Happy Birthday Maggie!

11 years ago the most beautiful little girl made her appearance in this world!  Margaret Jean Williams, 8 lbs, 9 oz, and 20 1/2 inches long born at approximately 5:25 p.m.  I am so glad God gave us this sweet little girl.  She has been such a joy in our lives, she can be a pistol, but she is such a sweet girl.  I don't have any pictures of her on the computer of her as an infant but this one is when she was right around a year old.

This is a Maggie today!

Sleeping Beauty at 5:30 this morning

Happy Birthday Balloons in her room this morning!

Happy Birthday my sweet girl!  I love you so much!

New Beginnings

The end of the school year has arrived, well last week, and want to know what that means?  It's time for new beginnings.  I see lots of changes around here going to take place, with people and spaces.

Maggie is going into the 6th grade and will be 11 tomorrow.  She's going through big changes too.  Physically and emotionally.  I see fun times in our future.  For her birthday we are going to get her a real good flat iron, my mother is going to get her a real good hairdryer, she started shaving her legs a couple of weeks ago, she is getting her ears pierced and getting contacts.  BIG changes, I'm tellin' ya!  Although school was out last Wednesday, she went on Thursday to try out for a band instrument and she is going to play the french horn.  We are all excited about that!

Sarah will be going into the 2nd grade.  Lawd help us!!!  She had a pretty good year with her ADHD but the last month of school was pretty rough.  She kept getting off task and her teacher kept having to redirect her, which I'm sure can be quite frustrating when you are trying to teach other children.  She has a doctor's appointment in the middle of June and I'm sure they will want to adjust her medication a bit.  She is also heading to get a consultation with an orthodontist.  She has a really bad overbite, since she was born and she is just stinkin' cute!  I'm quite sure she is going to need extensive orthodontic work.

They are both spending the summer at the YMCA.  Maggie is going to volleyball camp right now, then she will also do a babysitting camp and cooking camp.  Sarah is going to do a soccer camp, princess camp and pool games camp.  So far, they are having a good time.  Great for them, not so much for me because I have camp t-shirts, wet towels and wet swimsuits to wash EVERY NIGHT!!!!  Oh well, it could be worse I guess!

I'm also going to use my time this summer to organize my spaces in my house.  I don't have a great place to keep the kids schools paper and important stuff that I need to remember to do.  I am going to reorganize my desk in the downstairs den, put some little storage drawers  and clipboards on the wall.  As I get it done, I will post my progress.  I want to do some crafts I've been putting off and I will post those as I get them done.

I'm looking forward to a great summer!

Facebook

I am done for the summer with Facebook.  It's a waste of time.  I have a friend and I will call her "friend A".  Friend A and I have been friends with each other for a few years now and her husband works with mine.  There were several of us girls that were good friends so always did stuff together and when school started, we kind of drifted apart, but I always tried to maintain some kind of communication with her.  A few of us decided at some point to create a group on FB so our group of friends could plan something and not include others that would cause problems.  Then we created another group all of the wives and/or other employees of our husbands' employment could keep in touch and let each other know if there were any needs, i.e., deaths, illnesses, new babies, etc.

Well, to make a long story short, an employee died, and some of the ladies in the larger group felt like no one cared, no one did anything for this family, etc.  It was blamed on Friend A, so she made it where everyone in the group could post anything anytime, which was a great idea.  I talked to Friend A and reminded her what kind of women we are dealing with and not to let that worry her.  I tried to do some damage control.

Fast forward a bit to March of this year, a friend was hurt on the job and his wife was expecting a new baby any day.  So I send out message to the larger group of ladies and was basically said that I knew there was animosity between some of the women, but it needed to be put aside for the good of our husbands and their jobs.  I had a few agreements and I thought everything was okay.  I never got a response of any kind from Friend A.  Not one.  I put one of the female employees in charge that's in the office of letting me know when someone might have a need and she agreed she would do that.  I was trying to keep everything together.

