I meant to post this on April 17th....

Greetings, Yes it has been an extremely long time since I have posted but I am finally getting around to posting again. Who knows, maybe this time I will keep this thing up!!!

On Friday, April 16th, 2004, I awoke at 5:00 am and felt a slight tightening. It came and went every 10 minutes. I was 9 months pregnant (due April 20th) and I wondered excitedly if this was it! Contractions were finally here. I couldn't go back to sleep so we awoke and began timing. The contractions began to be getting closer together. My husband and I called into work (we worked at a mission at the time in rural West Virginia) and told them that we would not be coming in. We started getting things together, showered and then decided to make the hour long trip to my doctor's office to have him check me out to see if I was ready to go in. To my great dismay, on the trip over, my contractions stopped :(. We were halfway to the doctor's office so we went on in and had the nurse check me anyway. I remember they seemed busy and the nurse seemed a little irritated because I wasn't having contractions at that point. She softened when she realized that I had dilated and effaced some more. She told me to go to the mall and walk around when she heard we lived an hour away. We went to the mall and the contractions started again but didn't seem regular. We were disappointed and drove on home, thinking that it was all false. By the time, we got home, things began to be picking up again, but I didn't want to get my hopes up. We made the decision to go to our boss's house. They live closer to the hospital (40 min) and they were out of town. We knew where the key was so we went in and made ourselves at home. Around 10:00 pm, I was in pain and doubled over whenever I had contractions. We had better go, I told Jay, but I still second guessed myself for some reason. When we got there, it was around 11:00 pm. We checked in and the nurses confirmed that I was ready. We turned the TV to Nick at Night despite our birthing class instructions to not turn on the TV (something about having the husband not be distracted). We watched tons of episodes of Cheers, Leave it to Beaver, you name it while the labor progressed. I was scared to death to have something stuck into my spinal cord so I decided against an epidural and dealt with the pain. Finally it was time to push at around 5:45 am. It had been a long night and around 6:30 am on April 17, we got to meet our baby girl! Mary Katelyn was born! It was the most amazing thing I have ever experienced (aside from the birth of our son), and I thank God for her. Last Friday, Katelyn turned 5. I can not believe how much she has grown! Here are some pics to show how she has changed.

Merry Christmas!

Quotes of the Day

Prince Bee and my husband had a conversation this evening while prince bee was playing with his toy golf clubs. It went something like this:

DH to Prince Bee: When you hit the ball, you need to yell "FORE!" really loud.

Prince Bee: No, I yell TWO!

DH: No, you need to yell Fore like this....FOOORREEE!

Prince Bee hits the ball...."TWWWOOOO!"

When I put Prince Bee to bed, he was drowsy as he hadn't napped today. I said, "You are the sweetest boy in the whole world." He nodded sleepily and then said, "Mommy, you are my best world." Awwww...so sweet.

Here is a picture from Halloween:

Sweet moments

Today was a rough day. The kids were whiny and fought a lot. Prince Bee didn't nap which made him a little on the wild and cranky side towards the end of the day. The kids were not listening at all. Both of them seemed to roll out of bed on the wrong side if you know what I mean.

With that in mind, I am reminding myself of some of the sweet moments of the past couple of days to put the events of today in perspective! Here they are:

1. Princess Pea's making the bed ritual:
I have tried to give Princess Pea more responsibility. It is not difficult because she likes to help out and clean. One of her favorite things to do is make her bed. The only problem is it takes her about 45 minutes to complete this task. First, she gets all of her baby dolls and changes there clothes to get them ready to be placed on the bed. This is the most time consuming part of the whole thing, of course, as their outfits must be carefully chosen. Next, she pulls up all the covers and places the pillows on. Then, she places the zillion stuffed animals that grows by the day (where she finds them all I do not know) in their spots. They are "watching over her babies." Finally, she places her babies carefully on the bed and covers them up so that they can sleep! It is so cute but doesn't happen everyday as we usually don't have that kind of time to spend on it before we leave the house.

2. Prince Bee's cute baby doll moment:
When I was getting Prince Bee ready for his nap the other day, he ran into Princess Pea's room and got one of her baby dolls and brought it into my room. He hopped on my bed with it and held it in his arms. Then he sang to it so sweetly, Jesus Loves Me and Jesus Loves the Little Children. Now, normally after a sweet moment like this, he would probably throw the doll across the room but today, he actually took it back to Princess Pea's room. It was just about the cutest thing I have ever seen!

