Congrats

Congratulations to Jordan! We are so proud of you. Jordan placed first alternate in her sixth grade beauty review and she also won Most Photogenic in the pageant. Here she is with her two trophies. Marty and Jordan stopped by the house for us to see her in her dress since David and I were not able to go. We were packing and cleaning out the storage shed, getting ready for the move. I hate we missed it but McKenzie was able to go and really enjoyed herself. David ran in and got his camera and took a few pictures.

Playoff Baseball

The Memphis Redbirds (AAA minor league team of the St. Louis Cardinals) won their division this year and made the playoffs. McKenzie, Matt, Jordan, and I went to Game 3 of the first round of the playoffs. Memphis was up 2-0 in the best of 5 series and only had to win that game to advance to the Pacific Coast League Championship Series. I know, Memphis is nowhere near the Pacific, but this is baseball not geography.

Here are the kids - Matt didn't want to join in the photo. He was probably wanting ice cream at that moment.


This is in the plaza just outside the stadium.


About the 6th or 7th inning we headed out to the bluff and the kids played on the playground and then ran up and down the hill. I would've joined them, but somebody had to guard their shoes!

The Redbirds won that game 1-0 and went on to the PCL Championship.

This isn't from a game, but I wanted to include it. This was a Saturday at lunch at Spencer's - the boys enjoying some ice cream.

Matt, Caleb, Andy and I went to Game 1 of the PCL Championship Series. It had been raining most of the day and rained on us most of the way to Memphis but we were hoping it wouldn't rain the game out.

Matt has discovered the BBQ Nachos that Rendezvous sells at the Redbirds games. Check out that focus. The boy loves ball and food......I don't know where he gets that from!


We had a rainless rain delay of just over an hour. The weather report said rain was coming in at 7:15 and would blow out quickly. It never came and we sat and waited before they finally decided to start the game. Caleb, Matt and I decided to walk around the ballpark during the delay.

Andy decided to take a nap.

Matt and Caleb passed out on the way home. We stayed through the 5th inning since it was a school night. The game was scoreless when we left and we listened to the rest of it on the radio. David Freese hit a homerun in the bottom of the 7th and the Redbirds held on to win 1-0. They went on to win the series 3-0 and will play in a one game AAA championship game Tuesday night against the Durham Bulls on ESPN2.

Dance Class Begins

Late this afternoon McKenzie started her new dance year. She has been looking forward to this all summer. Another thing we were looking forward to is seeing the new dance studio. It is awesome! We couldn't wait to see it. Miss Reagan has been giving us updates on it all summer. She bought an old warehouse and turned it into a dance studio/gym. She put this super cute wallpaper in the room where you first come in to wait for class to begin. It is hot pink with black chandeliers on it. McKenzie's dance room is painted a robin's egg blue. The gymnastics room is purple. At the entrance she had the prettiest container gardens. Of course you know I notice all of these details! What a fun place to have dance! You could tell that Reagan and all of the instructers have worked so hard getting it ready.


Here is a picture of McKenzie after class. We found this dance outfit and another one at Target on our trip to Nashville. You can't have too many cute dance outfits!

Happy Birthday Betty!!!

It's finally here! The pinnacle of Betty's Birthday Month 2009!!! It's Betty's birthday! McKenzie, Matt and I would like to wish Betty a very happy ?9th birthday. You're the best mother and wife we could ask for!

Of course, we've been celebrating all month and will continue to celebrate the rest of the month, but we had a party at Betty's parent's house Saturday night (forgot to download the pics) and a party at Betty's grandmother's house Sunday afternoon.......

....and a birthday supper at Cosina Mexicana Sunday night.

Don't let the freakishly large head at the right of the pic scare you!

The Betty's Birthday Month 2009 festivities will continue today with a birthday lunch at Orleans. Then, we'll go out this Saturday for the promised Birthday Chick Flick and Birthday Supper Without The Kids.

We'd also like to wish Marty a very happy birthday today, too!!!!

