Reason to Rejoice

Yesterday would have been my Granny and Papa's anniversary...it would have been 52 years!!!! My Papa died just shy of their 50th wedding anniversary and my Granny died this past January. I miss them so much. I think about Granny everyday and I just wish I could drive to her house and talk to her like I used to. What hurts my heart the most is that she will never meet Lauren and Lauren will never know how special Granny was.

Well, I was thinking about posting what we did each day but I just don't have energy for it. Here is the sum of what we did: We got to Arkansas and had some "down time" with grandparents. Lauren had a HORRIBLE night of no sleeping. Drove to Little Rock. Lauren slept well every night there. Was there for 3 days and visited lots of family and friends. Drove to Hot Springs...best night of sleep Lauren had the entire trip! We were able to visit with some of my most favorite people EVER!!!! I miss Christi and Charlie so very much! Drove to Hope. Spent the night...Lauren again did not sleep well. Drove home. It was a long trip and it seemed even longer with all the stops we had to make with a potty training toddler and a breast feeding infant...not to mention a Mommy who drinks a lot....WATER people, WATER!!! =) I am including some of my favorite pictures from the trip. Go to www.dropshots.com/bricerikkirachel for the rest of the pictures!! OKAY...that's the on...

I need to play catch up...I know!! But for now, my friends... I Am Exhausted!!! More tomorrow!

So, have you ever done something really random and stupid and afterward you can't for the life of you figure out how you did it??? Well, I did that last night! I have been cleaning and organizing this house like a CRAZY WOMAN!! Yes, it is mainly because we have company coming over in a week or so but seriously it needed to be done. I HATE clutter but for some reason we have so much of it! So, I finally finished up last night (except for our closet...that will have to wait). BUT, somehow I tripped over the play mat in Rachel's playroom with one foot and hurt my 2nd toe (just right of the big toe, or great toe as it is sometimes called). I am talking, IT HURTS!!!! REALLLLLLLYYYY BAD!!!! I thought the pain would go away after a few minutes like things like that usually do but not so much. It still hurts and is throbbing this morning. I was half laughing after I did it because I have no idea how it happened. Brice saw the whole thing and the only thing he said was, ...

Here are some of Lauren's 3 month pictures!!!

So...my blog went berzerk (I am almost certain that is not how you spell that) yesterday and I had to resort back to the old plain basic blog. I am really wanting a blog makeover with personalized headlines and that sort of thing but I don't have time to create anything right now and I really don't know what I am doing anyway! =) I may look at some other blogs and see who I can pay to do it for me! Don't miss my earlier post with all the pictures!!!!

This post will be full of pictures!!! Lauren ready for church Lauren and Melody Rachel and Chelsea I am so glad that I have a close friend who shares similar life experiences with me. It makes things so special when you have so much to talk about and compare. It is so fun that Chelsea and Rachel are so close in age and now Melody and Lauren are as well. Chelsea is 3 months older than Rachel and Lauren is a little over 2 months older than Melody. I am so blessed to have Krista as a friend!! =)

I am VERY behind on blogging and posting pictures. I have tons of pictures from the last few days but I don't have my camera sitting here to download pictures...promise I will either later on tonight or tomorrow. This week has been so crazy I can't even remember what I have blogged about. So....we had a power outage on Wednesday, regained power Thursday around 2:00 am. Rachel was sick starting Wednesday. Doctor Thursday - diagnosed with urinary tract infection. Still waiting on the call from the doctor regarding the cultures....probably tomorrow. Power went out again on Friday night around 9:00. It didn't come back on until Saturday around noon. I had to work yesterday...sent the kids and Brice to my dad's for the day...it worked out well. Sometime this weekend I developed mastitis again. I put a call into the doctor yesterday and got a prescription called in. I get to the pharmacy today and they don't carry that prescription at my pharmacy. I had to cal...

