Getting ready for Halloween

So today we had a little fun with crafts and pumpkin carving. We FINALLY carved a jack-o-lantern. Or shall I say Daddy carved the jack-o-lantern--though I did trace it out for him! It took him the better part of the night once we got started. Jake was even ready to go to bed (Will had already turned in for the night).

Daddy and I were more excited to keep Jake up and turn out the lights so he could see the finished product than he was. He thought it was cool--think he'll think it's better tomorrow. Daddy did an AWESOME job!!=)

Jake and I also did a little project--he got to make some foam hand puppets. (Will was already asleep) He had a big time sticking the stuff on the puppet. Though he was very distraught that EVERY spider didn't have it's own web already drawn on the puppet like on the ghost one. Oh my...but we got over it. These were pretty cool and came out of pack I picked up at Target--there was a pumpkin too and there are 3 of each one. Fun stuff! I will have to say we got this idea from my friend Kim and her son Hudson who did a similar project a few days earlier. Here's how ours turned out...they still need the back put on to make the actual puppet in this picture....

Crazy Fun with the Family

On my mom's side of the family we always get together to celebrate birthdays a few months at a time. I have posted before about previous get togethers. Everytime the Childress crew gets together you can bet there is fun and hilarious conversations. Yesterday it was everything from Titans football to retirement to worm poop (yeah you heard me but don't ask I came in at the VERY end of that one and I have no clue--notice I didn't bother to find out either) to racing to very interesting novels SOMEONE has taken to reading since her time off of work. =) Anyway, needless to say you never know what you're gonna get but that is TOTALLY the fun of it! The kids always have a good time together and my boys love to get to spend time with more of their older cousins. This time we celebrated James, Leigh Ann and Rachel's birthdays (please take note as this will be important later in the Childress Cake Controversy). It was also the month of Jessie Gail's birthday so we did our annual balloon release for our beloved and VERY MUCH missed cousin/daughter/niece. Enjoy the pictures and captions....

For the balloon release we each write a message to Jessie on a balloon to release




There they go up to heaven.... yes we encountered somewhat of a "snag" some of them got caught in the trees due to the wind but believe it or not they all broke loose!

Anna Grace playing with Will..she's always so good with the kids...that reminds me of someone!! =)

My kids always find some toys at the Herd house that they love to play with. This time Will could not be separated from this John Deere tool box and set of keys. He took them EVERYWHERE! And yes he ended up getting to take the keys home with him. Oh and Jake got a video (Lori did you know that?? your kids gave it to him--I didn't know til we were on our way--haha!)

They stayed in the yard the whole afternoon playing. Here are all the boys even their bigger cousins Zach and Trent too. Good times!!

Where was Anna Grace---the only girl of the bunch?????

Here she is just sitting back under her umbrella and watching---perfect! Don't worry Alaina Claire is coming soon AG!

AND NOW for The Childress Cake Controversy

So obviously at the birthday parties we have cake. Throughout the years different people have tried their hand at making the cake (never me---couldn't pay me enough--haha). As of late though Aunt Charlotte has been making most of them as she did at this party.

Remember I said it was James, Leigh Ann, Rachel whose birthdays we were celebrating.....well here's a picture of the cake.....

Does anyone see anything wrong with this cake (remember the names I just told you) OH YES that's right...Jeannette???? what the heck is her name doing on the cake....um Aunt Charlotte---her birthday is in FEBRUARY?!! Where's poor Leigh Ann's name---who was really the ultimate casualty of this episode of The Childress Cake Controversy! (If I was you I would ask for another cake next time with YOUR name on it, Leigh Leigh)

So how could this happen you ask??? What was she doing while icing the cake?? She even bought a present for Leigh Ann and not for Jeannette?! And what was she thinking when she got done icing the cake and took a step back and thought to herself "wow self that looks darn good" ?? ....................

.........THIS....Yep this right here----I'm pretty sure this was the problem. So maybe next time lay off until the cake is completely done Aunt Charlotte, what do ya think??! Ronnie can't you regulate her??? heehee

HAHAHA---all in fun--all in fun--she is just another one the cake misfortune has fallen upon--stay tuned as I am sure there will be a sequel and I am sure it will be a different person and different issue. Promise Charlotte we won't EVER mention it again. ;)

And just an FYI---aside from the names the cake was YUMMY!!

Whose mini-me is this?

Take one wild guess who this looks like---minus the thumb but definitely INCLUDING the outfit! Not too many people sport these kind of duds!!! isn't he adorable?

