Bay's 1st day of Kindergarten

June helping Bay pack her her backpack. sweet sister.

Rewind 2011 and start over please

Okay. I figured out how to view my pictures in my posts again. Now I just need a new camera so I can have pictures. I am still uploading pics from phone to facebook, then saving then to computer from facebook. blah. big unorganized mess. I want my camera back! So, this year, June busted her head at the Louisville Science Center. This is June at Kosair's children's hospital. They had put a numbing medicine on it and we were waiting for it to work. Then they glued her wound together. She is doing good now.



A day or so later, the stomache bug hits our family. fun times. Then we all get better and now we got runny noses. I can't wait until spring. In the mean time we are finger knitting and

Drinking hot cocoa after playing in snow,

Bay's cowgirl birthday

Since Bay and June's birthdays are close together I wait all year to go all out for their birthdays. Usually Bay's takes half of my creativity out of my body leaving June with a smaller more casual party. But this year I have big plans for June's Rockstar party. But that is a blog for mid october. This blog is about Bay's cowgirl party. I took a picture of June in some pink cowgirl boots. It was our only pair at the time and June was the only one who could fit them. I used that picture to make the invitations(and later as vases). I invited most of Bay's favorite people. I tried to keep it to girls her age. She had pancakes with sprinkles for breakfast. She played in her hat and lasso all day. The party was mostly outside with hay bales, cowgirl coloring station, digging for gold, and stick horse races. Her cake was a Barbie cowgirl. She even had a lasso. Tony started the races with a cap gun. Bay recieved about 5 or 6 barbies, silly bands, a lite bright,candyland, and cowgirl attire. Bay requested country music for the party too. Then we went to Tumbleweed for dinner to continue the theme. She had a great time.I think after this year we may try to have simple cheap family birthdays from now on.

Dance: Bay and June

Here is Bay at her final recital. She did wonderful. She does every step and sings loud when she is suppose to. She finally "got the gold", as she would say. Good Job Bay! She is happy to have June in her class with her this year. We may have to separate them in the line though. We'll see. Hopefully we won't have to have separate classes because it will be nice to wait on them at the same time in one trip.
Here is June's Summer 5 week "mommy and me" class. She loved it and is excited to take dance a full season with Mrs. Connie this year.

Lately

Haven't posted in a while. Bay has managed to get her finger caught in a mouse trap and get stung by a bee this past week. Poor girl. God is making her stronger through it all. She needs these things. We were eating at a Chinese restaurant in lexington with Tony's dad and the girls went to the other side of the room to play with some other children. next thing you know, I heard Bay crying. The other daddy said she must have touched the mouse trap in the corner. Her finger was blue, but fine. not broken. I was mad and distugsted that they even had a need for mouse traps. yuck. I guess Bay learned her lesson. Too bad we had not dicussed the dangers of those thngs but ya know mouse traps don't come up very often around here. thank God. She did fine with the bee sting. no allergies or anything. Now we just clean and organize while we wait for Grandma to come visit. Bay's cowgirl birthday party this Saturday. I have a lot of prep work to do. I hope we have the money to do it. It will be a shopping scramble the day before the party since Tony gets paid friday. The weather is suppose to be wonderful. Pictures to come.

Bunk Bed day 1

Bunk Bed day one. or night one since we put it together right before bed. Bay slept on bottom and June slept on top. I felt comfortable with June on top with the rail. Plus she is a super duper climber as I saw today at the park. There is a good climbing tree which June loves to climb. all the way to the top. I had to go and get her. Monkey!

Love and Hate

My girls are very expressive and dramatic for that matter. On our way back from MS we stopped in Memphis, TN to visit aunts, uncle, and cousin. There, I captured some emotions on there faces.
Stuck up, uncooperative face(Bay)



angry face(Bay)
Relaxed(June)

Happy face


Really happy face

i love my daddy face

Not too sure about taking a picture in this tree faces. and the love of my life face in the middle.

I have often thought about making a feelings picture book of my kids. Maybe one day. Then they would know what they look like when they feel a certain emotion. Do you know what you look like when you are truly happy, sad, scared, worried....? I don't.

Pool Fun

Yesterday, we were creative with our pool. In the morning we swam an played in the sprinkler. I laid out for a bit. The girls wanted to pour water on me. I told them they could sprinkle it on me. They did something better: rubbed water on me. I thought I was at a spa. a water massage. Then after naptime we pool painted. Similar to barrel painting but on a large scale. I got this idea from the Artful Parent blog. Empty dry pool, big paper, balls of different sizes, and paint. Move pool to roll balls and paint. Then we washed all the paint out and swam again. I thought it would be fun to put some bubbles in it so I did. Then we poured that out and played in clean water again.

