friday visitors

 

we had special visitors on friday. rivers was so excited to finally get to hold her cousin that shares the same birthday as her. all she wanted to do was hold her and stare at her! we also loved looking at her little itty bitty feet!!

they are so precious! she almost made me wish i could have another one! but then she started to cry....and that was the end of that!

MY, i mean Ben's new baby.....

okay, so let me tell all of you that don't know me well.....i'm not an animal person...i don't like them...any of them. i'm not all about killing them for unnecessary reasons or anything like that-i just don't much care for them.

and here's the reason why-when i was young, i saw way too many of my animals die. they'd get run over. pretty much all of them got run over; hit by cars. some of them didn't die right away, therefore they had to be killed. i have a HUGE heart. i did have a very BIG soft spot for animals, but i keep myself at enough distance from them so i'm safe from getting to close to them. i thought i'd let myself get too close to daisy (our mama dog that got RUN OVER about 3 weeks ago). i was safe. i didn't get upset when i saw her die. boy was i close! anyway, yesterday morning ben and i were the only two up and he came runnin in the kitchen from the back porch and this is what all the commotion was about. as quick as i saw her i knew it was all over!!! i have an even BIGGER soft spot for kittens. dang this wittle gway kitty! needless to say ben has'nt parted with this kitten much since he found her and i haven't had many complaints towards him carrying her EVERYWHERE! seriously! you can look at the picture and see she accompanied us to the pool today. she - excuse me- SMOKEY napped while we swam...ya wanna know where she is fast and hard asleep at right now?? MY bed under MY pillow!!! how did this happen? 

cakes, cakes and more cakes!!!

boy have i been busy these past few days!!! i have 3 cakes (well 2 cakes and 40 cupcakes) to make for the weekend and i've been on pins and needles since my gall bladder episode. (stressin that it's gonna flare up agian and land me in the hospital and then it's gonna be up to map to get the goodies baked.) we all know that's not gonna happen.....unless you can grill a cake!

so, i went to have the gall bladdar ultrasound done this morning.....they informed me if my insurance deductable hadn't been met, then i'd owe $483....BUT my decuctable is $475!? go blue cross! the woman then proceeded to ask me if i was prepared  to pay that this morning.....and i was like "what part of me just saying i was UNEMPLOYED did you not understand??" i seriously wanted to go there! thank Heavens map has a job. maybe he can get the nice ppl at blue cross to pay all of this test.......AND the removal of my gall bladdar. found out that i apparently have a HUGE stone in there. ? is that worse than many small ones? oh, well...off to the surgeron next week and then the surgery....this next month of blogs should be interesting!!

oh, and by the way, this is one of the cakes i created this afternoon - my very first time working with fondant - and i must say I LOVE IT!!! (the working with it part but notsomuch the taste!) it's for a little girl who is having a slumber party...her brave mother is having 14, yes 14 little girls over for this party...bless her heart!

just a quick trip to the ER!!!

yeah right!
okay, so yesterday i thought i was having a heart attact!? seriously.
i discovered after having 3 c-sections that i obviously have a very high tolerance of pain and yesteday afternoon at about 3:30, i found out just how much pain i can stand......while the thoughts of dialing 911 danced in my head, i was searching for the key to the gun cabinet.....that's how bad it got. i figured the only thing that was gonna stop the pain that quick was a bullet!
after no luck in finding the key, i scampered out onto the front porch just in time for map to see the phone in my hand, me bent over the railing and crying. (p.s.-for all of you that don't know me, the gun bit was just a joke.....unless the pain comes back! ;)   ) map rushed over to see what was going on and like a flash of lightening and a poof we were at the hospital!  hallelujah!!! and then the pain was gone!! just as me and all my glory, lookin like a trailer park queen, breezed into triage! what up with that!! then i got to sit for like hhmmmmmmm 2 HOURS!! got put in the back in one of the emergent care rooms, (apparently all you have to do is go in there at 33 years of age and say you are having severe chest pains and you get THE ROYAL TREATMENT!) had every test done in the book and was hooked to EVERY machine back there and then at about 8:45 we came to the conclusion that i could possibly have a problem with my gall bladdar!? hallelujah again.....notsomuch that it was my gallbladdar but that it WAS NOT my heart! i'm not scared of dieing but i'm not ready to leave my babies. they were so worried about me. no matter how i tried to hide my pain yesterday, they saw it all! and  they didn't get any explination of what was goin on and that just added to my anxiety. anyway, doc told me not to eat fatty foods, but this is how i look at it: since they put my untrasound off til friday, i figured taht i'll just go ahead and eat whatever i want and we'll see if we can speed up the process and just snatch that sucker out. the doc said all your gall bladdar does is break down fat....i told him by the looks of me that mine was obviously out of order!  so there's that!  so far today, so good. PTL!

