Where Have I Been??

Well, I'll tell you. I've been at work! But as of last week, I have gone back to part-time and I couldn't be happier about my decision. I am so glad to be back at home with my kids two days a week!

Since I will be at home a couple of days a week again, I will hopefully be able to update a little more often. Since my last post at Easter, a lot has happened! Scott graduated from LCU on May 2nd, earning his second Masters degree, a Master of Arts in Biblical Interpretation. Scott's parents and grandmother were able to join us for the event. We are so proud of our daddy and all his accomplishments!

That same day, when we got home from Lubbock, we had Will's 4th birthday party. This year, we went with a pirate theme; Will dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow in the costume we got him. It was a crazy day, but we had a lot of fun! Since we were going to be out of town the day previous to Will's party, I bought his cake from the bakery this year instead of making it myself. They did a great job and it was delicious!

Will's actual birthday came on Mother's Day, May 10th. That day we celebrated by going to Midland, eating at Rosa's, shopping, and having birthday cookies on Spider-Man plates at home. It was a good day for all. We just can't believe that our big boy is FOUR!

Here is a random picture of Claire reading in her chair that I thought was too cute and had to share! The next picture is Claire at her end-of-the-year CDO program. They are singing "Twinkle, Twinkle." I don't have a very good picture of Will; we took more video of him than pictures.

We are excited that my parents are here this weekend. They are going to take care of the kids while Scott and I get away for a couple of days (our anniversary is coming up). Then, summer is right around the corner and our lives will be filled with VBS, camps, mission trips, youth rallies and the like! It doesn't seem possible that summer is so close.

I am looking forward to updating more often and keeping myself updated with all of you!

Goings-On

Hello! I am still alive :)

So much has been going on, and most of the time I am way too tired to even consider blogging, but I thought I'd update since I have a few pictures to share.

A couple of weeks ago, we went down to San Antonio to visit my grandmother and meet up with my parents. The kids and I went on with my mom and dad to Katy and Scott returned home to work on his essays for his comprehensive exams. We returned a few days later by plane. THAT was an experience I'd soon like to forget. Plane travel alone with two kids is not much fun. I did survive, though :) My mom took a lot of great pictures of my kids riding my brother's girlfriend's horse, but alas, I do not have those. Maybe my mom will email them to me (hint, hint!) ;)

Scott has since finished his essays and turned them it (Praise God!) and we are done with grad school stuff for a while. We also found someone to baby-sit our kids on those days that they're not in "school." So that is another "Praise!" The flower shop was extremely busy last week with several funeral pieces, so I definitely got in some "practice." This week has been a little slower so far, so that's kind of nice (it is our local schools' spring break, which is always notoriously slow).

The kids are doing well. Claire was sick for a while before we went to my parents' house, but she is better now. Will is currently obsessed with pirate "jewels" (which will explain a couple of pics), however we haven't watched Pirates of the Caribbean for several days as he is currently hooked on Star Wars (my fault, I let him watch it the other day). He still likes to dress as a pirate, though. Claire likes to do everything that Will is doing and is a sweet little helper. She is showing her intelligence here lately by recognizing some of the letters of the alphabet and talking more and more. She loves to sing and dance and is even starting to show interest in the potty. Kids grow WAY too fast!!!

One funny thing that Will has been doing the last few days is asking me if I am going to have a baby. I am not sure what has prompted this question...maybe it was the fact that we went shopping for a baby shower gift a few days ago. Anyway, he's asked me several times since about it and I have told him, no, that I'm not going to have a baby anytime soon. He says that I should and he wants a brother. Hmm. I'm not so sure.

Anyway, time for the pictures!

Scott and the kids watching Cinderella in our bed.

Claire's ponytail!

"Smarty Pants!"

Man, I wish this picture wasn't blurry! It would have been so great!

Will watching a movie while wearing his "pirate jewels", a Mardi Gras mask, and his Capt. Jack Sparrow hat.

Will (again with the pirate jewels) and his St. Patrick's Day hat he made at school (so cute!).

Claire with the leprechaun hat.

This is how I found my children when I came home today...Claire asleep in her chair (but sitting in it the wrong way, with its back on the ground)...

