Dancing Queen!

This weekend is Grace's recital at Will Rodger's Audtitorium. We went to rehearsal yesterday and tonight is the "Big Show"! We are headed to Sweet and Sassy at 4:00 to get our hair and make-up done. I just had to share a few pictures from rehearsal. The girls were having a great time playing together while we waited as you can see! Tonight maight be a little bit different. They have to sit in the dark and be quiet. Tons of fun with 4 and 5 year olds!

Tooti-Fruities!

My girls LOVE fruit. We spend a fortune every week at the grocery store on it! I had to take these pictures tonight because my girls were so darn cute!


Peach perfect peach. Hope cannot get the fruit drawer open in the fridge yet so she stands there holding on to it grunting! It is too funny! This girl could eat 1 of every kind of fruit each day of the week. Don't get me wrong, she LOVES her cheetos but thankfully fruit is her fav!

Grace has discovered that she LOVES grapefruit. Tonight she came in lugging a huge bag of them from the fridge in the garage. When I cut them in half and grabbed the smaller of the 2 for her, she protested. My girl loves her grapefruit!

Quick funny story...
G: Mommy some people were bad! Look at that litteration!
Me: The what?
G: The litteration! Look there is more litreration. You always tell me not to throw my litteration on the ground because the police will come and give me a ticket! And I don't have enough money in my piggy bank for a ticket.
Me: Oh yes honey, you are right! We are not supposed to thow our litter on the ground!

Hehehe! I love their funny words!

Going Home

This weekend we went to my hometown of Mena, Arkansas. It was kind of bittersweet for me. My mom's side of the family had a family reunion on Saturday. It was great to see all my aunts and uncles. My favorite part is watching my girls with my Papaw, whom I adore more than I can say! Grace is absolutely smitten with her Papaw! She says he is her boyfriend and loves him so much. We can call him and I can't get the phone away from her once she starts talking with him. Here are a few pictures from our morning...

Grace and her beloved Papw! She was pouting because the "Big Kids" were not letting her play their game. She sat in Papaw's lap for at least 30 minites while he loved on her andcommiserated with her!
My mom and Hope! She did not want to let go of her Grandma. She was a little bit overwhelmed by all the family!






So here was the par of our trip that was a little bitter for me... Hunter and I went and drove around the scenic little town that was torn apart by the F4 tornados about a month ago. It was heartbreaking to see in person. Home after home dystroyed. Piles of trash and twisted metal were everywhere. The home that my firend Sherri and I used to sneak out to (inorder to play Nintendo with Josh Miller) was devistated. My aunt and Uncle's home that had held lots of memories... completely gone. The former home of a friend was marked only with a chimney and concrete foundation. It was so scary to see how just a block over from my parent's home the devistation started! Amazingly, only 3 lives lives were lost but it will take years for this little town to recover. It was not one little bitty area but the tornado skipped it's way across Mena leaving a trail of destruction. Here are a few pictures that Hunter and I took. It does not even come close to what we saw!

Turning Back TIme

This evening I have been catching up on my wonderful friend's blogs. And one in particular took me off gaurd, made me smile, brought a tear to my eye, and just flat out made my day. Thanks Shy!

Everyone needs a Shyanne Bell in their life! We have known each other since we were nine (22 years now)! She is 1 day older than me and pretty much everything major that has occured to me in my life has occrued at pretty much the same time in hers. We only lived in the same place for 1 year but remained close. We both went to Camp Bandina and numerous summers I went and stayed with her and her family for a week before camp. When we were 22, we went on a cruise to the Carribean, we had not seen each other since we were 18 at our last year at Bandina. She was a bridesmaid in my wedding, and the last time I saw her was at her wedding, 5 months after mine (almost 7 years)! Grace is 5 months older than her twins and the next Christmas after her twins were born, I got a her card in the mail and it said Love Matt, Shyanne, Cade, Cole, and Baby! We had just found out that I was pregnant with Hope. Rylie is just a few weeks older than Hope!

We pick up the phone every once in a while and talk like we had just seen each other. We keep track of each other through our blogs and Facebook. She is just one of those people that I know will always be there for me! God blessed my life 22 years ago with her friendship and I cannot wait to see what the next 50 bring us! Love ya girl!

Me and Shy at my wedding. If Hunter would have done it, I would made him get up in the attic and dug out all my old photos from camp. Why could I not find the scrapbook from the cruise when I needed it?????

Reason's to Smile

I have not been the perkiest person to be around here lately. I will admit it, I am tired and a little bit stressed out with the end of the school year upon me. So much to do in so little time and frankly speaking... I feel like I am spread too thin. Debbie Downer, Negative Nellie.. that has been me. However, I feel like God has placed a few people in my life to remind me just how blessed my life is and what I have to be thankful for in the last few weeks.

A friend that I worked with up until a few months ago was blessed with a beautiful baby girl over a month ago. Unfortunately, liitle Miss Ella Mae was born with one of the valves of her heart being a little bit too small. After open heart surgery at a week old, Addy and Gabe have finally brought her home this last week!

The other blessing in my life has been the family of one of my students. Rich Behm was the scout that was paralyzed from the waist down in the colapse of the Cowboy's bubble a few weeks ago and the father of one of my babies at school. He is so thankful to be alive and working so hard to come home from rehab so that he can take care of his family. I listen to his sweet 6 year old boy talk everyday about how much he loves his Dad, how proud he is that his Dad is working so hard, and how bad he wants him to come home from the hospital.

So yes, my life is good! I have a wonderful husband that is graduating with his Mater's Degree on June 19th (woohoo!) who is healthy, 2 beautiful girls that make me smile, have shown me what it means to love unconditionally and are heathly and happy loving children, a God that is so good and forgiving even when I don't deserve it, and so many wonderful people that I can call family and friends. Yes, I have countless reason's to smile and feel truely blessed! Time to pick myself up and start being Miss Positive Polly!

Thank you God for all my Blessings and Reason's to smile! Thank you for bringing these people into my life!

Here are 2 of my life's little blessings!