Let me just do this before I begin... *HUGE SIGH* Ahh..... Okay, it has been a nutso week...well, since Wednesday, anyway. So, let me begin with a playdate that I was so looking forward to and am praying now that it wasn't a bad decision. Krista's mom and dad went back to Florida on Wednesday. They have been here since before Melody was born and it was time for them to return home which meant Krista, two kids, first time, by herself. So, after Parent's Day Out where Rachel and Chelsea both go, I told Krista to come over and let the older girls play and we could hang out since we haven't had a chance to do that in awhile. So, she did. When I picked Rachel up from Parent's Day Out, she felt a little warm. I didn't really think anything of it...it was kinda warm in her classroom. Anyway, she wasn't acting like herself in the pool with Chelsea...didn't want to be splashed, etc. I kept asking her what was wrong and she said nothing. She got out of t...

AS PROMISED!!!! The first ones are of our bedroom:

So...I have started this new thing (it's taking me longer than I want). I have started doing some organizing, getting rid of junk, etc. I started in the kitchen. That's as far as I've gotten. It looks really good though. I went to Hobby Lobby yesterday and spent over $200 on stuff to decorate my house. Back when we moved here in Feb. of 06 my friend Jana came and stayed for almost a week and helped me decorate. We had a great time. We went and bought a lot of things to decorate the house with but we only did the downstairs. We did the family room, kitchen and a little in the entry way and dining room. Then, we had a baby about 10 months later and all I wanted to do was decorate the baby's room. Well, Rachel's room was really cute and then I got pregnant again last July and after we found out it was another girl, I was so excited about decorating Rachel's new room and the baby's new room. Their rooms are super cute! That's about all that is cu...

A few weeks ago I posted about how burdened I was regarding friends of Krista's who lost their newborn baby to an infection in her spinal fluid. For some reason I was so heartbroken for this family. Well, long story short, yesterday I was talking to Krista and she told me to go look at the picture of how beautiful this baby is. The mother of the baby is on facebook and her profile picture was of the 3 of them. Let me just stop and say that the baby was gorgeous!!! BEAUTIFUL!!! Anyway, as I was looking at her picture I realized that we have like 21 friends in common. I started looking at who her friends are and it was all people that I went to college with in Arkansas. I looked at her picture again (you can't see her face really well) and then looked at her name....and said her name out loud. HOLY COW!!!! I know this girl! We went to the same college and she actually graduated the year I was a freshman but we met through some mutual friends and actually hung out toget...

Yes, this is hard!!!!! I have been "toying" with the idea of potty training for awhile now. We bought Pull-Ups and a small potty and a potty chair for the big potty awhile back. I even bought some big girl panties with Rachel's favorite character on them. We tried the panties a few weeks after the baby was born and it was a disaster. After about the 4th pair soiled within an hour I decided that she was not ready for that. I became exhausted again with the new baby and decided to try again later. It is hard to get motivation for these types of things when you are tired. So, earlier this week I started asking Rachel if she wanted to tee tee in the potty. She always said yes so we did. Finally on Wednesday I decided to take her diaper off and let her run around naked. Brave, I know. So, she had NO accidents all day without a diaper on. She did wear a Pull-Up for nap time and for bedtime and it was wet both times...significantly wet. So...there is a long road be...

Well, I guess I will continue to blog for the people out there that do read it. Teasing. I would blog anyway...it is my open-face journal for all the world to see. It really does help me when I am frustrated with the kiddos or what-have-you. I have made some friends just by blogging and it's kinda neat. There are so many people that do it! Besides I know my family reads and never comments. It's Wednesday. I got my new camera yesterday and it is FABULOUS!!! I will have to say that the place where I bought it was not fabulous. I will have to blog about that later...maybe during Rachel's naptime. Nevertheless, the camera is great. I have taken pictures and videos and I can't wait to share them with you. I took two videos yesterday of Rachel. One is of her singing "our song." It is that old song (that I have to confess I have no idea where I heard it) but we started singing it when she was just a little bitty baby and now we sing it together. It...

do people even read this???? I never get any comments!

When Lauren smiles, it is like she smiles so hard that her whole body scrunches up!! She cracks me up!!!