13 Weeks!

It's me! This shirt flares a little weird, so it makes me look a bit more pregnant. I'm wearing regular jeans though still! (WOO HOO!)

What will our baby look like?

I did a thing to see what our baby is going to look like. Whatcha think? I did a couple just to get a few different perspectives :-)


What do you think about my little new baby Bean?
MakeMeBabies.com - What will your baby look like?

What do you think about my little new baby Boy?
MakeMeBabies.com - What will your baby look like?

Save Handmade!

As you all know, I make handmade items. It's my livelyhood - it's how I pay for Blondie's curriculum, how I help make ends meet when Hubby's overtime isn't enough for our monthly bills, etc. What some of you may not know, is that handmade items, including my business are being threatened. Threatened by our own government. As it seems, all children's items will have to be government tested (think $$$$) starting February 10th, or it will be ILLEGAL to sell. Meaning I could get thrown in jail and/or get a huge fine.

For more information and for how you can help, please visit Cool Mom Picks Save Handmade Website.

This is EXTREMELY important. If this passes, you may never find a handmade wooden puzzle, Amish made toys and blankets, Pink Alligator Purses and Hats. Forget all those nifty craft shows with unique children's items.

Please help us save handmade.

So... I lied....

Well, I said I wasn't showing yesterday. Apparently things were growing overnight because I woke up this morning with a definate "baby bump". It's not one of those obvious "WOW SHES PREGNANT!" bellies yet. It's more of the "Is she pregnant or has she eaten too many doughnuts lately?" bellies. So yep, things are growing. I REFUSE to get my maternity clothes out yet. I'm going to enjoy this one last pair of jeans I have for as long as possible until I can't squeeze into them anymore.

Bye Bye Miss American Pie...

So... we're driving in the car to run errands today. Of course I love listening to the oldies, so one of my favorite songs comes on.... American Pie. It gets to the line when it says ".... the day the music died". Blondie speaks up and says "Mommy why did the music die". I replied that I didn't know. She quickly responds with "I bet it ran out of batteries".

hahahaha... good one.

"Bye Bye Miss American Pie, drove my chevy to the levy...."

Did you know I know every single word to this song? I played it over and over while I was a teen until I memorized all of it.

Happy Weekend!

Q & A Time!

Okay, since our annoucement that we're expecting again, hubby and I have been asked many questions from friends and family, so I'll go ahead and make our answers known by posting the common questions...

Q: The baby was a surprise, right?
A: Ummmm.. no. As you all know, it's rather hard for a baby to be a suprise. We all know where they come from. I think the only baby that could have ever been a surprise was when Mary found herself expecting Jesus.

Q: Why would you want another one when you have one boy and one girl?
A: Why wouldn't we want another one? We enjoy the 2 that we have, we feed them and cloth them, so why not add to the chaos, er.... I mean fun :-)

Q: This is your last one, right?
A: Probably not. We've always said we wanted at least 4. However I think our friends that have 8 children are rubbing off on us so who knows how many we'll have! They are such a joy to be around.

Q: What do the kids think?
A: Blondie is thrilled and convinced the baby is a girl and is thinking of very interesting names to name the baby. Bear of course is clueless for the most part.

Q: How are you feeling?
A: Way too good in my opinion! Just need a nap everyday and I'm good to go. Just don't cross me. I can be a GROUCH!

Q: Are you seriously going to do a VBAC?
A: That is my plan. If you don't agree, that's your opinion. Nothing will change my mind.

Q: Are you showing yet?
A: You can tell when I'm naked, but NO I'm not going to show you. Still wearing regular jeans, just have to be careful not to wear a clingy shirt.

Q: What are you craving?
A: SALTY SALTY SALTY, mexican food, an the occasional grapefruit.

Q: Are you going to find out what you're having?
A: Of course!

Q: So you already have all the baby stuff you need, right?
A: Ummm.. that would be a no. I've given away/sold all of the kids baby stuff after Bear outgrew it (with the exception of a few clothing items) because we don't have any storage space and we were selling everything to become debt free. So we'll pretty much be starting over. However, we do have our playpen still.

Q: What if I have a question not listed here?
A: The reply to this post and tell me what it is :-)

Surprise!

Okay - I admit - I've been hiding a secret from you all for the past few weeks..... See for yourself...

Yep - we're expecting! We sent out the above annoucements to family in our Christmas cards. We are excited and the kids are excited too. I was very cautious to start with. To be honest, I have felt way too good to be pregnant. Other than eating smaller more frequent meals to prevent my blood sugar getting low, and needing a nap everyday, I feel fantastic. We went to the doctor on Dec 1st and saw a little beating heart! We are attempting a hospital VBAC - our insurance changed and we'll be COVERED for the ONE doctor in the area that does VBACs. And I'm told I am a GREAT candidate.

