Smile Box "Scrapbook"

This time I'm playing around with Smile Box. I wanted to see how this looks when I post it to my blog. It is a mini digital scrapbook. I'm hoping to do more with digital scrapbooking, but not sure if I'll use Smile Box or not.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Testing ~ Playing

This is a test post to see my new "Signature". I'm having fun playing with my blog settings. Richard helped me create my new blog header and I added photos of the boys I had made during Christmas. Probably more to come!!! :)

My BIG BOYS!!!

I am SO proud of Wesley! Richard and I had determined that with this new year we had one major goal for Wesley and that was to get him completely potty trained. I must admit, I waited the longest with him for several different reasons. But, it was apparent that this was the best time for us to do this. So a couple of weeks ago, we stopped buying daytime pullups and I bought Wesley his first "new" pairs of underwear ~ Scooby Doo!!! He has had some of Graham's "hand-me-downs", but I thought maybe with new ones he would be more motivated. We also used the same "sticker" chart that I used with Graham. He earns a sticker every time he goes potty and 2 if he does 2 things (pee and poo). When he gets 10 stickers, he can get a surprise. With Graham, he took a while, too, but when I told him he could not go to school unless he could go potty, that is all it took. With Wesley, not so much!!! He really has just taken his own sweet time to get motivated. It was funny though, because the stickers really did the trick for him and he has done GREAT! He has only had a couple of accidents (just pee pee). And, he even brought up with me the other day that NOW he can finally go to school!!! Hurray!!! In fact, he is doing so well, he even has had dry pullups in the morning. (I still put nighttime pullups on him and Graham) And, Graham, not wanting to be left out, has requested a sticker chart for him to get nighttime potty trained. He is doing pretty good with this, too. So, I'm hoping it won't be too much longer and I won't have to buy ANY more pullups!!! Woo Hoo!!! I'm not in a hurry for them to grow up, but it will be SO nice to not have to spend money on pullups!!!

So, since Christmas I really haven't taken many pics! We have all been sick (except Justus) with the crud over the past couple of weeks. I did get this one of Wesley, though, sleeping with his beloved "Mater" truck he got from Grandmama and Grandaddy! I love to watch them sleep! The one of Graham is an oldie, but goodie! He is sleeping with his water gun! Ahhhh, life with BOYS!!! :)

Christmas 2009

***WARNING - This is LONG post...Sorry, but at least I finally did it! :)
To keep from dragging this out, I decided to make 3 slideshows and put them all in the same post. This first slideshow is of our church's childrens ministy events for Christmas. We entered a float in the Brantley Christmas parade. We had a great turnout of kids and they had a blast, even though it was BRRRR Cold! I apologize for not having more pics of the rest of the parade. Richard actually took these because I was very sick with my bad cold and did not want to be out in that weather! I hate I missed it! Also, in this slide are pics from our children's Christmas Musical at Mt. Zion. It was a fireside setting with all the kids in pj's. Richard (in p.j.'s & robe, too) told the Christmas story in between songs. They did a GREAT job and Graham even got to sing in a trio. They sang We Three Kings and it was really good! Wesley would not sing, so he "passed-out" on the front pew! :) We have some wonderful Children's Ministry leaders...Thank you ALL for your dedication to our Lord and to our children!

Mt Zion Baptist Children's Ministry ~ Christmas 2009

This second slideshow is of our Christmas Eve 2009. We didn't have to travel 15hrs. one-way this year, but we did stay on the road a good bit! (We actually made 3 trips to Mobile in a week's time, 2hrs each way - you do the math!) It was worth it, though, because we LOVE our family!!! We actually traveled down to Mobile the day before Christmas Eve so Richard and I could go out for our 19th Wedding Anniversary celebration! We really enjoyed ourselves eating at one of our FAVORITE restaurants in Mobile that we havn't been able to go to in a long time, Big Time Diner!!! It is not a romantic atmosphere, but it is a very wholesome atmosphere (owned by wonderful Christians!) and the food is GREAT! We then proceeded to make a quick shopping errand and then went to the movies (something else we don't do often) and saw A Christmas Carol. We liked it and we got to see it in an EMPTY theatre...noone else was there! (That was romantic!) God is Good! (No pics of this night, though!) We then celebrated Christmas with the Harvey clan at Richard's parents on Christmas Eve day and then trucked on back up to Brantley to be back for our Christmas Eve Candlelight service at Mt Zion (again, no pics!) It was a beautiful service and we had a good group considering the weather...it was frightful with bad thunderstorms! We came home and I fixed a simple supper and then we read THE Christmas story. Actually, Justus read it from a book that was his when he was little. Then we opened presents under our tree...FUN MEMORIES ALL DAY!!!

