Saturday, June 26, 2010

Swimming Lessons

This year I signed Trent up for swimming lessons. My friend Cindy teaches them, and everyone tells me that their kid swims like a fish after taking lessons from her. Trent went for two weeks. I cannot sing Cindy's praises loud enough or long enough.



Trent is officially a swimmer.


Now at the same time, Jack has become a dare devil!

I have a couple of water babies !

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Cooking with Mommy

Trent loves to watch cooking shows, so I decided to do a dinner where the kids could do the cooking. Now let's face it, there is no way kids can do ALL of the cooking, but they did have fun.


We made little pizzas on English muffins.


Can you guess who made each pizza?


Jack got a little carried away with his ingredients, but he still ate it.
After all, that's all that really matters.

We also made a dessert pizza.


Trent loved cutting the strawberries with my Pampered Chef egg slicer.


I let the kids put the strawberries on the pizza. However, I noticed that for every strawberry that they put on the pizza, they ate about three. :)

I think we need a Food Network show, don't you? :)

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Trent's 5 Year Checkup

I had Trent's checkup planned out for weeks. I would keep him home and spend the day with him. We would do fun Mommy/Son stuff all day. Then we would go for the checkup, and we would leave after his shots to go get a gourmet cupcake from GiGi's.

Well, as usual my plans did not work out. Jack got sick, and I had to take him to the doctor with us. This was not good because I really wanted to give Trent ALL of my attention on this day. Needless to say, he did not get it.


Jack cried the whole time we waited. What did I expect? He's sick...

We had to wait awhile, but Dr. Ellis finally came in. He checked out Jack first and wrote prescriptions. Then he moved on to Trent.


Trent loves to make silly faces for the camera...

Trent is healthy and is such a good patient.

Then it was time...

I decided to tell Trent what was going to happen before the nurse came in the room. He was scared, but not as scared as I thought he would be. He took the first couple of shots pretty well, but then he tensed up. After four shots, the tears were rolling pretty fast and hard. He finally calmed down after getting his stickers on the way out the door.

He was so good, and there was no way I could not get that boy a cupcake. Now if you live in Memphis, you understand me when I say that I hate Poplar Ave. I can't stand driving that busy street with its super narrow lanes, but I did it. I did it for my BIG BOY! He picked out his cupcake, and we headed home.


How yummy does that look? It looks like a sugar crazed 5 year-old waiting to happen...


With all that icing, did you really expect him to keep his face clean?

We did have a few shot related freak out moments, but all ended well. He got a pretty big knot on his leg from when he tensed up. And a week later, he got a pretty bad rash from the MMR. But now all is good! I love my BIG BOY!

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Family Vacation



On Saturday morning, we slept in since we arrived so late the night before. Nanny and Papaw took the kids on a walk around the chalets. We stayed in Chalet 1, and it was so nice. It was big and comfortable. It had a beautiful view from the porch with rocking chairs to sit and take in the awesome scenery.

After we got up and moving, we headed to the Dillard House to let the kids go to the petting zoo. Trent and Jack were both pretty cute feeding the baby goats. They liked looking at all of the different animals. Then we went for a carriage ride on the property. It was free, and we all enjoyed it. This is not a commercial for Dillard House, but it is beautiful.

Later on Saturday afternoon, we went to a free wine social on the property of the Dillard House. They had free beer, wine, cocktails, sodas in glass bottles, and lots of yummy snacks. The kids enjoyed the cookies and fruit. Trent's favorite was the chocolate covered strawberries.

We took a trip to Tiger, GA, to the Goats on the Roof. Both kids loved this place. We let Trent feed the goats. Matt and I got some boiled peanuts, and we all roasted some marshmallows over the fire outside. We actually made two trips to this place, and on the second trip we let Trent mine for gems and gold. He called it all gold. There were was green gold, purple gold, and even gold gold. He had a ball!

On our last full day in the area, we drove to some waterfalls. It was beautiful. We went to Bridal Veil falls first. It was really neat because we actually drove under the falls. Trent thought it was pretty cool.

Then we went to Dry Falls, and they were ANYTHING but DRY. It was a huge waterfall, and it was gorgeous. Matt took both boys under the falls and out the other side, but I couldn't make it the whole way because I was wearing Croc flip flops, and it was way too slippery.

On the way back to Dillard, we stopped in Franklin, NC, and took Trent bowling. He LOVED every minute of it.

Overall, it was a nice, relaxing vacation. If you take away our trip there, we could have called it "Perfect". :)

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Road Trip to Dillard, Georgia

We planned our family vacation on the fly this year. I would love to say that this road trip went well, but it didn't. I worked very hard to get everything organized and packed on the days before we left. I really wanted to be on the road by 8AM, and I woke up at about 5:45 (my internal Trent clock). I showered, started packing the car, got the kids fed and dressed, cooked pigs in the blanket for the car, etc. We did actually get on the road by 8AM. I was so proud!

The trip started out great. We made it through Nashville without incident by 11AM, and we started trying to plan where to stop for lunch. We had Brodie with us, so we planned to just have a picnic somewhere. A little past Nashville, Matt noticed the car catching while he was accelerating. Then the TRANSMISSION HOT indicator came on. We stopped at the next service station, and took out the handy-dandy manual to my Yukon. Matt checked the transmission fluid, and it looked high if anything. The book said to let the car cool down and check it again, so we ate at a sandwich shop inside the gas station. The kids had Lunchables, and Matt and I got some food.

After lunch, he checked the fluid again. It seemed fine, so we decided to get back on the road. It started doing the same things again. We discussed and decided to stop at a service station in Manchester to see if they could check it out. We used my phone and found an auto service station. They came out and checked the Yukon using the little computer. He informed us that we needed to get to a transmission shop.

We, again, used my phone to find the place. Most of the guys were at lunch, so we had to wait. Matt started calling our insurance agent and the body shop that fixed our transmission in January. We walked over to the Dollar General to waste some time. We looked for four leaf clovers, and I found a five leaf clover. The kids and I got a milk shake at the Mexican restaurant next door to the transmission shop. It poured down rain. Our phones died, and the mechanics let us charge them in the shop. The Enterprise couldn't find us a minivan or SUV. On and on and on and on.

FINALLY, at 7PM the Enterprise lady showed up with our minivan. It took us about 10 minutes to transfer everything from the Yukon to the minivan. Then we had to take her back to her office 30 minutes the wrong way. We stopped and got gas, picked up some drive thru food, and finally got on the road again about 9 hours after we stopped at the first service station.

The trip seemed so long since it got dark. Then the rain came. I told Matt that it was just our little black cloud following us. Thankfully, we had satellite radio so we sang songs and talked the whole way to Dillard. We passed the brightest realty sign in the world. It was so bright that I had to put my hand up to shade my eyes. This was after dark, too. I don't know how Matt drove by it without having a wreck. Speaking of wrecks, we saw lots of them and lots of blue flashing lights. The good thing is that it kept us awake and aware. We finally made it to Chalet 1 at about midnight.

Understatement of the Year: Road trips are not our thing. :)