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.

Hunter's battle with a chandelier

One thing I forgot to mention that happened in Mississippi when we were there for spring break was that Hunter split his head open within a few hours of getting there. That was just a lovely way to begin a trip as you can imagine. lol. I, of course, took pictures of what gouged his head open and of the wound itself, because I do tend to take pictures of pretty much everything. lol.

When my brother's (W.C.) wife left him, she took the dining room table. The kids were told to be very careful when going through the dining room because of the chandelier hanging down low. Hunter was running through and ducked, but didn't duck quite enough. He then came into the den where I was and told me that he had hit his head, and it hurt really bad. I was on the computer, so I put it down and held him as he leaned over to me. I told him to sit down so I could go get him some Tylenol. He looked rather pale. He took his hand down from his head where he had been holding it, and the blood began to pour. I was like "Oh crap!" So, I took him into the kitchen, sat him in the chair at the table, and got a cloth to put pressure on his head. He has such a thick head of hair that it was very difficult to see exactly where all of the blood was coming from. At that time W.C. came into the room. He said quite loudly, "Oh my God!" For those of you who may not know not to have that kind of reaction in front of a hurt kid, you DON'T! lol. Hunter started freaking out. W.C. was like, "Look at all the blood", and I told him to shut up. lol.

I then took Hunter over to the sofa and had him lay his head in my lap. All I was able to find was a tiny little speck on his forehead, so I put a bandaid on it. (I later realized that the speck I had put a bandaid on was just blood, no wound. Oops.) He laid in my lap for at least a half hour. I still had the cloth on his head, applying pressure, because I wasn't sure if where I had put the bandaid was the only place he was hurt. Plus, the pressure made it feel better to him. It wasn't until so much blood clotted his hair into a clump that I was able to see the gouge on his head. I didn't want to freak him out, so I mouthed and barely whispered to W.C., "It's bad." Hunter said, "What's bad?" I said, "Huh? I didn't say it's bad, I said I'm fat." (lol) He bought it for the time being. Quick thinking on my part. lol. I didn't want to freak him out even more by thinking it was super serious and that he may have to go to the hospital. So W.C. came over and took a look at it. He asked me if I thought we should go to the emergency room. I REALLY did not want to do that if at all possible. He then called a nurse friend of his to come over. She was there within 15 minutes or so. She brought some durma bond with her and basically glued his head back together. It all worked out really well, and I am so glad she was able to come over to help. She told me after all was said and done that if he would have gone to the hospital, more than likely they would have had to shave his head in the wounded area and in order to durma bond it back together. He would have absolutely hated losing all of his hair. There wasn't quite as much durma bond as she would have liked to have had, but we weren't too concerned about it being a pretty scar since it is up in his hair. Hopefully he won't go bald when he gets older, but unfortunately his genes aren't in his favor for that. lol.

The next day is when we went to New Orleans and walked around all day at the zoo and the aquarium. He was feeling kind of wimpy and queasy most of the day, so I was constantly asking him every few minutes if he was ok. He had a rough day that day and just felt crappy, but he made it through. I'm always trying to teach my kids how to deal with pain and suck it up as good as they can, because I don't want them to be pansies. He did a great job. Kudos to you kid. :)
Here is the bottom of the chandelier he hit his head on. He hit it, or rather gouged it, on that thing sticking down. It is metal and has a cast iron look to it. The picture doesn't have the greatest quality to it since I took it with my phone. Not that my phone always takes bad pictures. I just need to remember to clean the lens before I take one and I usually don't remember. I took it with my phone to send it to his daddy since he wasn't with us on that trip. He hit the thing sticking down on the right, so it now has his DNA on it. I never did think to clean it off since it's not like it had blood dripping from it or anything. Is that gross on my part? lol. I just didn't even think about it. Oh well.

And here are 2 lovely pictures of the gouge. It was pretty bad. It looked worse in person than it does even on here.