Christmas Eve 2009

This last slideshow is of Christmas Day 2009. Of course after we all went and got all "snug in our beds", Santa visited!!! The boys must have been really good! Justus got a new t.v. to go with all his new bedroom furniture including a really nice media center!; a new dresser and desk! He also got the new NCAA 2010 football game for his PS2 and he got a Northface jacket. Graham and Wesley got a new t.v. and movie for their playroom and they both got battery operated 4-wheelers, fishing rods, space blaster guns, Auburn caps, glow in the dark planets and stars to hang in their bedroom, and G - a huge army plane and W - a dump truck with a working drill to take it apart and put back together. And of course they all got lots of Stocking Goodies! I have some funny video of us trying to get Wesley up, he was quite a sleepy head that morning. Also filmed them riding their 4-wheelers! (I'll post later)
We got ready and made another trip down to Mobile for Christmas with my side of the family at my mom's house. It is ALWAYS fun to get together with all of them! The kids opened presents and Granny (my mom) opened presents. Then those of us who participate played "dirty santa". We thought at first it was going to be boring, but then it took a turn and boy was there some excitement before it all ended! Poor Bubba ended up with a "lady" gift, thanks to his "sweet" daughter, Garth, but I'm preeety sure, Diane (Bubba's wife) didn't mind! HA!!! At least it was ALL in the family!!! LOL Another highlight, was that my mom's yard was SOAKED from all the December rains including the storms from the night before. All the guys decided to find the dryest spot (not that there really was one!) and play a little football...old guys vs. young!!! Well, the old guys won, (at least points-wise ~ my old guy, Richard PAID dearly the next few days...not sure you call that winning!), and the young guys ended up NASTY! Justus and Daryn got the worst of it...lots of mud all over, you guessed it, their new clothes and shoes! It REALLY was a whole lot of fun...again, lots of LASTING MEMORIES!!! (One big regret, I didn't get pics of most everybody!!!...including Mama!!!...Sorry! I will do better next time!!!)

Christmas Day 2009

Test Post

I am using this post as a test to see if my blog post notification settings are working. If you get this in your email, please leave a comment or send me an email to let me know if you get it.

Thank you,
Shannon

Christmas 2009 Decorations

Yes it is half-way through January and right on time (for me) I am posting Christmas pictures! I have started with a slideshow of the decoration we did of our new pastorium. Of course with a new house (new to us), it took a while for me to figure out where and how to put everything. I must confess I probably went overboard with my photos, but for one thing I am hoping by taking lots of pics, I can remember how to do this again next year as my mind is not as keen as it once was...I must be getting old or something! Ha!

We had several firsts in our decorating process this year. Maybe these will explain some of the pictures:

1. We bought our first "fake" tree. We have always bought real ones from the time we were first married, mainly because I grew up with an artificial one for so many years. I missed the wonderful scent, but I think the boys' allergies were better off for it.

2. We actually bought 3 "fake" trees and one small real one. I know...that sounds so expensive and so ridiculous! But, thank the Lord for Thanksgiving sales and for both Old Time Pottery & Michaels because we got REALLY GREAT deals on them! Those of you who know me, know it would have to be for me to buy them. I said for many years that I would only have ONE tree, but with this house having a formal living room and it being on the front of the house, I decided to do a themed tree...I used the colors of blue, lime green, gold and silver to highlight the robin's egg blue and light gold colors of that room. And, I put white doves on it to symbolize Peace On Earth! One of the "fake" trees took the place of our usual real tree and it's the one I decorate traditionally. It was located in our family room. The other "fake" tree was really a small one in an urn for the front porch. I decorated it simply with a bow to match the bow on my front door wreath and with holly berries to match my wreath as well. The only real tree we bought was a miniature frazier fir tree for Justus' room. He (my 17 yr old) pitched a fit because his whole life we have always bought a real tree. So we got this one for him and decorated it with blue and silver to compliment his Auburn bedroom. We did actually have one more tree, but it was free from a Seminary give-away I went to last year. It's the small one in Graham's and Wesley's room. They decorated it all by themselves and I think they did a GREAT job!

3. I finally bought us all matching stockings and had our names monogrammed on them. We have not had matching stockings for some time and it was fun to pick them out. My pic of them is not good, but if you can't tell, the boys' stockings all have 3-D characters...Justus has Santa, Graham has an elf (he had elf-ears when he was born and I'm not kidding the elf just looks like him...so cute!), and Wesley's has a snowman. Mine and Richard's were decorated with button polka dots for Richard and ric-rac swirls for me. They all had cute little puffy balls on the toes!

4. I had success and failure with live plants. I grew some beautiful paperwhites for my kitchen window...they were pretty, but were not the variety that smell sweet and Richard was especially sensitive to their bad scent! I also had a beautiful live rosemary tree that I was hoping to keep growing and use in my cooking, but it died about a week ago...I think the dry heat we've had to run practically non-stop during this cold spell just killed it. I also had a beautiful white poinsettia that is still pretty.

5. Lastly, 3 faves this year: 1.)my "Happy Birthday Jesus" plate I displayed in my kitchen...it really went with the colors I used in the kitchen. 2.)My new nativity which I displayed on my piano. I have wanted one this size for many years, but haven't really had anywhere I could display it. So, this year when I went searching, I quickly realized that ones this size are very expensive. I was blessed again, though, to find one on sale for a really great price during the Thanksgiving sales at Kirklands. 3.) And finally my outside decor...including my miniature tree, my new wreath made with my favorite ~ magnolias and red berries, the ribbon I chose to make the bows on both of those as well as on my teddy bear ivy topiary, wreaths on my windows (next year I will light them or spot-light them), and my Christmas "H" garden flag!

Decorating was fun and although it seems like so much when I put it all into words, it didn't seem so as I was doing it. One drawback was that I was sick with a very bad cold while actually having to put it all out, so I was pretty physically exhausted when I was done, but it was still fun...now only about 320 days until I get to do it all again!!!

(By the way, if you are my facebook friend, you can see that I posted this slideshow on my profile there, too. When you click on the name of the slideshow, it will take you to the slideshow and you can choose to see it on full screen and the pics look better and clearer.)