These photos were taken in December 2009.  I love looking back at these pictures.  I remember the events of this night just like it was yesterday.  Clay and I were still functioning on 3 hours of sleep each night, barely.  Not long after these pictures were taken we started putting a little bit of  cereal in Addi's nighttime bottle, and we became normal, well-rested human beings once again.  It was glorious. Also when I look at these pictures I think about how Zach and Bre were in the same school.  Zach was in 8th and Bre was in 6th.  It reminds me of how fast time flies.  Zach is now almost through his freshman year in highschool.  I cry daily because of this.  It is not fair to Moms, the whole growing up idea.  Bre is almost through with 7th grade, and will be entering her last year in middle school.  Addi is walking running everywhere, putting words into sentences, and she understands when I ask her "Are you poopy?"  All of these events are almost too much for my heart to handle.  I am so grateful for whomever invented cameras, although I think as moms and dads the events of life are forever burned into our memories with or without the pictures there to remind us. To add fuel to my fire as I am writing this Kenny Chesney's song Don't Blink is playing on the radio.  Cue the waterworks!

this one is my favorite...can you say real life at its finest?

                                                           

These photos of Addi were taken when she was 10 months old.  She had never worn this outfit before. I was saving it to have her pictures taken with it on, and realized I had about 10 minutes left to put her in it before she outgrew the whole thing.  I don't  think we were even able to button her pants.  She gets that problem from me.  Bre and I got her all fancied up and took her outside for some pictures. 

Breanna made me promise not to put any pictures of her

on here without her permission first.  I hesitantly agreed to

ask her before I had her face splattered all over the internet. 

 I remember other parents telling me as my

children were growing up about how sometimes they would

give in to their children so as to not start a battle with them.

I never believed in picking battles with your children until I

became the mother of a 13 year old girl.  At that point I

entered the Twilight Zone,and everything I thought I ever knew

about being a parent disappeared into the great unknown and

was quickly replaced with uncertainty and a call to my

mom apologizing  for everything I ever put her through.

Having said all of that, Mom still trumps Daughter, and I

have the God-given right to veto anything I want to. So I am 

 posting these precious pics without my daughters permission

 because I love them, because they are precious and because I can!

                                                                     

                                                                  

                                                   

                                                                                 

For those of you who read my blog, Hi Mom and Dad, you have probably noticed that I have been MIA lately.  It has been totally crazy round here.  I plan on posting about our Easter pretty soon.  Yes I am aware that Easter was like 3 weeks ago.  So I'm a little bit behind.  I also plan on telling you about an awesome day my hubby planned  for me and the kiddos last Saturday, but those will have to be for later. 

This was Mother's Day week at the flowershop.  When you work at a flowershop holidays are not just one day for us. They are actually the WHOLE week.  We work hard ALL week so that the rest of you guys can enjoy that ONE special day.  Valentine's Day, not at the flowershop, it is Valentine's Week.  Mother's Day, nope Mother's Day Week.  Memorial Day, nope Memorial Week. I could go on but you get the picture.  So all you ladys out there, when you receive you bouquet , just remember all the blood, sweat and tears that were poured into those flowers.  Well hopefully not blood, but thorns CAN make a florist bleed sometimes.  I had a point with all this....  Oh yes and here it is.  I had planned on taking pictures this week to show you the hustle and bustle at the flowershop, but I hustled and bustled so much that I never got around to it.  I also never got around to sitting my booth outside and selling my bows. That pretty much went out the window after working until 7:00 p.m.a few nights this week.  This girls gotta get her sleep, becoming a millionaire will have to wait.

Along with Mother's Day Week , we had a festival in town.  We live in a small town so alot of people look forward to this festival all year long.  My 13 year old daughter is one of them.  After work today my hubby and I decided to take Addi to the festival.  Bree, my 13 year old was already there.  She and I were going to ride a few rides together, but she had already used up all of her tickets except one, and apparently I wasn't important enough to use it on so I got jousted!  I know Happy Mother's Day to me right?  So after being ditched by the daughter that I was in labor with for 25 hours, thats not true it was more like 2 hours but still it was LABOR!, Clay, Addi and I went walking around  and we ran into some of our friends.  We chatted it up for a while and she then asked if I wanted to ride one of the rides.  Well of course I did, I'm cool, I can ride any ride out there.  So we did, we chose some crazy ride that buckles you in twice, I like that, AND encloses you in this cage, you know in case the buckles fail.  All good.  We get in and all of a sudden I am not cool, I am a sweaty, heart pounding, shaking scaredy cat.  I check all of our buckles as if our lives depended on it, which technically it did. I even got out to see how some other people were buckled in to make sure we were locked in correctly.  It never hurts to be to safe !  So as the ride starts I am having serious second thoughts and vote that we get off . But its too late, the next thing I know we are UPSIDE DOWN just hanging there, our bottoms not even in the seat, and I am so thankful at this point that I did all the extra checking to make sure that we were buckled in correctly.  After we get off the ride my friend still looks put together and I know I look a little disheveled to say the least.  We go to where our husbands are, and they make fun of us for riding rides that are really for teenagers, and I don't even take offense to that because I agree wholeheartedly that I shouldn't have been anywhere near that ride.  At this point I was getting extremely hot and sweaty.  I had sweat dripping in places I never knew were supposed to have sweat dripping . Yet here I was, and along with the sweat I was also fighting back the vomit that was gathering in my throat.  I played it cool , just chatting away and then I blurted out "I'm hot we've got to go"  which was actually code for I am fixing to vomit all over the place if we don't leave now! So we left hurriedly and walked back to  the flowershop, did I mention its a small town,  where I went inside, laid down with a fan blowing on me, then went to the bathroom and hurled, and cursed that stupid ride and promised myself to never go back to that stupid festival again.