And YES, we already have names picked out, although I'm really feeling that this one is a boy. If it is a girl, her name will be Olivia Eileen. If it is a boy, his name will be William Reilly.

Anyways, here are a few fun tickers to see where we are....

Long time, No Post!

I promise I haven't fallen off the face of the earth.... yet! It has been an extremely busy and chaotic couple of months. I have until Wednesday to ship all my orders and this has been a very busy season. Slowly losing my mind!

We did manage to get out to Winterville's Christmas Festival and rode the Christmas Train

And we have put up our Christmas tree

The kids even took a pic of me by the tree

Other than that, work work WORK!

Here's our Christmas family photo this year. Not my fav, but it will do.

Quick update - more to share later.

Hello All :-)

Sorry for the delay in posting. I've been very busy with Christmas orders, Thanksgiving fun, Chris working on his promotion stuff, and just LIFE! Stay tuned and I'll update more soon :-)

Dancing Lessons

Soo... the 4 of us have been taking dancing lessons the past few weeks. I think we're getting quite good, but you can SEE FOR YOURSELF BY CLICKING HERE

Whatcha think? Are we ready for the big leagues?

Happy Thanksgiving!

May your stuffing be tasty
May your turkey plump,
May your potatoes and gravy
Have never a lump.
May your yams be delicious
And your pies take the prize,
And may your Thanksgiving dinner
Stay off your thighs!

Growing Much?

Hmmm... I think Blondie is going through a growth spurt.

Reasons being:

* She's eating everything not tied down
* She's complaining of leg pains at night (I've been told by the doctor they are "growing pains".
*Her favorite dress has reached the point of being too short.... what a sad day :-(

Yep I think she's growing!

Hopefully the eating will stablize or we may have to take out a loan to feed this kid! lol.

I'd post pics of her but guess what... I lost my battery charger for my camera. Thus the lack of pictures lately.

Playing Santa

As most of you know, we do not have Santa visit our house. Our reasoning is simple. We don't need Santa. Santa came about to give presents to poor children and I do not think we fall into that catagory since Hubby and I are able to buy Christmas presents for our children. Seems funny how the modern "Santa" brings huge expensive gifts to already over-blessed children while most of the needy children get cheap dollar store toys just to help the giver sleep better at night about spoiling their children. Nothing makes me more mad than to see someone have these huge $$$ toys in their buggy for their children and then throw some piddly little thing into the Toys For Tots box.

Since "Santa" doesn't visit our house, we play Santa for other children. Hubby got 2 kids through his work for us to sponser through his work this Christmas. Either one or both of their parents are incarcerated. We have an 11 year old boy and a 7 year old girl this year. At first I was beside myself trying to figure out what to get an 11 year old boy. 7 year old girl wouldn't be too bad. We took our kids shopping yesterday and Blondie was thrilled at "Playing Santa" and helping shop for clothes, shoes, and a couple toys for the children. For the boy we found a nerf ball set, slinky, and an electronic handheld game that Hubby insisted would be popular called Guitar Hero. We also got him some brand new sport shoes, 2 nice dressy shirts and 2 pairs of jeans. Throw in a Pink Alligator basic hat and some gloves and he will be set. For the girl we got a Crayola Art Kit, shoes, 2 complete outfits that Blondie helped pick out, and I will be making a cupcake purse and stuffing if full of lipgloss, body splashes, lotions, hair accessories, etc. I may go back out and get the girl a book or 2 and get the boy some comics or something. Not quite sure what an 11 year old boy would want to read.

Brief Update

We're all doing well - hubby is studying for his corporal exam in December. I've been rather busy crocheting up a storm.

Blondie is doing great in school - the only thing we're struggling with is differenciating between coins, but I'm printing a few extra worksheets on coins so we should be up to par soon. I am getting the worksheets from Enchanted Learning.

Bear is doing well - he's about 90% potty trained at home. However, when we go out, he does not want to even try. Sooo... we'll just keep at it. I'm sure he'll come around in time. At least we're using far less diapers at home!

That is all for now!

Penny Pig

Unfortunately we haven't seen Isabelle for a while now although our neighbors have seen her. I'm guessing she will remain wild.

On the other hand, Penny Pig is doing very well. She's put on weight and started running a few days ago. We were thinking maybe she was just older but apparently she was having a hard time moving from being undernourished. Anyways, judge for yourself on how she's doing :-)

And then here's Bear

An Intriguing Blog

In my recent searches to find out as much as I can about the man becoming the next president, which I must to say scares the life out of me, I came across a very interesting blog. The writer is a retired accountant and veteran. His posts vary from silly crime reports and factual articles on politics. Stop by and check it out - you may be hooked like I am!

