Mom and Student

Do those words even really go together? A mom and a student I am. This post could be alternately titled Mom, Student, Wife, Cook, Cleaner, Driver of many, Grocery shopper, Bath giver, playmate, teacher to my children...I think you get the picture. Especially since it is 11:51 pm and I have just finished my school work for my first day of classes. Yeap, for those of you just joining us....I'm one of those moms who is back in school. I started back in the spring. This is my third quarter and I can't lie, I wish it was my last. A good student I am not. A good manager of my time, I AM NOT! Let's re-cap...I have a husband, two kids, starting a business with a friend and am in school for lord knows what. Seriously, I have changed my major like four times in three quarters. If only my crystal ball wasn't broken I could figure out what would be my best path:) So this quarter I am taking a English core class and Medical Terminology??? Maybe at the very least my English class can help me with my love affair to comma's and these things.....

Stay tuned this week as I will be posting a give-a-way to help promote the new business which is Gracious Me! boutique, feel free to browse our little site!

Has anybody seen my boat....

Seriously, it has been raining in Georgia for exactly 7 days tomorrow! We were in a drought but I'm wondering if it is now safe to say that the drought is over. Well when it started I was having to get up and go work some in our "craft" spot. Then on Saturday I had a morning funeral so I couldn't sleep in. Then Sunday Church and today a meeting at my little one's school. So tomorrow morning I am totally looking forward to sleeping in on a rainy day!
I mean really...have you ever heard of schools closing in the state of Georgia b/c of rain. It's not just any rain, it's pouring pretty much all day long. I've been waiting for an ARC to come floating past my front door but they must still be gathering their animals.
On a serious note, in Atlanta there have been six deaths due to the flooding. That is very sad. Not to mention all the people that are losing their homes b/c we all know they don't have flood insurance. I mean seriously, why would you have flood insurance in Georgia! On the plus side, I have my very own lake in my yard:)

This Is All That I Can Say Right Now...

This is all that I can give!
Seriously...is there a better song than All that I can say by the David Crowder band. If you don't know it just click HERE and listen to it on You Tube. I heard this song sometime after the lose of my son almost three years ago. I think it pretty much says it all. When dealing with grief you get tired and you just feel all given out. Recently I have been feeling a pull. It's a pull to use my lose or experience for someone else....anyone else, no one in particular. My church has what they call communion meditation every Sunday. It is where someone other than the preacher comes to the front of the church and speaks briefly. They can read something or whatever they choose. Well I have felt like this is something I should do for a while. I told God that maybe I would do it around Cohen's birth/death day only if it was on a Sunday...maybe I should have checked the calendar before saying that b/c guess what....October 4 (Cohen's birth/death) falls on a Sunday. I am not a public speaker. My voice gets shaky, I start to sweat and I feel like I could vomit at any second. Heck, I feel that way lots of times when I am not speaking in front of people so how on this earth could I do this. Rylee, my daughter, will sing Amazing Grace that day in front of the church. That's right, I will send my child up there to do something in front of the church but I can't gather up the courage to go speak briefly. What would I say? Would it come to me the night before? Would God calm my heart and my anxiety that day? Do I do it? Do I not? Would I cry...I don't want to cry in front of everyone. I don't know just maybe This is all that I can say right now!

One more thing...I hear you can download this song now on itunes!

GRACIOUS ME! Boutique

Well as most of you know I have been sewing for a while. I am 100% self taught and have ruined lots of stuff through trial and error. Recently I have reconnected with an old friend from high school and me, her and another lady (Anne) decided to take a little chance and do a little business adventure together. So here we are sewing and sewing and sewing. Jessica (the old one..ha!) has an embroidery machine so we decided to get some blank embroidery items and see how those went. All of our stuff arrived today and it was like Christmas! There is a little of this....

and a little of that....

Aren't they neat! They collapse for easy storage when not in use. See...


Then there are these....awesome for gifts!

These cute little snack cups are pretty darn cool too!


So much more cute stuff to come...won't you join us at Gracious Me! Boutique or www.graciousmeboutique.etsy.com.

Traffic Jam

Seriously what in the heck is going on. I know I am pretty far from being blog famous but my blog traffic has greatly increased. It all started with a little girl with a headache and a fever. Then I did the post about H1N1. Well for some weird reason I wrote down that 4731 people had visited my blog since the very beginning of this blog (I use to have another one). Well since the H1N1 post on September 4th my blog visitors have went from 4731 to 12040! Does that make me blogfamous or just slightly popular. You know, the kind of popular that will go away when the whole H1N1 hype is over with. Well let me put your mind at ease...if your child is like mine and is a pretty healthy child, H1N1 is no worse than the average virus. The fever was the worst part unless you want to include the parts where she would get those crazy burst of energy that nearly wore me out!!!! But we made it through that sickness without any one else getting it! Anyways, if you have stopped by to visit just b/c of the H1N1 I hope you hang around a while. In the upcoming weeks I will be doing some great give aways to promote a new business adventure that I am heading in to. Hint...it involves sewing and embroidery!!!! So follow me so you can keep up with what is going on and maybe win something cute in the meantime!

NOT ME! Monday

Let's see what kind of craziness is going on this week. To read tons of other Not Me, Mondays just head over to HERE for lots of laughs and reality checks!

