Big-Girl Room

Move on over crib and changing table... A big girl is moving in!
The kids and I were gone last week, so D stayed up super late every night moving furniture around so that Charley would now have a big girl room. Partly because Eli will get her old furniture and the baby will get Eli's old furniture, and partly because it is just time! Time for Charley to be out of the crib (with the side down) and time to get that changing table out of there! I won't lie, it was kinda sad for me in a way! Charley's room has looked the same since we prepared it for her before she was born! Over three years ago! But, it's just a room and I'm grateful for her growth and transition to this new stage.

Hmmm....I think I like this...but I'm not sure.

Ooooo! Daddy set up the hope chest that had been in the guest room so that it now holds all of Charley's dress up clothes. So sweet.

Here's the big-girl bed. Thanks to our niece, Salley Kate, for passing down her quilt to Charley! The bed was my Mema's (Charlotte Blair) from before she married my grandfather in the 40's. My mom slept in it at some point in her childhood too.

Reading in my big girl bed.

 

Reading with daddy. The bed is now up against the wall instead of jutting out in the room. More floor space!

Cowboys and Princesses

Summertime=More time with Emrick!

"I think I'll round up a booger," says the cowboy.

Pretty pretty princesses

Please dance with me, Mam.

Memorial Day 2011

One of my favorite things about Memorial Day Weekend is the war movies that are on TV. This weekend we watched (parts of) Pearl Harbor, Kelley's Heroes, a Vietnam documentary, and recorded Midway. D and I both love war movies, and I'm definitely super super grateful that I get to watch them on the comfort of my couch and never have had to experience them in real life. Sooo grateful to those who have fought for my freedom! We watched The Pacific a couple of weekends ago, so right now I am just extra aware of the atrocity of war (although I know I have no idea when it actually comes down to it. Grateful for that too).

Sooo....what better way to celebrate our war heroes than with hot air balloons!!? Freedom Weekend Aloft was this weekend, and we've never participated, or even heard of it. We decided to take the kids down to see the balloons so we went down to the park at 8am on Monday morning (because the balloons were to be in the air from 7am-9am). Well.... when we got there, everyone was leaving! We saw one balloon disappear behind the trees while we were heading that way, but didn't realize it was ending so early! We walked around the fairgrounds anyway and eventually found where the balloon people were (as they were driving away, all packed up). Oh well. We decided to drive to the airport and watch the planes land and take off...just as exciting I suppose.
That evening was the big-time party at the balloon festival with the band and fireworks and another balloon launching. It was free that day to go to the festival, so we figured the place would be swamped. D decided that he could find a place for us to watch outside of the gate (since we are somewhat party poopers when it comes to fighting large crowds of people in nasty heat with small children at bedtime). The balloons were to be up from 6pm-8pm so we found an empty, abandoned parking lot at 5:55pm. It was perfect! But, then 5:55pm turned into 6:15 which turned into 6:45 etc etc. We finally found out from a car who had joined us at the lot that the balloons would be up between 6pm-8pm. Ahhhh! Gotcha. "Between" was the word we had missed. So we waited some more and at 7:15ish, the balloons started appearing above the tree tops. And boy, was it worth it! The kids were soooo excited! It was all said and done ten minutes later, but I'm so glad we did it. Here are some pictures of our adventures...

Picnic in the back of the van.

We played some ball to kill some time.

It was a scorcher! (and Eli found mommy's water)

Our parking lot had an old rail road track next to it, so D took the kids on a mini adventure

"THE BALLOONS!!! THE BALLOONS!!!" This was after the first ones appeared. She was excited.

The first one.

"Wook!!"

There were like 15-20 balloons (we lost count) but it was hard to get them in one shot. By the time the last ones came up, the first ones were way far away!

In Africa...

Charley likes talking about Africa. Actually, she likes telling us what is going on there, in her little mind. D has had several opportunities to serve in Africa in Charley's short little life, so she has heard us talk of it quite often. She used to think Africa was at the top of the elevator at the GSP Airport, because that is where we last saw daddy as he left for his last trip. When we returned to get him, we rode the escalator to the second floor and Charley said, "Hey! We're in Africa now. Where's daddy?!"
Anyways, more recently, she has randomly said the following "enlightening" things about Africa:

Me: "Charley please shut the door"
Charley (while shutting the door): "why do we have doors? In Africa, people don't have doors on their houses."

Charley (out of the blue): "in Africa, Daddy's friends don't have mommies or daddies."

Charley: "hey Mommy! There's Eli's doctor!... In Africa, the boys and girls don't have doctors"

Charley (at the dinner table): "In Africa, the boys and girls don't have any food."
Me: Exactly! So we should eat all of ours and be grateful for what God has blessed us with!" (hey, can you blame me?)

Charley turned three last week, and my parents gave her a toy cash register, which she calls her "pay thing." The night she got it, she pretended to fly to Africa to give the boys and girls all of her money so they could buy some food at her pay thing. She left the basket of food on the table when she went to bed so they could come out from their hiding places and get it. She was very concerned that Eli was going to take it, but I assured her it would be okay. Other than hating on her brother, this act of generosity was refreshing to see, even if it was pretend! Putting others first isn't high on her list, which we are constantly working on. "Me" paired with "First" are bad words in our house!

For the things she says that aren't entirely true (no doors, no mommies, no food), we try to correct her but also use it as an opportunity to point her towards generosity, sacrifice, service, etc. Donald wants to take us all there one day, so hopefully Charley will be able to see that there are some doors and mommies and food, but more importantly, give her real money away so the boys and girls can buy real food at the pay thing!

