Easter

So Easter was a blast with LM. He woke up early on Sunday morning and got up to see what the Easter Bunny had brought him. Way too much candy but other than that he made quit a haul! He got a new Cars puzzle that he has already mastered and several other little toys. The candy we are doling out a little at a time. We don't mind him eating candy but... He is already like the Energizer Bunny so too much candy and he is totally wired! His Granny Blood also sent him some new clothes and money for his new piggy bank.
Jerrett looked so cute in his new Easter clothes. I will post pics later but don't have the energy to get up and go find the cord to plug in the camera. We all got dressed up and went to an amazing church service. Jerrett even sat through the service with us. He did so great! After we got home, we ate a wonderful lunch and then hid Easter eggs for LM to find. The rest of the day consisted of rain rain and more rain.
To make matters worse I have been sick since Sunday afternoon. J has not been doing very well himself. He has lost a battle with the entertainment center, the window sill, and the dog. He is looking all sorts of beat up right now! He is also totally hyper since he has not been able to go outside and play. He is really not too interested in his toys for very long periods of time and since he doesn't watch tv it is becoming difficult to entertain him. Praying that the rain stops soon so that he can get some of his energy out!
Whats next on our plate is getting the countertops measured for our granite! WOOHOO. So excited to be getting rid of the ugly counter tops that we have now. So excited about that. TJ and I have already picked out the back splashes and everything to go with them so it is just a matter of actually getting them here! More than ready.
After that, off to work cows in the Pan Handle of good ole OK! We are really excited to get Jerrett up to the ranch and to see PaPa's cows. He is determined to help in some way. PaPa has already promised him a ride on the tractor and he is really excited about that too. While we are there, I am sure that we will help TJ's step sister and her husband move for the second time. They just sold their house and got a new one. We helped them move the last time and let me tell you, it was an experience! It was like a never ending pile of stuff! But oh to get those two boys together! Wyatt is exactly one year younger than Jerrett and I am sure they are going to be fast friends. Both of them are so active and love to be outside. Itll be exciting to see them get together.

Today in history

16 years ago today, I was sitting in the office of AJHS waiting on my mom to pick me up from school. I had a small modeling gig in OKC and was excited to be on my way. Mom was running late. The phone rang and the secretary answered the phone. She let out a little cry and tears starting running down her cheeks. She got up called to Mr. Smith and Mr. Staggs to come into the office. They came running and she turned the tv on. There on all the channels were pictures of the OKC bombing. They made an announcement over the PA for all the teachers to turn their classroom tvs on so that we could watch. OKC was a little over an hour away. How could this happen in OKC? What had happened? What about all those people? My first thought was not about all those other people but my Uncle Don. I knew that he had to be there. My uncle is a firefighter in Mid West City. Not too far from the Murrah Building. On his off days he often worked with an EMT crew. I knew that he had to be there. I sat there is stunned silence as chaos erupted around me. The images on tv did not seem real. I mean how could this really happen in OK? This only happened over seas right? I was so young that I could not think of any other time that anything like this had happened on US soil. How could anyone have so much hate in their heart that they would do something like that? And McVey was an American just like me. I could not and still do not understand how someone could do that. The image that has always haunted me from that day is the picture of the firefighter carrying out the youngest victim. A little girl that was 2 years old. There was a day care in the building and all of the kids were killed.
I know that my uncle worked many days at the site. I know that there were many more men and women that did the same. All of them seeing things and doing things that they never imagined themselves having to do. Calling upon God and their training to lead them in the right direction and give them strength. I remember that my uncle had to take off of work for a while after the bombing to kind of decompress and try to get past everything that he had seen. I think that most of those workers did. I am so proud of my uncle who is still a fire fighter. Risking his life every day so that he can help someone else. It is not an easy job and it takes a special person to be able to do that. Uncle Don is a Godly man and someone who is willing to do anything for anyone. I am so proud to be able to call him my uncle.
This was the first time that I had seen suffering like this. As I grew older there were the May 5 tornadoes that ravished parts of OK, all of the school shootings, 9-11, the beginning of the war, Katrina and so on. But the Murrah building was such an eye opening experience for me. I am so proud to be an Oklahoman and even more proud to be an American. As soon as I was old enough, I became trained as a first responder and began working with the Red Cross so that like my uncle, I could help make a difference. I am proud to say that TJ and I have many friends and family that serve in the military in different branches and different ways, we have friends and family that are police and firefighters. Even though we do not have jobs now that enable us to directly serve people, we do try and make a point to serve when we can. We hope to pass this down to our son. we would LOVE for him to serve in the military or choose a career of service if that is what he wants to do.
Today I pray for all the service men and women out there who do the jobs that noone else wants to do. From the bottom of my heart I thank you. Not just you but also your families. There is so much that the family goes through as well. I ask that God continue to have great men and women that have the heart of selfless service to others. Also let us remember the lives that have been lost in so many senseless acts of cowards.

