now write her first name after much prodding and after she made the statement "why couldn't her parents have given her an easier name to learn." She has one more year before she starts school, but I am trying to get her as prepared as possible. Trey is my busy boy who keeps me constantly on my toes. He is getting quicker and more skilled everyday, which makes my job harder and harder. He is a sweat boy who loves his big sisters. Jeff has been very busy with his new calling. I knew that the first little while would be crazy, but even as prepared as I was for the craziness....I still was not nearly prepared enough! He is doing a great job though and I know he is growing spiritually by leaps and bounds, which is helping me grow as well.

Kendal and I participated in the Look Alike Contest (we didn't win but it was fun)

Happy Birthday Grandma "G"

In that last couple of weeks we have also managed to make a couple of visits to Marietta to see Grandma "G" for her birthday and attend Spencer's baby dedication. We've also attended the Noble Street Bike Festival (where the girls participated in a bike race), participated in a mother/child look a like contest, gone to Six Flags, celebrated a birthday and spent a day at the lake enjoying our new toy! It's definitely been busy but fun! We look forward to another exciting week!

Six Flags...notice how much fun Bayley is having on this ride...kind of her attitude the whole day!

Kentucky Derby Mini-Marathon

I'm FINISHED! I have completed another 13.1 mile run and I think this time it really might be my last half marathon....at least for a long time! I have learned that disclaimers are good just in case you get a crazy notion again that it really wasn't that bad and it would be fun! After training and then running 2 half marathons in the last 8 months, I am a bit burnt out on daily runs, so I am taking a long hiatus. Plus this time around I did meet my goal of finishing under 2 hours and 10 minutes. My finish time was officially 2 hours 9 minutes and 15 seconds...you should have seen me sprinting the last .1 mile just so that I could ensure that I met my goal. I ran with the same former teammates from Morehead State (Jan, Shawne and Crystal). It was fun to catch up with them again and like last time it was nice to have others to voice complaints, accomplishments and ideas with through the training. Thanks gals!

The race was last weekend and I am still trying to catch up. Jeff was gracious enough to handle the 3 kids for the weekend and as an added bonus I came home to clean/vacuumed house! I was exhausted after all of the driving (7 hours each way) plus the long run, so it was SO NICE! I'll give more updates with pictures soon! Have a great week!