"I Been Workin' Out"

Hadley is always saying things that crack us up.  Yesterday, my mother-in-law was nice enough to pick her up from school for me since Connor has been sick.  Alex, my cousin, was with her so she brought Hadley to the house.  After Hadley showed her everything in our house, it was time for her to leave.  Hadley is now at a stage where she loves to walk you to your car so of course, she walked Alex out.  I see her running as fast as she can back up the sidewalk so I say, "Girl, you run fast!"  To which she replies. "Yeah, I been workin' out!"  I thought I may die from laughter.  

My Baby is Now a Big Girl

Can you see the difference here? I had no idea she had gotten so tall. Okay, so my baby will NEVER be tall, per se, but she has gotten tall-er. The uniform is the smallest they sell & it FINALLY fits her.

First Day of School Sassiness

This is the pose you get when you let your 3 year old watch too many episodes of Good Luck Charlie & The Suite Life of Zack & Cody!

Notice the curled hair. She just had to have her hair curled because Miss Aimee had done it on Tuesday when she got her haircut.

Look at this big girl! How did she get so grown in the blink of an eye?

Mrs. Angie

Mrs. Eve

Ahhh, the first day of school has come and gone. Hadley has actually been in school for 9 days now. She loves it! The first week was hard dropping her off in her classroom. She wanted me to stay every day. Then, all of a sudden yesterday, she told me she wanted one of the "big girls" to walk her in. You see, Hadley's school has these Safety Ambassadors. They are older girls (7th graders I think) that wait out under the carport with Mr. Lou, the security guard, in the mornings during carpool and walk the younger kids to class.

This is how that conversation went:

Me: (as I'm pulling in to a parking space because I knew the answer to that) "Had, do you want mommy to walk you in or one of the big girls?"

Had: "Um, I think one of the big girls."

Me: "Really, okay, well I'll walk you to the carport and one of the big girls can walk you in okay? "(Still thinking "yeah right, we'll get up there and she'll change her mind.)

So we walk and chat and she says hey to Mr. Lou. Then, we are standing face to face with A.P., the big girl. She looks at Hadley and says, "Do you want me to walk you in?" Queue shy 3year old...So I lean down and ask her again which one of us she wants to walk her in. AND SHE POINTS TO THE BIG GIRL!!! What? She's supposed to want me to walk her in. Well, I guess this is better than crying for me to stay every day. So, I handed A.P. Hadley's lunchbox and school bag and off they went into the big bad world of T3. Of course, I watched until they got to the door. Maybe I snuck over to the other door to make sure she got into the building and to her classroom...maybe I didn't. Oh, who am I kidding? We all know I did!

Too Cute Tuesday

Check out my cuties, Hadley & Connor on the Baby be Blessed blog.

Where did July go?

The past few weeks have been so busy! July 4th was my birthday, the 10th was the 10 year anniversary party for Darrell's practice, the 17th my sister & I hosted a baby shower for my cousin, and VBS started on July 18th. I taught 1st grade this year and it was SO much fun, but I am glad it's only one week out of the year. I don't know how I did this 180 days a year, 7 hours a day. I have gained great respect for moms that work outside the home, especially teachers. There is so much work that you have to take home. I can't imagine trying to get everything finished. When I was teaching, I had no babies so I could work on school things ALL.NIGHT.LONG.

I'll leave ya with some pictures of our precious littles.

I can't believe how big these kiddos have gotten. It seems like just yesterday we were bringing Hadley home from the hospital and now Connor is nearing his first birthday. Before I know it, he'll be heading off to school...

Big Apple Adventure

Singing in the Rain

We were sitting inside watching the Disney channel, when the satellite started going crazy. It was raining! Immediately, Hadley ran upstairs to get her rain coat & boots. Then outside we went.

I really don't know why she looks so sad here. Maybe it's because the rain had started to slack off.

Wordless Wednesday

Guess Who's Learning How to Write Her Name... Look closely....Can you see it? Yep, that's on my bedroom wall. There are also several H's on my bathroom wall and another "h-d-l-e-y" on the wall behind my robe.

Mardi Gras Break Part 1

Since Hadley gets out of school for the whole week of Mardi Gras and we are not big Mardi Gras folks, we decided to take a trip to Orlando. We usually go every year for Thanksgiving, but this year baby Connor joined our family a mere 24 days before Thanksgiving so we thought it best to postpone our trip. Since I have family that lives in Florida, it's also a great excuse to see them. We met in Daytona to visit with Robin, Ashley, Rocco, & Luka.

Look at these sweet "Kissing Cousins."

I am so glad these two finally like each other. It was a bit rough for a while.

Precious little Luka Sunshine...

Robin & Connor

I just realized I have no pictures of Ashley.(Sorry Ash) We had so mcuh fun and can't wait till we get to see y'all again. Miss you bunches!!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

My Big 3 Year Old

When did I blink?