...and Will deeply engrossed in Winnie the Pooh, with my couch's arm cover on his head and wearing (of course) his pirate jewels. Funny.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Oh, my. Where do I start? We've had an interesting few weeks at work. Valentine's Day was pretty horrible, not because we were so overloaded with work but quite the opposite. It was the worst V-Day that I've ever seen, and I've worked in the flower business for about seven years now. Aside from that, we've had some people leave the shop, mainly for health reasons; they needed health insurance and my boss can't really provide insurance that's reasonably priced--it's a small business! However, the people that left included the lead designer for the shop, who has had 25+ years experience in floral design. She is phenomenal in what she can create and do. The other person that left has been our other full-time designer since October. I have been designing some off and on for the past few months, but not in any major capacity. I only work three days a week.

Sooo....guess who's the new lead designer? Yep, you guessed it...ME! This is both exciting and scary at the same time. Today I went in thinking I would only work from 9:00 to 2:00, but ended up having to stay til 5:30 because we had a lot of funeral work orders come in. But, I made two $75 dollar standing easels and several other things and everything looked pretty good! Not 25+ years-experience top-notch, but certainly not bad.

This means I am going to have to try to go back to work full time. This is going to be hard because I don't really have anyone to take care of my kids. So, please pray for me in this new position and also that I might find a good place for my kids to go on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays (they go to "school" on Wed. and Fri.). Scott is also trying to finish up his comprehensive exams, which is really 4 papers, in the next couple of weeks for his Masters of Arts in Biblical Interpretation from LCU. So, AHHH! This is a crazy time for all this to be happening. I am just asking for prayers as we try to accommodate all these new changes.

Oh yeah, and Claire has been sick with RSV for the past week--bad timing! She seems to be at the tail-end of it, though :) To close, I leave you with a couple of random pictures...because what's a blog post without pictures??

My sweet hubby surprised me with roses on Wednesday! Beautiful!!

At long last...Scott's diploma from ACU came in a couple of weeks ago!

Sweet little red shoes on Claire for Valentine's Day (from Nana).

And finally...

A sign of the future?? Will decided he needed to take a nap outside in this cardboard box the other day. (He stayed in there for about three minutes) :)

Merry Christmas, A Little Late

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas this year! Ours was great; we had a quiet little family Christmas at home. Our kids were awesome and slept in til 9:30. After we opened presents we made Cracker Barrel pancakes (someone gave us a basket with the mix) and we enjoyed watching all the DVDs Will received for Christmas including WALL-E, Kung Fu Panda, and The Polar Express. I even got a nap! It was great!

Claire amid the mess!


Claire playing with her dollhouse


The mess in full view...Will and I are talking to my parents via Skype on the laptop.


Will and Claire playing with his new pirate ship in his room.

Will and Claire eating their pancake brunch while watching WALL-E.

We had "Christmas" with our families back on the weekend of the 12th & 13th when Scott had his graduation. It was nice to have everyone here then and get to visit. In the interim between our Christmases, we went to Lubbock to give presents to the kids at the Children's Home twice (we found a rouge present in Scott's office after returning from the first trip), hosted the LCU Praise Choir students for their Christmas Tour, and had a Christmas party for the Youth Group kids. Scott's 31st birthday was also last Monday; as his "present" to Scott, Will slept til 11:30 that morning!

Scott and Claire both have sore throats right now, but other than that, we are well. Since we were home for Christmas this year, I have been working at the shop as designer the past couple of days as our lead designer is on vacation. It's been really fun and I have done a lot of funeral work which I haven't been able to do yet. I have really enjoyed it.

I guess that's about it for now; Scott has to preach this weekend, so I'd better let him work on his sermon! If I don't post again in the next few days, I wish you all a happy New Year as well!

Learning to Design

One dozen roses

A $35 arrangement

A $30 arrangement

A half-dozen roses

A $55 arrangment

My attempt at Teleflora's Halloween special...it is a $50 arrangement

Another view of the Halloween special

The bats are made out of holly leaves painted black :)

I've been dabbling as a designer at the flower shop the last few days. It's been something I've wanted to do ever since I started at the shop six years ago. Here are a few pics of some of the arrangements I've done the past few days. I still have a lot to learn, but I'm satisfied with what I've done so far :) It's been fun, at least!

S.T. Prather, Treasure Maps, Mums and so on...

A lot has happened since my last post, and that's the reason I haven't been posting! We've been so busy in the last month...after Will's surgery and recovery we've been going, going, going. Will has changed schools--he's back at Children's Day Out on Wednesdays and Fridays along with Claire. He has been doing really well there, and seems to remember his old classmates. He is as funny as ever and one of his new things is dressing himself. He comes up with some funky outfits. Take this one for example. My first thought was gansta rapper!

