Prayer request

I would like to ask that my readers pray for a family that I went to church with at Powdersville First Baptist. I did not know until today that Ernie Simmons had cancer until I found out he had passed away last night. He was a faithful man to the Lord and he and his family were at the church whenever the doors were open. Ernie had a rare soft tissue sarcoma that did not respond well to chemo or radiation and it spread quickly despite trying various treatments. Please pray for peace for their family in this difficult time of grief.

One of the journal entries Ernie wrote himself on his CaringBridge site really touched me as I read it this morning:
Let me share this one with each of you. It has become my favorite. It's found in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18
"Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

We can rejoice in the knowledge that Ernie is no longer in pain and is dancing with our Lord this very day! Thank you for your prayers!

A favorite verse of mine in times such as this and one Ernie's wife mentioned on the site as well:
Jeremiah 29:11-13
"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart."

Busy weekend ahead!

I will post more on Monday of our trip to Lousiana, Zoo of Acadiana, Riverbanks Zoo and Easter with Grandma and Grandpa.

Today I am having the one day I can count on each month to hang out with my friends and scrapbook ALL DAY LONG! :) Today is our scrappy day where we crop literally all day - the crop is from 10 a.m. til midnight. I usually don't arrive until lunchtime due to other things in the mornings - usually a dance practice for Mallory or a short shift at work. Today I am off work but I'm taking care of a few things before I pick up Mallory from dance rehearsal. Then I'm off to scrappy time! Tracy will spend the day with the girls - they usually have a good bit of fun. They play board games, GameCube, watch movies with popcorn and he often cooks dinner for them although they're often known to get a $5 pizza or two from Little Caesar's as well. Sometimes he cooks breakfast for them - cheese omelettes and pancakes - and he's cooked ribs and wings for him and the girls before too. They're a little spoiled can ya tell? I'm really grateful that he doesn't mind staying home with them so I can have my day with my friends. I'm also thankful for a Nana that watches the girls when Daddy and Papa have basketball at church for 2 hours on Saturday nights too while I scrap! Today is a no-basketball day though and after Daddy and Papa taking a tumble on the courts last week I'm not sure they both would have went back!

Tomorrow is Tracy's grandmother's 80th birthday party. This is actually a bigger party than I realized. All of Granny's children helped plan it and they expect to have a really large crowd of people between church members and out of town family. It will be at their church, Oteen Baptist Church. Granny said she doesn't know if she'll be able to stand all those people looking at her and paying attention just to her. She's so sweet and humble! So tomorrow we'll be spending the day in Asheville with family after church and we just love that! I plan to take lots of pictures there as well. Be back to post more on Monday!

Hope everyone has a wonderful and safe weekend!

Louisiana Day 2 of my captivity...

Julia Grace is coloring in her Rainbow Fish coloring book.
Getting up close and personal with the Robin Hood DVD - I bought a DVD copy recently and it's become a favorite of Julia Grace. Mallory was pretty happy about the decision to get a copy on DVD too - they watch it together often.

More Julia Grace and her DVD player - note the sunglasses to the side. She would put them on her face off and on while watching the DVD - I wasn't successful in getting pics of them on her face. She's such a ham!

Whoa baby! Check out the Heels hat and the cheese face! Yes, Julia Grace got into the bag of Dorito's! She loves them!

Well, actually, Julia Grace and I spent Monday (day 2) in the hotel room. We were cranky about it to begin with but decided to be content with what we had.

Julia Grace and I woke up about 9 a.m. - anyone that knows my husband and his mom, knows that they DID NOT wake up at 9 a.m. More like 11.30 a.m. Anyhoo... I fed Julia Grace breakfast from our stash we brought with us and we had apples, bananas, and leftover Cracker Barrel biscuits and milk for her and Coke Zero for me. Nummy Nummy!

Julia Grace colored quietly and drew on a hotel notepad for a little while. I'm not sure they would have woke up when they did but she was having a hissy fit because I was doing the "pre-brush" on her hair - the one where we brush some of the tangles out before bath time to make washing and brushing afterwards as effortless as possible. (did I just use effortless in a sentence about Julia Grace - wait those don't go together!)

Nana got up and called a dealership and scheduled an appointment even though OnStar said it could wait. Tracy and I were both ill about this in the beginning because she was told it could wait and we thought she was being paranoid (it was a good thing she went after all). There was also a misunderstanding and Philip thought someone would be back to take him somewhere at 10 a.m. . Cathy left to take him where he needed to go and then to the dealership. Then they called Tracy and told him he needed to come sit at the dealership while they went to eat lunch. The dealership said someone had to sit and wait on the car. I've never heard of such and neither has my 20+ year veteran service dept father. He said he's sure never told anyone that.

