Happy Birthday...

to my hubby. 35 years old today.

The New Addiction in This Household...

We bought this game immediately following vacation. I mean we literally drove home and Eric left to find it. Ali brought his Wii and this game on vacation and we fell in love with it. So now, we play it everynight. It is so fun. Yesterday, we were able to link to Ali and play with him over the internet. So cool. We had he and Jenny on speakerphone the whole time and were able to see his guy racing with ours. The coolest thing.

**Trying to get back to painting, but ebay's not playing nice. They are not on my good list right now. At all.

**Started buying a few things for back to school this weekend. Got both the kid's new tennis shoes. Bought Cam his new backpack (the one he liked was on sale at Target). And the lunchbag Payton liked was on sale at Target as well. You can't beat that.

**E's birthday is Friday. Looking forward to a Mommy/Daddy date night. Feels like it's been forever. Seriously.

**Literally less than a month left until Cam's first day of school. This summer has gone by really fast. (Not to mention school starts really early this year). No word on Pay's first day though.

**It's hotter than hot right now. The kids swam most of the weekend. Thank God for the pool.

**Happy Monday. :)

I'm Outta Touch

At least that's how I'm feeling since vacation. Trying to scrap, keep up the pool, keep the kids from killing each other and from driving me batty, keep the house in order, start painting again, etc. etc. etc. Not leaving me much time for surfing the web and blog reading and what not.

We had a good 4th of July weekend, lots of family, food, fireworks. We drove out to visit MawMaw Pye on Friday which was a nice visit. We then had a 4th of July celebration at church that E and I had volunteered to work at. Mom came to watch the kids while we did our shift. After, they had a huge fireworks display.

Cameron has one more camp at the end of the month. Basketball this time. That will at least give the kids a break from each other. And give him something fun to do. Payton just finished her summer dance session. The girl loves to dance!! Which makes me happy.

Just a quick little update about what's going on in my neck of the woods. I'll leave you with some more vacay pics. Happy Monday! :)

So I'm Back...

Wishing I was still here, but back nonetheless.
What a fabulous vacation it was. Wonderful weather, water, food and family. This is the biggest posed group I've ever photographed, in hindsight I'd have done a few things differently. But overall I'm happy with how all of our group photos came out.

The kids had a ball. Payton seriously cannot get enough of the water. She would come out for 2 minutes and was asking to go back in. It was nice to have other adults that she could go out with. Made it a little easier. She actually tried her hand at boogie boarding this year. Cameron enjoyed diving and boogie boarding as well. They found several hermit crabs while diving. 2 hermit crabs came home with us and our now living out on the patio. Fun, fun. So one day, we are in the water, and I see this guy. I'm like asking all my sisters, "do ya'll watch the bachelorette?" None of them do, but after some internet research, we determined that it was indeed Sean from the bachelorette. His family had umbrellas a few down from us on the beach.

We pretty much all got stung by jellyfish. The last day, they were out in full force. Eric got stung 5 times trying to swim out to a sandbar, so he came back real quick. Jenny and Ali are pretty sure that they saw a shark out by the sandbar. It was pretty far out though. We also saw a sea turtle one night while walking on the beach. Lots of sea life for sure. One night when we were walking, we also found a wreath with a bottle with a note inside. Unfortunately, the sender forgot to cap the bottle, so the note was pretty much disintegrated, but it was a fun find, nonetheless.

One night Payton, Cameron and Eric all sang karoeke. Much to my dismay, my camera battery was dead and we didn't bring the video camera. The kids sang "Jesus, Take the Wheel" together. It was the cutest thing ever. I cried, because, well, that's what I do. I will never forget it though, even though I don't have the video. Cameron sang really loud and you couldn't really hear Payton, but she was definitely singing. Eric sang an old George Jones song. I still to this day cannot believe he got up there and did that. My sister got some of it on her phone, so I will try to post some of it soon. I was dying. My husband doesn't sing. Period. But I think having everyone there and in front of a bunch of people he'd never see again, he felt like he could. Although a large amount of people there were indeed from Louisiana, so who knows? ;)

But now we're back. And life is back to normal. I'll leave you with some more vacay pics. Have a happy Thursday!

Random Monday

1. The countdown to vacay is on. We leave Saturday, and even though I have a messload of things to get done, I cannot wait.

2. Watched design star last night. I'm pulling for this guy


because he's from Lafayette and we went to the same college. But sadly, he wasn't shown too much in the previews, so I'm not optomistic.

3. Went to the scrapbook store today and bought some goodies. As soon as we get back from vacay, lots of scrapping will be going on. I'm putting painting on hold for a bit to catch up on scrapping. I bought the kiddos each some goodies from Hobby Lobby so that they can scrap with me.

4. Payton starts her summer dancing session tomorrow. She's beyond excited. What can I say? The girl loves dancing. And I love seeing her dance.

5. We bought one of those metal framed above ground pools for the kiddos. It's so stinking hot, it's been wonderful to have that to jump in!

