Aubrey Elise

There's always room for more sugar and spice, with that being said, the girls are continuing to make a comeback with the birth of one more tiny baby. Once again a precious sweet soul left heaven and joined our family on November 6th at 4:10 in the afternoon. What a blessing she already is to our family. 

First time parents, Mollie and Aaron, are settling in and getting to know Miss Aubrey Elise. Isn't it funny that she starts out being sort of a stranger to them even though she is their very own? But they have quickly set to the task of getting to know her and realizing all that she already is at this moment in time. They are her forever protectors and biggest fans. Somehow she probably already knows that. She will learn so much more about them as her tiny life unfolds. 

I know this, she has captured hearts from here to Peoria and I've never been able to say that before ever. For now, she's officially the tiniest member of our big family. I've said many times it's amazing to me who God chooses to send us to join our family. Married in is great, but handpicked by God to join us here on earth, that's even better. 

As usual, our family swarmed the hospital with great anticipation of her arrival. We walked and waited and ate and waited and then waited some more, and then she was here safe and sound and ready for the world. 

So welcome to the family Miss Aubrey. Lets see how the day you were born, and the following days, played out. 

Pre baby arrival. Last photo as a two person family. 

Anna and Dale were checking out the boxed items. She was NOT disappointed. 

Then she wanted to get her steps in down the hospital halls. 

What's that you say? You want whatever you want when you want it? Comin right up.

What she wanted must have been a stroll down the hall.

Sissies...and cousins make the best friends. 

Who took this pic of these people?

That would be me and James.

This is what we do when waiting on a child to be birthed. We take over things.

James eats cupcakes. 

Yes James, I was talking about you.

Back atcha David.

So while we danced and played....

They met their daughter for the first time.

There she is, first pic. 

Instant family of three. 

First moments are the sweetest. 

Making memories that will last a lifetime. 

Grandparents meeting her for the first time. 

Aunts and uncles meeting baby Aubrey. 

First day was in the books and happiness was the order of the day while celebrating a beautiful baby girl. 

That's perfection right there. 

And she's already hogging the bed. The child was ready to stretch out. 

Grampers is happy. 

Such a cute little bow headed burrito!

I had a hard time taking any photos out. But then why would I?

This picture is magical. 

Dad getting some me time in with the first born. 

Then just like that, the hospital sent them on their way to Grandmother's house they went. Once there, she had an audience with the matriarch. It was the most important meeting so far...

Grandma imparted her love and wisdom to Aubrey for the first time. 

It was a good and successful first meet cute.

By the next day, she discovered she had found her most favorite place in the house. 

I think they're both smitten.

Grandma's got lots of love to spread around. 

Ninety years difference in those hands.  

I love this picture. 

Dad snuggles.

Marlie snuggles. 

These are snapshots of a moment in time that changed lives and will last forever. The first born into a young family. It's a precious moment to treasure and remember and retell the story of... So now the story of Mollie and Aaron includes the lovely phrase..."I remember the day you were born..." 

Now, Aubrey is part of her smaller family, but also a part of the bigger whole, as we continue to walk this life out together. Doing our best, living, loving and trusting and praising God as we do. That will always be the most important part of us. 

It's the happiest day in our family when a new baby is born into it. It's the culmination of all that we hope and dream to be wonderful and sweet and blessed. It's who we are, and what we know to be. But above all else....loved.

And so we are happy to meet you Aubrey Elise, and so happy you were God's perfect choice to join this big, loud and blessed beyond measure family.

We all can't wait to see you grow into the woman of God you will be.

We will watch and cheer and love and protect and pray over you all the days of your long, healthy and happy life.

Always loving you forever. 

Here are more frig messages and a little news

It's Wednesday and the first day of November, which means the countdown to Thanksgiving as well as Emma coming home is on! It's been since the first of September since I've seen Emma's face in person, and that's too long. November 1st also means that the serious countdown to the new family member is on as well. Aubrey will be the newest and smallest Thanksgiving attendee in....ever. Or since Brooke was born in 1978. I just transposed those numbers and it said 1798. That would be unimaginable. 

Update on the broken refrigerator. It still is. I can't talk about it since I don't cuss anymore. 

In other news, the back bathroom reno is ramping up to the fun stuff. The tile on the walls and floor are complete and now the bathroom floor is next and then it's grout for everybody!! Well, I realize tile isn't people and that statement made it sound like we would be grouting people, but it's very exciting and I just got excited! We still have to change out a small window and buy a new commode. That's gonna be awkward. I don't enjoy the thought of shopping for a terlet.

In some more news, girl's trip commences tomorrow...or later today and so I'll be out until next week. In the meantime, here are the latest of our frig messages...or better yet broken frig messages. But I can't talk about it...because of the no cuss rule. 

I'll be back Sunday and maybe I'll give a report of the weekend. 

Until then...

