Fun Play Day

Today was a playgroup with some of my friends from my MOPS group. (I know it gets a little confusing, but I go to two different playgroups - one with girls from my church and another with friends from my MOPS group).

We had a great time...and then B decided to eat their dog food. Haha! I thought he was still munching on a muffin because he kept stealing bites from Sara and Jennifer's but then I noticed it was the wrong color and figured it out. You know you're with a bunch of bloggers when they all whip out the camera's to take pictures!

And I want you all to see Brayden's adorable t-shirt! I got it from my friend Stephanie at If You Say Sew. She has so many cute designs and they are only $12. Or you know, you could enter my giveaway on my giveaway blog (link at the top) and I'm giving away FIVE of these great shirts!

Many of you sent me questions about Baby #2 and I have a post coming for you soon!

Pink or Blue for #2???

The title says it all...

We found out that we are expecting baby #2 in November!

This is a cute little cake from Rick's that Chris had picked up for me when we found out:

I've had 2 ultrasounds and so far everything is good and right on track. I met with my doctor today and since I am considered moderately high risk, we talked about delivery already. We are attempting to coordinate with our awesome pediatrician so that he will be there for the delivery (because when I had B he had to wait about 15 hours before he was seen...obviously, not ideal).

Other than that, the only restriction I have at this time is a weight lifting restriction. I am supposed to limit myself on picking Brayden up which is ... well, HARD and not lifting anything else that is over 20lbs. I'm at home with him all day everyday so of course I am going to pick him up! Thankfully we call him Mr. Independent for a reason and he much prefers walking or holding my hand to me actually carrying him around now.

If I can figure out how to scan the ultrasound pictures I'll do that - otherwise I'll probably take a picture of it and see how that turns out!

Atlanta: Day 2

Saturday was the day of the Beth Moore conference! I missed the bus so to speak and didn't get up early enough to ride with the girls, but Chris drove me over, which worked out well because I got dropped off right at the door! After wandering around lost for awhile, Lianna came to my rescue and led me to the correct chapel! Ha! Thanks friend!

I mentioned that Friday night I got to hang out with these girls:

Erin and Megan:

And these girls as well:

Trina (she brought her hubby too!!), Rachel and NCF:

I had such a fun time visiting with them! You girls made my night! It's so fun to meet the people that I read about and talk to on Twitter all the time. And being able to share in an experience like this was awesome!

I also got to meet Lauren, who've I feel like I've known forever:

Lauren and I:

Lianna, Amanda, Courtney (and me):

Lianna, Amanda and I share similar backgrounds and I was so glad to finally meet them in person. I've prayed for both of them for almost 2 years now and I feel like I really know them! And Courtney gave up her birthday to come hang out with us at the conference!

I know there were many more of you who I didn't get the chance to say hi to and I'm so sorry I missed you! I skipped out of the conference a little bit early because Chris got rained out of the golf course he was playing and we were switching hotels that night.

I think I'm going to do a separate post about Beth, the conference, learning points etc because it's just too much for one post!

Atlanta: Day 1

Chris and I arrived in Atlanta on Friday. I've been to a LOT of airports and I have to say I think this one has the worst signage EVER!!! We had to ask three people (who all worked there) for directions to the car rental and didn't get the same answer twice!!

We finally found it...and they messed up our reservation. I was joking on twitter that they stuck in the car from "Just Married" ... you know, the little European one. YIKES. We could barely fit our ONE suitcase, Chris' golf clubs and one duffel in it. My purse literally had to ride in my lap in order to fit. No joke.

Anyway, we had heard about this awesome outlet mall that was supposedly 30 minutes from our hotel. All I can say is that Map Quest lies. 30 minutes, haha! Try THREE HOURS!!! It took us 3 entire hours to get there. And because of it I missed dinner with Lianna and her friend Amy. Not cool.

When we finally made it back, we were starving so we ate at this little log cabin place down the road.

What they don't tell you on the front end is that the animals in the restaurant talk. So imagine us sitting here:
eating and minding our own business when a spotlight comes on over our table and the giant buffalo above our heads starts singing a song and talking. Of course everyone stared and I wanted to crawl under the table!!!

When we got back to the hotel I had a fun night of chatting with several bloggy friends (Erin from Blue Eyed Bride, Megan from Tales of Trees, Rachel (we talk on Twitter a lot) and Naturally Caffeinated Family).

That wraps up day one in Atlanta...more to come!

Urgent

Hi all,

I know I have some serious updating to do about my Atlanta trip (I am still here) but I have an URGENT prayer request.

Bear with me, since I don't know all the details. Our church bus was driving some area pastors/families/church members to a conference in Little Rock and the bus was in a one vehicle accident. At this time, I've heard of 1 fatality, 2 critical injuries and 19 other injuries. One report is that one of the critical injuries was a local pastor's daughter (unconfirmed).