My hubby

These past couple months have really flown by. Having Jerrett home has really been such an amazing time and it seems to have literally been yesterday when we got home. Things in our house will never be the same. It has been quite an adjustment all the way around. TJ and I are trying to adjust to having Jerrett and not having as much time to ourselves and Jerrett is still trying to adjust to being a part of a real family. This post though is long over due... It is about my hubby, my best friend. Since bringing our little guy home, it has become even more apparent how awesome TJ is. Things in our house can get crazy. As much as we love Jerrett, he can be trying at times. He is trying to figure out his place in the family, push the limits, and explore his new environment. At the same time that he is trying to figure all of that out, he is a typical 3 year old boy and into everything. TJ is so great with this. He is really patient and loving. Jerrett runs to the door every day when TJ comes home from work. He asks about his daddy all day and once TJ is home then that is where he wants to be. Jerrett really looks up to his daddy and I am so glad that TJ is a man of God. He really is someone for Jerrett to look up to. TJ is so awesome about helping me around the house too. Even though I am a stay at home mom, TJ is more than willing to help out if he sees something that needs to be done. He and Jerrett clear the table every night after dinner and get the kitchen cleaned up so that I can relax for a few minutes. He gives Jerrett his bath every night and gets to spend that one on one time with him. I am just so thankful for my husband. After everything that we have been through and the things that we continue to go through, he is my rock. I know that no matter what, TJ is there for me and supports me in all that I do. We are a team and I cannot imagine a better person to have on my team. I just wanted to write it out here so that he can see how much I appreciate him. I tell him all the time but sometimes it means more to have it written down so that he can read it! Well, I love you TJ and I cannot wait to share the rest of my life with you. You are such a wonderful husband and daddy!

Naturals Game!!!

This is a picture of the two most handsome guys I know, my sweet baby boy and the best husband in the world! This past Tuesday, we were blessed with tickets to go watch the Naturals play! It is a semi pro baseball team in our area. Our friends, Jonathan and Cher, have season tickets and they were not going to attend that game so we got the tickets! And what awesome seats! As you can sort of see in the pic, we were literally in the second row from the field. And right behind first base. I think that if the first baseman had missed a throw that TJ could have caught it. We were that close! Jerrett loved the game. He actually loves sports period and so being that close to the field was fun for him. He loved the mascot which is some kind of furry Sasquatch. TJ and I were afraid that it would scare him but he had no problem giving it 5 and talking to it. I thought that I had a pic but it was on my phone so... I am not good enough to get pics from my phone onto my blog. Jerrett was also excited because he got to eat all sorts of food that are generally not in our house. Lots of junk food. Nachos and pop corn and pop. But it was a special occasion so we let him. He also got to stay up late so that was a treat as well. Jerrett also liked getting to show off for all the people that were sitting around us. Since it was a week night during the school year, there were really not that many people there. TJ and I love going to these games so it is awesome that we can share it with our son who loves it also! He cannot wait until he gets to play tball next spring. TJ is pretty excited about that as well. TJ got Jerrett all decked out for the game once we got there. He got a new shirt, hat and ball with the team logo. Next thing you know he will be talking stats! Oh how I love my man and my son! Praise God that I can actually say that now. We have a SON! What an amazing feeling and blessing. It is hard to believe at times.