Cave Views

Cancer

Such a scary 5 letter word. We heard it yesterday to describe one of Blondie's best friends. Surely this word couldn't describe a 6 year old redhead full of life, right? And yet it does.

Blondie has been friends with Kaylee since she was 1 1/2 and Kaylee was 2 1/2. Kaylee's mom is a teacher and her dad is a police officer. Just an everyday family living the American Dream. It breaks my heart to know what they are going through.

This all started about 2 weeks ago. Kaylee's mom got a call from the school that Kaylee was in immense pain and to come get her right away. Kaylee's mom took her to the doctor where they diagnosed her with a UTI and gave her meds. Nothing seemed to help, so she was taken to the ER. They eventually did a scan and found a tumor so they sent her to Atlanta to the children's hospital.

The tumor was on her ovary. They took out the tumor along with the ovary. They just got the results back today that it is cancer. They should know treatment options in the next few days.

Please PLEASE pray for Kaylee and her family. If you want their address to send a letter or card of encouragement, Email Me.

Christmas is Coming!

With Christmas coming fast, I needed to make a decision on what we are getting the kids for Christmas. As you all know, we just give them 3 gifts each, but we don't "skimp" those gifts. After much thought and deliberation, hubby and I finally came up with a plan yesterday.

Blondie:
1. Books - including I Spy, Magic Treehouse, and maybe a few others. She's getting into chapter books now and I caught her reading my big book on training pot bellied pigs.
2. American Girl Stuff - Christmas Dress for Kit (ordered this yesterday from etsy - why pay 24.00 for a "name brand" when you can get one that's just as cute handmade for 8.00!), AG craft kit (found this at Sam's for almost HALF the price in the catalog.
3. Baking Set - including her very own mixing bowl, measuring spoons/cups, a few mixes, etc. She loves to bake.

Bear:
1. REAL kid's tool set - basically a minature version of what Daddy has. Hubby is going to be working on building a deck on our house and Bear is going to be thrilled to be able to "help".
2. Boys Dress up clothes - such as police man, cowboy, etc. Hubby is tired of seeing Bear wearing Blondie's tutus.
3. Powerwheel - IF we can find a good used one for cheap. If not, we'll come up with a different gift for number 3.

As for me, I'd really like a whistling teakettle. I'd also love a more advanced bread machine, the one that you can make jam and all kinds of things in it. But I think that will wait until later. Other than that I am just very thankful that Hubby will be here to enjoy it this year! He actually gets Christmas off!!! And he has Thanksgiving off as well!

My thoughts on the Election

Well, I wrote a huge long post on my thoughts and frankly, I don't think you all want to read them so I hit the delete button. To say the least, I'm dissapointed in this election and shocked at what American's view as important.

Just my 2 cents....

Meet Penny!

Well, we haven't caught Isabelle Piggy but we did find a piggy that needed rescuing. She was listed as free to good home on craigslist. And this piggy NEEDED a good home. Poor thing was half starved. VERY VERY thin for a potbelly piggy. Penny is everything that Isabelle Piggy isn't. She's VERY friendly, VERY good with the kids, and she stays right with us. I hope to have Penny nice and healthy and plump within the next few weeks. Hopefully there are no underlying health conditions other than not being fed properly. The people that had her were telling us how bad it is for pigs to get fat and that they made sure that Penny didn't get fat. I think they took it to the extreme.

Pig-Tales

I mentioned the other day that we were considering letting Blondie get a piglet. We went ahead and let Blondie get a piglet Sunday night from a local breeder. Since then our world has been CHAOS, to say the least.

We were assured by the breeder that the piglet, fondly named by Blondie as Isabelle Piggy, has had a lot of human interaction and was friendly. Let's just say nothing could have been further from the truth.

We bought a harness to "harness train" the piggie. After the kids went to bed, hubby and I tried to put the harness on the piggie. Isabelle Piggy went NUTS, screaming and hollaring. This was no little cute squeal. It sounded like a woman being murdered or something. I told hubby to forget it, let's just try again in the morning as we don't need the police called!

The next morning, Monday, hubby and Bear busied themselves constructing a pen for Isabelle Piggy. It looked great! We were happy to introduce Isabelle Piggy to her new home. She sniffed around and seemed to be enjoying it, so I tell Hubby that I'm going to get the camera. As soon as I went inside, Isabelle Piggy got out from underneath the fence and took off. She wanted AWAY from us as quick as possible.

This is when the "FUN" starts.

