I get so aggravated when I clean house. It seems like no matter how much I fuss at the kids to pick up after themselves, they just don't seem to grasp the concept. Then when I go crazy on them they act all shocked about the fact that I am acting like a maniac. Lol. It's simple, keep the house clean, keep mama happy. No fussing from me would ensue. I just don't get why they don't get it. I mean, I walk into my kitchen just a little while ago and there appears to be water all over the floor. It was pouring down rain just before I discovered this, so I figured maybe it came in from the back door. I called my husband and told him the back door needs to be checked, because it appeared that the seal around the door was not working. I proceed to mop up the floor and quickly realize that it wasn't rain at all. It was tea. My son had made a full glass of tea and it somehow got knocked over and spilled all over the floor. I mean heaven forbid he actually clean it up. Wtf!? It's this kind of stuff all the time. I take away their electronics, put them on room restriction, ground them from friends, but still they continue this unkept behavior. It just amazes me. UGH!!! My parents would have beat me senseless, but that's a little more difficult to get away with these days. Lol. Ok, now that I've slightly vented, I'll continue with my trip to Florida - Sea World post. Alyssa

Alyssa and Karen

Kristen and Hunter

Kevin Michael (my nephew), Alyssa and Karen

Yay!!! We see the sign. :)

First stop, get a stroller and see the flamingos :)

My skinny sister, Terra, with Alyssa and Trent

Next stop, stingrays. :)

Well, I'm tired of working on this post, so I'm just gonna post what I already have here. Lol. Maybe I'll finish it sometime soon. You can always look at my pics on my shutterfly link to the right of our full trip. Tata :)

Our recent trip to Florida included going to Sea World, Discovery Cove, Busch Gardens, and Aquatica. We had a fabulous time. It was a real treat to get to swim with the dolphins on my birthday this year. So cool. :) The only park out of the 4 that I had ever been to was Busch Gardens. I went there several times as a kid when I'd go to Tampa to visit my mom in the summer. It was great to be able to go with the kids. I love taking them places. :) For the trip down, we took 2 cars. My sister, Terra, drove over from Mississippi with her 2 younger boys on Saturday, then we headed down on Sunday. What should have only been a 6 1/2 hr drive took us more like 9 hrs. Lol. Why can't everyone just have to pee at the same time for pete's sake? Karen and Alyssa quickly went from this...

to this. Isn't it so nice when the kids pass out on a trip? :)

Kristen holding Alyssa at the Florida welcome center sign. We have so many pictures of this same spot. Lol :)

So, we finally get to the condo and drag in all of our luggage. And there was a lot. There were 9 of us. We got all settled in rather quickly though.

Why we always have to go to the World's Largest McDonald's is beyond me. My husband thinks it's cool or something. It's really just chaotic if you ask me.

We headed back to the condo and did a little swimming to finish up our day. The youngest ones had a great time.

This was the end of our day and tomorrow we would be headed off to Sea World. Yay!!! (I suppose I do need to try to get a little sleep before the kids get up. It is almost 6 a.m. after all. Eek!)

I'm back :)

I've decided to start blogging again.  :)  Lots to come.  It's been a busy few years. lol

National Zoo, Washinton D.C.

We flew in for the day to Washington D.C. It was a great choice for a day trip. Very inexpensive and lots of fun. That's the whole idea for us. :) I do tend to take all week to get one post up for some reason, but hey, at least I am getting around to it. lol. We went to the zoo, ate at a Mexican restaurant, then went home. Simple day with lots of fun. Kristen on the platform at the train station leaving the airport.

Billy and Karen on the down escalator going to change trains, on our way to the zoo.

At the zoo now, obviously. I thought this would make a great picture of the kids. :)

Got a good picture of the panda.

Baby hippo. It looks like a big, slimy.... well, you know. lol.

This is a scull of a hippo. They get some huge heads when full grown.

My 3 crazy kids.

A baby elephant. Awe, I love elephants. :)

My cuties

The girls got animals like build a bears. Like they don't have enough animals.

My kiddos again

See the spouting elephant in the background? You have to look kinda hard to see it, don't ya?

The Mexican restaurant were we ate. It had the best salsa, and the food was great too. Of course, I love Mexican food anyway.

Kristen next to the little Mexican dude. :)

Time to go home and they are all still in good moods. It was a good day. :)
If you are interested in seeing all of the pictures, you can go to my shutterfly account.

New Orleans

I've taken all week to get around to this. We did go to New Orleans last weekend and had a great time. We toured St. Louis #3 cemetery, Besthoff Sculpture Garden, Jackson Square, the French Quarter, and Riverwalk.