southern hospitality at its best!!

this past weekend i visited a plantation in south georgia that i didn't even know was there until about a year ago. my hair guru is getting married there this september and i'm her designer/arranger/cook/ventilation system (for those i'm-gonna-loose-it-and-i-don't-think-we-can-pull-all-this-together-in-such-a-short-time...times) anyway, i had to go check out the location to see what i've got to work with......this is gonna be a piece of cake!!!!  

as you can see by the entrance, this is gonna be a beautiful place!! i still can't believe i didn't even know this place existed! it's on the far other end of the county where i live. 

this picture is a little dark, but as you can see, it seems like the house goes on forever! and it does! i'm here at the end of  "the east wing"

this is the front entrance. hair guru and her honey will wed atop (or almost atop; middle step to be exact) this here porch. we looked at some previous wedding pictures and it's gonna be so purty!

this is the front entrance from the inside. very pretty wooden door. it has a neat little lookout/peephole that i've never seen before. it's like a 6x6 square that you open up and look out of. it has little bars on the outside of it. i think it's mainly for looks...no pun intended :) you can also play pool if you get tired of hunting...or cooking! haha!

the house didn't look that huge from the outside, but it's wide open on the inside from top to bottom from bottom to top. the fireplace is AMAZING! i could almost step up in there without even ducking. i told hair guru that if it rained, they could stand in the fireplace and get married and have the people down front.....plenty of room! she said notsofunny!

by the size of this picture you should be able to tell that I WAS TOTALLY IN LOVE WITH THIS KITCHEN!!! I COULD TEAR UP IN THIS THING!!! seriously! two refrigerators! a huge stove complete with a griddle!! dang! i cannot wait to get in this kitchen!  oh, and there's sil...with her blog shirt on. 

here's another closer view of the kitchen...and the granite countertops. and the big bad stove.....

and look, over there in the corner, that beautiful, nice and shiny KITCHEN-AID MIXER!!! no master kitchen is complete without one of these babies!!

and check out this pantry! love it too!

here you have the dining area. so pretty.

here is one of the 6 bedrooms. there are 2 beds in each room and a bathroom in each one also. can you tell this is a hunting lodge?

this is another view from the kitchen into the living room. there's an oversized big screen tv in the corner. this is an awesome place.

this is a coridor on the west wing leading to the bedrooms...the east wing looks the same.

there are turkeys perched high up on the beams in the living room and this big giant chandalier of antlers.

there are some gorgeous arrangments scattered all over the house. this is an eye catching piece. all the fathers are neat and woodsy. 

this looks like an antique piece of furniture. the wreath is beautifully decorated complete with shotgun shells! does that scream elegant southern redneck or what!?

and who couldn't keep up with all their laudry if they had TWO COMPLETE WASHER/DRYER SETS!!!!! WOW! 

and then you have your fire pit out back...similar to a tribal council. that thing is HUGE!!

hope you enjoyed this tour as much as i did. it's a beautiful southern hunting lodge.

