Sunday, July 31, 2011

it's an oldie...

we spent a good portion of saturday helping my dad and kay unpack in their new house in the fort.  unpacking inside when it's 105 is much better than the actual move in.  it was a fun day...and i came home with this family treasure, passed down from my great grandmother hazel love.  i straightened it up, flipped through the pages turned the pages very carefully and read the names, and looked at all of the pictures...

i think the covers are made from wood.....they are very thick...i'm no book historian, but i am impressed.
lots of traces of tape on the binding...
i love all the detail, and pictures through out...
penmanship from the late 1800's is beautiful....a lost art for sure.  
 a fun surprise, a colored page!  
the binding is broken, but i've tied her up....
 with my reused pottery barn ribbon that came in handy....
i am looking forward to a snow day this winter, when i'm trapped in my house with nothing but time, so i can sit down for a couple of hours and do some more work on the pages, and reading....
i really love books, so to have this family bible that is over 130 years old, makes me SO happy.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Ohhh sweet honey and the bee!

I love my job and the hilarious things kids say.  One of my favorite sayings, taken from an 8-year-old fella last year is "Oh sweet honey and the bee!"

You can use it two ways.
1.  "OH sweet honey and the bee!" - meaning- "good grief" or "that's ridiculous!" or "UGH!"
2.  "Ohhhh sweet honey and the bee!" -meaning- "YAY!" or "Finally!" or "hip-hip-hooray!"

This week I have been saying "Ohhhhh sweet honey and the bee" because we are got our landscaping done!!  I am SO excited about it finally being completed, it was a crazy project!

We have been in our house for a year and three months.  We have quite a large area that has needed serious help.  It's so bad, that I mowed the flower beds because there was so much grass growing in them!  It's a bit embarrassing, but we've had lots of parties, get togethers, a baby shower, and family and friends in and out of here anyway! If your friends can't love you with bad landscaping, well then, they aren't really friends! :)

To begin our landscaping journey we needed a french drain, and that was completed a couple of weeks ago.  Friday afternoon a dump truck brought a load of top soil, Nate Lopez (our landscape architect and friend) brought a trailer full of plants, trees, bushes, and my brother picked up a ton of landscaping rocks.

I took some before pictures:
 notice the extra lovely strip of dirt from digging the french drain line
 sad looking, pretty much non-existant flower beds

so here we go......


 landscaping under the full moon!  
 working hard!
 my red bud tree going in!  yay!
 progress....

 i have "butterfly bushes" and we had tons of butterflies immediately, i love them!  
much better!

 my new hobby now is watering the flowers, i feel like my mother. " I gotta go out and water my plants...." :)

Doing landscaping in mid-July wasn't the smartest thing ever, but it's done, so we are happy!

Sunday, July 10, 2011

our weekend with riley and little lena beth!


we spent the weekend in Searcy with two of our favorite little ones!  
our little niece lena beth is smiling, and laughing, and turning into one fun little baby!  
riley is wild, has more energy than you can imagine, and i am pretty sure he'll have a good run at being a football player, 'cause the boy is solid, and will run into you at full speed for a hug, and then smile about it!  i told him to be easy on me, i'm obviously not as tough as he is! :)  

sweet stuff!

blue eyes, i love them!

playing 

i love this one!  

 i like how she's looking at the camera in this one.  forgive my photo editing inconsistency, i'm too lazy to go back and save them all the same way! :)

my sweet boy, who gives the best hugs, and will tell you so!  

silly boy!
 

Fourth of July Weekend, in pictures!

Happy Birthday America, I sure love you!  
Photo from www.searchenginewatch.com

dessert kabobs i made for our day at Joe and Liz's!

Joe and HJL on the giant couch.  

my girl

had and her momma doing sparklers!

fun!

i've never been a big fan of being any where near fireworks.  I remember going to buy them with my mom and dad, and asking "this one's not loud, is it?!" 
 If it was loud, i didn't want to buy it!

afternoon at the lake with my carmen and adam!

my second themed dessert, cupcakes to take to our friends.  white cake with cookie dough filling, and chocolate icing!

baby parker and her momma watching some fireworks!

 hard to tell with this sad iphone 3 picture, but it's 3 grown men, trying to get the army parachute man off the electricity line.  one of them, might or might not be my husband.  

we had a fun weekend, surrounded by lots of friends and family.  and you can't beat that!  