3. Random I Love you's
Both kids will randomly look at me from time to time and say "Mommy, I love you." There is nothing better than that!

So, here is to a new day tommorrow and the hope of two little ones getting up on the right side of the bed!

My Granny

On Friday, September 12, 2008, my granny passed away. This came as no shock as she was 91 and had suffered from dementia for 6 years + and had a major stroke a couple of weeks ago which led to a steady decline. She was a remarkable person, and there is much to remember and celebrate about her life. To honor her, I would like to tell a few stories about her.

My granny was a Christian. It was very apparent to many who knew her that she took her faith seriously, and she took what she read in the Bible seriously. For much of her life she lived in Memphis, Tennessee. There is much to love about Memphis but back in the1940-60's when my mother was growing up, racism was rampant there. At one point their yard man (who was African American) was arrested. He was accused of stealing their neighbor's rake. My mother remembers Granny loading up her four children in her car to go to the prison that this man was being held in. She would visit him and encourage him and 10 years later he came to visit her. He had married and gotten his life back together. He credited my granny's encouraging visits for how his life had turned out so positively. Instead of becoming bitter, he was able to move on.

My Granny was a teacher and she loved her job. The following is an excerpt from a letter she wrote, remembering one of her students:

"Alexander Cade moved with his family from Charleston, SC. He spoke Gullah. At that time I had never heard of Gullah and I had trouble understanding his speech.......Alexander was hardly aware of the other children. In fact, he would bring his desk up front and sit by me and do his work. I tried to encourage him to sit with the group....He did not care. He came with his desk as often as he thought he could get by with it. It was my policy as a teacher to visit my student's homes each year. When I went to Alexander's home, I found chaos. Mr. and Mrs. Cade had eleven children...eight were still live at home. The Cades lived in an old house with three bedrooms. Alexander shared his bedroom with four other children. I now understood his need to be alone. I went back to school that afternoon and arranged a space for Alexander..his alone. I turned two six foot long bookcases to form a right angle. The outside wall formed the third side....I placed Alexander's desk in the center of this space. This was to be his very own "room."

When Alexander came to school the next day, I asked him if he would like to have his desk in this area. He was delighted. The other children accepted this arrangement. They seemed to understand Alexander's need to be alone. The rule was that they could not go into Alexander's room unless he invited them." Later Alexander brought some of his meager possessions to school to put in his room.

My own memories of Granny are wonderful. She told me stories and tried to encourage my imagination. When we lived in Kansas and Granny would visit, we would drive from Kansas City to the town of Salina where we lived. On the way, there was a large grain elevator off in the distance. You could see it for an hour across the flat prairie land. Granny told me that this was the Emerald City. She said, "Now, let's look for the yellow brick road." So I spent the whole trip, nose pressed to the glass, looking fervently for the yellow brick road. I will never forget when all of sudden there was a dusty road, a little on the yellowish side. "There it is!" I screamed. "There it is, indeed!" She said.

When I told her that I wanted to be an author and illustrator of children's books when I grew up, she sent me a typed copy of one of her famous stories that she would tell us called Annabelle Marie. She left space for me to illustrate it.

Later on, when I was in 8th grade, Granny came to live with us. She would take me to downtown Columbia and she would tell me the history she had learned about the state house and the old churches down there. We would eat Chicken Salad croissants at the Gourmet Shop and she would lecture me on the importance of learning to drink coffee.

The stories about my granny are abundant but I will stop now. I am thankful for Granny and the way she touched my life and the lives of those around her.

School begins

Princess Pea started a new year at the preschool she attended last year. This year she is doing Pre-Kindergarten, three days a week. I think Prince Bee was a little sad to see her go. He kept saying that he wanted to go to "spiderman preschool" while Princess Pea was at her preschool. Don't ask me where that one came from! I haven't a clue. The only spiderman he has really been exposed to are the spiderman vitamins I bought "buy one get one free" at the store.

We dropped Princess Pea off which went very smoothly especially because she has the same teacher and is in the same room as last year. Prince Bee and I then went on to the Y so that I could work out. He pitched a fit about going into childcare which he has never done. I think this was his way of telling me that he missed Princess Pea. Here are some pics from the first day!

Fun Pics

Princess Pea's new hair do

Junior Firemen-At a carnival for DH's work

Prince Bee loved fixing his car
Pigtails
Helping Princess Pea make a Homemade My

Little Pony House
Painting a house for her ponies
Close up!