And The Winner Is.......

Well, it wasn't McKenzie but she did great!  We're in Jackson right now eating a late lunch/early supper.  (Would that be "lupper"?)  It's a neat little pizza place and ice cream place called Sal and Mookie's New York Pizza and Ice Cream Joint.  Before crowning the pageant director and four of the Miss Magnolia queens performed "Beauty School Dropout".  I've got some pictures of that below.  Then they brought up all 31 girls and called out the ones who didn't make the Top 12.  McKenzie made the cut!  Then they counted down the girls until the Top 5.  McKenzie was the last one to get called who didn't make the Top 5!  She did a wonderful job and had a lot of fun!  We all enjoyed it - even me and Matt!  We're so proud of you, McKenzie!!!!!

CompetitionSaturday

Today has been a full and exciting day of competition.  McKenzie had her Sunday dress beauty competition at 1:30.  She was a little nervous but she did great.  Here are some pictures of that competition.

We came back to the hotel for a few hours then headed back to the auditorium for casual wear.  Hear are some pictures of that competition.

Crowning is Sunday at noon.  We hate to see this fun weekend come to an end.  Matt has been a real trooper but I am sure he has had his fill of pageants for a while!  Don't worry Matt, I'm sure you'll get your turn when McKenzie follows you to all of your baseball tournaments.

Pageant Weekend

We are in Vicksburg this weekend at the Little Miss Magnolia State Pageant.  We are having a lot of fun so far!  We registered this afternoon and found out that McKenzie is number 14 out of 30 girls in her division - Pre-Teen 9-11.  For those interested, she does Sunday dress beauty at 1:30 tomorrow (Saturday) and her casual wear will be at 6:00 tomorrow evening.  I'll get David to take some pictures and we'll post them later.

Here are some pictures David took last year that we submitted for the pageant program and the Miss Photogenic contest.

McKenzie the Ant

McKenzie had the part of the Queen Ant in the Children's Choir spring musical back in May.  She had a speaking part and a solo in the song L-A-Z-Y.  Here's a link to a video of her solo.

Christmas Card Reveal

This weekend I am linking up with Kelly's Korner and Show Us Your Life...How you shared you were pregnant with family/friends.
With our second baby, our ultrasound to find out if we were having a boy or girl fell in November and a friend told me I ought to reveal the sex of our baby in our Christmas card. So with that idea, we got busy getting creative. Of course our family and friends were dying to know what we were having but we told them they would have to wait for the news to come a few weeks later in the mail! We have an older daughter, McKenzie, who at the time was four. I dressed her up and we headed down to our old train depot (hint hint-boy) to take a picture of McKenzie holding a newspaper that we had painted It's A Boy! on it. We didn't tell her what it said for fear of her spilling the beans. I then made our Christmas cards out of card stock, had Our Big News of 2005...printed at the top and taped McKenzie's picture revealing the gender in the center. We had so much fun with this and our family and friends did too. I think this will always be my favorite Christmas Card ever!!

SuperMatt

Saturday afternoon Matt and I watched the Superman movie from 1978.  I remember going to watch it with my Dad and Andy when it came out.  As you can see in these pictures, Matt enjoyed it so much he had to put his cape on and "fly" around like Superman.  So....faster than an angry Mom, more powerful than a toy train, able to leap living room furniture in a single bound.....Look! Up in sky!  It's a bird!  It's a plane!  It's SuperMatt!!!

Happy Birthday, McKenzie!

Today (Sunday) is McKenzie's 10th birthday!  We can't believe she is already in double digits.  We've had a good birthday weekend so far.  McKenzie picked The Tacky Shack for her family birthday supper Friday night.  After supper we had her birthday cake and she blew out her 10 candles.  Saturday, she got up with Betty about 5 a.m. and helped her and Mimi with a garage sale.  Then we went to Nana and Grand's after lunch and visited with them and ate supper with them.  Here are some pictures from Friday night.

 This is the official family birthday picture.  It came after the first attempt below...

This was our first attempt.  Matt sat there perfectly until just before the timer went off when he did his Spider-Man pose.

Below is McKenzie's birthday video.  The song is Taylor Swift's "Never Grow Up", which is our wish for both of our kids.  We wish we could just stay like we are for a long time.  But......time moves on, so enjoy......

Pray For Me

During our adult choir spring musical I got the special opportunity to sing a song with McKenzie.  I had the solo on the verses and some of the girls from the Children's Choir sang the chorus.  At the end, McKenzie walked over and I gave her my mic as she sang her solo.  McKenzie did a great job!  It's a tear-jerker of a song, so be warned.  You can also go to the First Baptist Facebook page to see some more videos from the Children's Choir spring musical and the Adult Choir spring musical.

Happy Fourth of July!

Happy Fourth! We are having a fun, relaxing weekend. So glad David has the day off today, too! He will be grilling hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch. This is sort of a random post just to update what we have been doing lately. Saturday morning we celebrated Elizabeth's baby's first birthday! Kendall was such a little doll and seemed to enjoy every part of her cute little party. The theme was owls. The food was soooo good! I enjoyed all of it especially the homemade BLT dip. I am making that very soon. We also had fresh fruit and dip, blueberry muffins, sausage balls and cheese. After eating then it was time for Kendall to dive into her cake. She had an owl cake just for her and we all enjoyed owl cupcakes and ice cream. Kendall got an assortment of neat gifts. All the cousins enjoyed playing and visiting with each other. At the end of the party the kids got to take turns with the owl pinata.  Here are some pictures from the party.

Later that afternoon, we took the kids to Oxford to see the movie Mr. Poppers' Penguins. It was so cute! We had really been wanting to see that movie this summer and it did not disappoint. It's such a treat to take the kids to the movie especially when its out of town. After the movie we stopped by Belk and Hibbits, then on our way out of town, enjoyed supper at Abner's. We got home just in time to see Miss Mississippi! That was fun and got us excited about McKenzie's pageant coming up toward the end of July. It is the Little Miss Magnolia State. You can check it out at this website. It is a natural, Sunday dress pageant. She won her preliminary back last August and will go as Miss Preteen Grenada. We have her sportswear and dress ready to go. It should be a neat weekend and we plan on celebrating her 10th birthday while we are in Vicksburg!

One last thing I wanted to share was my decorating project using a $4 can of red spray paint. I have been wanting a bedside table for Matt's room and knew I wanted something old. So, on our last visit to the Cummings, I found this very cute table that belonged to Liz's grandmother. I painted it red and now it is perfect for Matt's room. David loves the fact that it was free!

Hope everyone has a great week and we will be back soon with McKenzie's birthday video that David is working on. Can't believe she will be double digits! Wow!! Lot's of celebrating coming soon.