Excuse me, Mr......Where is my little boy?

Did you ever have one of those moments where you realize time is moving so fast and it just sucks the breath right out of you? I had one of those moments last week. Garrett had a week of golf camp and after I picked him up on the first day, he wanted to go outside and practice his swing.

Ok.....he goes outside and I do a few more things in here.....then spy my camera lying on the table and decide to go take a few shots of my little guy playing golf....

When I walked outside and laid eyes on my son, my breath caught in my throat, and I got all teary eyed.....When did this happen?

First of all he had taken off his shirt....and we have been going to the pool so much that he is TAN.....and his hair has these really blonde highlights in it from being in the son.....then to top it all off, and really this is the part that did me in.....his underwear band is poking out the top of his shorts......Wait a minute.....You are SIX years old!!!!!! SIX.......NOT SIXTEEN!!!!!

I just wanna scream WAIT!!!!! Don't grow up too fast.....being a little boy is sooo much fun (for you but also for me). So I stop and I imprint this picture into my mind.....because before I know it....I'll turn around and he really will be sixteen standing out in my yard tan....shirtless....underwear hanging out the top of his shorts.......and you know what? I'll close my eyes and I'll be able to see him again at six.....my sweetie who thought he was older than he really was....my little man who was in such a hurry to grow up and do "man" thing.....my little guy who would tell me he loved me at least ten times a day.....my sweet first born son who taught me how to be a Mamma.....I love you, Gar......please slow down.....you are growing up too fast and my heart is having trouble keeping up....... Please be my little boy for a while longer.....I won't look at how big you are getting if you won't.......although carrying a 56 pounder to bed every night is getting a little hard......love ya big guy!!!!!

Our 4th Celebration

Our Fourth of July celebration started on the night of July 3rd. I am extremely patriotic and will tear up when singing the National Anthem. I feel that the youth of today do not honor Country, Flag, or Servicemen like they should and want to teach my boys what an honor it is to be an American and how they should revere and respect our flag and the men who fight/fought to make this country free. So I took them to this patriotic program that Temple Baptist Church presented. It was wonderful and had just the effect on my boys that I wanted it to....(well, it touched Garrett anyway, Grant fell asleep about 20 minutes into it.....). Here is a photo I snapped of their re-enactment of this famous statue and the battle it represents.

After the program they presented a beautiful fireworks display and Grant was so still once the fireworks started. He wasn't scared but I think he was in awe of the beautiful fireworks.

On the actual Fourth of July we went to our friends' house Skip and Carolyn Russell. They live up the street and were kind enough to invite a bunch of folks over to their house and pool for a cookout to honor the day. The kids enjoyed themselves immensely. We ate alot but I think the boys liked the blue cupcakes the best.....

I couldn't resist this adorable photo of my little guy relaxing with a cup of iced sweet tea and taking in all that was going on around him.....
For once I actually asked Ryan to take a photo of me and the boys since I am usually the one behind the camera.....look at the boys swim suits.....I thought they were perfect for the 4th!!
We came home and rested for a while and then finished off the day by setting off some fireworks of our own. Here are the boys with their sparklers......always a favorite around here......


We had a wonderfully fun and patriotic day!!!! Hope that you had a wonderful 4th of July too!!!

Swim Blessings

Finally, I get to tell you about our swimming lessons. These lessons are almost a month old now though and Grant is now in his second week of lessons for the summer and he is doing FANTASTIC!!!

You may be wondering about my title here....Swim Blessings.....Well, this is Grant's way of saying Swimming lessons.....funny isn't it? You never know how a child's mind is going to interpret something that is new to them....it gets even funnier as you'll see later in my story.

I found a great deal for my boys. Mrs. Pam Owens taught Garrett last year and we liked her so much that when I got ready to sign my boys up for lessons this year....there was no question about who we would call. Well, Mrs. Pam teaches at Mrs. Carla Colvin's pool. Mrs. Carla Colvin happens to be Garrett's PE teacher at school and he loves her. So Mrs. Carla taught Garrett at the same time that Mrs. Pam was teaching Grant. It worked out GREAT!!!

Garrett knows how to swim and is a really good swimmer. I wanted him to have lessons just to gain more knowledge of different strokes and just so he felt really confident in the water....as you'll see from his photos, he does NOT lack for confidence...lol....