Carrying on here... So... Tracy went to the dealership and sat and used Philip's laptop and the dealership's Internet to take care of some BPO's and monthly status reports. I guess the good news is in his wait there he got all of his work done for the next few days. I had brought along Julia Grace's portable DVD player, 3 coloring books, crayons and 8 DVDs. Yeah I know - for 3 days? I tell you... I'm glad that I did. Julia Grace and I ordered Papa John's pizza and cheese sticks. As soon as it was delivered Julia Grace jumped on the bed and yelled NUMMY! and got over to the table to eat pronto! We spent the afternoon watching Robin Hood and the Wiggles and then took a really long nap!

This was a good thing - we ended up getting things for sandwiches at Wal-mart that evening and munchies and chilled out watching the Tarheels win! :) Yeah! Julia Grace is even sporting her Daddy's Tarheel hat in some pics! Day 2 in captivity, I mean, the hotel wasn't so bad by the end of the day. It was great Mommy/Julia Grace time!

Easter Egg Scramble - April 4, 2009

On Saturday, April 4th, Tracy and I took the girls to USC-Upstate for the Easter Egg Scramble. This was the first year we've been able to take the girls to this hunt. I think Mallory had been one time a few years back with her mom and Richard but I am not sure. Usually we just have always gone to the pre-school Easter egg hunt at church - with Mallory for several years and then we skipped a year when she was too old and Julia Grace was just born. Now we've gone with Julia Grace and Mallory and Adrienne have come along too as "older siblings and guests" :) . We didn't make it to the preschool egg hunt this year - Mallory was at her mother's on Easter weekend and cousin Adrienne wasn't with us either.

Back to the Egg Scramble - Tracy and Mallory headed up to the older kids field to hunt. We ran into the our friends the Henke's a few times on the field and Mallory caught up to Robert and Justin on the field a few times. I stayed down on the toddler field with Julia Grace. Talk about antsy children! You would think they would have lineup a little less chaotic with little ones wanting to get to all those eggs! Julia Grace got fussy and wanted one of the DumDum suckers she'd already been given and not her blanket for once. So I gave her the mango flavored sucker (she likes mangoes so I figured why not?). This kept her content and she ate the sucker and looked around at everyone lining up okay. They finally sound the horn to go get all those eggs. Julia Grace - oh my - she ran and got 4 eggs after saying Julia Grace look! Then she just stood there watching everyone else eating her sucker. I guess that was sufficient for her!

Mallory got a lot of eggs but no "prize" eggs. Robert Henke got a "prize" (piece of paper) in one of his eggs and ran up to show it to Mallory before he went to the tent to claim his reward. Mallory's known the Henke twins since preschool and my neice, Amber, has been their babysitter since the boys were 3 or 4 - a very long time! Other than the Henkes I'm really surprised we didn't see more people Mallory knew. Tracy and I ran into an old coworker of his and I waited in line with her and her toddler at the field. I ran into Michaela and her little ones from MOMS.

Tracy and Mallory went to look at the Soapbox Derby car and some bunnies in a tent while I talked to Michaela - then we all walked over to the petting zoo and took Julia Grace back to look at the bunnies in the tent. She wouldn't touch the bunnies for some reason. She likes petting zoos and so does Mallory - our girls really LOVE the zoo!

We had a great time at Easter Egg Scramble and I think we'll make that a yearly outing - it wasn't expensive at all ($2 each kid in advance) and we all had fun on a nice SUNNY Saturday morning!

(My photos got out of order - I did good to get 2 'blog posts done in a day so far so I'm not redoing them. I think you, dear reader, can figure out what we're doing!)

Louisiana Part 1

Julia Grace in the car after eating at the Cracker Barrel in Montgomery, Alabama.
Julia Grace thinks Cracker Barrel is all kinds of "NUMMY!" I agree!

A bridge before Mobile, Alabama. Lots of waterways and then a huge bridge - don't remember anything else about it now! I was driving at this point.

The view from the center of the big bridge - It was overcast so it's hazy looking but we were pretty high up there!

The sun is setting somewhere on Interstate 10 in Mississippi - this is pre-car fiasco with truck tire.

Getting there...

