Levi's Birthday and my chicken nugget thief

I know everyone is anxiously awaiting pictures from Lauren's first birthday... I am happy to announce they will be posted tomorrow.

For now, I will share pictures from Levi's birthday.



Lauren eating some yummy homemade ice cream...





Helping daddy with his presents...





After eating a good steak dinner, and yummy homemade ice cream, one would have thought that itty bitty Lauren would be full. While we were enjoying conversation at the dinner table, Lauren snuck into the diaper bag and found her chicken mcnuggets from earlier that day. She couldn't resist as you can see, and I of course had to take some pictures. It will make an adorable layout!



After dinner we rode with dad down to the barn for a late feeding...





Yes, her rear is wet... she decided for a quick drive in her Cozy Coupe before we left the house.





The greyhounds, Brittany and Black Dog wanted some lovin's

And last I thought I would hsare a picture of one of my Royal Palm turkey hens... out of four, the two hens are the only to survive. We will get some more toms later, but for now, these two make up the biggest of our poultry. You can google an image of Royal Palm Turkeys and see how beautiful they are.



Okay, more than likely tomorrow there will be birthday pictures posted, and lots of them.

For now, I'm off to bed, baby girl and I are both sick with terrible colds. Sorry for the puny post.

Lots of love!
Shannon

for these reasons... I create

This is a little something different... After losing my pictures and not knowing if I would get them back, I was working on scrapbook pages for Lauren's 1 year album ( I am soooo behind). Originally the two page layout was going to be about seeing her bubba again for the first time in about a month. Instead, after wanting to cry looking at these pictures, I realized how blessed I am to have every picture that I do. A lot of people don't take the time to capture everyday moments in their lives. I know for me, it's this warm fuzzy feeling (<---seriously? did I really just say that) to look at these pictures and know what we all looked like, how we smiled, how happy we were to be a family again. I seriously have this fear of one day not being able to remember these small moments in our life...

The journaling reads:

to remember a moment
to go back in time
to record those little things
that make up the everyday
and any day...

to watch their faces
as they look at a page,
see my pictures, and know my words

to express myself
through scrapbooking
and photography
and loving every minute of it

for you (on the picture of both of them)

for these reasons...

I create.

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I don't know if any of you ever read my comments, but grandma, who always posts wonderful comments, mentioned some things I failed to mention about Lauren. She looooves to move and push things around. She especially likes heavy objects, and anything challenging. While she likes me to read to her, she has to be in the mood. She doesn't like anything that keeps her still for too long. If it does she either finds a way to make it more action filled, or she moves on to something else. She pushes limits. You can say no, and no, and no, over and over again. It makes her no difference, she will try her darnedest to do it, get it, or whatever it may be... what I hope for me daughter is that shes keeps her independence and her will. I grew up very weak and always walked on. I didn't stand up for anything I felt. I didn't even find myself until after high school... I hope that both of my kids will stand on their two feet in this ever changing world, and know who they are and exactly what they want out of life.


In the meantime: I am getting busy with birthday celebration plans. I have got to finish her dvd this week, that keeps getting longer and longer. I swear! I don't know when to stop. I worked on the cupcake toppers. I'm sorry but I want it to be a surprise for my guests, so I won't post details until after the party.

My girlfriend and I had made plans to go see the movie, "The Women", came out this weekend. It was a very good movie, not what I thought though. Unfortunately for her, she won't know, she got called out to a doggie c-section. So I sat there with my other friend Amanda. We had a good time.

Well, I'm off to the dentist. I'll post pictures of Lauren later.

ahhhhh, hump day!

Ok, something fun to start with. I have been seeing them all over people's blogs and in emails. So I thought it would be fun to share as well:

5 things about me

1. I once sold Watkins spices on horseback in rural Nebraska (my junior year, '98)
2. I memorize things such as commercials, jingles, movie lines and randomly repeat them
3. I talk to myself in the bathroom mirror (ie when I am doing my makeup and such
4. I don't really care for sweets and seldom crave them
5. I have five different cameras
   

5 things about Lauren

1. Lauren is a very (very-very) affectionate baby
2. Lauren has to have her teddy bear to sleep- period.
   
3. Lauren loves stuffed animals and has to 'taste' them (or give sugars)
4. Lauren knows the difference between her remote (a dud) and our remote and prefers ours
5. Lauren absolutely hates anything on her head
   

... now you know...
.................................................................................................................

The horse she is holding is one of mine from a long time ago. They are called 'Breyer' animals and any horse lover knows what I'm talking about. But if you don't you can google them. They have a few other animals that they make, but horses are the big thing. among Breyers, just a flash back, we also played with Grand Champions, which are still around. I still have a barn with stalls full of these horses from my early teenage years that I will pass on to Lauren...



I'm going to date back a little bit... my friend had shared some pictures of her son in the swing, and I realized that I had not shared any of Lauren. These were taken back in August, if you recognize the outfit, it is from the first walking video. After we were done shooting, we played in the grass and she wanted in her swing. This swing has been through almost all of the grandkids, if not all of them. I figured she would be afraid of going high or fast (trust me, it's high and fast enough for this mommy, so not too terribly bad), but she loves it!

Here are some pictures of her playing in the grass with the horse... she really likes horses. She loves our mule, Festus. I figure if she is anything like her mommy she is going to worship them. I need to do a count of all horsey things in her room. There is a ton!

I haven't really given any details of my new 'work' situation. I was asked several months ago, if I would be interested in keeping a little girl while her mom attends nursing school. I was a little hesitant, but I knew it would benefit both of the girls to have some interaction with each other. We have pretty much gotten into a routine (read: thank goodness!).