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

our week at sea!

It honestly started off a little bumpy, I woke up the morning of the cruise with a stomach bug, which continued through the day, and then when we arrived to board the ship, I took the car to the parking garage to park it and had trouble locating my other half in a sea of fellow cruisers (all while he was juggling our carry-ons and 2 cases of diet sprites, and when I finally found him, he was a bit grumpy, and literally pouring in sweat, so sweaty in fact that he looked like he jumped into a bathtub with his clothes on!), not to mention 100 degree heat and insane humidity, and then the third day at sea was huge waves, and I had motion sickness!
But, I will say, after all that passed, we had a VERY good trip!  :)

Day before our trip in the big easy, at Pat O'Brien's!:

Day 1: Fun Day at Sea, it was formal night and the Love's and Smith's got all dressed up for dinner!
Joe and Liz


 my love
 love my sis-in-law!

 my bro!
 the whole gang up top at sunset!

Day 2: another not so fun day at sea, complete with swaying and big waves
(we'll just have to use our imagination, I took NO pictures this day)
Picture waves, and me looking sick.

Day 3: Belize!  Elizabeth and I did a snorkel excursion, Belize has the second biggest barrier reef in the world, besides the great barrier reef (so, we read) it was beautiful!  I have only snorkeled a couple of times before, and neither time was this pretty!  We saw tons of colorful fish, coral and even a manatee swam right underneath us (during which I smiled really big, broke the seal on my mask and took in water...just my style!) and while we snorkeling I kept thinking about how amazing God is, the creator of every living thing!  He made lots of pretty stuff, especially in the ocean!

Heading out!
 very glad to be off that boat after the swaying day before
 ready to roll!
 :)
 after snorkeling was a couple of hours at private island
 you better belize it! :)
 loving our island, the boys missed out! 
 bye-bye island!

Day 4 Roatan, Honduras!  We booked a zip lining adventure and beach break, I thought I would be super scared about zip lining, and considered not going, but everyone else in our gang was going so I decided to quit being a chicken and just do it!  The van ride to the zip lining was a lot scarier than the actual adventure!
The port!
Everyone in the beautiful yellow helmets!
All ready! 
 i kept a good eye on them while they strapped me in, making sure they were paying good attention! :)
 those are tops of the tree's below the platform! :)
 all of the men who worked there went down first, and there was one at each of the 11 platforms to swap you from one cable to the next!  if you didn't pull yourself up enough, they would just use their knee to give you a boost!  a little surprising the first time! :)
 ready to zip, 18-30 feet above the ground! 
 tabyana beach break!

my favorite time of day, dinner!

 my special drink i found, a tiramisu martini!  

 hilarious, the things you can do on a cruise..wear matching sequined tanks to dance in...we might or might not have led a conga line on the top deck at the dance party!  
Day 5: Cozumel! We did a beach break, and a little shopping. 
 It also rained off and on several times while we were at the beach, and I stayed huddled under an umbrella with our stuff much of the time! :)  

our second formal night on the cruise, the boys were way over pictures by this point in the game.
Day 6 day at sea relaxing, the ride home was very smooth (thank goodness!) and we just laid out and read, and relaxed!
 last night on the ship!  
 windy!
 drink server from dinner, he was hilarious!  
when we told him about seeing the manatee while snorkeling in his accent he said
"Uh what is this?  It is an ugly animal, no?"  
we laughed all week about the way he said it!  

 "A vacation is anticipated with pleasure, experienced with discomfort, and remembered with nostalgia.  ~Author Unknown"

And here is Hadleigh having some fun at her aunt deb's house, while getting to hang out with mamaw while we were vacationing!  she loved it when her momma and daddy got home, and she got to hear about the big boat her mom went on! :)