Once Mrs. Carla realized that he was such a good swimmer she let him work on his "dives."
Here is his run and dive move.....sorry for the blurriness....didn't realize until too late that my camera was not set on action.....His absolute FAVORITE jump of all is showcased here.......wanna guess? Come on, he is a little boy.....the CANNONBALL of course!!!! I'm not really sure how he pulled off this jump.....some kind of flip but he thought it was super cool and so did I!!!

Ok.....let's turn our attention to my little one. Now he is not afraid of the water so to speak. I dump huge cups of water on their heads int he bathtub when I wash their hair and have been doing that since before he was a year old so he is used to water in his face. However, what he is NOT used to is putting his face IN the water. Especially such a HUGE body of water as a pool. He was NOT at all sure he wanted anything to do with "Swim Blessings." However he took an instant liking to Mrs. Pam and did not hesitate to go with her into the water. The first thing she told him to do was put eyes in and hold breath....it was the quickest eyes in ever as he did it for like half a second! Barely time to snap this photo!!!!
After she got him used to this, he got pretty good at it. Jumping in the pool was a different story....When she told him he was going to go jump off the diving board, this is what we got....
But you know what? He did it.....now there was plenty of screaming and crying but he did it....and you wanna know why Mrs. Pam is such a great swimming teacher? This is the photo I got after he jumped.....

Grant really does LOVE her and he trusts her which I know has alot to do with the fact that by the end of the week he was doing this.....

YES!!!!! He was swimming!!!! He didn't realize it but that is what he was doing. I was so thrilled!! This week we have been taking a whole other week of lessons with Mrs. Pam and he has advanced so much that he can swim halfway across the pool before he has to come up for a breath and he is reaching and pulling REALLY great with his arms and kicking with his feet!!!

And now.....the rest of the story.....lol.....OK....when someone says Swimming lessons we all know exactly what is being said....however, Grant had not heard the term before or didn't remember for last year when we took Garrett and so was not familiar with the term. His little brain did not hear Swimming lessons......it heard Swim Blessings......I didn't think that much about it until yesterday when we pulled up at the pool. As I was getting out of the car, I heard him saying swim blessings, swim blessings over and over to himself....by the time I got to the back to get him out of his car seat, this is what I heard......"God is great...God is good....." LOL!!!! That is the blessing we say at home before we eat our meals....He was saying a swim blessing!!!! I thought I was gonna die laughing and who knows? Maybe he was so scared he felt the need to say a blessing before his lesson....lol.....!!!!!! Kids say the darndest things don't they?

Busy

This is such a busy time of year for us. When it turns warm outside and ballgames start we aren't here all that much and I don't get to update as often as I'd like to.


Just wanted to share with you a few pics that might clue you in to what we have been doing lately. This is one of our outdoor activities.....everytime I look at this picture my heart skips a beat...notice that all four wheels are off the ground....he is six!!!! His favorite thing to do is try to see how hight he can go over this little hill.....if he is jumping his four wheeler at six...what is he going to be doing at sixteen?

Here is how Grant entertains himself at Garrett's ballgames....lol....These glasses are Ryleigh's(she is our friend's little girl and like a sister to my boys)....he loves her pink glasses!!! When it gets warm and the sun is shining.....we are usually at the swimming pool....Garrett has turned into such a good swimmer and at swimming lessons this year Grant made such great progress.....I'll blog on our lessons soon...(I hope!!)

I'll leave you with this photo....I laugh everytime I look at it because this is Grant's "Puss In Boots Face".....he looks just like the cat on Shrek when he wants something and isn't getting his way....when he does this I've taken to calling him Puss!!!!

I hope that you are having great summer!!!! I have Garrett's last ballgame photos and our swimming lessons photos to share but I"ll have to save that for another day!!!

Sign Of The Times

Oh boy. You can definitely tell that the youth of today have been slowly, but surely submerged into the coffee culture. When I was a little girl people didn't drink coffee that much. Where I was from only older people drank coffee. I clearly remember staying with my Nanny(my maternal grandmother) and getting to drink coffee milk. Which was alot of milk with a little coffee with sugar in it. That is one of my very favorite childhood memories. Well, today.....EVERYONE drinks coffee. I had to tell you about this little incident because it just made me shake my head in disbelief......