This is a quote from Project Runway back when it was good. I don't cuss, but our frig does. 

Hmmmm mum's the word on who posted this message.

This was a request from William to Emma and Olivia. At least I think so. 

This is a song quote? Emma's friend Jessica from Alexandria participated in the frig messages when she was here for the day. I was very excited for her effort. 

Someone was angry at certain children one day and put this up. She was brilliant to use the stick-it note due to so many A's and S's used in this phrase. 

This is a famous quote from John. When the kids were little, they were in the bath and had splashed so much water out of the tub that it went into the hall. John walked into the hall, slipped, fell and hit his ankle on the door jam and yelled, "I snapped it!!" Someone overreacted much? I'd say yes. It still simultaneously makes me laugh and annoyed at the same time. 

This just brings a smile to my face still. 

From an old movie I can't remember the name of. Maybe State Fair? 

We got on a roll here...

A jelly roll! Ha ha ha ha I always crack myself up. 

This isn't true for me. It's green paste and not delicious. 

This is completely true forever and always. Notice the temp inside the frig. It's sweater weather in there. 

My darling son made this message after looking in the balmy frig and finding nothing there. It's been VERY frustrating. But again. No can talk. If your sensibilities were offended by that word, get over it. I found it very amusing. 

But it's been a dry spell on the old frig for many days now and then Olivia said she thought the repairman was coming and so she was waiting until after he left to write something. As I've stated multi times, it's still broke. 

And that catches us up for now and since it's 2:44 I must go to bed quickly so that I can get up and leave town before lunch. 

I sleep very little anymore. It's really just changing positions from sitting up to lying down. It's a fact of my current life. 

Until I'm back, stay real people. 

Another few days have passed

It's Friday again and I'm thinking it's time to do a post. Once again, except for making some stylistic changes on my blog, I've found myself avoiding blogging. My life doesn't warrant very much excitement these days.

The biggest news I have to report is that our refrigerator is still not fixed. It will be until some time next week before it might get repaired. That's a month since a repairman came to look at it the first time. And 4 to 6 months since it started messing up. That annoys. Turns out it's a design flaw in the unit and not a broken part. Thanks for doing your part to screw stuff up at my house Whirlpool. Never again.  

We had a highly successful trip to Corsicana, except for warm temps. Summer has not gotten the message yet. I'm ready to complain about it being too cold! It's currently October 26th and it's 77.5 degrees outside. There's a cold front coming though and the temps are supposed to plummet into the 30's by the weekend. That's an extreme change and maybe uncalled for. Look at me ending multiple sentences with prepositions! I love myself right now. 

It's now Saturday and Caitlin's here for the weekend and it's currently 51.1 degrees outside. Our family won't be enjoying the warmth and glow of an inside fire though, due to my harvest decorations on the hearth. I just can't dismantle all my work for a day's fire. I can assure all people the weather is going to turn again and then my undoing of my decorations would be a pain in my side. 

Today Caitlin, Olivia and I ran a few errands and the big city girl that is now Caitlin can get quite riled up at any driver that crosses our path. As we were behind a person turning right very slowly she yelled, "Why are you moving so slow? We don't want to see your stick family (you know that decal on the backs of some cars) keep it moving!!! Her fuse was short and that's the honest truth about that. 

Right now we have chili cooking on the stove, jalapeño cornbread in the oven and some sort of pastry sitting on pans waiting for their turn to be baked. If Emma were here, all would be as good as it gets for me.  

I'm still continuing my foray into cupcake photo shoots. Newsflash cupcakes never complain and never talk back. It's really quite nice.  

 As opposed to the person on the left side in this photo.

Cupcakes also don't have attitude.

Sunday has now come by for one day this week and I'm still working this thing to death to have a post ready by....at least one day soon.

Today we were late for church because Olivia and Owen are slow enough to annoy me and make me late for church. As God as my witness this will be the last time it happens. Since I'll be out of town next Sunday, this scenario will have to play out in two weeks. It's like a cliffhanger for church goers.

It's 5:31 now on Sunday afternoon and Caitlin has left again for the big city. It's 61.4 degrees out my back door and the big news of the afternoon is I just found one of my cinderella pumpkins in a total mush meltdown on the floor in front of my fireplace. Ew and gross and it was not fun cleaning it up. So gross. I've had the worst time this year keeping my gourds and pumpkins alive for this decorating season. It's never happened this way before and I'm losing my faith in the gourd/pumpkin family. If it weren't for fake gourds and pumps, I'd have none at all. 

From Friday until 1:00 this afternoon seven trips were made to the grocery store by my family. I blame Whirlpool. My refrigerated items are spread out over two frigs. The pissy one was a balmy 61 degrees today. Milk products don't appreciate that. 

I'm not sure if I've reported on Addy's injury here yet. A couple months ago she was found to have torn the equivalent to an ACL in a human. She knows not that she shouldn't run because she will reinjure herself. She limps a lot these days.   

