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Great Friends

Sat, 22 May 2010 21:42:38 -0400

So this one might seem a little random because for a change there are no pictures of kids in this except for the one above where Will is trying to sneak in!! : )
Today is Sunny’s birthday. She is a daughter of Christ, wife, mother of 3 awesome kids, a preacher’s wife, a teacher, a singer, a bargain shopper & a great friend. She has blessed my life over the past 12+ years more than she will ever know. There is a special bond that forms when you are in college together, in each other’s weddings, learn how to be minister’s wives together, have babies together and serve at the same church together. We have seen a lot! We have cried together and we have spent many hours laughing together. My favorite moments are when our laughing makes us cry & our sides hurt like crazy!
The interesting thing is that we would have never met if these two guys hadn’t become great friends first.

(Corey & Jason)
It doesn’t take long to pick up on their sense of humor when they are together. They have a deep bond that is centered around Christ & serving others. When they work together (which they did in college & then at Mayfair) mighty work gets done. They complement each other and creatively become masterminds when they start planning.

So what are mine & Sunny’s favorite things to do together? Shopping, especially consignment, eating @ Little Rosie’s, talking, & telling stories about our kids and of days gone by. We are good at closing down restaurants (not leaving until they lock the doors), protecting & standing up for each other & encouraging each other in our walk with the Lord.

One of the absolute worst parts of moving to Atlanta has been moving 4 hours from these guys. They are like family. I love Sunny like a sister. One of the things I have learned over the years is that best friends, the kind that always have your back, who love you even when you are wrong, who you feel the most comfortable with are really hard to come by. So those friendships should be cherished & acknowledged. So this blog entry is my way of saying thank-you for being that friend to me.
Happy Birthday Sunny!
Love you!
(P.S. I just found these pictures from last August @ the Milam wedding!)
www.coreyandalisha.com

Beth Moore = Great Weekend!

Fri, 21 May 2010 15:07:34 -0400

I was so excited last fall when I heard that Beth Moore would be speaking in April here in Atlanta. We had just moved and I was really missing all of my friends!
(This is a picture from the conference.)
So, on my next trip home I gathered a car load of them up and talked them into buying tickets to come this spring. They all did and then we waited & waited & waited for that weekend to come.
(Before we found our seats.)
Corey was so sweet to find housing for he & the kids for the weekend (thanks Ben!) so that we could have a retreat here at our house. It was great! We ate lots of unhealthy foods (thanks for those GiGi cupcakes Kera!), laughed a lot, shared stories and then spent some awesome time in prayer and encouragement not to mention we got to hear Beth speak on Saturday.
(Thanks Kera for sharing your pictures!)
Beth was great of course! She spoke about her new book - So Long Insecurity which I have not read yet but have heard is really great. I was so thankful that I got to share this with some of the people that are most dear to my heart. You girls are incredible and have each been with me at different stages of my adult life. Please know that I love you all and would do anything for you! Can’t wait to do this again!

A-Day - War Eagle!!!

Thu, 20 May 2010 14:11:12 -0400

Last year Will, Corey & Papaw all got to go to A-Day in Auburn. Gracie & I stayed home because she wasn’t even 1 yet. Well, since she was almost 2 this past April we decided she was ready for a little Auburn football. It’s been a long time since I have been to a game. Pretty much since we started having babies it’s always just been easier to stay home.
So, the 4 of us & Papaw all loaded up on Saturday morning (I love only being 2 hours from Auburn!) and headed to Tiger Town. We planned to have a picnic lunch but because of traffic ended up eating in the car while we waited to get off the interstate. So thankful we packed a lunch or we would have missed 1/2 of the game trying to get food!
I did not plan well for the hot-hot day that was in store for us. I did pack sunscreen but didn’t bring hats for the kids or myself along with no sunglasses for the kids. I won’t make that mistake again. Will was in need of a new Auburn baseball hat so we did run into the student center and bought him one and we probably really should have bought one for Gracie too!
Here are the pictures from our day... squinty eyes and all!

We had to go straight to pig-tails in this heat!

Thanks to the Hamrics for this really cute Auburn dress from last year! So glad she can still wear it!

