Young love....

We had a fun afternoon at the park today with my friend, Karen, and her two sweet kids, Laken and Marielle.  James and Laken love each other so much, it just warms your heart to see them get so excited to see each other!  oh, young love :) 
I've been working with the manual settings on my camera...trying to develop some skills and not have to use the automatic ones.  it's a work in progress, but I managed to snap a few cute ones today.  what fun! 

Our trip to LA

Lower Alabama, that is!  Enterprise, AL to be exact, home of Ft. Rucker where some of my dearest friends now live.  James and I took a took a quick trip down there last week to visit and had an amazing time!  Erin just had her 2nd sweet baby, Owen Daniel, and this was the first chance I had to meet him.  What a doll!  He is such a good baby and his big sister, Claire, is so much fun.  James followed her around like a shadow, giggling non stop all week!  We had so much fun! 

Luckily Holly and Ava were able to hang out with us every day too!  Oh how I miss those ladies!  We also met up with our friend, Haley, whom I had just started hanging out with in Clarksville before we moved to GA.  She is about the sweetest person you'll ever meet and her kids are adorable.  She had us over for lunch and pampered us with a delicious crab cake lunch!

Of course, time with Erin wouldn't be complete without a craft!  We each started a spring wreath which included a moss covered letter that the girls helped us paint.  She also gave me some good tips on working with my new camera, editing photos, and the Silhouette...an amazing cutting machine that does magical wonders...I must get one!  She has been such a special and real friend to me, oh how I miss living 5 minutes from her.  She and her husband will be moving to a new duty station this June, hopefully it will be someplace they want...and a fun place for us to visit! 

 Erin, me, Holly

 Erin and sweet baby Owen

 Haley and her delicious crab cakes!  Below with her daughter, Maggie and Owen.

 The kid's table!

James loved Claire's Power Wheels!  He could push the gas but didn't quite master steering...it was interesting!  The kids woke up every morning begging to go play outside, they had so much fun :)



No Mess Finger Painting

you heard that right...no mess!  I stole this idea from Pinterest and one of my new favorite blogs The Hippie Housewife, and it's AWESOME!!  It took a whole 2 minutes to set up, 40 minutes of color mixing fun, and no mess to clean up.  That's a happy day for me! 

Here's how you do it: 

1.  You'll need some paint...any kind will do, some painter's tape so you won't ruin your table, a ziploc bag and a piece of white paper. 
2. Put some paint into the ziploc bags, get all the air out and seal them shut.
3. Put your white paper behind the ziploc and tape it down to the table. 
4. Start painting with no mess!
5. Clean-up in a snap, just throw it all away!  No fingers to wash, no paint to wipe off the walls, no clothes to soak!  yippie!

Valentine's Day Drama

I got a call from Steven around 5:30pm on Valentine's Day and the first thing out of his mouth was... "You didn't get the flowers, did you?"  He knows that the second anything fun happens at the house, I either call or text him at work, and when he went all day without any word from me, he knew something went wrong.  He came home fuming...so upset he could hardly look at me.  He felt horrible.  The flowers he ordered didn't come.  He was empty handed.  He couldn't get hold of the florist.  He was beyond frustrated.  It really was kind of sweet how mad he was :)  We decided to just celebrate Valentine's Day on the 15th so he could make up for it. 

It's 9:30pm, we're watching NCIS (I'm watching with my eyes closed) on the couch and I get a phone call.  It's the flower delivery man parked out front of our house with a vase of gorgeous roses.  The poor guy was still delivering flowers and had a few more to go!  He saved the day and Steven's blood pressure!  They are gorgeous flowers!  Love you and thank you, Steven.

more practice...

I have a very cute subject to photograph, and I think a few of these will be up on the wall for his 2 yr old photos.  This first one is my favorite, but the lighting is off.  I've tried playing with some online photo editing software, but it's like reading Chinese...I have no idea what I'm doing.  :)  I guess I'll just have to take better pictures rather than relying on editing them! 

These were taken at an outdoor wildlife center here in Savannah.  We saw wolves, deer, foxes, eagles, owls, bison, birds, farm animals, and gators.  Very cool and fun little family afternoon!