I'll close with this picture from 2007 and the first time I took a pic of this cypress that's been documented by me now almost every year since then. 

Thanksgiving is so close and large family gatherings are about to happen for real. 

We will soon be singing all the Thanksgiving songs.

Wait, are there Thanksgiving songs? Over the river? Through the woods? 

I'll just be riding a few blocks when T giving happens. 

We are in the season of holidays people! 

Where did 2017 go already? We're churning out these years like pretentious butter. 

I have to stop now... 

A stream of consciousness

Thursday, October 12

I've been avoiding my blog for weeks now. I feel like I have nothing to talk about and frankly, I'm bored with the snapchat photos. I'm not sure we're putting our best foot forward with looking silly enough to warrant me stealing your snaps. Or mine for that fact. Another snap of my fireplace just isn't worthy. Therefore I've been stymied because I've got very little other newsworthy things going on. 

I also don't care anymore about ending a sentence with a preposition. I'm going to look up the rules about that because I think it's dumb. Looked it up. It's a rule from Latin grammar. A dead language. Yep it validates me and I'm so over it and wish this very sentence ended in a prep. But it did not. 

Moving on...

Our bathroom reno is coming along. We're in the, putting tile in the shower, stage and I've been using a saw and I'm awesome. I still have all of my fingers and therefore I consider myself amazing at sawing tile. But we've had a couple of set backs this week that have caused me to have to have style meetings with my husband. I HATE the many decisions that go along with renos. It makes me realize I don't have the stamina for building a whole house. Can you imagine how many decisions have to be made when doing that!? I could not function. Anyway I'll have to do a post about the process of the b room when we have it completed. I've been taking pics of the process since before we started the demo. The transformation will be jaw dropping. At least for me. Here's hoping all my decisions were good ones!

Owen's taking John's class this semester and so far, John's winning. Owen took the second test in John's class today and he feels good about it. But he's beat due to a heavy schedule and I'm not sure he cares as much as he used to. I'm really OK with that. He's always needed to lighten up a bit when it comes to schooling. 

This week Olivia has had me take pictures of delicious looking cupcakes and the number of them in my house has been astounding. Up to five dozen at times. And I've only eaten one. That may be the most news worthy story of my year. Now I'm going to show you some cupcake pics that I've taken and we can all drool together. Well actually, since they're in my house, I can do more than drool...

 And that's all I have to say about that.  

Owen and I just each ate a grape and at the same time both winced and he said, "My mouth instantly rejected that." It bit us both back. And we walked away from the grapes. He is currently making a sandwich I hope to get a bite of. Prep ending sentence!! Huzzah!!

Friday, October 13

I've let this blog post work bleed over into the next day because I got sidetracked by something yesterday. I have no idea what it was, but it happens a lot. 

In other news...

My one year old refrigerator is on the fritz and it's really annoying me. After research and many trips and gathering as much info as I could, I decided to buy Whirlpool products in the form of a washer, dryer and refrigerator. After my one year old Whirlpool washing machine died, and now my frig is not cooling properly and the outside ice machine won't dispense ice, my faith in Whirlpool as a company currently sucks. If you're in the market for any appliances, walk away from Whirlpool. You've been warned. I currently hate Whirlpool. It's affected my DP drinking due to the cooling issues and that crap matters. 

John called me earlier to tell me something as well as report Owen made an A on his second exam in his class. I told him, "Good for you," to which he replied, "Good for me?!" Yes that is correct. I've told him not to fail my son. Also, Owen and I have some amount of integrity, since we both know where the tests are and haven't attempted any thieving. 

Saturday, October 14

It's been one week and not one more tile has been put up in the back bathroom. Ugh is all I can say. The plan is to finish it tomorrow. We shall see. 

Some of us will be going to Corsicana later this week for Fall break. I'm hoping for a glorious time with wonderful weather. It's time for summer to go away and leave us be. I can't wait to look outside and see the lovely colors of fall and feel a chill in the air that signifies summer in Louisiana is over for a little while. I want to see the blue sky of October and remember it as only an October blue sky to be. I want to smell the wood smoke in the air from the first fires of the season. I want to look out my back door and see Addy enjoying the chilly breezes of her favorite time of year. 

I want to look down the street and see the fallen leaves creating a golden carpet along the sidewalks. I want to feel Fall and know without a doubt the season has changed, even in Louisiana. 
   

It will change. The season will change. It always does, but summer's last gasp of heat has had a choke hold on the temperature for far too long now. 

Here's looking forward to tomorrow and that cool snap and feeling fine. 

In the meantime, I took these pictures so many years ago I can't remember, and I'm as happy with them as any I've ever taken. It was a beautiful golden tree right here in town. I still know exactly where it lives. 

Pumpkins and cotton and harvest and the feeling that something's about to change. 

Fall in all it's glory will be here soon.