Garrett, my six year old, has been drinking "Coffee Milk" every morning since he was 15 months old. This mixture consists of a huge cup of vanilla soy milk, a tiny teaspoon or so of coffee and a couple of teaspoons of sugar. He LOVES it and it is one of those things that I will always associate with my boy. Anyway, yesterday morning he came up to me and said,

"Mom, I'm ready for my coffee milk."

Ok....I'll get it for you.....

"Oh, but Mom, wait....I want chocolate coffee milk."

WHAT? .....I said, "Chocolate coffee milk?" Like I couldn't quite believe what I was hearing because in the five years that I have been fixing this for him, chocolate coffee milk has NEVER been a request.....

He calmly sighed and said with the utmost patience as if he couldn't believe that I was so uninformed he said simply......"Yes, Mom.....chocolate coffee milk....don't you know that is a Mocha?"

Ah, yes, sweet boy....you are right....it is a mocha.....I just had no clue that you knew that....

So in disbelief I fixed my big boy his "MOCHA" and the scrapbooker in me couldn't help but grab the camera and snap a photo to remember this little story of how my six year old schooled me on the finer art of coffee drinking.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all my Mommy friends and family. I love days that celebrate loved ones in our lives. Gives us a chance to give those who deserve our love, admiration, and gratitude a special day. My day did not turn out exactly as I thought it would. Our original plan was to attend church and then go to the park with Ryan's Mom and Dad to eat lunch and let the kids play for a bit. Then I was going to take the boys down to my Mom's for an afternoon visit. Well, Saturday evening Grant started running a fever. He still had around 101 degrees this morning so Church was not an option for him. Ryan and Garrett went to church and I stayed home with Grant. Also being around the cousins and out in the hot sun was also not an option so the park was out. Ryan ended up taking Garrett to a local pool with his family and I loaded Grant up in the car and we drove down to visit my Mom.

My mom was hosting her whole family for the day and it was nice to get to see some family that I haven't seen in a while. It was a fun day and I enjoyed the visit with my Mom and Dad.

Here are some photos from our day.

Ryan took these photos right after he and Garrett got home from church. You can tell Grant did not feel well as he was not very cooperative and for that matter, Garrett didn't cooperate that well either....Oh well, it captured the REAL us.......

Grant definitely was not himself. Usually when I want to take photos of him, he is EVERYWHERE and it is hard for me to get a shot where he isn't moving. Today when I asked him to sit in Granny's flowers so I could take some photos, he plopped down and just sat. Now you could tell he didn't feel well as he didn't smile or entertain like he normally does but I did get a few really beautiful shots of him in these flowers. I adore this photo although it is a little dark. This is my daddy and his mother. She will be 80 years old this year and her health isn't all that great so I was so glad to get this sweet shot of them together. My dad has a special bond with his Mom. He is her oldest son and his Dad died when my dad was twenty three or twenty four and so my dad has really watched over his mom all these years.
And of course, what would Mother's day be without a special photo of me with my incredibly wonderful and beautiful mom....

I have such a wonderful family. I truly am the most blessed person on Earth.

The Cougar Mile

Garrett's school, Cedar Creek, used this week to emphasize physical fitness and they culminated this week today with the annual running of the Cougar Mile. They divide the kids into ages and seperate boys and girls and they all run four laps around the track. Garrett expressed his desire to run the Cougar mile a few months back and so I have taken him running with me several times to try and prepare him and let me just say, I was not optimistic.....

But he was so excited....I fed him pasta last night and then bananas and yogurt this morning for breakfast as well as making sure he was drinking enough fluids. He woke up this morning all ready to go and dressed in his running shorts and Cedar Creek shirt. The six year old girls ran first and while watching them, and seeing how tired they were getting not far into the race, I began to worry about Garrett but of course, didn't let him see that.

After the girls finished, the boys started their warm up..... They did a five minute warm up and then the announcer asked for them to take their positions on the track.... Here they are jockeying for position...there was quite a bit of shoving and elbowing......

On your mark........................................Get set............................................................GO!!!!!!!