Since this happened quite recently (this evening) this information may vary as the the reports are confirmed. I'll do my best to update as I get new information.

Please keep these families in your prayers!

Matchmaker, matchmaker...

Edited to add: So I guess Sam and Stephanie are a real life couple! Opps! Oh well, I still think he'd look cute with Sunshine!

I have a bad habit of trying to make couples out of people I don't know. Okay, okay, so I do it with people I do know as well. Reality TV is my weakness though...there are just too many single people who would make cute couples!

I've always watched Biggest Loser and I really think this has been the best season yet. The players seem to get it more...they aren't just about playing the game, but they act more like a family which I really like.

And personally, I think Sam...

and Sunshine would be SO CUTE together. (And on a side note, after last night's episode especially, I really want to give O'Neal a hug. I just love him!! He had Chris and I both crying!).
And I also think Daris...
and Stephanie would be cute. He is so quiet and shy and I think she could bring out more of his personality.
I think it's sort of funny that Biggest Loser has a better track record for couples than The Bachelor, don't you?

I can't wait to go to Disneyland

The other day it was raining outside so Chris and I took Brayden to the indoor food court at the outdoor mall. They have a kiddie ride section with 5 or 6 little rides and there used to be a large carousel but they took it out for some odd reason.

Brayden didn't really stand a chance at not loving rides, with Chris and I as his parents. We LOVE roller coasters.

Ride number 1 was a hit...

The John Deere was (of course) another favorite:
But he (quite literally) looooooved the jeep with the baby lion in it. You know my germophobe self was having a mini freakout over this one:
I wish we would have thought to do this sooner! B had so much fun (and I had Subway - yum!).

My 3 Favorite Guys...

Yesterday we went out to my families cabin to take some pictures. My dad wanted to do a picture with him, Chris and Brayden fishing with old fashioned cane poles (which I didn't even know existed).

I called it faux fishing because they weren't baited!

The big white thing is our flag pole...it's 135 feet tall so I couldn't fit it in all the pictures.

Brayden had no clue what was going on but he enjoyed it nonetheless:
Snuggling:
Remember how I said it was faux fishing? Chris still managed to catch a perch! Haha! It's at the bottom right of the picture!
I thought they turned out great! None of these pics have been retouched yet. I'm still figuring out Photoshop, so until I have time to really sit down and work with it, I'm not going to mess them up!

Present idea...

While we were in Tulsa, we decided to celebrate my mother in law's birthday (a little early). If you're like me you really struggle to come up with gift ideas. I was talking to my mom about it and then we both came across the same thing and thought it would be perfect. Dayspring has a new Life collection, so between the two of us, we bought my MIL the entire set...two place settings, mugs, place mats, serving platters, oven mitts, aprons etc. Here is a pic:

And the other place setting features the blue:
She really loved it! I think this would look great in a lot of kitchens don't you?

I have a link over on my left sidebar for their site and I included a coupon code in the header if you want to check them out!

Incredible Pizza

Saturday, after our trip to the zoo, we went to a place in Tulsa called Incredible Pizza. It's sort of like a Chuck-E-Cheese but a lot bigger and it's a buffet (which I normally am not a fan of but it was actually pretty good!).

Brayden loved playing the games:

And so did Chris (they had a really fun Deal or No Deal game):
And this race car was probably B's favorite:
The next day before we left Brayden wanted to cuddle with Grumps. It was so cute!
Tomorrow was supposed to be Gymboree and MOPS, but I forgot that B has his 15 month checkup, so we won't be able to go to either! I'm not sure if he will be getting shots (though I would think he will be) but I have a feeling we would have a lot more fun if we were going to Gymboree!

Dinner with Emily and Cate

So I finally uploaded my other camera and I can blog about Friday night!

I met up with Emily and her little cutie pie, Cate at PF Changs. Chris and Brayden were with me since we had just gotten into Tulsa, and Ryan was supposed to join us but got hung up at work.

We had such a fun time. It's always fun to meet up with bloggers because we may have never met, but we pretty much know everything about each other! It's funny to talk about things we've done or places we've been and have a mental picture - because we've read the blog posts! Haha! All these bloggy meet ups have me really looking forward to Atlanta!

Emily, we had so much fun!!! Can't wait to do it again!

Lions and Tigers and Bears...oh, and Monkeys...

First, I need to say that I know I've got to post about my bloggy meet-up with Emily! The pictures of that are on my other (now dead) camera, but as soon as I can get it up and running, I'll post!

We stayed the weekend at my in-laws in Tulsa and on Saturday, we went to the zoo:

It was SUCH a nice day for B's first zoo trip. We saw the giraffes:
And I'll give you one guess at what B was "meowing" at...
Just a couple of kitties.
And of course, his favorite exhibit was...the MONKEYS!
We stayed at the monkey exhibit the longest. He laughed and laughed and laughed at them and it just never got old!