Easter Prep

It is getting really close to one of my favorite holidays! I am so excited and ready to share this day with Jerrett. It is the day that our Savior arose from the grave. You cannot have a better day of celebration than that. It is not about bunnies and chocolate eggs. Its about the fact that with out this day there would be no life ever lasting. If Christ had never gotten off of that cross and arisen than the prophecies would not have come true. I love Easter for more reasons than just that though. Spring is my favorite time of year. It shows the signs of new birth and of starting over with a clean slate. Easter is kind of a marker for what is to come. I am not a total scrooge. We are planning Jerrett's Easter right now. Our church is having an Easter egg hunt this coming Saturday. They do this so that on the actual Easter holiday it can be spent with family. So Jerrett is going to wear his super cute Easter outfit to go and hunt eggs on Saturday. Then next Friday we are headed west again to Oklahoma. My family has always done a huge egg hunt at my grannys. All of us grandkids in our Easter best. With her flowerbeds and everything, she has the best hiding spots! But that is after we attend Easter services at church. It is so much fun to attend church together as a whole family. I miss getting to sit next to my parents and listen to them sing praises. It is not that they are the best singers but you can hear the passion in their voices and it was a source of comfort and guidance when I was growing up. Now TJ and I get to share these type experiences with our son! We are so grateful for Jerrett. He is the most amazing little boy. We love him so much and are so excited to begin traditions with him. And Easter is going to be our first chance to start some. We will begin on the night before Easter. We will begin by starting our Resurrection cookies. If you do not know what they are let me know and I can get you the recipe and everything. Jerrett may be a little young for the story now and might not totally get it but he will at some point. After we do the Resurrection cookies the whole family will come together with cups of food coloring while we dye our eggs for the next day. Sunday morning when we get up we will check on the Resurrection cookies and you have to eat one then and there! After we go through the story of the cookies again and the importance of Easter then we will see if the Easter bunny has left Jerrett anything. This year, I think that Jerrett's Granny Blood is going to send some candy for us to put in his basket along with the other things that TJ and I picked up. He is going to get a couple puzzles, bubbles and a book from his grandma and grandpa, and a Veggie Tales movie. We would not normally put that much stuff in there but... Oh well this is his first Easter. Then we will all get dressed up in our new Easter clothes. That is a tradition within my family. My mom and or Granny used to make my cousins and I matching dresses every year when we were little and my brothers got new clothes also. I still do this. Every year TJ and I have both gotten new clothes so it was a given that Jerrett get new stuff also. This year TJ got some new stuff from Men's Warehouse. If it were up to him he would totally clean that store out! But when they have such great sales how can you resist?! He just got two new dress shirts for $90! It was their buy one get one free sale. We love that time of year! So TJ has an awesome purple and white striped shirt to go with his khakis. Jerrett has Khakis too and a little button up. So cute that he looks like a little man! His shirt is a bright blue and white check though. Love how it looks on him! My Easter outfit is cute too if I do say o myself! I found the most most awesome Steve Madden shoes and knew that they were going to be part of my Easter outfit. Then I just had to find the rest of the outfit! So my shoes are heels of course but they are shades of purple, grey, and yellow silk! The rest of the outfit is pretty plain but the shoes make the outfit. I found a really pretty purple shirt with a scoop neck and ruffle sleeves. My skirt is a grey a line that I already owned and I just found jewelry that matched. So that is enough of my ramblings for today! I will post pics after the holiday.

Catch up

So I know that I have not been blogging as much as I used to but keeping up with a certain 3 year old takes up most of my time! We have been relatively busy lately. Nothing out of the ordinary for us though. This weekend we started working on our landscaping which we totally ripped out last year. We planted a few things but it is still a little early to plant some of what we are wanting and needing. So our totally empty flower bed is not totally empty anymore. We bought the shutters for the house just have to get them hung up. Ordered the new granite for the kitchen and bathrooms. Got the new sinks and found the new back splashes for the kitchen and bathrooms too. I am so excited to whip this house into shape! It is getting there slowly. But I love doing this kind of stuff. What is still left on the house agenda is painting the living room and repainting our master bed and bath. New light fixtures in the living room and second bedroom, another patio outside, a butterfly garden and my summer veggie garden, as well as building another flower bed out front. Oh yeah, refinishing the kitchen cabinets and the master bath cabinets and hopefully having some new pot lights installed and a light over my garden tub. Yep quite a list but it is fun working on it. So thats whats new with the house, Jerrett is a different story altogether. He is not by any means the same child we brought home 2 months ago. This is a confident out going happy little boy who loves his family! We are still dealing with a little bit of control issues but nothing to extreme. He is very attached to me and TJ. He LOVES his grandma and grandpa and his uncles Chris and Russell. He talks about them adn prays for them all the time. He is really excited about his upcoming trip to his PaPa and nannas house. He wants to go work cows with daddy and papa. He is also excited because he gets to pick out a hefer calf all his own. He is such a boy I know that he will love the ranch. Jerrett is always outside playing in the dirt and getting totally nasty. He is fearless and wants to do everything that his daddy does. His favorite toys are his farm toys. It would not surprise me at all if he ends up just like his daddy and papa. But I love me some country boys! Jerrett is also taking swim lessons as I have stated in another post. He is so great! TJ got to come and watch for the first time yesterday. You could hear the pride in his voice when he talked about how well Jerrett did. Jerrett also has his first golf set. And yes he knows how to hold the clubs and which one to use and how to stand. TJ says you have to teach them early! I did not learn how to play golf until jr high so Jerrett is getting a jump on me! We love this little boy tand whatever he wants to do or whatever sport he wants to play we totally support. It is such a blessing to wake up to his sweet little voice every day!

