Time

I've been wanting to get on here and post a blog, but have hardly anytime to do it. I will try my hardest to put something up here soon!

4th of July

For the 4th of July we took the girls to Mary G Montgomery High for their Festival. It was a lot of fun. They had a petting zoo, face painting, bounce houses, food, and live music.

Here are the girls enjoying a hot dog on the lawn.There was a concert right before the fireworks and when it was time for the National Anthem a retired airforce man jumped out of an airplane with this red smoke that followed him. It was very patriotic!
Here is Ashlyn showing me her painting of a firework.
Here is Hadley showing me her face painting of a star.

Dancing Queen

My Hadley is a Dancing Fool! Here are a few videos of her dancing.
The first one is her dancing pretty!
The second one is of her shaking her booty! Anytime I tell her to shake her booty, this is what she does. It's priceless!
Enjoy :)

God does anwer prayers!

When Ashlyn was a few months old her pediatrician diagnosed her with eczema. We knew a few adults with it and saw how they suffered with it especially in the summer and we immediately started praying that she would grow out of it. Ashlyn's doctor did say that most children will grow out of it, but to be honest I had a hard time believing that she would because of how bad hers was. Her doctor took her off of milk and had her only drinking soy. That seemed to work pretty good but she would still get outbreaks all over that would only get better with steriod cream. When she turned 1 her dr. gave us the go ahead to put her on whole milk and then her eczema slowly started getting worse when she turned about 1 & 1/2. We were going through steroid cream like it was regular lotion and I hated using it on her. We did everything the doctor told us to do, no perfumes, no dyes, and not be around people that smoked. We decided to try different things to see if it would improve her eczema. We took her off milk for a while and tried rice milk, goat's milk, but nothing helped. I had had enough and asked if we could be referred to a dermitoligist. He told us she was the worst case he had ever seen. I don't remember which came first but about that same time I requested her pediatrician to do a basic blood allergy test. Afer about a week of waiting to see if she was allergic to anything, it came back dog only allergy. We didn't even have a dog, but Nathan's parents did. They gave her away and tried to get rid of as much shedded hair that was outside as possible. We kept her away from dogs as much as we could, but that is hard. People don't think about others being allergic to a dog and dogs are EVERYWHERE. It was hard to try to explain to her that we can't touch dogs when she was so little. She has outgrown the allergy a lot but certain dogs are worse than others to be around. She still will get an outbreak every once in a while if she's been outside in the grass where a dog has been. We found out that Nathan's dad had been praying so earnestly for Ashlyn to be healed from her eczema even if it meant that he have instead. Her eczema now is almost non existent and Stan in the last year has been diagnosed with adult eczema.
The above picture is of Ashlyn a few days before she turned 3 months. If you look on her arm that she is chewing on you can see the eczema whelps.


Above are some pictures taken right around the time we took her to the dermitologist for the 1st time. I took some to show the doctor in case she had cleared up some. It seems like when ever I take my kids to the doctor they never seem as sickthere as they do when they are at home.

Thank you God for answering our prayer and healing my sweet Ashlyn of her eczema. You know it pained me to look at her itching and hurting and there was nothing I could do, but there was something you could do and I thank you for it!

Memorial Day

I know this is kind of late for posting but I can only do this when I have the time and that's not something I have a lot of!
I took the girls, my sister, and brother in law to the Naval Air Museum in Pensacola, FL. for Memorial Day. We started the day off by having a picnic lunch outside of the museum.
Ashlyn and Hadley had a lot of fun looking at all the air planes. We even sat through an Imax film about air planes. Ashlyn of course did great watching the Imax, but Hadley could not be still. I bet everyone in the theatre was wishing we would leave! Oh well...
The museum is great! The are always changing things up and adding different exibits. They added this nice play area for preschool kids since the last time I was here. What's even better is that the whole thing is free (exept for the Imax).
After the museum the girls wanted to swim so we changed into our swimsuits in my van (that was fun) and went for a swim in the bay. We swam for about an hour or so until it was time to eat. We went to the Shrimp Basket for some fried crab claws and shrimp. YUMMY!


We finished our day with some ice cream from McDonald's in Spanish Fort before going home. The girls really enjoyed their Hot Fudge Sundae's!