I cannot believe you are three years old! You are such a beautiful little girl and your daddy & I love you more than we ever thought we could love anyone. You are so smart and you amaze us every day with what you have learned over the last year. You've learned to spell your name, sort of. You spell it H-D-E-L-E-Y and you can spell Connor's name using the song we taught you. You can identify the letter H, circles, squares, triangles, rectangles, and many other shapes. You know how to spell several colors: pink, purple, blue, red, brown, black, white and can identify them. You love anything Disney! You can spell Mickey Mouse and your favorite princess is Rapunzel. You are growing your hair to be just like hers. This would be fine if you didn't fight me every time I wanted to wash or brush it. You are such a loving little girl and I truly hope you stay that way. You have many friends and love going to school & your teaches so much you name your babies Ms. Carol(one of your teachers) and Caroline(a friend in your class). I look forward to what the next year brings...

Birthday Girl

I've been trying to type this post for a while now. I'm not sure if I've put it off because I've been so busy, I mean I DO have a 4 month old, or because I really don't want to face the fact that my baby girl is 3 years old. I didn't realize just how grown up she had become until I watched video from her 1st & 2nd birthday parties. Y'all I could just cry at how much time as flown by already. I know I cherished every moment as it came, but still I feel like I missed so much. How is that possible? I have loved every stage she has gone through, even the tough ones. They weren't all perfect and God knows that I have not gone through each one perfectly. In fact, there have been many times that I really messed up. I've yelled, I've snapped when I shouldn't, I've even spanked when the behavior really didn't warrant spanking. I wanted to be a momma for so long and I am so glad that God chose me to be Hadley's momma.

Anyway, enough of that...Let's get to the party. Hadley has been into princesses for so long that we decided to have a princess party last year after her 2nd birthday. Yes, I've been planning it that long. We had a huge Princess Castle Bounce House delivered at 10 am. It was a huge hit. The only good picture I got was of Hadley pulling my mother in law into it & I'm not sure she would appreciate a picture of her backside all over my blog so you'll just have to trust me it was awesome! Here is the table for the party favors.

I was so excited to get these princess cups. I think they are precious, but they cost $1.00 a piece so I was only going to get enough for Hadley's class. Then, the week before Hadley's party I went to Toys R Us and guess what? They were on sale for $.58 each and I had Rewards $$. I ended up getting 21 of these cups for $1.11! How awesome is that?

Of course, every princess needs a tiara, so we had these too.

I also made little bags with stickers, silly bands, and lip gloss rings. I got the tags from Etsy. The seller customized the tag to match Hadley's invitation. I thought they turned out perfectly!

We had shrimp stew and potato salad(both made by my father-in-law) and sandwiches, cheese, & fruit catered by Gattuso's. I only got pictures of the cheese & fruit, but the other was fabulous too...

Now, of course the most important part of a birthday is the cake. I called a friend and asked if she could make a castle cake for Hadley. Look at this gorgeous cake she made for us.

Can you imagine anything more perfect for a princess party?

After, the cake & ice cream, we had a little surprise for Princess Hadley. PONIES!!! This was a last minute decision. Once I found out they could dress the ponies to match a princess party, we HAD to have them. I had planned to cancel the bouncy house, but the ponies couldn't get there until 30 minutes before the party was scheduled to end so we kept it.

We had so much fun celebrating the birth of our little princess.

Future Cheerleader

My big girl's first shoulder stand with Aunt Kiki

Happy Birthday Hadley

Three years ago today at 11:29 pm we were blessed with the sweetest little girl. I can't believe how fast the time has flown. I'm going to do a birthday recap later, but I wanted to share a few pictures from Hadley's celebration at school. She was so proud that I made her cupcakes and kept telling everybody. That sure made a momma's heart swell with pride. Here are Princess Hadley's cupcakes.

Princess Hadley

(Her right eye is a little swollen because a "skeeter bug" got her.)

All of her friends at school singing Happy Birthday

Sleeping Cuties

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My Babies

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Make Over

Almost 3 year old little girl + mommy's make up bag + silence= one big mess.

Teddy Bear Tea

We took Hadley to the Teddy Bear Tea at the Roosevelt hotel. It was so nice and may just become a tradition every year. She had a blast as did Darrell & I. Look at these yummy goodies.

Hadley loved Frosty the Snowman & had to get her picture made with him as soon as she saw him.
Mrs. Claus read a story to the kids and they all sang Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. After, they were all able to sit by her for pictures.



The Princess takes her singing very seriously as you can tell in this picture.
My Princess & the Snow Princess

After we ate, sang carols, read stories, & took more pictures than you would ever care to look at the kids formed a second line with their red Christmas napkins and lead Santa & the gang out of the tea room. When they got outside, they were all given a teddy bear. Hadley was very happy about this part.
Connor, on the other hand looks a tad freaked out about the large bear hanging out in his stroller. (okay it's not really large, but to a 1 month old baby it looks huge I'm sure.)
When we were walking to the car, we came across Mr. Bingle. Being that I am not a New Orleans native, I told Hadley to go take a picture with Frosty. I found out two days later, and only after seeing a clip on the news about him, that Mr. Bingle in a New Orleans icon.