Hubby, Blondie, and I chase the piggy through the woods, briars, poisen ivy, trying to catch our piglet. This was just a joke - no way could we catch this little piggy who was terrified of people. I go to the animal shelter and get a humane trap. We set it in the woods and wait. Nothing all night.

Tuesday. Nothing. I tell hubby at dinner that something probably got the piggy and that we should take back the trap. Right after saying this, I look out the window, and there is Isabelle Piggy, sniffing around the yard. Hubby and I run down to the woods and set the trap up in the yard. I add warm apple pie and pig food into the trap. Sit back and watch as she sniffs out the cage. But alas, she doesn't go in.

This morning - 4 AM. BARK BARK BARK! Our dogs wake me up allerting that something is going on outside. I look out the window! Something is in the cage! HOWL HOWL HOWL! It's the neighbors pitbull. UGH. I hate that dog. Out I go stumbling at 4 am in the freezing cold to release the stupid dog from the trap. The thing growls at me the whole time. I'm thinking maybe I should leave him in the cage as this is a dog I DO NOT trust. I talk to the dog and finally get enough courage and release him. I reset it and go back to bed.

7:30 AM - I get up and look out the window. Something's in the cage again! Maybe it's..... NOPE Stupid Neighbor Dog again. This time he's not growling. He's laying in the cage, content as can be, looking at me like he's laughing. I'm sure he was. I let him out again, reset it, and sprinkle more pig food.

9:00 AM - Hubby gets home and neighbor comes over - says his wife was in hysterics that we had their dog in a trap. We get the situation explained and fortunately he's got a good sense of humor and laughs it off.

Everytime it looks like the pig is about to go in, she decides not to. Since we're paying $5 a day to rent the trap, we are just going to take it back and continue feeding Isabelle Piggy and I guess she'll be a "free range" pot bellied piggy. We've got 13 acres and she's not bothering anyone so that's probably the best situation.

Dreams and Wishes

Sigh. It's so good to be debt free. Now comes the hard part. Saving and deciding what to spend our money on. We'd really like to clear out more of our woods and that's hubby's current project. We also want to become more self-sufficiant. Meaning grow our own food, have chickens for eggs, etc.

I am looking forward to getting our porch built and getting our yard fenced in. It's so hard because, of course, we want to do everything NOW. We'd also like to fence in a good bit of the woods and have a horse or 2. So much to do, so little time and money. Blondie wants to get a pig. Yes, a real live pig. She's been saving her money. At first, I thought she was nuts, but after reading a bit up on pigs, it might not be a bad idea. Did you know that pigs will eat snakes? And that the venom of the snake doesn't bother the pig? With as many snakes as we've found close to the house lately, I'm all for it! We've looked into pot belly pigs and they seem like the best idea. And NOOOO to if the pig would live in the house. NO NO NO! I do enjoy animals though and don't want to crush her dream after she saved up money. So we'll see. Hubby also wants goats, but they must wait until we have a sturdy fence. Comes spring, we may just have our own petting zoo. Hmmm... maybe we could charge admission and make money. HAHA. My dream is to have horses. It's been too long without horses and I'm craving them! Definately going to be some time for this dream since we will need a fence, saddles, hay, etc. I have someone willing to GIVE me a 5 year old horse, but no where to keep it right now. Sigh.

Hubby cleared out a bunch of the woods and is working on sawing up the wood now. Anyone need any fire wood, just stop on by and help yourself! Well, off to dream some more...

Don't forget!

To stop by my review blog -there is a GIVEAWAY and lots of great coupons!

Mommy Octopus Reviews Link

Bear turns 2!!!!

Yes, yes, our little bear is now 2! I can't believe it! Bear's party was fun and perfect for a 2 year old. We had his favorite foods - pizza, chips and salsa, goldfish, and veggies with ranch dressing. For cake, Hubby, Blondie, and I made a cake that our friend Jennifer sent me the link for. As far as entertainment, the kids entertained themselves and we let Bear pull out his trains to play with. I think everyone had fun. Bear had a great time and got lots of stickers (he is obsessed right now!) and some great books and even a toy train!

Pumpkin Patch 2008

We went to the pumpkin patch yesterday with friends at Washington Farms It was a blast like usual!

Hayride time! Here's Blondie with her friend D

Us on the hayride

Riding the pedal karts!

Going on the cow train! Blondie and Bear were eager to go!

About halfway through, Bear decided he had enough of the cowtrain

Here's Bear - he is so funny when he walks around like this! Just one hand in his pocket!

Thunderbirds!

Yesterday we went with our friends down to Atlanta to see the thunderbirds and other airplanes at the air show. We had a great time, although a few regrets today. I'm rather sunburned from staring at the sky for so long. On to the pics. Tons of them!