We start with:

• back-to-back episodes of Jacks Big Music Show on the noggin channel from 8-9
• Then Seasame Street on PBS from 9-10
• From 10-11'ish we either go outside, ride the bike, or go to grandma's house
• Around 11:30 we eat lunch... todays lunch was mac'n'cheese with wienies and applesauce
• From 12:30 to roughly 3 (sometimes earlier, somtimes later) they both nap...
  

The funniest part about the nap, thank goodness for the rainbow vacuum and it's air purifying ways. The vacuum is ran between the two girls, in seperate rooms so if one wakes up, they don't wake the other one up...

• Then after nap time is snack time

by then my day is usually almost done. In between we read books, play games, learn about sharing, and sometimes we do other things. So far it has been a great adventure. The first couple of days I questioned my decision, but now it's running more smoothly.

Well I guess that's it for now... I hope everyone had a great hump day!

And nooooowwwww... THE BIG SURPRISE!

I got an email from my friend Adrienne this morning:

"Oh, would you hurry up and post your surprise already!!! I'm dyin' here!"

So without further due:




I am so completely sad right... I know that there is no stopping time, my baby is growing up. I realize that the days of crawling are now short lived and will soon be non-existent. Everyday she's figuring out that walking is much easier on the knees. She even now will stand up in the middle of a crawl and take off. It's awesome to see what a difference a week or two makes. We went from barely and ocassionally to doing it all the time as fast as her legs will carry her!

After church yesterday, Lauren and I went to Wal-Mart and to Sonic. Here is a cute picture of her sitting in the passenger seat waiting on the food yesterday. She is so darn cute!

Also I am sharing pictures of Lauren and Aubrey's "poor girls cadillac". I had been wanting a two-seat trailer bike so we could go for bike rides during the day. The only problem, one seaters are 130-somethng dollars at Wal-mart. Deleta and I went thrift store shopping on Friday, and I found a double seat stroller and this bike trailer frame for a whopping total of $7! So Levi and I did some 'southern engineering' and voila! Not bad huh?

Well I guess for now that's it! I'll have more to post in a day or two. I'm sorry I didn't post this yesterday, but I'm glad I waited because the walking video you saw from yesterday is much better than the one I was going to show. I have been battling severe sinus and allergy problems, so I haven't felt very good that last couple of days.

I am going to be changing the blog a bit more. My passion for photography has been re-kindled and I am hoping to add some of my favorite pics to the side banner. I found a new blog that I am absolutely fascinated with. She's been a big inspiration.

I hope everyone is doing good!

PS: You DO NOT have to be a registered user to leave a comment. Simply fill out the comment fields, and choose the publish as anonymous user. Just make sure you do put your name in the comment field so I will know it was you! I really do love comments and it let's me know that you were here!

Joy! Joy! Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy!

Make sure you check
back in a day or two,

I have a very special
post to share!!!

( I think you may know what it's about!)

...................................................................................................................................

This is going to be one my happiest post ever!

I GOT MY COMPUTER STUFF BACK!!!!!!

We installed the new harddrive that Greg at ACS Data so kindly recovered for me (not without a price though ;) ). At first glance I panicked, as I am known to do, because I couldn't find a thing! Finally I was able to locate ALL of my pictures, and I am pretty sure all of my videos. The bad news is that about 5-10% of my pictures are corrupted from the drive being reformatted. And some of the video has some corruption. But all in all, I am happy and relieved. I just sat at my desk and cried because I felt so blessed to have it all back...

In the meantime, you will be pleased to know, I officially have backed up 2008 and 2007 so far. The discs are sitting here at my desk waiting to go to the safety deposit box on Monday. I can tell you I WILL NOT be making this mistake again!

So to celebrate the retrieval of my files, I thought it would be fun to share some pictures from the past year:

It's amazing how much can happen in one year!


Now on with the new stuff!

Bubba and Sissy out at an old rock house...
I wanted a new picture of them together...

And even though her hair is messed up from the wind,
I just love this picture...


I am keeping a little girl during the day now, her name is Aubrey. Aubrey really loves Sesame Street, and on this particular day, Elmo was taking pictures of kids on Sesame Street. So I took the girls picture and printed it out for them. They had a lot of fun carrying around their pictures. I can't share Aubrey's, but here is Lauren's:

Saturday night, despite a gall bladder attack (yes, again! and it lasted until tuesday) we had promised Hunter we would do something fun. First we went to our County fair. The carnival was so tiny and pathetic, so we went on to eat at Montana Mikes and then bowling. We had a lot of fun, but by the second game, I couldn't go anymore...









Check out the scores!

Levi- 50
Hunter- 45
Shannon- 119 ( <---- and that was on some major pain med, so I wasn't even really trying)


I have always loved bowling, I can't wait until we can go again! Oh, and in case anyone is curious, yes I thought the gall bladder deal was done. I called the surgeon this week, and the nurse told me since I had my gall bladder out in June, that the pain I had for several days wasn't my gall bladder. I then said, 'well, if this isn't my gallbladder, ya'll were wrong from the beginning..." It's the same pain I always have had with an 'attack'. I once again explained what I felt, and she said it did indeed sound like my gallbladder. They are thinking then that there might be a stone lodged in my gall ducts. So I am scheduled for a Cholangiogram next week in OKC. They will look to see if they can find one. If they don't find one, then this may very well be something else. So please be praying for me.



Okay to wrap up this post, here is a few pictures from last Friday night when Hunter was here. He had so much fun pushing her around in her 'cozy coupe':


They literally would turn the corner on two wheels. He was so wore out by the time they were done.



This last one cracks me up! She was really enjoying the ride! She would laugh, squeal and turn the steering wheel back and forth. How do they know to do that at such a young age?

Well, I'm gonna wrap the post up... like I mentioned at the top, you definitely will want to check out the blog in a day or two and see what surprise I have in store for you!

Until then, we send our love!