Mary Alice and Major...

Well, we just put the kiddoes to bed. They are so cute and so sweet! Josh and I were just talking about how blessed we are. My kids are so much fun. I am so blessed to be able to spend my days with them. I thank God every day for this wonderful gift, being able to be a full time mom.

Last night Mary Alice went to stay the night with my parents. She is in a Christmas play. She really enjoys it, but the drive is a beating!!! She has play practice 5 nights a week. She has been having so much fun on the stage, though. At first, we had no idea how she would feel about singing in front of strangers. Her voice is so precious, but Josh and I weren't exactly sure how she was going to handle singing in front of a hundred or so people. At my mother's suggestion, we took her up to the auditions. She was supposed to sing "Away In a Manger" and "Silent Night" for the crowd. I was too uneasy to go, also thinking that me being there might actually make things worse. Josh went with her instead. I guess they asked her to go get in the middle of the stage and read some lines. (Not really "read", someone fed the lines to her) Apparently, Mary Alice just marched right up there and boldly said her lines. She went on to sing her songs with no problem. Josh said that he wished he would've been able to record her sweet little voice belting out "Away In A Manger" so that everyone anywhere around could hear her. So sweet. So- Mary Alice is a baby angel in "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever". I think it will be good for her to do something outside of our house.

The move has been hard on all of us. We miss our old friends, being close to Josh's family, and our old church. Lots of people have been asking how we are doing. Honestly, things are starting to get better, but we REALLY miss our friends in Dallas. Mary Alice had such a sweet little group of buddies there. Tonight I was talking to her about something having to do with friends and she said, "I don't have any friends anymore, remember? They're all back in Texas, Garland." That sums it all up for me too. We are trying to make friends here, but realize that forming good friendships takes time. Right now we are praying for a church home and godly Christian friends.

On that note- we have been meeting some really sweet people at a congregation we've been attending the last couple of weeks. Last night, we went to their fall festival. Major was dressed up as a pirate. Mary Alice, of course, was not there due to her play practice. UGH! Major was so hilarious!! He had on these funny suede slippers that I had made into pirate boots. On the way in, he kicked them off. Underneath the boots he had on striped socks. They were adult sized knee socks that I had converted to Major-sized pirate socks by cutting off the feet of the adult socks and folding them over to fit around his feet. So- his toes were sticking out. (That wasn't supposed to show, but was supposed to be snuggly tucked away inside his pirate boots--the ones he kicked off.) So- He just ran around looking like a goofy pirate with his toes sticking out of his socks. It was a little past his bedtime, so he was a little wired. He kept running around the gym snatching things from people. (I like to think this rascally behavior was because he was really getting into being a pirate and NOT because my child is a greedy little stinker..) After a few minutes of that, he tugged at his vest and threw it on the floor. He also repeatedly threw off his cute little pirate hat and then would get mad shouting, "punny hat". That means "I want the funny hat, please." He wasn't really interested in the carnival booths, but had a great time poking at other children, shoving cookies into his mouth, and throwing things into the air. The professional photographer did manage to get a picture of him. (I think Major is charging at him with his pirate sword.) So funny. So.... we talked to some people at that church and headed home a little earlier than most other people. Oh, Major. He's a character. Such a little blessing.

I will try to figure out how to do the picture thing. I'm sure it is something that Josh can figure out. I'll try to get some Halloween pics up in a few days.

It is daylight savings time tonight. Don't forget to turn your clocks back!

Blogger's Mission Statement

Well, here I am sitting at my computer. I've been excited about starting this thing ever since I talked to Katie C. at Homecoming. I was talking about how I really wanted to be able to keep up with everyone there and how fun it was to catch up on people's lives, etc. She told me that I should start a blog. I laughed at her suggestion, partly because I didn't really know exactly what a blog was. I had read the blogs of deep-thinker types and read some great funny blogs, but really didn't think that what I had to say would be something that everyone would want to read on a daily basis. I consider myself to be neither extremely witty nor extremely bright and insightful, so I just laughed at Katie's suggestion. What I didn't know was how many people DO blog and just how many varieties of self-expression there are out there in the blog world. I looked up Katie C.'s blog, and then proceeded to read the blogs of her friends, and their friends, and so on and so on. I felt a little bit invasive of those people's lives, but realized that they wouldn't put their life stories out there if they didn't want people to read them.

I laughed SO hard at Shanta's and Amy B.'s blog and yawned at some others, but just realized that there was a kind of blogging that I was not previously aware of... I did not know that some people just blog to update their families on their lives. If you aren't funny or cute or well known for stimulating people's intellect. I can write simply for the purpose of updating family members on life events.

So.... I guess this first blog is a kindof my blogging mission statement...

MISSION STATEMENT

1. The mission of my blog site is to update family members on life events.

2. This blog is a stress reliever for me and just something that I think will be fun.

3. This blog is kind of like an open diary of my life with some innappropriate parts excluded so that it can be read by young and old alike...

4. The mission of this blog is NOT to make everyone laugh every day. That would go against my #2 statement.

5. This blog will NOT be filled with exciting insight into the inner workings of world events and will DEFINITELY not talk about anything going on in Hollywood. Who really cares (about Hollywood that is)? My family probably doesn't and if they did, would probably subscribe to People or some such junk instead of soliciting my blog for that information.

So that's the deal.....