Great Grands

In May we went to Arkansas to spend Mother's Day weekend with our family. It was a very busy weekend going from house to house trying to spend as much time as we could with everyone. Here are some pictures from my visit with my grandparents. They have 4 great grands and 2 of them are my girls. We all got together and took some pictures. My cousin James has a little boy named Issac and my cousin Scarlett has a little boy named Landric. I was in the room with Scarlett when she had Landric so he will always be a very special little boy to me!

Here are the grandparents with all their great grand kids.


Me and Landric!

Busy Weekend

We had a very busy weekend. Starting with Friday the girls stayed home from school with Nathan's parents and they took them to get their hair cut. Ashlyn loves playing beauty shop and even though it doesn't look like it she loved it!

This was Hadley's first time to the beauty shop and I thought she was not going to go for it, she kept wanting to sit in the boy chairs that looked liked cars. I didn't blame her, they did look like fun. She finally sat down and she did a great job sitting still.
Saturday was Ashlyn's birthday she had a couple of friends come over and all the family. She had a great time playing outside. We rented a bounce house for the weekend and they loved it. I did too!
Here they are sleeping off the busy weekend. I just Hadley looked so adorable and Ashlyn kills me how she wants to sleep with all her new toys!




Here the girls are about to leave for Arkansas.
They were so excited! They traveled back with Nathan's parents to visit with them all week. We'll be leaving on Thursday and spending Mother's Day weekend there also.

New Orleans Zoo

We went to the New Orleans Zoo and had so much fun! It was Asian Festival Day so there were tons of people there. It was so pretty and we took our time the whole day stopping when we wanted to, we had a great day!
Here is Nathan and the girls posing by the elephants. There were people painting the elephants for the Asian festival.




















We stopped to get snow cones, Hadley wore most of hers and then it melted so put it in her sippy cup, I guess it was like drinking Kool-Aid! Here is Hadley at a gift shop, she is a hat girl.


She found this hat and put it on all by herself!

Easter

Ashlyn and Hadley at our church hunting for eggs.


























Having fun dying eggs.










Ashlyn in her Easter dress. My pretty princess!





















Hadley, my rotten little sweetheart!

Here is my family (from left to right, My daddy, Hadley, My mom, Ashlyn, me, Nathan, My sister Tonia, and My brother in law Jack)

Feeding the Ducks

It was so nice on Friday and we all got home early we decided to take the girls to the cemetery. This is where I run. It is so pretty there and there is a pretty pond with ducks and a huge tree that kids climb on. There are always people there getting their pictures made and feeding the ducks. We had a great time and it was a good change of scenery for the girls. Ashlyn said "I see flowers" when we pulled up to the cemetery. I tried to explain to her about graves but I could tell the more I told her the bigger her eyes got and she didn't really understand. She asked me, "Are the people wanting help out?"
I gave the girls each a piece of bread and you can see that Hadley started eating her slice. Silly girl! She finally got the concept after watching us.

We all had a good time throwing our bread at the ducks.















Hadley didn't really like to be up high in the trees she was just find watching Ashlyn and walking around.


















We had a great time at the cemetery climbing the trees. Ashlyn told us, "This is kind of like a park".
Ashlyn is a our thrill seeker. Nathan and I were on either side of her while she climbed the tree on her hands and knees.

Fly a Kite

Last week while Hadley was sick we went to the Dollar Store and I found a Dora kite. I thought it wouldn't hurt to spend a dollar on a kite, if it broke it wasn't like we were out a lot of money. Well, yesterday it was so beautiful outside and windy so we decided to try the kite out. I grew up always going outside and doing fun things as a family so this was nothing new to me (watching it anyways). Nathan was going to be the pro (he had never flown a kite any longer than a minute). We had so much fun outside watching Nathan get it going. He really did a good job! I think he had fun too.

Ashlyn and Hadley wanting a turn to hold the string.

Flying the kite (it's right above our house).

I'm not sure what Nathan is doing but Hadley is trying to help.

Sick Girls

Well, my girls have Type A Flu. I fell like the worst mother in the whole world. How could my kids get sick, they never get sick? I'm trying to make the most of it and spend some quality time with them. Here they are eating some yummy Popsicles (thanks to MeMe and Grandaddy). Hadley is so silly, she winks every time she smiles for the camera.
Here they are today. Ashlyn woke up fever free but poor Hadley has had a hard time with this flu. They were both feeling better here. I made them a tent with some blankets and our chairs to sit under while they watch tv.