That's what I do.  I will always put any feelings I have aside to keep from there being any friction with family or friends.  That's who I am.

Apparently, this time it backfired on me. I've noticed some changes in how Friend A was acting towards me, making me feel like she could take me or leave me.  I've invited her to stuff to which she has declined.  I am so sad that she is not a part of my life anymore.  She is such a good hearted person and me being around her made me a better person.  I'm not going to beg someone to be my friend, but I need to know that I've done everything I can and as long as I feel good about what I've done, then it's not my problem.

Therefore, because of that and the fact that my kids are out of school for the summer and they have to get up earlier than they do when school is in session, I'm going to enjoy my long summer evenings with them because they are the most important in my life, I am not getting on Facebook.  Always too much drama!  We have swimming to do, Monopoly to play, ice cream to eat and lots of hugs and kisses to be had.

Hope everyone has a great summer!

Free Stuff and Funnies

Week or so ago, a local grocery store had an ad out that had a typo!  Funniest typo I have EVER seen!!!

Today I received this in the mail from Target!  I saw something post on one of the blogs I follow about signing up for this and I got it!!! I love free stuff and coupons!!!!

CRAY-Z Weekend!!!!!

I. AM. BEAT.  It all started Thursday.......Mike had some unexpected work, so I had to get a babysitter to get the kids off the bus.  Becca took them back to her house for the afternoon until I could get them.  I left work at 4:00 and rushed home to get Maggie's volleyball uniform, then rush to Becca's house, then rush to the other side of town for the game at 6:15.  Of course our girls won because they totally rock the court!!!  Go Strikers! We finally got home around 7:30, then it was time for dinner, baths and bed and time for mom to collapse and hang out with the most handsome man ever!

Friday, Becca had to pick up the girls again because Mike was working on a burglary case and had some charity work he was supposed to do for Cops on Top, where they get on top of a Wal-Mart, dance, harass patrons and get donations, all of which to go Special Olympics.  The police department does alot of fundraising for Special Olympics.  Cops really are great people and as long as you obey they law, they won't bother you!  Just sayin'!  My plan for Friday night since he was working was taking dinner to a friend and her family.  Shanon just had a baby two weeks ago, a pleasant surprise, but baby Mac joins this sweet family which consists of Wade, who is 13 and Zach and Garrett, twins who are 11, plus let's add in the fact that Steve, the husband/dad, blew out his knee while at work about a week before the baby was born. They have their hands full right now, so I was taking them dinner.  In the meantime, a friend calls and wants me to have dinner with her and another friend, so of course I say yes, but no babysitter until she tells me that her babysitter will keep all of them and we can split the cost!! YAHOO!!! Count me in!  So.....I get dinner for my friends, stop and get dinner for the kids, drop them off at Kristi's, take dinner to the friends, go back to Kristi's and then we head out.

Oh and let me mention that it took me ONE AND ONE HALF HOURS to get home from work!  I mean really?  It's like I never have plans with friends and the ONE time I do, traffic is horrible, I get behind folks who won't go the speed limit and get caught by every red light and train in the county!  What's up with that? Needless to say, I needed a little girl time and it was great hanging with my friends.

Saturday, me and the girls got up and headed to the other side of town (an hour away) to shop and get some groceries to cook some side dishes for my Dad's birthday.  He turned 61.....still young!  We had a great afternoon with family eating BBQ and enjoying the weather. It couldn't have been a more perfect day. We left my parents house an hour later than I wanted to, AND I had stop at Wal-Mart on the way home so we didn't get home until nearly 10!  EXHAUSTED AGAIN and then I had to clean our bathroom because it had been like 3 weeks since we last cleaned it.  Yeah, I know that sounds gross, but the bathroom wasn't gross, but we do live in our house, we are busy and we have two kids, sometimes things are forgotten.