Scary hair....

Yep Jake decided today when he woke up from his nap that he was ready for Halloween a few days early!! Pictures are somewhat blurry because he wouldn't be still! Imagine

Check this hair out....

Fun on a yucky day....

What do you do when it's finally stopped raining outside but it is still too yucky and slightly cold to go out and play in the backyard???? Build a tent of course!! That is just what we did today.


The boys love it when we do this. My grandmother's sewing table opens out and makes a perfect roof for a tent---add the sheet and we are good to go! Cheap fun, my friends, cheap fun!

Will thought it was lots of fun to pull the sheet down, out, up and every which way on the tent. This made Jake slightly upset......can you tell?

Enter the rigged with a pillow tent after Will's sabotage attempts in which he succeeded in ripping a hole in the sheet. lovely



He was way more into playing peek a boo with Jake from outside rather than going inside even though Jake tried to coax him in there with many different toys and books. Will wouldn't take the bait--was it a plot for revenge of the tent sabotage or just a stab at brotherly bonding??? --ya never know but Will wasn't taking any chances!

Daddy's trip

Last weekend James went on his annual trip with my dad (Gramps) to the mountains to hike, take in the sights and just do whatever it is guys do. This time they headed toward the Smokies and went over into Cherokee, NC and ended up somewhere near Banner Elk with several stops along the way. They even stayed atop one of the ski mountains over there one night because the hotels were so full. They had a great trip and I thought I would post some of the pictures James took. (he is a much better photographer than I am) This is probably the most color we will see this year since our fall is looking not so pretty this year. Enjoy the pictures......

Our friends' birthday!

Last Friday was our friends Carson & Lawson's FIRST birthday!!! Hard to believe they are already one year old! So on Saturday the boys and I went to their birthday party at their house. It was super cool and we had yummy food. I'd say it went well since we closed down the party and were the last ones to leave cuz we were having so much fun---that is just what tends to happen between our two families. HAHA I will only post one picture here of Jake trying to entertain everyone with his awesome guitar skills and singing ability! Check out Kim's blog with all the cool pictures of the party and the full story here--click on Birthday Party
You can check in on them anytime though at The Wheelers. Happy Birthday Carson & Lawson!!!! We had a spooky good time at your party!

Pickin' a Pumpkin...

This past weekend we went with Net Net to a pumpkin patch we had seen that is near us. Now we didn't go to some fancy shmancy pumpkin patch with a petting zoo and hayrides. Nope--This was right off the road and they had pumpkins and they had big blow up Halloween characters! That's all my kids needed. They had a blast running around all over and checking out the characters and the scary stuff too! As you can see from the picture above they REALLY liked to run around--can you spot Jake in the middle of all the pumpkins?

Yes we left with 2 big pumpkins (one for our house and one for Net Net's) and a little pumpkin for each of the boys. It was FREE, a good time was had by all and very close! That's my kind of outing!!! =)



Net Net was showing them the "scary trailer" where they had all the scary stuff in one spot with all kinds of weird noises coming from all those weird things. Notice where I was......exactly! They didn't care though.

Here we have one of the infamous blow up characters---you know the Turkey---for HALLOWEEN???? !!! Anyway, this was Jake's favorite of course--I have like 5 pictures of him standing in front of it which is amazing because he HATES having his picture taken.


As I just said---HATES having his picture taken---"I'm outta here mom!" he said.

This was Will's favorite. It talked or danced or something and he liked shaking his hand. He really thought this guy was super cool!

Check this out!

Ok I have other posts to put on here from this weekend so stay tuned...but I am so excited about this one I had to go ahead and tell you about it. Have you heard of RetailMeNot.com??? If you haven't then you need to check it out! My mom heard about it from somewhere and I honestly couldn't tell you. (mama, where was it again??)

You know when you buy stuff online and you see that box when you are ordering to put in a promotional code if you have one?? Well this site gives you all the promotional codes and the success rate people that have tried them have had. You just type in whatever website you are on and it will tell you if there are coupons or codes for it. It is SUPER COOL!!! Maybe I am the last one to find out about this but I have placed 2 orders in the last 2 days online and I checked this site out before I put them through and saved 10% one place and 15% at the other--stores like Target, JC Penney all the way to Priceline if you are booking a trip or getting airfare. This Stay at Home mom says Saving Any $$ is better than Saving NO $$--that is for sure!! Check it out here.... Retail Me Not

Let me know what you think if you get the chance to use it.

Fun Stuff at Yaya and Papa's house...