Billy at the entrance to the St. Louis Cemetery #3.

It was actually very pretty for a cemetery. Lots of crosses and angels everywhere too.

The entrance to the sculpture garden.

Billy being silly. lol. He's pretending to as for directions. So silly. :)

This was my favorite sculpture. It was a huge spider.

This is the entrance to Riverwalk. It's a shopping mall right on the water. I thought it was neat.

This is the statue of Andrew Jackson in the middle of Jackson Square.

St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square

This was one of the first churches built in Louisiana. It's well over 200 yrs. old.

Ok, so I obviously started this several days ago. All I had left to do was put a little text under each picture and it would have been ready. I am so bad at putting things off. But hey, I've been busy. I do have all of my pictures posted on my Shutterfly account, so if you want to see them, just click on the link to the right.

Now I think I will get started on my post from this past weekend, as this is actually from the weekend before, May 20-31.

What's goin' on...

So, not too, too much going here any more. I'm still going to New Orleans for the weekend and am really looking forward to that. Thanks again Matt for taking care of my younguns. ;o) I know they will have lots of fun while they are there. Make sure to take pictures. lol. I know you've been so great at that lately. He He:)

We are no longer going to Washington next week to see Petra. Awe :( That's ok though, really. I know we will make it up there someday. I will definitely make it to North Carolina to see that whole clan once they get settled in there. That will be fun.

The original plan was:
1) Go to New Orleans for the weekend of May 30th-May 31st
2) Go to Washington from June 3rd-June 7th
3) Take a weekend trip to Texas if it can be worked out with relatives maybe on the weekend of June 12th or 26th.
4)Have Karen's birthday at Build A Bear on June 20th

Those were my original plans for the month of June as far as anything eventful is concerned. However, since I am not going to Washington, I have made other plans for next week. We weren't planning on spending much money while Washington, doesn't mean we wouldn't have, but we were going to try not to. Anyway, since we aren't going, I have found something else to spend the money on. I know, the smart thing to do with it would be to save it, but that's no fun. :) So, I found out a friend of mine has been trying to sell her bowflex for a while now. It is maybe a year or so old and has been used at most 10 times. I am going to buy that from her. We have certainly had exercise equipment before. I use them for a little while, then end up getting rid of it. Although, the last thing I had, I totally regret not keeping. I think I'll do way better this time. My plans are to go on a serious diet and work my butt off on my new toy, literally! I have gained soooo much weight in the last 2 years, it isn't even funny. And now that I am doing so much better emotionally and am getting "right in the head" I think I will be able to get myself back. I want to get back to the way I was a few years ago.

Ok, now that I've rambled on and on about that, my plans for next week are to completely redo my office space. I am going to pretty much gut that room, paint it, and make it a workout/computer room. I just have so much furniture in there now that I will have to find somewhere else to put most of it. Those bowflex machines are not small. I still have to decide what color I want to use, and we all know I love lots of color. Well, maybe we don't "All" know, but I do. My downstairs, which I've yet to post pictures of, is very colorful. Maybe it's even too colorful. I want the bedroom to be cohesive with the rest of the upstairs though. I do think it is going to take me several days to get this done, so that's good. It will keep me busy. And I am so excited about having a "new" room to workout in. Yay!!!

I know this summer I will also be kept very busy by the kids. The pool in the neighborhood is now open, so we will no doubt spend a lot of time there. We are also going to join the summer reading program at the library, and there are things going on there at least once a week. I have to keep them entertained to some degree I suppose.

Those are pretty much my plans for the month of June. Not too, too much on the list, but enough to keep me happy. I just like to have lots of stuff going on pretty much all of the time. Oh yeah, my birthday is next weekend too, and since Petra will not be making me a glutten free cake (lol), I will be doing something for that as well. We may take a short trip somewhere for the weekend. Right now we are thinking maybe Niagara Falls again. It is just so darn beautiful there. I haven't decided on that just yet.

As for this past weekend, which I've yet to post about, we went up to Matt and Carolyn's. We had a good time. Just hangin' out in the pool/hot tub, watchin' movies, kids playin'. You get the gist. I really do like going up there. We may have to squeeze some more of that into the month of June as well. We shall see. Of course, they are always welcome to come down here too. (You know that, right?)

I did take a few pictures of the kids just before we left their house last Monday, and I will post them later today. I still have to upload them to my computer. I don't know why I didn't take more than I actually did. I guess I was just too busy visiting to worry with the camera. I don't really know. I will also have a ton of pictures from this coming weekend as well. Those will come on Monday more than likely.