Sunday, we got up and went to church and it was a special day because we walked down front with Maggie and she made her profession of faith and is getting baptized on May 6!  I am so excited for my sweet girl!  This is the most important decision she will ever make.  I'm excited about what God has done in her life. I treated the girls to lunch at McAlister's, which by the way kids eat free on Saturdays and Sundays, so it was really a treat to my bank account!  Then we went home, Maggie watched TV in the den, I crashed on the couch and Sarah went next door to play with the Silloway twins.  Mike was napping because once again he had to go to work, but I love my man for working so hard to provide for our family.  He is my hero!

Hope your weekend was as fun-filled at mine!

A Day In Nashville

On Wednesday of this past week, I went to Nashville, TN with Maggie, who is in the fifth grade, for a field trip. The kids who didn't get to go on the Washington D.C. trip had the opportunity to go on this field trip, so we went.  I haven't been on a fun field trip like this one so I wanted to spend the day with my girl and her friends.

We left the school at 5:45 IN THE MORNING and headed for Nashville.  It only took us 4 hours to get there, which I thought was pretty good.  First we went to The Hermitage, which is Andrew Jackson's home.  He was the 7th president and his wife's name was Rachel.  She died before he was elected president.  Her sister and brother in law had a whole slew of kids and they had a set of twins.  The sister and brother in law thought it would be a good idea to give Rachel and Andrew one of them so they adopted a son and named him Andrew Jackson, Jr.

Then it was off to eat lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe in downtown Nashville.  It was a great lunch. They serve us lunch and a cookie for dessert.  The staff at the Hard Rock were so accommodating for such a large group (3 charter buses full), I mean of course they knew we were coming and they were well prepared!  Thanks and kudos for putting up with so many kids at one time!

On the way to our next stop, while driving through downtown, our tour guide told us about a few points of interest and showed us where Taylor Swift lives.  All of the kids were excited and squealing.

Next was the Parthenon!  It was so cool!  We did the tour of the museum and then walk around outside and learned a little history about the Greek gods, etc.  Not much there to see, so we sat under the shade of a big tree and enjoyed the nice weather.

Our last stop was the Adventure Science Center.  There was lots of cool stuff for the kids to run around and play with/on.  They had a blast and it was a great way to end our fun filled day!

We loaded up the bus around 4 and headed back home, and I was very excited.

While on this trip with 5th graders, I learned a few things:

• They are very obnoxious.
• They are loud.
• Some of them stink of body odor. They are 10 and 11 years old, it's time to wear deodorant.
• NEVER EVER EVER sit in the back of the bus where the restroom is because you will inevitably get stuck on the bus with the "farter" of the class.  Mitchell really polluted the bus BEFORE he even came out of the bathroom!  There was a kid sitting in front of me saying "doo doo pee pee doo doo pee pee" and he kept on and finally I leaned and asked him how old he was and he said 11 and said well quit acting like you are in kindergarten.  I guess he was acting his age after all.  
• Some of the girls are way more "mature" than my sweet Maggie. Some of those girls could have passed for 8th graders.  WOW!  

Although I enjoyed going on the field trip with Maggie and she was an angel and her friends are so silly and I really enjoyed seeing her interact with her friends, I will think twice about going spending another long day with a bunch of 5th graders!

RIP Bratz

Last weekend, Maggie went with a friend to the school's spring fling.  Sarah was sick and I really didn't want to go, so of course I got from Sarah "Maggie gets to do everything".  Well, she's 10 and you are 6, so yeah.  Maggie, being the sweet girl she is, told Sarah she would try to win Sarah a goldfish.  Well, she did and we got Sarah a tank, a plastic plant and some pretty rocks for her gold fish and everything seemed okay.  That was on Friday.  By Saturday afternoon, Bratz the fish was a goner.  Sarah took it well and we prepared Bratz for a proper burial and I'm not talking the flushing kind of burial. Later that night, Pepper, our dog, dug it up and ate the fish.