The boys love going over to Yaya and Papa's. Not only are there cool toys and tea to drink but for Jake it's like he is in video heaven!! For Jake that means EVERYTHING! Yaya has about 1, 493 videos to choose from--anything and everything you can imagine. It's her secret obsession---hehe--and Jake couldn't be happier! (for the Cart family maybe it's not so secret...) So yesterday like any other he wanted to watch a video downstairs. You see downstairs is much cooler than the upstairs where everyone hangs out normally. Downstairs has more couches and open space to run AND cats to chase! Woo hoo

So anyway, yesterday as a break from video heaven for bit {You do have to remember that when we talk about watching movies--you can count Will out. So the whole time Jake is occupied with his next cool movie--Will is into everything he can get his hands on at yaya's} =)

Back to the break---the boys went outside when Papa got home today and they had a big time playing in the yard. James snapped a few pics of our kiddos running around before we had supper. He tried to get some with Papa and Yaya but the speed they were going outside you wouldn't have been able to see through the blur!

Mmmmm there's some of that yummy tea!

Yaya starts the ice throwing contest--dig in yaya'a glass for ice with your dirty hands cuz she loves that then put it in your mouth--oooh too cold so quick throw as hard as you can into the yard--cool!

Fun times on the swing set in the backyard--I luuuv you so much Will (squeeze really hard) I really do! (smack-not pictured)

Thanks Papa and Yaya for all of our fun times, videos and of course sweet tea to drink--yum yum!!

Awwwww....

Aren't they adorable!!! Thought I would share the pictures the boys had taken at Mother's Day Out last week. We just got them back today. There is one of each of them with their class. Will's class doesn't have that many in it some are part time and trade out days but all were there for the picture. Check out the difference in Will's class picture all of them are crying or sucking a thumb, finger, sippy cup or pacifier and one just looks scared. Then you have Jake's class where all are sitting very orderly in their chairs. What a difference 20 months makes!!! =) Enjoy....

For school pictures I thought they were pretty darn cute! Don't worry family before I get nasty emails---I have some for you....

Getting ready for Halloween

Halloween time is lots of fun. I had been telling Jake that we would be able to put up our Halloween stuff when it was October and he has been patiently waiting. Everytime he sees Halloween anything in the store he wants to have it and I try to tell him about all the cool things we already have and I finally decided it was time to get it out. Net Net one upped me and got some of her stuff out already so he thought that was super cool and he gets to see it everyday. BUT couldn't have that for long--we have to have our own stuff too! hehe

So today we had a chance to find SOME of our Halloween stuff. We are still waiting for Daddy to get down the rest of it from the attic in the garage. (I'm not allowed up there now--too risky for me in my prego status--supposedly--although where do you think I rummaged this stuff from??)...but anyway, I digress. =)

We did find one pumpkin thing that we hang up and stake out in the yard. Jake thought it would make a great costume as you can see. He was the pumpkin monster....he was very scary!

Then, sadly, the only other thing we could find were these pumpkin lawn bags. I had these from last year Big Lots $1. Now I wasn't expecting much, and I was right, not the BIG lawn bags that make the BIG pumpkins nope just little bitty lawn bags that make little bitty pumpkins. But those are ok too. So we found the one spot in our yard that we had leaves. Mind you these ARE the dead dried up leaves from our no rain past few months--not cool leaves that are fun to jump in that fall from the trees in the Autumn. Regardless they did the job and we were able to fill up a few pumpkins with leaves and the boys had a good time raking and helping fill the bags.

Hopefully soon I will be able to report more fall and Halloween decorations that have been put out, but for now these will do. The kids like them....that is what matters!

Daddy and the boys weekend

While Mommy was away, Daddy and the boys got to play!! From what I can tell everyone had a good time! I think Daddy was certainly ready for Mommy to get home but he always has a blast when it is just he and the boys. They got to play with Net Net and I think they helped her get more of her house straightened out from moving. AND they got to see Papa and Yaya who came over today to see them too! It was a big weekend for them.

Here is the only picture I found on the camera to commemorate the weekend. Pretty fitting I would say....