Easter Weekend in Pictures

We spent Easter weekend in Charleston with our families, and it sure was fun! We also celebrated Charley's birthday and D's and my 6th year anniversary while we were there. Here are lots of pics from the weekend!

Mema made cupcakes for the kids to decorate (and then smear all over their faces). So fun!

Our weekend was full of eggs and egg hunts.

Hi, I'm Eli. And I throw EVERYTHING.

This little piggy...

Charley getting her hair fixed by Donald's sister, Metrie.

Yard work. He just haaaad to help.

The finished product.

Getting ready for the egg hunt!

This is serious business to Eli.

The kids with Zachary, their cousin who is Eli's age.

Auntie Evelyn made Charley a super yummy birthday cake!

Eli and Mema were looking at birds. I tried capturing the picture through a window.

An egg hunt at Mema and Granddaddy's with cousin Mairin.

Easter Sunday family pic

Charley's first Chocolate Bunny. I didn't realize its name was "Hippy" until after I got it home. There are no flowers in its hair. Strange.

Eli got a football and is in love with it.

My sister Robin's family. Grant, Ryan, Lexie, Robin, Mairin, Ricky, and Brooke
oops...didn't mean to upload the one with Lexie's hand on her head. Sorry Lex.

Charley and three of her girl cousins. Brooke, Lexie and Mairin

Eli busted his lip on a wooden arm chair yesterday. Playing with his football. First of many busted lips, says Donald.

Bun in the Oven

In September of 2007 we announced to the blog world that we were expecting a baby, who ended up being our daughter Charley. In February of 2009, we announced the beginning of another life, which is/who is now Eli. And now blog world, we are announcing, with great anticipation, the arrival of baby three in October. We are very excited! Today was our first appointment and ultrasound, and so far Spicken 3 is healthy and growing well.
We found out when I was four weeks, which is what I consider SUPER early (compared to the other two), and so it feels like I've already been pregnant for FORever. I'm 12 weeks. Not exactly forever.
As you can read about in this post, I wanted to tell Donald in a creative way that I was pregnant with Charley...and it didn't work. With Eli, D was the one who read the test results, so there was no creativity involved in that either. This go around, I was like, "This is it!! (probably) It's now or never..." So... I took the test after he left for work. I had a dentist appointment that afternoon, so he met me at the dentist to take the kids home. The dentist's parking lot isn't exactly a great place to share the news, so I had to wait until I got home from my appointment. The kids were napping and D was on the couch on his computer. D's family had been in town the previous weekend, so we had hamburger and hot dog buns galore leftover from a cookout. I manged to grab a hot dog bun and sneak it in the oven without D hearing me. Phew! I totally can't lie, so I was stressed about how to get him over to the oven, but God spared me and all I had to do is say, "Hey Honey..." and point at the oven. D was like, "Oh yeah!!! I left some of that stuff from Saturday in the oven!" Sweet. I ran with that, and was like, "Can you please come get it out??" He was a tad confused as to why I couldn't just get it out, but thankfully, after only a little persuasion, he came over. He saw the bun and was like, "Oh that???! I didn't know we left a hot dog in there." He didn't get it. I was like, "Yeah, it's a bun." He still didn't get it. "There's a BUN in our oven." ...Oven door shuts. He says, "NOT-ahhh. NOT-ahhh. Are you for real??" NOT-ahhh." He had the biggest smile on his face. It was great. Totally worth it. Success.
And no, it wasn't an accident, and yes, Charley is 2 and Eli is 1. But in October, they will be 3 and 2. Yes, I won't be going anywhere with the kids for a long while. Please come visit us. :)

So here's the first pics of baby three! Praising God for another precious gift!

P.S. My due date is October 31st. Trick or Treat.

March Happiness

We sure do love March Madness in our house, but, thank you very much Morehead St for seriously wrecking my bracket. And Vandy, seriously, why did you lose?? You also messed up my chances. Chances of what?? I don't know...my bracket counts for nothing, but it would be nice to get it right.
I may have told you before that Eli loves basketball. He will just sit there and watch it, while any other kid show entertains him for like 4 minutes. But, as we were watching yesterday, I realized, oh great, the commercials during the games are awful. You may not think so until you watch with your one and two-year-old. The Axe commercial where the angels drop out of the sky b/c they can't resist the hunky Axe guy and then smash their halos on the ground... Charley asked to see the "angels" the rest of the day. Ugh.

I realized that I we have zero green articles of clothing for our children yesterday, but fortunately have been loaned some summer clothes that did contain a little bit of green. Charley had a party at school, and Eli and I got to party with friends where there was green punch, green wraps, green apples, green cookies, green guacamole (yes green haha) etc etc etc. So yummy. I made a cake for a dinner guest we were having, and it's official, I would never be hired as a cake decorator. It was still fun though!

The weather is starting to get soooo nice! We love being outdoors, and after Tuesday's cold and wintery day, the sun has been shining and we've spent some much needed time playing in the driveway.

Bye-Bye.

Fill 'er up!

In other news, one of my best friends from college is getting married tomorrow, so we have all of the wedding festivities this weekend. D and I are going to take Charley to the wedding, which will be her first! So fun!! My parents will be there, which is an added bonus, getting to see them. I am in the wedding, and I just found (in my closet) some shoes that fit the criteria for the bridesmaids, and now I am working on directions to the rehearsal. That is in Charlotte. In just a few hours. Wow, I'm a procrastinator.

Happy Spring!