Love this picture!

Daddy & Will being silly!

And telling secrets... I’m sure about football!

Gracie... well she loved the snacks at this game too!

The girls trying to stay cool!

Love this picture too!

Are we hot or what??

We did get to move over to the shade for the 2nd half.

Yay! Auburn won! : ) Now it is time to head home with 2 sleepy kids.

Gracie got a jump start on her nap on Papaw’s shoulder on the way to the car!

We had a great day and loved introducing Gracie to Auburn! War Eagle!

All he needs is a ball...

Wed, 19 May 2010 13:45:28 -0400

In the past few months Will has become obsessed with sports...especially baseball. I’ve never seen a little boy so obsessed that he won’t play with anything else. He got a new ball & glove from Santa this year (he wore his other one out) and then he got a new bat, a set of bases and a baseball play outfit for Easter. Since Easter all we have done around here is play baseball. I like the sport, don’t get me wrong, but can only play so many hours a day. We need to get him on a team, help him find some friends to play with our find another interest! Whew, I’m tired!
Mid April, we had the opportunity to go to a Braves game at Turner field here in Atlanta. It was a great night! The kids loved the stadium & everything that was going on and Will of course watched the game very closely to see the players every move. He was so serious about it! Here are a few pictures from the night...
Walking over to check out the big baseballs. It rained really hard right before we got out of the van to enter the stadium & then it was dry the rest of the night thank goodness!
He was so proud standing there with his glove on!
Gracie wasn’t too sure about all of this...
Then she started playing with her daddies hat & she warmed up to all the fun.

I love this picture because it sums up the night.. Will is serious & Gracie is silly!
They were having a little baseball talk right here.
Gracie cheering for the Braves!
Will looking for a ball!
Maybe if I reach a little higher I will catch one! So cute!
I couldn’t resist sharing this one because Gracie & I spent half of the game walking back & forth to the bathroom! At this point I’m trying to figure out why we potty trained her! : ) Thankfully, the people sitting next to us liked our kids & didn’t mind all the fun we were having!

Love at first sight... baseball!

And, love at first sight... snacks!
We had a great night thanks to a precious family who shared their tickets with us. This made for some great family time & fun family memories. Go Braves!

Mother’s Day

Sat, 15 May 2010 21:29:42 -0400

I enjoyed a great Mother’s day this year with my family. I got to see my mom that morning before she headed back home and the kids got to give her a present. A vase they decorated with their fingerprints & a bouquet of tulips inside. It works out nice that we celebrate Gracie’s birthday on Mother’s day weekend so that we all get to be with our moms.
The sermon was really great that morning. Jody, our preacher, talked about Mary & Martha, specifically Martha and how her personality can be used for good and bad. They showed a great video about being a mom & honored all of us by asking us to stand & praying for us. Very special.
After church we went to Corey’s parents new place here in Atlanta. They moved here the weekend before Mother’s day. Corey’s mom was so sweet to cook lunch for us anyways. It was delicious & we even exchanged a few gifts.
Nap time came next. Our whole house was quiet! We were all so tired from the week before getting ready for Gracie’s party and the busy weekend we had that we all crashed and took about a 2 hour nap. Corey woke up thinking it was Monday morning... that’s how you know you’ve had a good nap!
Corey’s plans for the rest of the evening were perfect. The 4 of us packed up and headed to downtown Suwanee for some family time. We ate dinner at Five Guys (which is at the park). Then, Corey brought his guitar and played all of the songs he has written for me over the years, which was sooo sweet! Will brought his baseball, glove, bat & bases and played ball with Corey. And Gracie, well she just wanted to go pee-pee about a hundred times so we spent a lot of time walking back & forth through the park. Which was okay because the weather was perfect for strolling around the park. We closed out the night with some Italian Ice from Rita’s our new place in the park.

Corey singing to me! Pretty sure this is how he melted my heart from the start.

Gracie singing along with daddy while playing soccer.

I’m so thankful they are getting old enough to start playing together a little!

Here is Gracie trying to help her daddy play the guitar.