He got it pretty good, I'd say. He's all better now, of course. I just actually meant to put this on here a month ago and just forgot to. I do hope our next trip together as a family out of state, away from our doctor and covered hospital that will give us no trouble what so ever in services, goes much better. I may not be so lucky as to have a nurse show up and give care next time. If there is a next time. I know that Petra hopes that our next out of state trip goes uneventful as well since she is our next destination. lol. Just don't move your table and leave your chandelier exposed for my child's head, please. hehe:)

I know you just enjoyed the heck out of that story. :)

Karen lookin' all fancy

Karen was asking and asking me about my wedding dress a few weeks ago for some reason. And since I happened to know exactly where it was, I got it out for her to try on. You can definitely tell it is from the early '90s. I should scan in a picture of me in it so you can see how it really looks, but I'm just to lazy to do so at the moment. She looked so cute though. I just had her stand on my bed to take it. I don't have the poofy slip that goes under it anymore since I let my little sister use it when she got married and her kittens tore it to shreds. Needless to say, I was none too happy about that. But I don't think that would have fit Karen anyway. She wanted to hold my bouquet also, but I really didn't want to go dig that out too. It was more packed away than my dress was. She told me she wants to wear my dress when she gets married. How sweet is that? I'm sure she will change her mind though. It would certainly save on the outgo, now wouldn't it? :) Of course, that is quite a ways off, even though I know it will be here before I know it, unfortunately. :(

Karen in my slightly wrinkled wedding dress, since it has been packed away for over 15 years.

I have no idea what I will blog about tomorrow, but I'm sure I will come up with something. :)

The Delta Block Party

Delta Block Party

We spent most of the day Saturday at the Delta Block Party in Atlanta. It was an appreciation day for Delta employees. We had a great time. We didn't get to do everything, because it rained most of the day; but we did do a lot. It was fun.

When we first got there, the kids decorated little flower pots, so when they were done, Billy ran them back to the van. They got their faces painted next. After that, we all got caricatures drawn. I didn't get pictures of everyone with their drawings, because it was raining; and there really wasn't anywhere to stand to get a good picture to where it wouldn't get all wet. I'll try to get pics this week and put it on here though. Billy took those to the van once we were all done getting them drawn. Next we got our picture taken to make it look like we were on the front of Sky magazine which is the magazine in the back pocket of the seat on the plane. They turned out alright. Billy then took those to the van. Needless to say, he was getting tired of running to the van. lol.

They had a rock wall and a few jumping inflatables there, but by the time we got around to doing it, it was raining. They had deflated the inflatables. Awe:( We got some food to eat and just spent the next few hours looking around as you can see by the pictures I've posted on here.

So, that was pretty much it for Saturday. And we didn't do too much yesterday either. I haven't done so great at getting to church lately. I guess I need to work on that. I really like to go for the kids especially.

Billy and I did go see a movie yesterday afternoon. We say Angels and Demons with Tom Hanks. It was really good, I thought. It was a lot like The Davinci Code. So if you liked The Davinci Code, you'll probably like this one too.

Well, that's it for now. Not much else going on at the moment. I'll have to think of some more things to post on for the rest of the week. I'm sure I'll come up with something. ;)

How I spent my Mother's Day

I guess I'm a little behind on posting this. lol. Oh well, better late than never. I really didn't do much of anything on Mother's Day. Literally, I was a complete lazy bum. I was so tired from the day before that I just laid around pretty much all day. It was great. :) We never left the house, so I didn't go out to eat or anything. I really didn't feel like it. And besides, we ate out for 3 meals the day before, so I was good. Billy just fixed me some stuff here at the house that I like to eat, so it was all good. Then, after I slept half the day, the kids and Billy gave me their cards and gifts. The kids cards were hand made and so, so sweet, and Billy found a really sweet one to give me from him. He also gave me a large bottle of Red Door perfume, which is my favorite, and I am currently almost out of it. So that was a good choice on his part. ;)

So, that was pretty much my day in a nut shell. I did take some pictures of us in the hot tub so I'd have some pictures of us on that day. I would have liked to have taken some of us dressed up for church, but seeing as how we didn't make it to church, I took what I could get. Oh well. It was a good day though.

Me and Billy in the hot tub, enjoying it before the kids got in.

My little Karen having fun in the hot tub.

Hunter being silly. He's gonna hate that I put this picture of him on here. He's so funny about having his picture taken and them me showing it to people. I don't know why though. He's such a cutie.

My 2 girls being sweet. They can do that on occasion. lol.

Hunter again

The 3 amigos :)

Kristen being Kristen. lol.

Our trip to the Mall of America in MInneapolis, MN

Saturday we went to the Mall of America in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I got up at 3:30 a.m. to start getting ready. Ugh, that was early! We left the house by 4:40 to head to the airport. We got to the airport at 5:15 and got started on our journey. :) Our plane left at 6:30 a.m. and arrived in Minneapolis at 8:15 a.m. central time. We stopped by Burger King in the airport there to eat breakfast. Then we got on the airport tram to head to the light rail train.

