Shopping

I have been shopping a lot lately. In fact, most of it took place during my medical leave. No, I was not out burning up the town while I should have been at home recovering. I did a bunch of Ebaying, picked up some when my mom helped me get groceries at Walmart one day, and I got a few things another day after mom took me to the doctor for a check up and we ran into Belk for a few minutes. The rest of it I did at JCPenney on MLK Day (my last day before returning to work) and this weekend at Fashion Apparel and at Walmart. I am so excited to be ahead on some of my seasonal shopping for the girls. Below are some of Emma's birthday things for her Tinkerbell-theme party. The personalized Tinkerbell shirt is going to be a night shirt that she will get for her birthday. She wore the Tinkerbell costume today for a photo session for her photo party invitation that I am working on. She was so beautiful. I put her hair up in a bun just like Tinkerbell. Luckily the weather was warm enough today to take them outside. I am dying to share some of the pictures, but I am going to make myself wait until closer to her party.
My SIL Samantha is going to applique an "E" on the white shirt below with the Tinkerbell fabric I found at Walmart. She will wear this at her birthday party. I picked up a white shirt for Anna Kate too and hope Samantha will applique her an "A" with Camp Rock fabric for her birthday party. Walmart has the Camp Rock fabric. I don't know why I didn't get some of it today since that is the theme she has chosen, but I will get it next week. The purple and green shirts and plaid fabric are for Easter. I am hoping Samantha will work her magic on these too. She did a fabulous job on the two shirts she did for our nephew Philip's birthday recently. I believe she learned this wonderful craft from her SIL Melanie who made the snowman applique shirts for my girls. I am so lucky to have such a talented SIL. (Okay, Samantha, have I buttered you up enough? Ha!)

I am so excited about the two dresses below. These are my girls' Easter dresses. White is an unusual color for me. I usually love bright colors on my girls, but there is a story behind the white. The smaller dress was Anna Kate's five years ago. It is a smocked Will Beth dress that came from Fashion Apparel. She wore it for Emma's first Easter. I choose white back then because Emma wore Anna Kate's white baby Bible dedication dress for that Easter. Fast forward five years. Since I knew Emma would be wearing the white smocked dress this year, I wanted to find a white dress for Anna Kate. I won a bid for one on Ebay. When it hadn't arrived after two weeks, we contacted the seller and found out that the dress was so longer sellable since it had an ink stain on it. They refunded our money, and I was so disappointed to not get the dress. All this happened Thursday. Fashion Apparel opened for the season on Friday. I found Anna Kate's dress, which also is a Will Beth made out of the same kind of fabric and with some of the same details as Emma's. And it cost less than the one on Ebay. Isn't it neat how God works out small details? Okay, I am open to photo ideas for these dresses. Since the dresses are kind of formal looking, I feel like I will need something a little more formal for the pictures. Ideas, please?

I didn't stop with Easter, her are Valentines shirts, Fourth of July outfits, and big sister/little sister t-shirts. I can't begin to tell you what kind of bargins I have gotten on all these clothes. For example, the Fourth of July shirt that is Emma's has a slight pull under one of the rhinestone details. I pointed this out at the check out yesterday at Fashion Apparel and she came down half price before taking the normal 60% off this Zoodles outfit. The pull is so slight that an iron on patch on the underneath is all it neads. The big sister/little sister t-shirts I also got at Fashion Apparel yesterday. Anna Kate's had a small stain on it, so I pointed this out at check out, and she just gave it to me. I have already washed it, and it came out.

I always try to do the girls Christmas clothes shopping for the next year right after Christmas. Despite my surgery, this year was no exception. Below are their Christmas pajamas and two Christmas shirts each. Cheap, cheap, cheap -- unbelievable prices.

Below are their Christmas dresses. Emma's was Anna Kate's five years ago, and I recently picked up Anna Kate's at Belk on clearance for cheap. Sorry to be so long on this post, but I just had to share. I love me some bargains!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Today was my birthday. If you are curious about my age, Anna Kate would tell you that I am three dozen, and Emma would just say that I am old. Here's a picture of us after church.

I couldn't resist taking a couple of individual shots of the girls. I thought they looked so cute.
Anna Kate looks so grown up to me in these two shots.

Here's one of Emma with sweet smile.

I love this shot of Emma acting like a princess in her Snow White smocked dress.

One last shot of all three of us.

Science Fair Project

Anna Kate and I spent a good bit of time this afternoon working on her Science Fair project. It is on which color M&M shows up most often in a bag of M&Ms. Her hypothesis was that it would be brown. Tim and I also guessed that it would be brown. We were all wrong. She did five bags, and blue won out. She will do the graph and pie charts this week on a cool internet site for kids and then put the board together this coming weekend. I took a few pictures of her doing the experiment so she could put those on her board. Here's just a "fun" shot of her with the M&Ms. We couldn't wait to get done so we could eat some.