This week I most certainly did not walk in to Tegan's room only to see his cute little 2 year old butt without a diaper on. There is no way this would happen b/c the second my kid wakes up, I rush right in to get him and would never block him out and continue to get an extra hours sleep. Once said child learned to take his diaper off I would never start duct taping him in his diaper. I now am no longer convinced that duct tape can fix anything since this morning my son manage to have his diaper hanging open while the whole thing was duct taped to his butt. I did not consider the pain of pulling duct tape off his bare skin as his punishment...although if I did, I'm pretty sure it worked b/c he repeated "it hurt mommy" over and over again!

Part 1 in black and white

A few weeks ago I did a family session that turned out to be awesome. Besides the fact that this family is just plain beautiful, they were also so fun. Both mom and dad were all in to it and I didn't have to force dad to smile like I would have to do my own husband. Their kids are amazing and the camera really loves them. In less than an hour I took about 240 pictures of them. Here are just a few from the black and whites that I did. More color photos coming in the next post!

Mommy and her baby girl. Awesome moment!

I tell you Miss C is so perfect. Never a bad picture of either of the girls.

Little E was so precious. You can tell she loves her mommy so much in every picture.

Aren't they just a beautiful family!!!

I mean seriously, I didn't even have to ask her to pose like this. We were deciding what picture to do next and I look over and here she was!

I'm ready for my next session so if you live in or around Athens or Commerce let me know!

Sweet when she wants to be!

Yeap...she is sweet as ice cream when she wants to be.

A pretty good and fun little girl. She does have the attitude of a teenager sometimes but boy does she help me with her brother! She plays with him, stops him from doing things he shouldn't and she takes the majority of the hits from his throwing habits. (bless her heart!) I just love that little face and those big brown eyes!

Yeap...She is sweet!

Driving Miss Crazy

or also titled "Driving ME Crazy". So apparently all the hype about the swine flu being awful is true and false. I mean it is spreading like wildfire here in Georgia and it is hard to watch your kid be sick but the false part is that it didn't knock my kid down for weeks. It is day four and she is a live wire...I MEAN A LIVE WIRE. She thinks her world is ending b/c she is still being quarantined to her bedroom or my bedroom. The funniest thing is I think this stuff is making her a little wacky. If I didn't know any better I would think she has broke in to the liquor cabinet, but since we don't have one of those I am going with this being temporary insanity from the swine flu! Here are a few of the funny things she has said in the past couple of days:
"Be careful with me b/c I'm priceless"
"Who is the queen of this family?" This is so funny to me b/c the queen is me...duh!!! She Knows that!
Every time she coughs she yells out "I'm o.k.!"
"I'm never going to be able to come out of this room"
"I tried to come get you last night when I felt sick but when I opened my eyes, I was still in my bed!"
"A girl with the flu has a boring life!"
The list goes on and on. But on a serious note she seems to be recovering and bouncing back fast. I guess from all the hype I was expecting her to be knocked down by this stuff for at least a week but not her. I have had to practically tie her up in one room to keep her from spreading her germs to her brother....and me (and I guess her daddy too)! She is talking talking talking and driving me crazy crazy crazy! I mean she isn't talking about anything with any importance, just random things so she can hear her raspy sounding voice I guess! I am hoping that she has turned the flu corner and none of the rest of us will get it. Of course if I get it I probably won't be so lucky as to be recovered by day four! Us adults are big babies when it comes to getting sick.....me I wouldn't say I am a baby so much as I can't function well with sickness and must lay down and not move. Heck I would like to do that and not be sick but that would involve me faking a sickness and jinxing myself. I think I am hallucinating...is that a side effect of H1N1?
Oh and to go back to the hype thing...Poor Georgia Bulldawgs, all the build up for the GA season to start and well, let's just not talk about it!

H1N1 Go AWAY!!!

H1N1...we don't really like you and I am asking nicely for you to please leave our house without infecting any other members. You invaded my sweet six year olds body sometime around Wed. and started showing your ugly head with a headache...I mean am I the last person on earth to know that a headache is a major sign of the flu? Then you began to make my child feel cold with chills. Within 12 hours you gave her a fever and she has been down ever since. You have taken out the majority of the students in her class at school and I fear that you are gunning for me! Please set your eyes on me and not my precious little man who wants to touch every possible thing that could be infected. I have sprayed so much Lysol to try to kill you that I fear inhaling that much Lysol may turn out to be the death of me. So to re-cap...your main symptoms are headache, chills and fever. You are very sneaky and got one over on me with the whole headache thing. But never again will I let that happen. My little man will take tamiflu while you continue to knock out my daughter b/c there is not one thing in the whole entire world that can be done to help her! I will continue to rub my hands raw by washing them every 30 seconds b/c apparently that's about all I can do. H1N1, you are not my friend and never will be!!!

What a birthday!!!

We had Teg's 2nd birthday party this past Saturday. It was probably one of the most relaxed party I have ever thrown. We had it at a pavilion by the river. Even during the hot Georgia August it still wasn't all that bad. We had lots of shade and ceiling fans. It was a nice evening for a party. We had a whole meal full of bbq, coleslaw, baked beans, chips and cake. Of course there where lots of pictures taken. Here are just a few.

My new favorite picture of us!

Teg's gift from me, daddy and sissy.

He was fighting me to get down in this picture.

While we were singing happy birthday!

My nephew Caden

Me and the hubby!

Our niece Leah

My and my mini me!

KB after enjoying some cake!

His totally awesome cake. It didn't just look good but tasted wonderful too!