When we got to the mall, the stores weren't open yet. There were a lot of walkers there though. So, we just walked around for a little bit. Then Hunter decided he wanted to eat McDonald's since he didn't eat at Burger King with the rest of us. While we did that, we watched the people who worked at the Nickelodeon Universe test the rides.

We took several pictures of Nickelodeon Universe and the little lego land they had next to it. It looked really cool. We continued to look around at a lot of the stores. Kristen did some shopping to spend ALL of her birthday money. lol. I found a pair of Rocket Dog shoes for $4.99. I love deals. :) We got Hunter a few shirts and took Karen to Build A Bear. Hunter was happy to get clothes from Aeropostale and Hollister instead of Target and Walmart. lol. And of course Karen was ecstatic to get yet another build a bear. She loves those things.

We ended up renting a locker to put all of our stuff in, because it was getting rather heavy. Then we went to eat at the Rainforest Cafe. I've been inside a gift shop at a Rainforest Cafe before, but I've never eaten at one. It was pretty good. I liked the decor. It was very...well...Rainforesty. :) And while we were there, Kristen discovered another Build A Bear shop inside the gift store. So of course she just HAD to have one too, after having given more thought to the fact that Karen had one.

We wanted to either do the Nickelodeon Universe or the aquarium, but we just ran out of time. We definitely plan to go back soon and spend the night in order to do those things. I wasn't feeling great enough to ride the rides anyway, which I normally would love to do, and Hunter and Karen both chose to spend the money that we would have spent on them for wrist bands for the rides on the stuff we ended up buying them. I told them they weren't going to get both. They are a bit spoiled, but I don't give them everything they want. lol. Besides, like I said, we just didn't have the time anyway.

We had a lot of fun and were all glad that we got to go. I do look forward to going back somewhat soon. It won't be as soon as we would like seeing as how our money doesn't come off the tree in the back yard, unfortunately. lol. And we do have several trips planned in the near future to pay for. But, it is on the short to do again list.

Here are some of the pictures that we took while there:

This is the kids on the tram at the Minneapolis airport.

Kristen sitting on the MOVING escalator and getting fussed at by her dad. lol.

Billy buying our tickets for the light rail train

Karen at the Lindberg Station waiting on the train and Kristen in the background. :)

Hunter

Kristen and Karen on the light rail train headed to the mall

A picture taken from the 4th floor of the mall

The space shuttle and other things made of legos

Part of the lego land next to Nickelodeon Universe

Nickelodeon Universe

More of Nickelodeon Universe

And of course I had to get my picture taken by this sign. lol.

The kids in a shark cage by the aquarium. Funny:)

Karen in the BuildABear Workshop getting another build a bear. A lamb this time.

Karen rubbing the lambs heart on her head to give it good thoughts :)

Karen making a wish and putting love into her lambs heart :)

Karen putting the heart into her lamb

Karen giving her lamb a bath to remove all of the fuzzies

Karen doing the birth certificate and giving her lamb a name. She named her Libby.

Here she is dressing her.

Still dressing her :)

Kristen with her build a bear in the Rainforest Cafe. She is checking to see if the tiger is soft enough, not too firm.

Here she is putting the heart inside the tiger. This lady didn't have her do all of the sweet little things that the lady that Karen had had her do. Karen's lady was much better at the whole build a bear thing, I think.

And here she is cleaning all of the fuzzies off.

Billy and the kids just before we went in to eat, with aquariums behind them.

Kristen and Karen at our table. Nice aquarium.

Hunter posing by the aquarium at our table. I was surprise he wanted me to take this since he usually doesn't want me to take his picture at all.

Billy and Kristen with the "Volcano" we ordered for dessert to share. This thing was plenty for 5 people to share. It was huge!

And of course, Karen wanted her picture with it too. I couldn't get much of the dessert in there though.

I guess this is the Rainforest Cafe mascot. :) So we just had to stop him and get a picture.

This is the hostess desk. Kinda cool, huh? Again, I had to get a picture. :)

Kristen with "Stripes" on the airport tram in Minneapolis, heading back home now.

Hunter on the tram on our way back home.

Karen fell asleep for a little while on the plane ride home. It was a long day for this little girl. Heck, it was a long day for this big girl. lol.

Karen with "Libby" on the plane ride home, after she woke up, of course.

Libby now riding safely buckeled since the seat belt sign was on. lol

Well, we had a great time, as we usually do on our day trips. I'm glad we got to go and am grateful for the opportunity that we have to do stuff like this.