And, no surprises here, look who’s ready to play baseball! If you haven’t been around our house lately then you should know that this is ALL that he wants to do ALL day long. It’s going to be a long summer!
Thanks to all of my family who made the day so special. I feel so blessed to be apart of such a great family with such a loving husband. Most of all I feel so blessed to be a mom. What an honor and a blessing to be given the privilege to raise up HIS children. I also look forward to the first Mother’s Day I will spend with Hope in Heaven, assuming we will have those in heaven, if not I’m pretty sure everyday will feel like Mother’s Day because Lord willing I will be there with all of my children.

Gracie’s Birthday Part 3

Sat, 15 May 2010 14:05:21 -0400

This is the last birthday entry for Gracie! We will conclude with her birthday party. We had the celebration at our house on the Saturday after her birthday. We had family and one close family friend over for lunch and cake. Gracie helped me the day before her party with making cupcakes. Her theme was “Cute as a Cupcake”.

Her silly smile!

These are the cupcakes that we made to decorate with all sorts of candies during the party.
This was one of Gracie’s birthday presents. I got a deal on it, stripped all of the old paint off & then Corey repainted it for me. The table is white (later that night both of her aunts painted flowers on the top of it) and the chairs are each a different color... pink, blue, yellow & green. She also got the tea set for her birthday.

She loved playing at her table...
and then even got to eat her lunch (grilled chicken, beans & chips) at it. Her birthday blessing book is on the sofa table in the picture below. It is a special book that the family adds prayers & blessings to each birthday.
It’s time to sing happy birthday & blow out my candle! We put cupcakes together in the shape of a big cupcake to make her cake.

After we opened up all of her presents we went outside to check out her last gift... a water table! (She loves her new purse!)

Then we watched her birthday movie filled with pictures from the last year and then headed to the dining room to decorate the cupcakes. The kids were excited about all of the candy!
Aunt Amy & Jaxon and Tori & Tessa decorating their cupcakes! The boys liked using the gummy worms to decorate theirs.
Gracie’s favorite part was eating the candy!
Sweet Tessa & Gracie posing for a picture. So sweet!
Will & Gracie playing in the new water table.
Gracie loves her Aunt Amber!

Mimi (my mom), Aunt Amber & Gracie swinging on the porch after the party.
We had a great weekend celebrating with the family. We feel so blessed that Gracie has so many people in her life that love her so much. She is a blessed little girl!
www.coreyandalisha.com

Gracie’s Birthday Part 2

Fri, 14 May 2010 12:47:35 -0400

We had a great time celebrating Gracie’s birthday last Thursday. We spent time together as a family, went to story time at the library, exchanged gifts, played at the park, & got milkshakes from Dairy Queen. Here are pictures from the day...
Gracie getting her Dora backpack, colors & coloring book.

While I was getting everything ready to go to the library I couldn’t help but snap these pictures of Will & Gracie playing. They were singing together until Gracie started grabbing Will’s ears!

Before dinner that night we gave Gracie her other birthday present... a Dora doll house. She loved it & so did Will!

She had a hard time reaching it on the table.

So she just climbed up on top!
She loved all of the little pieces that went with it.

She was really excited about her presents!

After dinner, we went to Duluth downtown park to take her 2-year pictures, play & share a milkshake & blizzard. Here are a few of our favorites.

Happy 2nd birthday Gracie girl! May you always feel the joy you feel right now as a 2 year old!
www.coreyandalisha.com

Gracie’s Birthday Part 1

Thu, 13 May 2010 14:54:54 -0400

As a special treat for Gracie’s 2nd birthday we took her to a wedding Corey was performing the weekend before her birthday in Nashville, TN. It was her first time, maybe ever, to be alone with us for that length of time.
The first hour or so of the trip she kept asking where ‘bubby’ (Will) was and pointing to his car seat. It was really sweet that she was missing him. Then, when we arrived at the Cool Springs Galleria and she received full attention from mommy & daddy she stopped asking about bubby.
We enjoyed lunch at Chick-fil-a and then headed over to Build-A-Bear in the mall.
(I took a lot of pictures because I was down to just one kid... I actually had a free hand!)
Her & her daddy picked out the bear & the heart that should go inside.

