Tailgating

Football season is in full swing in Stark-vegas which means lots of fun, food, and friends! We had an awesome crowd last week and it truly is the more the merrier.

I am pretty sure Will and Andrew each ate close to a hundred cheesy poof balls on Saturday. Their hands and mouths were stained orange for the rest of the night.



Cornhole is made a little more challenging by holding a baby in one arm while throwing the bags with the other. :)


My guys!

Our Days...

are filled with puzzles...


learning hopscotch...


playing with friends...

making sure we are still taller than our brother...


running as fast was we can...


swinging, airplane style...


waiting on our friends to finish lunch so they can come back to play...


sliding down the swirly slide for the 89th time...

and "wrestling alligators"...ie playing on the new music equipment at the park.


Life is good!

(Thanks to Gigi for snapping these great pictures a couple of weeks ago. I just love how they capture the simple, yet wonderful ins and outs of our days.)

21 Questions

I saw this on Pinterest and thought it would be fun to do with Will and Andrew year after year. I tried to get Andrew to participate too, but I think he is still a little too young.
So here are the questions along with Will's responses:

1. What is something Mommy always says to you? Hi. (Really? That's all you got?)

2. What makes Mommy happy? Seeing me.

3. What makes Mommy sad? If I don't listen. (Wow, he actually does listen.)

4. How does Mommy make you laugh? You(Mommy) laugh.

5. What was Mommy like as a child? a baby

6. How old is Mommy? 29

7. How tall is Mommy? very tall(ha!)

8. What is Mommy's favorite thing to do? Play with me.

9. What does Mommy do when you're not around? Go home when I'm at school.

10. If Mommy becomes famous, what will it be for? (I'm pretty sure he couldn't grasp this question.) For saying hi.

11. What is Mommy really good at? cooking

12. What is Mommy not very good at? You don't play basketball good.

13. What does Mommy do for her job? Watch my baby brother while I'm at school.

14. What is Mommy's favorite food? tomatoes

15. What makes you proud of Mommy? Making yogurt.

16. If Mommy were a cartoon character, who would she be? a racoon (The scary thing about this answer is that he didn't hesitate, like he has thought this before.)

17. What do you and Mommy do together? Play bingo and play games.

18. How are you and Mommy the same? Our faces look the same.

19. How are you and Mommy different? You have long hair and I just got a haircut.

20. How do you know Mommy loves you? Cause you love me all day long and will never let me go and never let anyone take me away.

21. Where is Mommy's favorite place to go? McDonald's (ummm...not quite)

FREEDOM!!!!

I am so happy, so thankful, and so humbled to be able to say that we are officially DEBT FREE!!!! We took on the Dave Ramsey plan a little over 2 years ago and it is the best thing we have ever done for our family. Let me paint the picture of how it all started:
Dan and I moved to Starkville from Birmingham in April 2008 leaving behind a house on the market. Well, time came and went, a new realtor, thoughts of renting, and a full year later(which felt more like an eternity sometimes) we finally sold our house...but for less than what we owed. Thankfully, we have an AMAZING family who helped us out along the way and we were able to pay off the house debts and start over.
And start over we did! The month after we closed on our house, we decided to start our financial freedom journey. Dan had read the Dave Ramsey books before and had listened to his radio program pretty regularly, so he just had to convince me to get on board, which wasn't too hard to do because of the financial burden we had just bore. So, we made a budget...had lots of "our financial future" planning talks...set up goals...and got going. We had a small credit car balance, a car payment and student loans totalling around $22,000.
We started chipping away little by little at the debts while still allowing ourselves to live. My biggest fear going into all of this was being miserable for 2 years while we got rid of our debt. But, the beauty of the plan is that through good budgeting, we were able to still have a pretty good time while working hard. Sure, we could have been done a little sooner if we had given up more, but I don't regret the way we did it. It worked for this family! Oh yeah...I almost forgot that along the way, we also sold our cars in order to pay cash for a good family vehicle as well as a "beater" for Dan. The process has totally changed the way we look at things.
In the beginning, we also took the Financial Peace University class at our church. And another amazing part of all of this is how it has grown our spiritual lives as well. We are not lucky; we are blessed.
Now, we still have lots of road ahead of us and lots more that we would like to accomplish, but I can't wait to see where God and this new financial freedom takes us.

Luke's Baptism

We headed down to Pensacola on Labor Day weekend to celebrate Baby Luke's Baptism.
We spent a lot of the weekend indoors because Tropical Storm Lee was making for some nasty weather outside.
But, we still had lots of fun and the kids played nonstop with each other.


The Baptism was really sweet and very special.

I love how all of our family came in town for the occasion. I am so thankful to be a part of such a wonderful loving family!

Trip to Hartselle

A few weeks ago, we made a weekend trip to Hartselle. It had been more than 3 months since we had visited so it was a long overdue trip.
We celebrated Jabo's birthday...


Played out in the backyard...


On Sunday, Gigi and Jabo took Andrew and Will on a ride through the country in "F-150 greens." They were pretty excited to ride in Jabo's, ahem, Gigi's truck.

Andrew fell asleep within the first couple of minutes of the ride.

But Will was all smiles.

My Boys

How did I ever get so lucky as to be the mother of these two beautiful boys?