Here we have Jake with his Pirate Goofy hat half way on and backwards jumping on Net Net's couch and notice all the toys in the floor in the background. Yeah they had a good time! =)

Mommy gets time off

Been off with the girls trying to complete a scrapbook I started 2 years ago. This was our biannual scrapbook weekend. We've been doing it for several years now and this time we decided to stay close to home AND save money. Went to my friend Misty's house and her hubby was nice enough to take the kids on a trip for the weekend so we had her house all to ourselves! Don't worry Jay we are taking turns with the houses--you're off the hook for at least another year! =)

Anyway, it was so nice to be able to have adult conversation all weekend and chit chat about anything and everything! I think that is the best part. I did get ALMOST completed with Jake's 1st year...haha!! I still have Will's 1st year and my goal is to have it all done before Alaina Claire makes her appearance.......................Yeah I know.........It ain't gonna happen.........I can dream though!

It was a blast ladies and I am thankful for the much needed reprieve!!

Nightmare in the Driveway

Ok so here's how an everyday task can go WAY wrong! It's taken me a bit to get to where I can talk about this in any kind of comical manner so forgive me. But here goes....

So picked up the kids from Mother's Day Out on Tuesday and came home. Pulled in the driveway, stopped at the end to get out and get the mail. This is a normal occurance and sometimes I shut the van door and sometimes I don't.....well this time I DID. Went to get back in the van to drive up to the house and the van was LOCKED!! Now not sure if it locked on its own or of course if I hit the button getting out, I'm thinking the latter since it has never locked on it's own before. BUT IT WAS LOCKED!!!!!!!

So I had just locked these kids.....

Into this van.....

All to pick up this mail...

And why didn't I keep driving on up to the house, park the van, take the keys out and THEN walk to get the mail at the end of the driveway????? {sound of crickets} ???????

It would only happen to me! I know you are thinking well heck you are in the driveway at YOUR house what is the big deal! Big deal was I had no extra key to the van except in the house AND no extra key to the house anywhere OUTSIDE the house because we just realized all the ones we recently had made are DUDS! So THAT is the BIG deal.

After making my way all around the car to no avail for an open door and pleading with Jake if he could just "press the red button" to get out of his carseat. It was just stressing him out and he couldn't press hard enough (I know prob a good thing but not then!). After all of that a neighbor comes over to let me use her phone because my cell phone was in the CAR!! Anyway, called for James, no luck--out working and more than 45 minutes away anyway-- then called for my mom--oh yeah---she lives next door--woo hoo I am in luck she is almost home---like one minute away! YAY we are saved--No WAIT--she doesn't have a key to my car or my house either!!!!!! #$%@!

Ok I'm trying to be somewhat brief--we go all around the house and finally we {and when I say we I mean my mom} took off the storm window to one of the back windows because I remembered we had a crack in that window and no big deal to go ahead and break it--it needs replacing anyway. We did that got the window open, I climbed the ladder crawled in onto a chair all the while scraping my leg---grabbed the extra keyless entry and RAN to the van to GET THEM OUT!!

So by this point my precious babies were trying to figure out why the neighbors were circling the car for 30 minutes!!!!!! while they were still inside to make sure they were ok and Mommy kept coming to them promising them she would get them out soon. It ended up being a little much for them because by then instead of happy go lucky--"we're in the car with the car running and air going (it was semi hot that day) we just had a snack on the way home and we have our sippy cups in our laps and a plethera of books at our disposal, we're fine"........ to this........

We didn't call a locksmith by the way for those asking that question right now because it would have taken just as long if not longer and we figured the break in to the house theory just about 15 minutes into the whole matter so....

Kids are fine they don't seem traumatized they were running around the toyroom playing with Net Net immediately after all the while mommy was sitting in a trance on the couch at what just happened!! We have stopped to get the mail since--though I ALWAYS leave the door open now or if I am getting out for anything and shutting the door which is rare I have the keyless entry with me!

So that was the nightmare at the end of my driveway. May it never happen to you or me again anywhere!!

The Standoff...

Will annoys the heck out of Milo. It's pretty funny to watch in action. They can play/fight with the best of them. I should note Milo has no front claws just so everyone knows. It wouldn't make a difference I don't think because he IS good with the kids and puts up with alot of crap from both of them. Hate to tell him we're adding another to the bunch in a couple of months. He'll be SOOO excited. =)


Here's how it goes down, in the words of Milo....


Great, here HE comes to sit in MY chair... {sidenote: check out the mid-air thrown toy--isn't that lovely!}

Ok if he's gonna pet me, maybe it's ok...

Not THAT hard, I knew it was too good to be true and he tries to look innocent...

The stare down...

I won! He's getting down, that's what I thought! ....

What?! Have you not had enough, what's with the violence? What did I do to you? Don't hit me?! .....

Now he's got a pillow?! Whatever, I'm outta here--take the stupid chair!

BUT I'LL BE BACK....