Claire took her first couple of steps a couple of weeks ago and hasn't really started "taking off" yet, but she's gradually getting there. Every day she goes a bit farther on her own.

I have been VERY busy at work, making LOTS of homecoming mums and trying to get my other work done as well :) We had two of our local homecomings on the same week (not this past Friday but the one before) and our other one is this week. We are just trying to get caught up because they were all so close together at the beginning of the year. It's been nuts. I stayed at work one night last week til nine and the next night til eleven. I even worked today from 12:30 to 6:00! Craziness!This is the mum I made for Claire (we went to one of the school's homecomings b/c one of our youth group girls was on the court)

And of course, Scott began his semester on the 26th. He is taking two classes this semester, and both are 8:00 classes in Abilene, so he has to get up those two mornings at 5:30 and drive for 2 hours to get to class! But the nice thing is, he's done by 11:00 and can get back in town to eat lunch and get back to his office (that is, if he doesn't need to do any library time!).

We've gotten to do a few fun things since Will's surgery as well. On Labor Day weekend, I was able to travel up to Amarillo and spend a few fun-filled days with my two good friends, Jen and Chelsey. It has been a tradition for us for about the last seven years to spend Labor Day weekend together. It's something the three of us look so forward to each year and we really enjoy our time together. We had fun just hanging out, cooking, and watching movies. We went to see both Mama Mia! and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, which were both good girly movies.

The following Wednesday, Harmony came and stayed with us as she had some work to do here in her Big Spring office. It was fun to see her again and she stayed til Friday morning. That night, Jen came again (her hubby has a hunting lease and our house is on the way!) and stayed til Sunday. That next Wednesday, my mom had some unexpected time off and came to visit us. That was also the same week of Hurricane Ike. Her work was cancelled, so she was able to stay until Sunday.

On the hurricane: My Dad stayed home to weather the storm with their dogs and watch the pool, etc. He did lose power for about 12 hours, and had some minor debris and damage, but nothing too horrific. A neighbor down the street lost a pretty big tree, but thankfully it fell into the street and not on their house. My parents' backdoor neighbors had a worse fate: the house they had just spent the last 6 months remodeling flooded on Sunday due to backed up drains (remnants of Ike dumped another 5.5 inches of rain on Katy on Sunday morning). My dad helped his neighbors rip up the flooring they'd just finished laying not a month before. My grandparents still do not have power at their house, last I heard, but are managing. Thankfully the weather at night has been cool enough to allow for sleep. My great aunt who lives on Lake Livingston had some damage to her small peir and two trees came down. She sent me some amazing pictures of the waves slamming the bulkhead that are below. It is amazing how the storm held up so far inland.

Okay, so about S.T. Prather: Claire now has a new nickname, as of tonight--Snaggle Tooth. At our youth devotional tonight after church, she fell on some brick steps (in the backyard of the house at which we were having the devo) and chipped not one, but two of her teeth! It was quite frightening as there was blood coming from her mouth and with her screaming like she was. The chips aren't bad; we're going to consult with a dentist who goes to church with us and see if he thinks anything needs to be done.

Cross-pollinated pumpkins: Yesterday, we needed to make a quick trip to Abilene to pick up a book that Scott needed for his class that was unavailable til this week. He needed to read part of it by Tuesday, so he needed it right away. We used the opportunity to visit our friends, Ty and Beth, who live there and see their new baby boy again. They have several varieties of pumpkins planted in their backyard. They didn't realize until after they had planted them, however, that some of the varieties need to be several acres apart in order to grow properly! So some of the pumpkins have cross-pollinated. We went out to show Will the patch and found a rather interesting looking pumpkin. They let us take it home (I thought it looked pretty cool!).


Treasure Maps: I FINALLY finished a gift for some friends at church I was working on for like 6 months! Their son's nursery is done in a pirate theme and I wanted to make a pirate's treasure map for them. So I started it back in March and just finished last week. Here's the final product...I'm pretty proud of it!!


Well, that's about all I can think of to share right now. I hope that everyone who might have read this and hasn't completely given up hope on me is doing well and loving life. We are, even if it is a bit hectic!

Still there?

Are you still there?? I am still here! I know...it's been almost a month since I've posted anything and you probably have every right to NOT check my blog anymore, but hey, give me a break. I've been pretty busy and therefore wiped out whenever I do have time.

So...what's been going on, you might ask? About the minute we got back from our Florida trip, Will became sick again (he had just finished a round of antibiotics). We got him well and then a few days later he was sick again. I'm beginning to think this kid may need to get his tonsils removed.