Testing out Facebook

Is this thing on?

late spring afternoons in the country

this is a pretty windchime i got for mother's day. i love windchimes and my kids know it!  this one is hanging outside my bedroom window.

after the kids got out of the pool this afternoon, i told them if they ate all their dinner, i had a surprise for them. they LOVE LOVE LOVE to go walking down our dirt road late in the afternoons just before the sun sets (i do too because out in the country, that's the prettiest time of day) and we ran up on some of the prettiest wild flowers while we were out on our little adventure. i have no idea what ANY of them are...but they sure are pretty.....

this is jake's kitten. her name is Sunday. not sure how he came up with it but it seems to fit. my sil said to me the first time she saw Sunday that it must be a girl b/c like 90% of all tri-color cats like this are female!!! i did not know that! Sunday likes to run her motor and she loves to snuggle. i try not to get too close to an animal, that way if anything happens to them (like last week when daisy ((our mama dog)) got hit by a car and was killed) it's not as hard. poor ben saw it happen and he was ABSOLUTELY heartbroken!

here's a little surprise we found in one of our 58 blueberry trees. i asked jake if i gave him a pair of tweezers and lots of leaves and twigs if he could build a nest as tightly and neatly as that mama bird did.......he said it wouldn't look that good...

here is another pretty wildflower jake brought to my attention. it's kinds neat looking.

i don't have any idea what this is either but it's one of my favorites. i've never seen these before. they remind me of a starburst. pretty.

these little lime green fuzzy things are attention getters....and these, too, are new to me. we're outside in the blueberry patch every year this time and none of these flowers have been around in the past.

our bountiful blueberries....or one bush of them anyway...as i said, there are 57 more!!!

here is the flower that makes me smile  :) I LOVE HYDRANGEAS!!!

other than solid white stock, these are my favorite!!! especially the blues and purples!

BUT, i must say the sly little daddy long legs, has got to go! he is my least favorite of ANYTHING!!!

one of our many varities of daylilies. i think these are maps (my hubby's initials are MAP, therefore i call him map for short) favorite

it's so pretty in the country at dusk.

the kiddies enjoyin their late afternoon walk...with map

i also have a thing for these beautiful pink wild roses. if i could string up enough rope around my house, i'd  find a way to cover it completely in running wild rosebushes!!

so tiny and girly...

these roses run everywhere!! up a tree, over the fence...everywhere i say! but that's fine with me! crazy kids! they get excited when they can run out and pick me wild flowers from the edge of the woods. that makes me smile too  :)

my grandma (kids call her grannie) has alzheimer's. she was diagnosed right before rivers was born and she has been slipping little by little ever since. she and rivers have this "thing". i think it's because grannie has just about slipped down to rivers' level. they are buddies and they seem to click into place everytime they see each other. sometimes grannie seems a little distant when she sees others, but never when she sees riv. if i ever visit and i don't have her with me, grannie immediately asks "where's the baby?" ever since rivers was born, she called her "the baby" because that's what she was about the time grannie stopped remembering and started to forget things but she always knows her baby.

i try to get as many pictures of the two of them as i can. both sets of my great-grand parents were gone before i could remember them but my kids have been fortunate enough to get to know and remember most of their greats.

i think this is my favorite picture of them. grannie seems so far away but she's got her baby girl in her arms. today was a good day :)

feelin the heat!!!

this is a typical tuesday since we are all at wal-mart. mama went to take dad lunch at work yesterday and then there was the quick trip to wal-mart for POOL TOYS!!!! i so wish we had a target here. the nearest one is 40 mins away.  mama was readin all the hazards of the toys and the kids couldn't decide on what they wanted......so she just got it ALL!

justin (my firefighter/paramedic brother) and i only wish we had stuff like this when we were little, although none of it would've been any fun in those inflatable pools! mama and daddy didn't get a REAL pool until they had grandkids (well, they actually got it when jake-the 1st-was only 2 months old). jake took swimming lessons when he was only 6 months old!!!

now i'm lookin forward to the beach on the 4th even more!! AWESOME sand-castle-builder-thingies!!! and shell sifters...shovels, buckets, YAY!! please let the oil stop flowing.....well, into the ocean anyways!

the jakeman decided on goggles and snorkel. i wish we could go somewhere so he could snorkel on the botton of the ocean and find stuff. he'd love it. he said he wants to learn how to scuba dive when he gets older.

baby girl got a battery operated penguin that swims around the pool.

she pronounces it her "pinkone"-very cute!

and who wouldn't have guessed ben picked the underwater flyin airplane!? they also got some divin torpedos and a velcro tennis ball throwing thing?. anyway, needless to say, we had a fun day yesterday and today also. i even got in the water (although it took me 20 mins to actually get completely IN the water)! a little chilly still.