Favorite Things

Here are a few of my favorite things from this past weekend.

A sleeping (& healthy) baby boy,


Happy children (& best friends),


and my husband doing the dishes (is there anything more attractive???)...

Luke's Pep Talk...Priceless

A few weeks ago, Todd and Luke were looking up Peyton Manning's "priceless" pep talks on the Mastercard website. You can put in your name and "situation" and Peyton will deliver a personalized pep talk. Todd put in Luke's name and the situation was "I got a bad haircut". Luke thought it was hilarious and has been walking around giving pep talks since then. Here is an example...

If you need your own pep talk, you can either call and talk to Luke, or go to this website to let Peyton cheer you up: http://www.priceless.com/us/personal/en/extras/peptalks/index.html

Growing Up Too Fast

Baby Carson is learning new tricks daily, but his newfound mobility is starting to make me a little nervous. Right now he can get anywhere he wants to go by rolling and pulling himself across the floor, but he's just learned to get up on all fours. The baby gates are coming out this weekend!

We also had to lower his crib mattress because he's dangerously close to pulling himself up. Here is what happens when we stand him in his bed:

Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled that he is active and strong! His newfound freedom just changes things dramatically around the house and sometimes change is SCARY! Since he's been able to sit up, though, bathtimes are much more fun!!!

Walking Snowman

I added a new section to the blog called "lukespeak". It's where I will share some of the funny things that come out of Luke's mouth. Here is a picture to go with one of his quotes.

Walking Snowman

Counting my Blessings

This post is a lot different than my others, but this is about something that has really touched me this week and has reminded me that every day with my sweet boys is truly a gift from God. Many of you probably know of or have heard me talk about the morning radio show, "Rick and Bubba", that I've been listening to for several years now. One of the hosts, Rick, just lost his two year old son this past Saturday. He drowned in the family pool. It is so tragic. It is truly amazing how the faith of that family is getting them through this tragedy. I pray that if I am ever faced with a similar situation that I will be able to trust God to see me through. Here are the videos of Rick speaking at his son's funeral on Tuesday. It's in three parts (about 10 minutes a piece). I would highly recommend you view them when you can. I know I'm glad that I took the time to hear what he had to say.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Snow Clouds

Did someone say snow??? After we dropped Dad off at the airport on Friday Luke, Drew, Carson and I headed to the grocery store for bread and milk. It just seemed like the thing to do because there was a mention of snow that was to start at 4 am Saturday morning. This is the South ya'll and it just doesn't snow around here every day!!! In the meantime, Carson was starting to show signs of not feeling well so, just to be cautious, I scheduled a doctor's appointment for Friday afternoon. After all, what if we got snowed in with a sick baby on a holiday weekend...

After a very stressful afternoon at the doctor, Carson was diagnosed with his first ear infection. This diagnosis is especially ominous considering the battle Luke had with ear infections starting at 6 months old. Unfortunately, the ear infection was the least of our concerns because he also had a whopping fever of 103.6. Daddy had to be called in for reinforcements because the attempted blood draw nearly put Mama under the table, although somehow my precious baby was falling asleep while they were fishing the needle under his baby skin! Thank God for my wonderful neighbor Ronda. She watched Luke for me all afternoon and then had dinner ready for us when we got home. Don't know what I would do without her! Needless to say, we had several sleepless nights over the weekend, but the little guy is doing so much better now. He's also getting a tooth on top to go with his two on the bottom which didn't help with his comfort level. Funny thing about the new tooth...it isn't one of his top center teeth, it's kinda off to the left a little bit. Our little chomper may be renamed our little snaggle tooth pretty soon.

Luke woke up Saturday morning extremely disappointed that there was no snow. Here is the extent of our conversation:
Luke: Mama, it forgot to snow.
Me: Maybe it will snow a little bit later.
Luke: Maybe it will snow A LOT later.
And then, as he's looking out the window, he proceeds to say, "Those sure look like snow clouds". He was right, because an hour later we got some snow. It's a good thing it snowed because he was laying on our hardwood floors telling us he was making snow angels. I wanted to say, "no baby, those are just dust bunnies", but I digress...here is a little video of his snow angel:

Below are some other photos of LJ playing in the snow with his friends, doesn't he look happy! You should also check out Ronda's blog if you want to see a cute slideshow of everyone playing in the snow.

Papaw's Visit

We sure have had a busy week. Dad came on Wednesday for a short visit. Papaw and Luke have such a great relationship. It's all about give and take--Papaw gives Luke everything he wants (and more) and Luke takes it. They stayed up late both nights he was here and watched movies. Carson got in on the action a little bit before I took him off to his own bed. I guess Luke is trying to catch up on sleep because he slept until 8am this morning instead of his usual 6:30am wake up time.

We saw Holly and Alivia Rose on Thursday. I call Carson the "busiest baby on the block" and Baby Livs the "sweetest baby on the block". She is so gentle and thoughtful...a real snuggler. The babies are so intrigued by each other. Luke, on the other hand, still does not see what all the fuss is about. It's really difficult to get him to sit by the babies long enough to get a picture. Also, he is less than thrilled to have to share his Papaw. Holly has their new apartment all fixed up for when Joe comes home from Iraq next month. We can't wait!

A Big Personality to Go with Those Big Blue Eyes

Here is a picture of Carson swinging on our front porch.

He is really starting to show us his personality and likes/dislikes. From the picture, you can see he loves to swing.

Other favorites include:

• Eating anything he can get into his mouth, including toys, paper, fingers...
• His exersaucer
• Taking a bath with big brother
• Tags on blankets, clothing...

He does not like:

• Eating his vegetables
• Dirty diapers
• Sitting still

Here is a shot where we were celebrating UK's basketball win on Saturday...GO BIG BLUE!!!

Oh yeah...he has two teeth now, and knows how to use them! Our little CHOMPER!

A hard day for LJ

On Tuesday Luke was forced to do two of his least favorite things...go to the dentist and get a haircut. We were not looking forward to the dentist because he freaked out the last time and we had to reschedule. For this appointment, if he cooperated, he was promised new toys and a trip to McDonald's with best buddy Drew. It went much better than last time and as soon as we figured out he hated the gritty toothpaste "that crunches" [his teeth] it was fine. The haircut was filled with drama, but the end result was good. Just to prove he survived the day, here is a video of him on Tuesday evening...

Another adventure at Portrait Innovations

When Carson was one week old, I decided I had to have professional pictures of the boys. It was one of my first outings alone with both boys and we went to portrait innovations. The results were not stellar. Luke wanted nothing to do with the new baby so it was hard to get him near enough to Carson to take a picture and Carson was fussy and way too young to take a good photo. In fact, Grandma calls the resulting photo the "Carson's gotta poop" picture and Grandpa said he looked like Don Rickles...whoever that is!

Well, I think our second trip for pictures went a lot better, but it was still exhausting. Here are some of my favorites...

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New Year's Resolution

Happy 2008! One of my new year's resolutions is to improve how I organize and keep track of fun information about my boys. Since scrapbooking hasn't quite worked out for me (since I purchased Luke's scrapbook in 2004 and have only done one page), I decided that I would give blogging a try. I also want a way to share videos with family and friends. I don't know how to do any of this yet, but bear with me and hopefully my blogs will be something that people look forward to viewing.