They ate popsicles too at some point. They are sweet sisters.

Self Esteem, Beauty, and Dancing

I decided to do body tracings with the girls one day. They did really good. We drew body parts inside the body and they colored the pictures. This is a good thing to do with girls no matter what age. You can really find out what they think about themselves and their body image. But at age 2 and 3 it is just fun to see yourself and learn about body parts. Bay wanted a heart, lungs, bones, and stomach. She had a skirt on so the body tracing has a skirt too. June just colored on hers.

Bay had dance pictures and a mini recital at a nursing home. I wanted to curl Bay's hair for the pictures so I bought sponges rollers. I figured out they just about only work if you sleep in them and I don't think Bay will sleep in them. I used a curling iron instead. But we had fun playing in the rollers anyway even if they weren't curling our hair.

Then Bay did the most awesome job at the nursing home. I have had so many parents talk about how great she did. Even her teacher said she was the leader that day. She did every move correctly at the right time, and sang loudly. I only saw it on video. Tony took them. I felt I might break down being at a nursing home. I visited my grandmother at the nursing home for many years. Bay said, "there was an angry grandma there". I told her that dancing for her probably made her happy. She replied, "no mom, she was still angry".

Grandma

"Do not put that mascara on today" I told myself as I was putting my makeup on. I did it anyway. I know it won't be there for long. Tears come and go in spurts. My mind has been full of memories of her today. Here is the best picture in the whole world. It was taken in Dec. '08. My grandmother, Norma, never took many pictures. Hated the camera, actually. This is four generations of wonderful, smart, creative, and STUBBORN women. It was good to see her smile at her great grandchildren. Norma Ruth Griffin. She was born during the 1927 flood, made it throught the Depression, married and raised 4 children at an early age. She suffered through a divorce and later the death of one of her daughters. Both my mom and my grandma raised me. She left this earth May 13th, 2010 at 1:30am. My mother is handling the details and rounding up the siblings. Grandma will be cremated and we will have our own personal funeral in Indianola, MS where we are suppose to bury her ashes near her mother and father's grave. I haven't been to MS in the summer in over six years probably. I imagine it will be mega hot and steamy. It will be good to reunite the family though. Unfortunately, this happens at weddings and funeral, right? Bay and June will get to meet my aunts and uncles. The last few quotes I remember from grandma are:
1)"I don't know what I would do without you". She said this to me at the first nursing home she lived at in MS. I visited her quite often then.
2)"Have a nice life" as we moved her to a TN nursing home and I moved to KY. She knew me then. She had alzheimer's. That one hit me pretty hard. I felt I was kind of leaving her all alone.
3) "who's the daddy?" she asked when a couple of years later when we brought Bay to TN to meet her. She is so funny. My cousin and I are her only grandchildren and we were children of divorce as babies(probably fetuses). so "who's the daddy?" may have been a familiar question 29 yrs ago. The funny thing is that Tony (THE daddy) was standing in the room with us.
My grandmother was a tough one. I never saw her cry. She just wasn't very emotional I guess. Other words to describe her: stubborn, blunt, smoker, dancer, mathematician, racist(born and raised in MS), unchanging(good and bad), mother, brave, selfless, giving, trustworthy, strong, and a hard worker. She worked a few jobs at the same time to take care of her children and was a single mom for a while. She didn't have any hobbies really.When she retired, she retired. She didn't do anything after that. She didn't knit or sew(but she knew how). She had a sweet tooth which caused her to bake butter cakes and iced sweet tea frequently. I liked that. She liked crumbled cornbread in milk. I guess it is a southern thing. Maybe a creation from not having much(depression?). Sometimes she would french braid or plat, she called it, my hair if I asked her to. But she wouldn't let me play with her hair. She mostly watched TV. She liked gameshows like wheel-a-fortune. I knew that she was ALWAYS there and wasn't going anywhere, that's for sure. I would sit and hold her soft hands. Do all old people have soft hands? Hers were so soft. I loved to hold her hand (And pinch her elbow skin which she would tell me that I would have it when I got old too). I loved her greatly and miss her from time to time.

Tutu Photo Shoot

I finished this tutu and needed some pictures to give to Aunt Tiffany for the Baby Cadenhead Auction. I got several good pictures. I may try to make a couple into black and white.

I like the shadow in this one.

Imagine what I could do with an expensive camera and photoshop!