She was afraid of the machine that filled up the bear...

and the bath that we tried to give it!

But then it came time to accessorize & she was all about that!

Maybe this shirt will work? And, she really loved that Hello Kitty chair & was insistent on putting her bear in it.

We tried on clothes...

But then finally settled on this pink dress along with a pair of matching shoes & hair bows.
After giving her a name, Emme Grace, and making her birth certificate we were ready to go!

Gracie bonded with her bear as we headed into Target... so sweet!

And then decided to get a quick nap.

If you are wondering why she has a blanket behind her in her car seat then you are in for a fun story. We are confident now that Gracie gets carsick. She got sick once on the way to Fernbank Museum & then got sick again on the way to Nashville. Sadly, Will was still in the car with us (we had not dropped him off yet) and bless his heart it took all he had to not get sick too! We lucked up at a good gas station this time that allowed us to use there cleaning products to do the best we could to wash out her seat. Needless to say we were spraying air freshener almost every time we got in the van on this trip. Fun times! This is why I will not get a new car for a long, long time!
The wedding on Saturday was so pretty and of course we are so proud of Mrs. Amy Beth Pinto who was such a beautiful bride.
Alas, I have one more big story to share from this special weekend. Notice the sky in the last 2 pictures above. Isn’t it beautiful? It really was on Friday. Saturday was a different story. When we woke up in the hotel we found that we had no power which meant no hot water, no blow dryers, etc. Yikes! So we headed to the Country Club where the wedding was taking place & used their showers to get ready. The wedding was great, although it was supposed to be an outside wedding, it was absolutely perfect & beautiful inside.
Then, as we headed out of town we got a call from a great friend (Sunny) who said to stay off of I-65 that a full size truck was underwater by Cool Springs. We turned around and head north on I-65 (due to traffic being backed up on Old Hickory) to I-40 and then to I-24. We were sailing along nicely until I noticed on the other side of the interstate a few cars under water and the traffic was completely stopped. I was thankful that we weren’t going that way until about 10 mins. later when traffic on our side stopped too. After sitting a while in the terrible rain storm people started trying to turn around because they figured out it was flooded ahead. That didn’t work because what we didn’t know was that it had flooded behind us too. We were stuck!!

(Notice how high the water is next to interstate at this point.)
Then, we start seeing people cut through the mud off of the interstate (about a football field & a 1/2) over to a gravel road. I’m looking at these people saying they are crazy and how impatient they are... then, Corey reminds me we have less than a quarter of a tank of gas and that if we didn’t get off the interstate soon we would be stuck. So, what did we do?
(Don’t you love the EXIT NOW sign?)
We follow all of the crazy people! Several cars had gotten stuck, but then we watched 5-6 cars including a few mini-vans cut through on a different, higher path. When they all made it through, Corey announced, “here we go”, I closed my eyes, and held on tight. I couldn’t believe we were mudding, and yes I mean mudding, in my mini-van!!
We made it, without getting stuck! Then the next challenge... we had to drive over a metal gate because we were on private property. We would find out later that a hummer tied up to it and drug the post, concrete and all, out of the ground. Crazy! I feel like I’m in a movie about now!

(This is the road we got on after going over the gate. Notice it is flooded up ahead too. So, we turned around & cut up another side road.)
We finally find a gas station so Corey starts filling up while I go inside to try to get more information. The word is that it is flooding everywhere and that we can go about a mile up and check into a hotel... we are not going home as planned. When I get outside people at the pump start talking... hey there is no more gas... I look at Corey. He quietly says, we are full, lets get out of here! Whew!
We find a hotel and get one of there last 2 rooms. The good news was that they had an inside pool. Bad news, there is another storm moving in after this one. There is nothing we can do at this point so we enjoy the evening and make plans for tomorrow.
Gracie’s new swimsuit!

Thanks to Corey who didn’t sleep much that night now had a plan. He had been watching the storm on TV and knew that we needed to get out of town early Sunday morning or we would be enjoying another fun night at this hotel. So we loaded up as quick as we could and got on the road.