Home and Home

I give up on trying to make the pictures do what I want them to on here! I am technology challenged to begin with so oh well. Here are a few pics of our past week. Jerrett and I left with the Raymer girls for my and Alisons home town of Ada on Wednesday morning. The kids were awesome on the drive! All it took was a bag of toys, Cars movie, and a lunch stop at McDonalds. That night Jerrett and I got to meet up with my Uncle Kent, Aunt Ginger, and two of my cousins. We ate at Polos which is a staple in Ada. It was great getting to see Jerrett meet some more of his family. He is so richly blessed with all of the people loving on him! Whats awesome is that my uncle offered us the use of their ranch whenever we want! TJ and I are so excited! What a blessing. It is going to make a great vacation spot for us. My aunt and uncle live in town and not at the ranch so we can either stay in the ranch house or camp out. There are cows and horses and four wheelers. There is a creek to play in and we are minutes from the lake. We totally plan to take advantage of this little hiding place this summer!

On to the trip... On Thursday morning, Alison and I got the kiddos packed back up and we headed to Jasmine Moran Children's Museum. I am not sure who had more fun, the kids or us! I had not been there is ages and it has changed so much! Hopefully next time TJ can be with us. The pics above are the kids on the train and Jerrett looking for dinosaur fossils in the sand. We also played in a jet, an old car, an ambulance, the bubble room, and too many other fun things to count. Too bad I cant put all of the pictures on here. Those poor kiddos were exhausted. Thursday night we had Folgers!!! That is an absolute must anytime we go back to Ada. TJ and I used to go about once a week when we lived there. It is literally this little bitty hamburger joint with 2 tables and a counter to sit at. Sometimes there is over an hour wait for tables so carry out is much easier to do. The place has been there forever! It was even there when my mom started college the first time right after she graduated high school. My grandparents said it was there even longer than that! Friday we met a friend from highschool and her 5 girls! God bless Summer. She and her husband have 5 girls under the age of 6! I am not sure how she does it but she is an amazing mom! Those girls were so well behaved and kind. The oldest took time out of her play to include Jerrett. Jerrett still is pretty clingy to me and wont stray to far from my side but Gracie was greast in getting J to play also!

Friday night was the alumni basketball game! What fun. There were so many people there that I had not seen in ages. TJ came down and went with us and he got to meet some of my old friends and teachers and just see a glimpse of who I was and what I did back in high schhol. It was also great to see that I am actually in a lot better shape than I thought I was! The boys game was great! They had alot more guys play than the ladies. Some of my best guy friends were there to play. It was so great to see Brad and Elliott.

Saturday we all went to eat breakfast at the Aldridge. Then we parted ways with the Raymers and the Hambys. I really cannot express how grateful we are to Mr Jim and for letting us stay with them. They treated Jerrett and I like family and Jerrett had so much fun having a sleep over with Sasha and Jacy. It was such a great time!

Anyway, we went to the alumni baseball game on Saturday. It was even better than basketball. I grew up with those boys. Russ played with the same boys every year from the time that they started tball. There were many hugs and catching up to do there not only with the boys who are now men but also with their parents and siblings that came. It was so touching to see the guys come together for one of their own. The benifit was in part for one of the guys sisters who died last month of cancer. What was great about the game is that the first time Matt, the guys sister is the one that died, the first pitch he hit an over the fence home run. What a way to honor his sister! After the game, TJ, Jerrett and I went to my Grandma's house. To Jerrett she is Grandma Mariano. Once again I am not sure who loved it more Jerrett or Grandma. She played with him outside, gave him a bath and read to him. She got down on the floor and played trucks with him. The same trucks my dad played with when he was young and the same trucks that my brothers and I played with at Grandmas house. It is so cool just to see certain things like that continue. Jerrett got to get up close and personal with some of the calves. He climbed the apple tree and got to eat some of Grandmas amazing cooking. I love seeing him getting to know his great grandma. So many kids nevr have that oppertunity and Jerrett has 3 great grandmas!

We stayed Saturday night with grandma and then Sunday morning we were off for Granny's house. Granny's house was always a favorite place for my brothers and I. When we were really little we lived down the road from Granny and so the farm was our playground. We knew it all, where to catch the best tadpoles and where the best black berries grew. I wish that we lived closer so that Jerrett could have that same experience but that is not in the cards right now. He had a blast anyway. He loved wandering through Grann'y flowerbeds. Seeing all of the butterflies and the animals at the farm. My parents and older brother came as well as one of my uncles. He had so much fun playing and making the grownups chase him all over. The guys got out the golf clubs and were hitting balls. That includes TJ's mini me. Jerrett has his own set. Imagine that?! THat afternoon we headed home. It had been a long couple days and Jerrett and I were both ready to be home. He had started to get very clingy and cranky and the anxiousness was coming back. So we are not really planning any trips anytime soon that are even close to that length. All in all it was a great time. A trip home to OK and then getting to come home to here once the trip was over.