And they were off!!!! Some of them you could tell were experienced runners.....like this little boy here in the red shorts that you see......he finished the mile in 7 minutes......others took off WAY too fast and ran out of steam way too early. We had tried to remind Garrett over and over that he needed to set a pace that wasn't too fast and not too slow so that he wouldn't tire himself out....well.....he did really really well!!!! I was so proud of him........Here he is after his first full lap....he looked pretty tired and I was a little worried about him.....as he passed I gave him some encouragement......Ryan was on the opposite side of the track from me urging him on.....

Even though he looked soooo tired the little guy just kept on running......

Here he is after his second full lap......

His tongue was hanging out and he was sweating buckets....I was still a little worried....more and more kids were slowing and starting to walk some instead of keeping up a steady pace.....but about halfway through his third lap he settled in and actually seemed to do better............

Here he is after his third full lap....you can see his PE coach encouraging him and showing him that he only has one more lap to go.....I think this really helped him out alot!!!

So he began his fourth and final lap......this photo was taken after he was most of the way around....you can see from the pic that he has just come off the final curve and into the straightaway....that is Ryan acutally kind of jogging along beside him telling him he was almost there..... And that was about the time that he realized all his friends who had chosen not to run were sitting in the stands and they were cheering for him.....you can see in this photo that he is looking up into the stands and kind of smiling......this kid lives to impress others........ and after just a few more steps, he had made it!!!!!!

And then he was done......He got his National time medal and his cup of gatorade and sat down to rest and revel in the fact that he had completed his first Cougar Mile.....his final time was 10 minutes and 20 seconds give or take a few seconds which I thought was incredible!!!!!! For no more than he has been running or training he blew us away!!!!

This was such a huge confidence booster for him. He has one race under his belt, he knows what it is all about now, and I think he was VERY proud of himself. We are so proud of you, Garrett.....you persevered.....you pushed through......you proved to yourself that you can do it!!! Now that he has a taste of that satisfaction, I have a feeling we are gonna be doing alot more running.

One more thing before I let you go......someone else was caught up in the spirit of the race......he always watches Garrett and wants to do everything he does.....he begged me through the entire race to let him run....I kept telling him when Garrett was done.....I figured I could let him run a little bit before the next age group started.....well, let me tell you something......This little toot ran TWO WHOLE LAPS.......yes two that is half a mile without stopping.....those little legs were just a pumping and before long the entire crowd was watching him.....he had a pretty good little pace going too.

.....looks like I'm gonna have two runners!!!!! I am such a lucky Mom!!! I love you boys!!!!!

Some New Stuff

Ok....I promised some baseball pics which are in the post below and I also promised some pics of some of my newest layouts.....so here they are.....


This one is for Grant's first year album and lists all the things he was doing at three months old....yes....I do realize that he is now 3 YEARS old....I am slightly behind......but I try not to let that bother me.

This one is of Grant's Baby Dedication day which also happened to be Mother's Day 2004. Dedicating my babies to God is something very important to me so it was a wonderful day in that aspect but the hidden tag tells the true story. It was a HORRIBLE day. The only time Grant smiled that day was for the pic on the left when we were still at home early that morning. The rest of the day...including while we were up on stage he fussed or cried. Garrett who was only three was uncooperative all day and cried while we tried to take some family photos. I felt VERY fat in my dress and looking back at these photos I realized I was very justified in feeling that way....and to top it all off, Ryan and I got into this awful fight before leaving for church and so I think I cried most of the day.....lol.....anyway....the important thing was Grant's dedication even if I couldn't hear it because he was crying in my ear.
This layout is dedicated to my Mom. She really is a lifeline for me. She has been there for me unconditionally and she is so selfless and giving. I love you Mom!!!!
ok...I think that is enough for now. Thanks for looking!!!!!

First Game of the Season

Friday night was Garrett's first tball game of the season but he didn't need a T!!!! We have been working with him alot and he can really get some good hits with one of us pitching to him and so Ryan (who is his coach) pitched to him during the game. Actually most of this little team hit off of Ryan pitching to them. They did AWESOME!!!! We were so excited!!!

Also he looked so cute in his Chili's shirt and cap...

It is so neat to watch him....after he made that first hit you could almost literally see his confidence growing....He also played first base and got two people out at first which is incredible for a tball team comprised of 4, 5, and 6 year olds.



Both sets of grandparents were there and he soooo wanted to impress them with how well he could play.....and he did it!!!! I love this photo of him running towards home plate....






We are so looking forward to years and years of baseball!!! One of the perks of having boys!!!