hangin' out with little E

The week before Thanksgiving I was soooo blessed to spend 2 days with the cutest little girl that I know!  There were a few sick kiddos at Weezy's (E's nanny) so Caroline asked me if I would mind keeping her for a few hours on those two days.  In my mind I was thinking, would I mind keeping her?!?!?!?...pshhh...I would LOVE to :)  Needless to say, I got to spend a lot of fun time playing dress up, reading books, having tea parties, and just loving on this sweet girl :)

Lunch time after she woke up from her nap!!

The little princess sitting in her princess chair!

 No joke, E set up this little tea party all by herself!  She had a cookie for her bear and a cookie for herself!  She even had her baby in a stroller next to her and was feeding her baby a cookie too!  

Little diva :)

Such a smart girl...already a reader and before she even turns 2 :)

 Trying to learn to go potty on the big girl potty, but she's gotta have a book to read!  Just like her Uncle Gair :)  Must run in the family!

Hope to spend more time with this sweet little girl very soon!

Happy Thursday to you all :)

"are you all done?"

This is what I see/hear every time Charlie man is done eating, if I ask him, "Are you all done?"

That one little noise, "ahh," is the cutest thing!  It's like he is trying to say "all done."

Just a little tid bit of my day!  Now I will stop procrastinating and get back to writing papers!

Happy Thursday :)

pears. pouting. and he's out

Charlie man was eating some pears for a snack and he was playing with his juice cup and trying to throw it on the floor over and over again...so I took it from him and told him he couldn't have it if he was going to play with it.  Yeah, I know...he isn't even two yet....but he is a smarty pants and he was giggling because he knew he wasn't suppose to throw his juice cup on the floor.

Anywho...little "mr. smarty pants" had a little pouting incident!

After I took this picture he sat up and kept on eating his pears.

eyes fluttering.

head nodding.

and this.

little booger couldn't keep his eyes open long enough to finish his snack :)

If this doesn't brighten up a dull day, I don't know what will!

Love this precious little boy!

Hope everyone has a wonderful Wednesday!

more to offer than football

So yeah, it's football season, but that isn't all that I do.  Looking at my blog though, it kinda seems like all I do is tailgate and cheer on my Gamecocks!

Well, it isn't...as far as the rest of last week goes....(picture me trying to remember) ha! Hmmmm....Oh yeah!  I babysat Charlie and Annalee ALL NIGHT on Tuesday!  I felt like a real mommy!  Major props to you real mommies out there...I never realized how hard it was to get a 16 month old and a 4 year old fed breakfast, dressed, and in the car by 8:15 to get big sissy to school (so she doesn't miss "circle time"). Well, let's just say I learned!  Fortunately for me little man decided to sleep in until like 8:05 (I mean hey...I've always heard "never wake a sleeping baby").  So with that being said, I had 10 minutes to change his diaper, feed him breakfast AND Annalee breakfast, get her sweet sassy little self dressed (ha), brushed teeth, fixed hair, and dress the little man too.

I would love to say that you would be so impressed by my awesome mommy skills because I had her at school at 8:30 on the dot.  But lets be REAL!  That did NOT happen!  I'm pretty sure I was finally putting little man's car seat in the car around 9:00.  Lucky for me, I think that her class was running a little behind this morning because it looked like she was just starting "circle time."

Phewwww!  What a morning!  And it was only 9ish.  I've always wondered why you mommies out there always say it's so hard to even get yourself ready in the mornings...but now I understand why!  If I had wanted to shower and get myself ready, I would have had to of been up and going before both kiddos even got out of bed!  And my sleep is oh so important to me!

Well...enough rambling about my one time mommy experience!

The rest of my week just consisted of school, Gair's softball game (where they whooped some church softball tail),a date night with my love, and YES...a little tailgate for the Gamecocks playing the Kentucky Wildcats (you can check out those pics on my previous post).

tuesdays and thursdays.

and sometimes a friday.

All of my Tuesday and Thursdays are spent with Annalee and Charlie.  Annalee is usually in school so I don't get to see her much.  I have been thinking and thinking of ways to entertain Charlie.  With that being said, I have been trying to take him outside as much as possible since the weather has cooled down some.  Nice weather, precious baby, and my camera....you know what that means - - a photo shoot!

wondering what in the world his shadow is :)

Big Sissy is home from school!!

She is such a great big sister!  Loves her baby "Charles" --as she calls him :)

Another day, Charlie and I were having a lounge in our jammies day!  This was taken on my iPhone!  Charlie is already reading (and even has the book turned the right way)

Last Thursday, Annalee stayed home from school because she had a bad cold and a fever the night before.  She was feeling better by lunch time and of course asked, "can we go to welcome to Moe's for lunch?"  How could I say no to that, when it is my favorite place as well :)

This girl wasted NO TIME!  After her first bite she looked at me with a smile filled with cheese dip and said, "I feel like I have a party in my tummy right now!"  --PRICELESS

Yesterday morning Charlie had some Lucky Charms for breakfast!  He is my kinda boy because he ate the marshmallow ones first :)

These are just some updates of the little ones...and pretty much all the cuteness I have to blog about these days!

Happy Wednesday!

new shoes.

With school started back I have been pretty busy!  I am taking three graduate courses this semester and all three of them are very important courses packed with A LOT of reading!  I am still babysitting two days a week though.  On the days that I babysit it's just Charlie and me because Annalee is in school.  I do miss her, but me and the little one have been having a lot of fun!  On Tuesday we went outside and played for a little while since he got him some new shoes!