Then, last week, Claire started running fever...a pretty hot one too...about 100 to 102 degrees. She was really irritable and not eating well. She was super-restless at night. I chalked it up to teething, but by the fourth day of the fever, I was thinking maybe it was something else. Especially since I hadn't seen anything tooth-like in her mouth. I took her to the doc on Monday and he said her throat was red and prescribed Amoxicillin. Tueday, she woke up with a rash. I immediately thought, she's allergic to penicillin, because both my parents and I are. I took her back to the doctor and he said that he was pretty sure the rash would have come even if she hadn't taken the Amoxicillin because of her other symptoms. He said she had the "three-day measles" or Roseola. He did change her meds (probably just to set my mind at ease). He rash is pretty much gone now and she is eating and sleeping better. However, I have been giving her Benedryl to help with the itchiness of the rash! :)

In the meantime, Scott was busy getting ready for three back-to-back events starting on June 28th. He left last Saturday for Wilderness Trek in Colorado and will be returning on the 5th, only to turn around the VERY NEXT DAY and drive back to Wyoming for a mission trip. He will return from that on July 13th and our local VBS begins at 9:00 AM on the 14th and lasts three days. Thankfully, for the first two trips he doesn't have just a ton of responsibilities once he's there, but it is physically taxing. However, for VBS he is in charge and that comes at the very end of two physically exhausting trips. Please keep him in your prayers.

So, when not caring for sick kids and helping busy husband, I've been at work. Work has been a little nutty lately as it is full-swing wedding season and we only have one designer (we used to have three!). Since she's the only one, we've all been trying to pick up some of the slack.

Since Scott will be gone for two consecutive weeks, the kids and I have made the trip down to old H-town to stay with my parents. My mom flew in to Midland on the 1st and we drove here yesterday. On the way, we were able to visit my brother, Kendall, at his workplace, Callahan's General Store, in Austin, where he is a hat blocker. Then we ate dinner with him and his girlfriend, Stephanie. It was good to see them; it had been April when we saw them last.

The kids and I will be here until the 9th, when my dad will drive us back home. That means we will be here to celebrate Claire's first birthday! Tomorrow, we are going to my aunt's lakehouse for the Fourth and will have a little party for her there. So, I will definitely be posting again in the next few days to document that!

Amazing!!!!

Two posts in two days??? Ahhh!!! Where is Lauren and what have you done with her?

Nah...just kidding. It's me. Really. I am alive (Mom). And I am jumping for joy. My husband's semester is OVER!! Yea. He's celebrating in style by going to be before one o'clock in the morning for once this year. He's been in bed since eleven. Hopefully my clickety-clacking on the keyboard isn't disturbing him too much.

Anyway, I just wanted to post a few pictures and also tell you that I put up a post on my work blog. I created this blog back at the end of January, but things got so crazy around home and work that I really just couldn't keep it up for a while. I don't know if anyone ever looks at it or even knows it exists (I only ever did one post on it and we didn't ever put the web address on our statements or anything, so there is really no reason for anyone to know it exists except my boss and I. But I suppose one might stumble upon it if and when they searched for "Inspirations Flowers and Gifts."). So, anywho-ey...go check it out! It has lots of cool pictures of our works of genius :)

Okay...on to the fun stuff:

Uncle Kendall making waves in the pool for Will to ride. He LOVED it.

My mom thought this was too hilarious. She wanted to paint Claire's toenails. So to distract her we grabbed the first thing we found that we thought she couldn't hurt and it happened to be a tampon box. My mom took about ten pictures of Claire with this tampon box!

Mom and Dad's church has the most beautiful garden. There is even a pond in it that they use as their baptistry (I'm sure it's chlorinated and I know it has safety rails and steps, etc.). When they have baptisms, they video it and the congregation watches it live from inside the auditorium. It's pretty darn cool. Anyway, here are a few pics of Will in the garden. (Claire was asleep!)

The Malletts came to town a couple of weeks ago so Leland could help his old Big Spring kids with their yearbook. We were blessed to spend three different meals with them and their precious kids. Here's a pic of the baby girls--Claire and Reese--standing at our coffee table.

Will's birthday is Saturday and we are having a rootin', tootin' cowboy party. My mom found some western duds at her favorite store, Gymboree, and we got the package in the mail today; in time for Will to wear them to his party on Friday! Thanks, Nana! We love them!