Parties

I survived my first week back at work. It was a long week, and I was really tired each night, but it was good to be back. Today was a busy day. In addition to cleaning the house, doing tons of laundry and making a trip to Walmart for groceries, the girls had two birthday parties to attend this morning. Both girls went to their cousin Philip's party at Jumping G's and had a blast. Amanda did a fabulous job on his Thomas cake, and the shirt Samantha made for him to wear on his special day was super cute. I wish I had taken a picture of the birthday boy, but I am sure Amanda soon will be posting some on her blog from this fun day. I did manage to pull out my little camera and snap this one of Emma as Anna Kate and I said goodbye to her and headed to the second party of the day. The parties overlaped some, so Granny and Granddaddy made sure Emma got home after Philip's party. Anyway, Happy 3rd Birthday Philip!

Next party was for Sarah Caldwell. She had a manicure/pedicure/makeover party at Lake Lowndes. It was so much fun. All the girls had a ball, and I had fun watching them. They acted so grown up. Here's a picture of Anna Kate getting her hair fixed by one of her friends. By this point, she had already had her nails painted green, had a facial, and had her makeup done.She ended her "spa" experience by soaking her feet, having a foot massage (which she thinks I should now do for her each night!), and finally a different color nail polish on each toe nail. It was such a cute party. Happy 10th birthday Sarah!

Bible Drills

Anna Kate has decided to participate in Bible Drills. Fourth grade is the youngest a child can participate. She is so excited, and we are excited for her. I remember participating in Bible Drills as a child, and I carry so much of what I learned with me until this day. That is my prayer for her. She got her Bible for Bible Drills tonight at church and was super excited to get it. Here is a picture of her with her new Bible.

Scrapbooking

This week was my last week at home before going back to work following my surgery. I can't believe how fast 4 weeks has gone by. I haven't felt like doing much and I couldn't really go anywhere. What's a girl to do? Scrapbook I say. It's a perfect activity for someone who's supposed to stay at home and rest. I planned out my last 21 pages to finish our 2008 family album. After that, I am going digital, which I am really excited about. I will finish these 21 pages at our next church scrapbook night. I also did 1 page in Tim's outdoor book, 4 pages in my brag book, all 16 2008 pages in Anna Kate's book, all 12 2008 pages in Emma's book, and I did the fall semester in each of our girls 3-ring binder school books. Not to get behind on 2009, I downloaded all my 2009 pictures to Shutterfly to begin work on our 2009 digital scrapbook, downloaded a few pictures from 2009 to Walgreens to begin work on our 2010 personalized calendar and downloaded all my 2009 pictures to Walmart and had a few printed for the girls 2009 pages that I will do when the year is over. Below is a picture of the girls looking at the 2008 pages I did in their books. They had fun looking and remembering. I am so thankful I was able to use some of my "spare" time to get all this scrapbooking done.

More Tannehill

I have been meaning to post these all week. These are more pictures from our visit to Tannehill Park last Sunday afternoon. Granddaddy Sam would be proud. Here's a picture of two of his granddaughters standing in front of a 1927 Ford tractor. The girls thought it was neat. Emma wanted to get on top of it, but it was VERY rusty as you can imagine.

While we were visiting the outdoor steel museum, Anna Kate and Emma stood inside this huge thing the girls called a "tunnel."

I loved the church. It was so pretty. They have church services there every Sunday morning, but we missed it. Maybe next time.

They had several old bridges at the park that were so beautiful. The girls loved running around on this one. They and Tim even found a geocache underneath it. If you don't know what geocaching is, please refer to an earlier post.

I can just imagine how beautiful it is on this bridge in the fall when the leaves have just changed. I would like to go back at that time to see.

Here's one last shot on the bridge before we headed to another spot.The girls loved the water. No ducks in this picture, but we saw lots of them.

Then we went to a grist mill. It was so neat. This was a great spot for pictures.

Here's a shot of the mill. I loved all the old wood of the building and the stonework surrounding it.

Also at the mill, here a shot showing some sisterly love. Aren't they precious?

Last stop was in the trade area. There is a beautiful creek weaving through this area that the girls enjoyed exploring. I shot a few fun pictures of them here.

Emma just had to be in this picture.

And this one too.

But she didn't want Anna Kate in her picture. Believe it or not, Anna Kate hid behind the large tree and then peeked out.

Emma never knew Anna Kate got in both of these shots. I thought it was cute. It was a long day for me, but we all really had a great time.

I will post some individual shots of the girls next.

Tannehill -- Anna Kate

Here are some shots of Anna Kate. She started off the afternoon not really wanting to have her picture made, but with some coaxing by Tim, she loosened up. Then she really got into it. She kept coming up with pose ideas, and I just let her go with it. Sorry for so many photos, but I believe Anna Kate would be upset with me if I left any out. She had so much fun and was proud that she was making her mom happy.