(The road Sunday morning in Nashville. Still raining but no flooding up ahead... also no traffic!)
Thankfully, the waters had lowered enough on the interstate that we could get out of town. I was never so happy to see the sunshine as when we crossed into Georgia. We had made it!

and this is why you should never “do-it-yourself”

Wed, 12 May 2010 16:19:17 -0400

I was trying to hang curtains in my bathroom while Corey was putting up curtains in Will’s room. I thought I could reach. I climbed up on the side of the soaking tub, holding onto to the blinds that were firmly mounted on the wall. After I got them fixed just right I looked down to see how it would be best to climb down. I decided it didn’t look too far so I would just let go and kind of jump down into the tub. Well, that was a bad idea, my engagement ring got caught on the blinds and broke. The ring didn’t come off of my finger and thank the Lord it didn’t take my finger off!
I was so sad and felt bad to show Corey. Thankfully, I found a repair shop in the mall that would fix it in 30 mins. for $30. I didn’t even have to go a day without wearing it! So, from now on I’m thinking of leaving all of the tricky do-it-yourself jobs to someone else!

Family Fun!

Tue, 11 May 2010 18:30:43 -0400

Warning: This is a little long and a lot gross!
At the end of February my brother & sister-in-law, Jason & Amber came for a visit. We decided to check out Fernbank Musuem on Saturday. It is really cool museum filled with dinosaurs, kids play/exploring areas, exhibits like the weather one we saw that day and a lot of other really cool things. It turned out to be a memorable day in many ways for our family.
On our way to the museum Gracie was really fussy. It never crossed my mind that she might be sick until I heard it... she puked (sorry if you have a week stomach) all over herself and her carseat and pretty much anything that was within a foot radius of her. Will immediately started gagging... I was begging him to please not throw up too while Corey was trying to find a place to stop. Poor Jason & Amber, who don’t have kids yet, were probably thinking that they are now in no hurry to have one of these puking machines of their own.
We spent a good 30 minutes scrubbing down everything at the QT (gas station) while Gracie was now fine playing with Aunt Amber. We decided that she must have gotten car sick and carried on with our plans. (This is what happens by the time you have 2 kids. With the first you cancel everything and head home in fear of it happening again. Second child - you carry on unless it happens again!)
The dinosaurs were a big hit at the museum.
The whole family...
Will with Aunt Amber & Uncle Jason...

This is one of my most favorite pictures of the day! So funny!
Gracie was a little afraid of some of the exhibits.
The kids enjoyed playing in the kids area of the museum. Gracie built a city...

and Will went fishing!

Look, I caught one!
We made bubbles, too!!!
After, a lot of fun at the Museum we headed over to The Varsity for lunch. It is a fun family friendly place to eat downtown. It is always crowded, food is okay but we go mostly for the atmosphere.
I must say that they don’t get any cuter than this...

I don’t care if she did just pee-pee all over that booth where she is sitting. Yes, you read it right. As soon as I arrive at our booth with our food in tow I look over and Gracie is doing the pee-pee dance, in sheer horror, I grab her... big mistake. She starts pee-peeing on me, I quickly move her off of me back to the booth where she continues to fill our seats! My brother & I get the wonderful job of cleaning up the river she just made in our seats. After washing our hands we ate a cold lunch and got some fun pictures. BTW- at this point I’m pretty sure that not only were my brother & sister-in-law planning to skip on having their own babies but were also looking for an emergency exit from this crazy day. Did I mention that every time we had to get back in the van we were reminded of car sickness?!?! What a day!

My sweet boys!

They do have great milk-shakes at The Varsity.
Looking back at this picture I’m trying to figure out why in the world we are filling her up with more sugar & liquids. Probably a bad choice since she has puked & peed on us already.

So, sorry for all of the gross details of this day. It really was a fun day. We laughed a lot & played a lot. I’m pretty sure that these kind of incidents go right along with a fun family day when kids are involved. Memories we will never forget.
Apologies to Uncle Jason & Aunt Amber again for this crazy day! You were so great and didn’t even flinch during the messy moments. You will be great parents one day!