Well, I guess that's it for now. I could go on and on, because talking/typing is something I certainly have no problem with. lol. I always say, "I could talk to a tree stump". So, I'll shut up now, or stop typing. However you wanna look at it. :)

Several posts in one

I have several pictures I have wanted to post about in the past few months but never really got around to. I had this all done yesterday, but this stupid site would not cooperate with what I was wanting it to look like. I just gave up after a few wasted hours. Ugh! So, now I am going to try it again. I'm sure this time I will have no problem since I've just decided to leave all of the pictures smack dab in the center and comment above and below them.

Kristen blowing a huge bubble: Kristen had God knows how many pieces of double bubble in her mouth. She does tent to pack it quite full. I bought a large bucket of gum from Sam's Club to take on our trip to MS with us for spring break. She kept insisting I take pictures of her.

This does remind me of the time about a year ago when we went to Chili's to eat dinner. She had her mouth packed full of gum at that time as well. She had an enormous bubble, and it popped all over her face and in her hair just as we pulled into our parking space. I was rather irritated to say the least. I was ready to go eat, and she was covered in gum. So we ran over to the Home Depot and got some Spot Shot. I had to use that once to get gum out of the carpet when the kids had gotten it ground into it. The Spot Shot worked great. All of the gum came right out of the carpet with a little scraping. So I thought surely it would work on her. Of course, it does say on the can not to use it one your skin. Well, what was I supposed to do? She was covered in gum, and we were hungry. I sprayed her down, and what do ya know, all that gum came off and it didn't kill her. I don't know why they say not to use it ON yourself. Spot Shot is awesome!!!

My kitty kitty:

This is my fat, lazy kitty kitty, Polly. We have tons of pictures of her, but this one was convenient. I pretty much chose it for that reason. Anyway, I just wanted to share a picture of my kitty that we rescued from the pound 3 years ago. I love my stupid cat. She's very, very messy and is always in the way, making me trip, but I love her. :)

My beautiful Tulips: This is my most favorite flower ever. It is just so beautiful. Billy got these for me for Valentine's Day. And I know, I should have put this up a long time ago, but we all know I wasn't doing so great during the month of February. So I'm doing it now. :) I'm just glad he got me flowers. I love to have live flowers in the house; I just don't like the cost of keeping them around. They do liven up the dining room table though. ;)

The whole pot:

As you can tell, this is the whole pot of them. Oh so pretty! I love 'em, love 'em. :)

Karen in a silly bunny hat:

Obviously this was taken around Easter time, because when else can you get a silly bunny hat like this? I just thought she was cute, hence the picture. :) This was taken in Cracker Barrel. I love that restaurant. Ya know, they don't have Cracker Barrels in the Vegas area. We were out there a few years ago and I wanted to go to one. I asked a lady about it and she said she had never heard of it. Wow, those people are really missing out as far as I'm concerned. I love the Cracker Barrel. Yummy food and a cute little store all in one. Love it!

Dolphin Mural in Hunter's orthodontist office:

Now if you didn't think I was strange before, I'm sure you do now. lol. I will take pictures of just about anything. I actually took this one for Kristen, because she loves dolphins. I thought maybe she could use it as wallpaper on her phone. It is pretty though, don't ya think? :)

Sea turtle mural:

Aren't the babies so cute? ;) I took this when I was still planning on going to Hawaii for our anniversary this year. We were going to go scuba diving, and I was really hoping to swim with the sea turtles. We found a really cool place to do it and everything. Awe, I'm sad now that we didn't get to go. Maybe next year. That is definitely on my "to do before I die" list.

Hunter buying his girlfriend flowers for his first date:

We took Hunter and his girlfriend on a double date the weekend after Valentine's Day. This was his first date. :) He wanted to buy her some flowers, but I didn't want him spending every penny he had on them. We went to a few floral shops, but they really didn't have what we were looking for. They cost too much anyway. So we ran into Kroger really quickly just to see if they had anything, and sure enough, they had a ton. They actually had a lot of Valentine's left overs and that saved him a lot of money. Hey, it's the thought that counts anyway. Right? I just wanna raise that boy to treat girls right and be wise with his money. ;)

Karri and Hunter at her house:

This is when he gave her the flowers. :)

Karri and Hunter at Logan's:
Well, that's my hodge podge of pictures for now. :) Kind of random, I know. But hey, I just don't have a ton going on at the moment, so what do ya do? All of these are things that I, at one time, had planned to post about. So there ya go. :) I'm just making up for lost time. lol.