6. E and I had a wonderful anniversary date night. Ate at our favorite restaurant and just enjoyed the long quiet meal. Thought about renting a movie, but who are we kidding? There was no was we would make it through one without falling asleep.

7. Borrowed this movie from my little sister. I'm a little late in watching it but we don't watch many movies. See #6.

Very excited to watch it. Hopefully Tuesday.

8. I'm using a gift card to this place on Wednesday. Got it for Christmas from E, and I think it's about time I put it to good use.

9. Today was my 3 month post op appointment. I'm seeing 20/20!! And the doctor released me and said I can stop using all of my drops (hallelujah!) I've been using drops several times a day since the surgery, so I'm so happy to be finished. Oh and he told me I could swim. Just in time for vacay! ;)

9 Years Ago...

This is what I was doing. Happy 9th anniversary, E!!

ETA: Dang I was skinny. ;)

And I Cried...

that was the theme of the weekend. Payton had her dance recital this weekend and I cried. 4 times to be exact. Both practices, the recital itself and when she was called on stage to receive an award for the hardest working in her class. And my extremely shy little girl, jumped off of her daddy's lap and went down the aisle, up the stairs and onstage to receive it. And I cried.

Her class was the sun princesses. They danced to "You are my Sunshine" and "I'm Walking On Sunshine".

It was quite possible the cutest thing ever. I could cry just thinking about it. ;)

So to say that Eric and I are proud of our 2 munchkins would be an understatement. Payton with her Hardest Worker award and Cameron with his Oustanding Tiger of the Year award. Sniff sniff.

Happy Wednesday that feels like Tuesday!! :)

Unbelievably Sad News...

here.
And if you have a moment, watch this video about his daughters.

This Week = Insanity

**We had Cameron's end of school program today. They sang a song about making gumbo, then we went into their classroom where she handed out awards. He won: an artistic award, math award, reading award and tiger of the year for his class. I was a proud mama for sure. She picked 2 boys and 2 girls who did well academically and behavior wise.

**Today was also Payton's last dancing class. Her recital is this weekend, and I'm really excited about it. I think (or hope) that she might actually dance. They had a little end of year party today and we were late because of Cam's award presentation. She decided that she wants to take the summer session, so she'll be dancing through the summer.

**We had a tball game last night, pictures tonight and a game tomorrow night.

**All of our shows are ending this week. Except for Lost which has its finale next week. What will we do then??

**Cam's last day of school is Friday. I cannot believe that he is going to be a second grader already. Mind blowing. And when he starts, Payton will be in preschool 3 days a week. It's going to be some quiet around these parts.

**Happy Wednesday. Go David Cook!! ;)

On A Thursday...

This is what we woke up to. Well this and the power going out. Crazy weather this morning. All is well. We were out of power for about 3 hours or so. Cam doesn't have school because their power was out as well. There were apparently several tornadoes out and about this morning.
We have a palm tree up front that fell down, that was pretty much on it's last legs anyway, so we'll have to fix that, but that's about all. All I kept thinking about is that the power better be back on for Lost. Priorities, I know. LoL.

So I've been having phone issues. The main button went out that you have to click to do pretty much everything. So I called AT&T and had a new phone in about 27 hours, which was awesome. I transferred my videos to the computer so that I wouldn't lose them, so I wanted to share one. The quality is not great, but you get the gist. Happy Thursday, folks!

I Know I Know...

I'm pathetic with this blogging thing. May has been crazy busy thus far and is only going to get crazier. Weekend before last was our weekend at the beach with our friends Steve and Shaina. We went again this year without the kids. Seriously my favorite part is the eating out. Just to go out to dinner at whatever time and be able to sit there and carry on adult conversation without playing tic tac toe. Priceless. We missed the kids lots though and can't wait to go back to the beach with them in June.
This is Eric working out in the "gym". LoL. When he was on the machine, his head literally touched the ceiling. He still worked out on it. It was hilarious. I got on the treadmill and had maybe 3 inches between my head and the ceiling. Too funny


Once we got back, I took a field trip with Cameron to Vermilionville. It's a local place that shows you the Cajun way of life. It was fun. I'm pretty sure the adults found it more interesting than the kids.

We listened to some Cajun music and even had some Cajun Waltz and two step lessons. The kids were too funny when the instructor told the boys to go pick a partner. Cam lucked out since I was there. ;)

My May to do list is insane. The rest of this week alone we have teacher appreciation week, Mother's Day tea (at school), Payton's dancing and costume meeting, Tball game, cookie dough fundraiser pick up, eye doctor appointment, Mother's Day, tons of painting (back in full swing), oh and J your girlah challenge as well (I'm gonna get to it, I promise!!)

As well as in the coming weeks: volunteer appreciation breakfast for the room mothers, Cameron's fun day at school, yearly appt. (woohoo :P), little sister's college graduation, end of year ceremony for Cam's school, last day of school, Payton's dancing recital, memorial day and a host of tball games.

It's cool though, because that means June will be here before we know it which will bring our family vacay. And I'm already ready to go back to the beach! ;)