We left on Sunday morning about 9 a.m. from Boiling Springs for the long drive to Lafayette, Louisiana to visit Tracy's brother Philip and take him his car that was here and not there. It was me, Tracy, Julia Grace and Tracy's mom, Cathy. Mallory had to go back to school from Spring Break or we would gladly have taken her with us too. She made Philip a sweet card though for us to give him since she wouldn't get to see him.

We stopped in Montgomery, Alabama to eat at the Cracker Barrel just off the interstate. Food was great as usual but the service from our waitress was just lousy. In fact another waitress noticed we needed things and brought them to us. Tracy looked for her afterwards to give her a tip and she hugged him and I swear I thought the lady might cry telling him he was so sweet for doing that. We got Julia Grace a really cute dress that was on clearance there for her to wear this spring and I'm hoping to have some photos made in it.

Tracy was driving Philip's car and Cathy was following us - Overall the trip down was okay until Gulfport, Mississippi. Tracy swerved and dodged a piece of truck tire in the road but Cathy couldn't miss it. Her check engine light came on immediately and we stopped. They called OnStar who told them it was emissions issue and just make sure to take it to a dealership within 7 days. Holy cow. Yeah we drove the rest of the way to Lafayette. Cathy had her Vue checked out at a dealership there on Monday and it turns out we shouldn't have driven it after all because it could have caught on fire at any moment. Nice. Not so sure we should trust the OnStar folks henceforth. Needless to say this prolonged our stay in Lousiana by almost 2 days getting it fixed since there is no Saturn dealership there.

We did get there in one piece and checked into the hotel. Then we went over to Philip's apartment at a little before midnight. We had Taco Bell for dinner and Julia Grace ran in circles in his apartment squealing and laughing and hiding from Philip. She sure does like her Uncle Philip! My camera was at the hotel and I didn't get a single picture. We finally got back to the hotel around 1 or 2 something - which was central time there meaning 2 or 3 our time. I don't think anyone moved an inch once the lights were out at the hotel!

A looooooooong week!

It's been a long week. I will probably blog about most of it later. Sunday through Wednesday evening we were in Lafayette, Lousiana visiting Tracy's brother, Philip. Tracy drove all night long Wednesday into Thursday morning to get us home.
I worked yesterday evening and that 5 hour shift sure did turn into a 7.5 hour shift and I am still feeling beat. Gotta go back and do it all over again this evening, but praise Jesus, they gave me Easter Sunday off work. I think if I see any more dinner rolls after this evening I might just scream. I saw dinner rolls and pound cakes out the wazoo last night at work.
Anyhoo - we had a good time in Lousiana aside from the car mishap - more about that later too. We took Julia Grace to the Children's Museum of Lafayette on Tuesday and had a great late lunch at Don's Seafood Hut where we tried crawfish - yummy! We took Julia Grace to the Zoo of Acadiana on Wednesday and had dinner at a chain called Cane's before hitting the road. Lots of pics to post but I have to get ready for a busy day today if I hope to relax at all on Easter Sunday! We also have to go buy a new camera - we had 2 cameras we used for work and family photos - they have all now bitten the dust. Ironically the el cheapo one we bought for work lasted the longest and finally died yesterday evening. RIP Vivitar camera (hehehe - vivitar). Have a great sunny Saturday!

JAMBOREAD!

Yes, I know - that was the beginning of March - the first Saturday actually!

I don't have very many pictures because I forgot the digital camera and these were on my cell phone which also wasn't fully charged. This was Julia Grace's first trip to the library- she's such a wild child I have been fearful of taking her even for story time! And go figure - the one day you can be loud in the library - she was quiet!

Mallory had her face painted, made a clay culpture and ran all over the train!

Julia Grace stayed in the stroller and took it all in - quietly! She whimpered as Mallory was having her face painted and when the girl got ready to do Julia Grace's face, she started crying. So obviously there was something scary about face-painting to Julia Grace. We didn't get balloon "art" - they wouldn't let anyone else in line after 3.15 and we just got there at 3! Oh well. We mainly went to take a look around and see what it was since we'd never been to the library's annual Jamboread! festival.

I would say both girls had fun - we came home with 4 balloons and a clay sculpture. Julia Grace had a silly straw with a little plastic thingy that says Jamboread! - Mallory had laid hers down somewhere and when we asked for another one as we were leaving they wouldn't give us another one. Oh well. We did see the end of the bicycle stunt show, but Mallory wasn't too impressed - she said that's the same guys that came in second grade to my school - same stuff. :) Oh my. Enjoy the pics - I think we'll definitely try to go to this again next year - just a little earlier so we can enjoy more of it!