I also got an update for those of you who were wanting to keep up with Becca's journey in Uganda!  She put a bunch of pictures on her Facebook page.  If you go to her blog you can click on a link to her Facebook page in the left sidebar.  The album titled Uganda with Russ is the album of pictures that she most recently posted from this trip.  She has had trouble with her internet holding up long enough for her to do a blog post, and the power at the orphanage is very spotty.

I talked to Russ about an hour ago.  He has landed back in the states!  He said that he had a great time!  I can't wait to see all the videos that he took!

I was just able to Skype with Bec, Papa Isaac, and Baby Don for a minute and she is doing great!  Baby Don (Papa Isaac's grandson) has Malaria, but Becca says he is doing much better!  Keep praying for Baby Don's recovery!  Although this precious little baby wasn't feeling well, he did blow me a lot of kisses.  I tried to do a cute screen shot when he was blowing me kisses, but it didn't work out so well.

Thanks again for all of your prayers for Becca! Hopefully she will post on her blog very soon!

I hope everyone has a great Labor Day weekend :)

riverbanks zoo

I have been dying to take Annalee and Charlie to the zoo all summer, but it has been waaayy too hot!  Since this week has been a little cooler, and it's kinda the last week of summer (since school is starting back), I thought it would be nice to take the kids to the zoo.  Charlie has had a cold all week, so we thought he should stay home.  Thankfully Ashley was willing to come and stay with him so I could take Annalee to the zoo.  I asked Caroline if her and Elliot wanted to meet us there, so I was really excited.  Caroline had asked her friend Laura and her son Easton to come also, so we had a fun little group at the zoo.  

We started off checking out the bears!  It was crazy how close they can actually get to you!

 Last time I was at the zoo was when I was doing my student teaching, and they were building the kangaroo exhibit then.  So this was the first time I got to see this.  It was so neat!  You literally walk through a big door and there is a pathway that you walk on.  The kangaroos are so close to you and there isn't anything keeping them from coming right up to you because there isn't a fence that blocks the walkway.  I'm pretty sure if you haven't seen it yourself then you are so confused as to what I am talking about so I guess you'll just have to check it out yourself to understand!

 Then we went to see the gorillas.  It wasn't their feeding time, so only one of them came down by the windows, and he didn't really stay for long.  It's really scary to think that the only thing that is between you and a HUGE gorilla is a piece of glass! YIKES!

 After the gorillas, we kept on walking to go see the elephants!  Little Miss Independent was enjoying walking around like a big girl :)

 Of all the times I have ever been to the zoo, I have always thought the elephants were so boring.  They always just stood there.  When we walked up, one of the elephants was eating some hay and then got a drink of water out of the creek.  Sounds kinda boring when you put it that way...but I guess when all you expect them to do is stand there and do nothing, it was kinda neat!

 I'm pretty sure every kid has a picture with these animal statue things at Riverbanks Zoo.  I mean why not....

 I was trying to be artsy and creative with my camera while people were feeding the giraffes :)  The shadows are bad...but it was hot, there were a lot of people around, and the kiddos were getting a little fussy!

 Not fussy for too long though, because we got to ride the Carousel!

 And...what's a day at the zoo without a picture of two little boys with the best mullets I've seen since Joe Dirt!  

 And of course they had to have some ice cream!  

Such a fun morning trip to the zoo!  Hopefully we can do it again soon (when it gets cooler outside)

my favorite 4 year old

Annalee wanted to stay home from school today and have a pajama day!  How could I possibly say no :) Charlie was taking a nap so we got to have some "girl time" as she calls it :) 

slacking off

Sorry I have been slacking off with my posts.  I just haven't had anything that interesting going on to blog about!  I always wanna make it a point to go outside on a pretty day and take some pictures/play with my new camera, so that I can just post pictures on my blog, but surprise surprise . . . the weather has not been cooperating!  I did manage to take some cute pictures of little Charlie man while I was babysitting on Monday though!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Wednesday!

bounce house

I got to work on Thursday and was greeted by Annalee at the door in her pajamas and the first thing she said was, "I want to stay home from school today!"  So of course . . . . I couldn't say no!  I had told them Tuesday that if the weather was good I would take them to the zoo.  Annalee had already made up her mind that she wanted to go to the "bounce house."  Probably like I year ago I took her and Eli to Fun Zone where they have tons of bounce houses and bouncy slides.  I wasn't sure how Charlie was going to be able to play, but I packed up all 3 kiddos and headed to Fun Zone!

 Needless to say . . . . he loved it!

After we left Fun Zone, Annalee wanted to go to "Welcome to Moes."  I took her there when she was two, and instead of calling it Moes, she always just says she wants to go to "Welcome to Moes!"  When we left Moes to head back home, this is what I saw in the back seat before we even got on the interstate!

She was all tuckered out!  Played her little heart out the bounce house :)

kiddos

The past two days I have spent a lot of time babysitting!  It makes me sad because Annalee is in summer camp at her school, so I don't get to see her that much!  Thankfully I was able to see her yesterday morning before school and today I got to take all the kids to Chick Fil A for breakfast and to play on the playground!

Little Charlie just turned 1 at the end of June, I cannot believe how big he is getting!  Here are some pics of him in his high chair!

 I can't believe how much he looks like Annalee did when she was 1 year old!  The picture below is Annalee when she was this age!

Annalee has swimming first thing in the morning at school, so if I want to spend time with her I have to bribe her somehow to stay home for a little bit and hang out with me!  Usually breakfast at Chick Fil A and playing on the playground after breakfast is a good enough bribe :)  While we were at Chick Fil A, the playground there was getting cleaned, so they weren't going to be able to play in it!  I decided I would take them to the playground at the park near the house instead!

 We weren't there for long because I felt bad for little Charlie's feet since he didn't have shoes!  If weather permits I told them I would take them to the zoo on Thursday :)