We had such a fun time at the zoo! So, for those of you wanting to know if this was a good age for zoo trips, the answer (at least for us) was YES!!!

More of our fun weekend to come!

Bloggy Meetup Day, Part ONE

Today I got to meet up with Sarah for lunch! I've wanted to meet up with her forever, so I was so excited when she emailed me to say she was making a trip up my way!

We met at Mimi's (where else?!):

We had such a fun lunch with only one little problem...
Not that Bman is a problem he was just incredible ill-behaved. Normally he is really good when we are out and about but today was just the opposite. He screamed his little head off for most of our lunch! Ahhhh!!!

Sarah is just so adorable and so easy to talk to! I wish she lived closer so we could get together more often!

Later today, Chris, B and I are meeting up with Emily, Ryan and baby Cate for dinner! I'm sure I'll have that post up tonight or tomorrow!

Where a Dad can be a kid!

Chris was seriously jealous that I'd managed to go to Chuck E Cheese twice without him, so the other night we all went. I'm not sure which of my boys was more excited...

Having Chris there made it a lot easier to play more games - it's hard when I'm alone, toting his diaper bag, my gigantic purse and B.

Whack-a-mole:

One of the 2 little kid rides:
The only thing that bothers me about CEC is that some parents use it as a babysitter. There was a group of families that came in together and their kids were all over the age of 7 or 8 (at least) and they were terrorizing the "Toddler Zone." There were about 6 kids and as you can see in the pic of me and B, the toddler area is really small. We actually had to leave and go to the big kids game because they were running us over. I don't even think their parents looked at them once! Okay, vent over!

Oh, and Chris wants me to thank you all for the compliments on his shorts. He really enjoyed reading them, haha!

And...

The winner of the Norwex giveaway is.....

Amanda from The Enabler and Her Codependents!

Congrats Amanda!

Email me your information and I will pass it on to Cortney!!

Backpack Boy

Chris' mom got Brayden a little Elmo backpack as part of his Easter gift. He loves to wear it around the house - I think it makes him feel like a big boy!

It has these cute little pulls on it that say Zipper, Snap, Velcro etc.
I even put a few toys in it for him and he thinks he is just the biggest stuff ever, walking around with his "full" backpack. It's just the cutest thing!

Just a Swingin'

Saturday we finally took Brayden to the park for the first time, and as I thought, he LOVED the swing!

We got an adorable video of him laughing his head off:

He really liked the slides too - he went straight for the biggest one in the park!

We have some exciting plans this weekend...can't wait to share about those later!

Easter Sunday

Yesterday we decided to dye eggs for Brayden for Easter this year. They turned out pretty well! Chris wrote Brayden's name on the green egg, and I wrote his name on the blue egg:

He enjoyed watching me dunk eggs while he ate a snack:
This morning we headed out to the early service at church. Evangelist Junior Hill was preaching at our church today - he gave an awesome service and 16 people were saved in the early service alone!

And a mini-praise, Brayden LOVED the church nursery today!!!

But he was still happy to get out and head home!

Family picture:

Opening Easter gifts:

Mommy taking pictures of B hunting his "real" Easter eggs:

I can't wait for Brayden to be old enough to understand the real meaning of Easter. Jesus died on the cross for us, He rose from the grave and through HIM we can have everlasting life!

I Wanna Go FAST!

I like to drive. A lot. And I like to drive on the fast side (though not when B is in the car).

And I was thinking the other day about if I could go do anything that I wanted, it would probably be to go take a stunt driving class. I don't know who offers them or where I'd have to go, but I really think it would be so much fun.

And if I could drive anything I wanted during such a class, it'd probably be this...the Audi R8. What can I say, I'm a vehicle fanatic kinda girl.

Ohhhh, isn't it just so pretty?

Anyway, so if YOU could go do anything you wanted, what would it be?

My husband, the loudmouth.

Well, he's not a loudmouth, per se but he wears LoudMouth...

As in these shorts:

And he's also the proud owner of these two pairs:

LoudMouth is a golf brand of apparel that was popularized recently by John Daly (whose a famous golfer from Arkansas). Chris was watching a tournament one day and John was wearing a pair of LoudMouth pants and he just had to know what they were. He's not afraid to stand out and he's been dying to get some ever since. I don't think the older golfers at his club are very happy about it, but he's getting a kick out of his new golf wardrobe.

We met up at Chili's yesterday for lunch and the top picture in this post is what he was wearing. I forgot that is what he left the house in until it was too late. Chili's was packed and I think every single person in the restaurant turned to stare - and of course they put us in the very furthest corner of the place.

Have you seen these - or do you know anyone who wears them?