Packing Up

We have sold our house in case some of you didn't know, so now I am in the process of packing up everything. I get tickled at Max. He finds a different box to sleep in everyday. Here are a few pictures of him.

We close on September 30th and our moving date is set for that Friday, October 2nd. Moving day will be a very emotional day for us. We will be leaving our first home and a lot of great memories of starting our life together here and raising McKenzie and Matt here, too. But I have to remember that we will take all of that with us in our hearts. I am very sentimental, so it will probably be a little harder for me. But I know we will make great memories in our new place!

To escape from all the boxes today, I went to one of my favorite stores, Walls. I love to go in there when I have the time just to ramble. David took the kids this morning to do their breakfast thing, so I headed over there. I am so excited about my finds! I have been looking for a big clock for the new house and found this one over in a corner.

It was only $24, so I grabbed it. Walls got in a shipment of Michaels stuff. They had great fall and Christmas things. I saw this turkey and knew that it would be great for my kitchen table this Thanksgiving.

It is so pretty with all the different textures. I had several women stop me in the store asking me where I found it. I was sorry to tell them that I got the last one!

A Long Scary Weekend!

First, let me apologize to Marty for the picture on the left. She's not really a witch.......I don't think. Anyway, we had a nice Labor Day weekend even though it was filled with busyness and scariness.

Saturday, we went shopping for light fixtures for the new house since the owners are taking the bedroom light fixtures with them. We went to Lowe's where they already have some Halloween decorations out. McKenzie was in the buggy and Matt was holding on to the side of the buggy as we approached a witch (not Marty) standing at the end of an isle. As we got closer, the witch all of the sudden started dancing wildly (a little like Marty) and flashing red eyes. It scared Matt to death! He looked like one of those cartoon characters flailing his arms and legs trying to get away but not going anywhere. Bless his heart, he was traumatized. The picture below shows how he was for most of the rest of the time in Lowe's. All he wanted was "his Bobo".


Matt woke up during the night crying Saturday night and Monday night. He said he had a bad dream about the witch (not Marty) and spiders.

To prove that I'm not a horrible Dad who scares his kids, here are some pictures of me and McKenzie and Matt enjoying a walk/ride around the neighborhood on Monday.

See, no tears, no terrified looks, just fun.

Fall Nesting

Yes! My favorite season is almost here. I love fall. I am itching to get out my fall decorations, but I think I will wait until we are in the new house in another month to drag it all out. It's going to be fun to find new places for my fall stuff. I recently ordered this really cute banner for Halloween and plan on hanging it on my back door. Sarah at The Painted Wren created this for me. You can check out her adorable work on her blog to the right of mine. Can't wait to hang it!

I have been getting some "fall inspiration" from Melissa over at the Inspired Room. She has created for us "Fall Nesting Week" to get ideas for our decorating. It is so fun! I have clicked on a few links to check out how other people decorate their homes and porches. It's a great escape for me right now because I am very overwhelmed with showing the house, cleaning the house and thinking about when I am to start the monumental task of packing up sixteen years of stuff! Plenty of people have lived through this stress, so I know we can too. I will be glad when it is over and we can get back to normal. Be sure to check out The Inspired Room to the right of our blog.

Betty's Birthday Month (and big news)

September is Betty's Birthday Month! Betty is very proud of her birthday (even after all these years!) and likes to remind me that we need to celebrate it for the entire month of September. So, I'm am officially kicking off Betty's Birthday Month 2009!

So far, the agenda for Betty's Birthday Month includes a nice dinner and a chick flick about a guy and a girl who are meant to be together if they could just realize it and admit it. I think I've seen that one before. The biggest present for this year's Betty's Birthday Month is a new house! Yes, we finally found a house. After years of off-and-on looking and looking and looking, we finally found something we could both agree on. I told our realtor that we finally wrestled each other to the ground and came to a compromise on price and content. We have a contract on a house in Oak Grove and have listed our house. The sign went up on Monday. We're excited about the move, but we'll miss our friends on Mimosa Drive. But, it's not like we're moving out of town, so we'll still see them.


Happy Birthday Month, Betty!!!!!