Lindsey + Dentist = Crying Fit

Lindsey had her first visit to the dentist.  Our friend Michelle is a pediatric dentist.  Her office is super cute, all decked out in kids stuff, video games, colorful paintings, tvs with movies playing, sunglasses to wear, fingernail painting while your teeth are being cleaned.  Great stuff.  Linds watched as her big sister sat in the chair.  She seemed to be warm to the idea and was excited for her "tun" ie. turn.  As soon as Whitney got out of the chair, Linds climbed right in.

And.............these would be the beginning and the end of the pictures.  After this you can instead picture me in your mind holding Lindsey on my lap, her legs straddling my waist as she lays backwards with her head on Dr. Harmon's lap.  Picture crying, lots of it, as Michelle calmly and coolly and somehow gets everything done that she needs to get done.  She's a pro!  Actually, even though she was crying and not in the chair, Linds did pretty well.  I expected kicking and screaming and actually not even getting an exam done.  Set the bar low, kids, set the bar low.  I love you Lindsey Kate, you keep me on my toes! :)

Fun Creepiness

It was a day to celebrate our friend Quinn's 5th birthday.  We had two car loads to go see the Babyland General, the place where Cabbage Patch Kids are "born" and apparently, it's a staple when you're growing up in Georgia.  Whitney thought we were going to a factory and asked if they were going to have "conveyor belts like on 'How It's Made'".  They didn't have that, but they did have a nursery room, a toddler room, and a huge store full of every kind of Cabbage Patch you could ever imagine.  The kids absolutely loved it, and that's what it was all about, but my suspicion of creepiness started when I happened onto their website the night before we went.  Check out a tour of the hospital here.  I don't know, something about them acting like these babies were real creeped me out, dressed in nurses uniforms, a newborn nursery...but hey, I was in it for the kids and we're always up for trying new things.  Once we got there, wow, overwhelmed by the babies.  Look out, everywhere.  Babies. The girls were loving it, even Whitney who isn't a "baby" kind of girl.  Then it happened.  Creepiness confirmed.  Over the loud speaker, "Attention, boys and girls, Mother Cabbage is at 8 leaves dilated." Really?  8 leaves dilated?  But this was our cue to move over to the main attraction in the center of the store, a huge tree, complete with cabbage bunches with swivelling baby heads all around the base.  As if that wasn't enough a "doctor" came out and made all sorts of real life pregnancy references but in kid-friendly terms.  My personal favorite was "easy-otomy" for episiotomy.  What in the world.  Where were we?  But again, the kids were loving it!  Score!  Then finally, with the help of us pushing for Mother Cabbage, the baby was "born", being fully pulled out of a bunch of fabric cabbage leaves.  The big tradition is that the crowd gets to name the baby by yelling out names.  I had told Whitney about it, and when it was time, lookout, my non-shy girl yelled out "Grace!"  So Grace it was, and someone else yelled Abby for the middle name, so the new baby girl was Grace Abby.  The "doctor" quickly rushed the baby over the to newborn nursery, bathed her, checked her over, dressed her.  Oh, and we got to watch all this through the glass. Yes!  Then, out he came with the baby for our turn to hold her.  The kiddos all lined up.  I will say, that was precious.  Little Whitney was so proud to hold the baby that she named.  Ok, it was over. Yeah, it was a little creepy, but the kids all had fun and it made for some good laughs.  Until then, the creepiness factor drastically increased.  The "doctor" had put little Grace Abby back into the nursery and was on display for all to see.  As he walked back out he noticed a lady, in her 40s mind you, kind of hovering around.  So he asked her if she wanted to hold the baby...drum roll please........she said yes, smiled a weird little smile and said, "I know I've already got one, but I would like to hold her."  Yes, you are understanding this right, she was comfortably already carrying around another baby, not a real baby, a baby doll.  As in, fake.  As in, not real...bless her heart.  Hear me out on this, I'm am not trying to be judgemental here, I know it sounds a lot like I am, but who's with me on this?  Creepy?  It was a blast!  I'm sure we'll be back someday.  The girls loved it.  Plus Ben's got to see this!

All the kiddos, Quinn, Kallie, Payton, Lindsey, Cole, Whitney, Luke



Kids in a cabbage

Apparently they stuff grown ups too...

Whitney and Grace Abby

Fitting In

Male or female, you better learn how to handle at least one of these down here...

Not quite yet for this one, but her times coming I have a feeling...

A Birthday, Anniversary, and Garth

So Ben's highschool friend turns 30 in July and his wife, Nikki suprised him with a trip to Vegas and wanted us to tag along.  And we always try to take a trip around our anniversary, this year was number 8!  And we had an "Appreciation Dinner" for the Teamates for Kids foundation that we are a part of.  So.....it made perfect sense for us to head on out to Vegas!  It was great to spend some time with Keith and Nikki.  We don't usually get any extended time with them.  We had fun going through all the different casinos, getting some time at the pool, playing beach vollyball, visiting the Pawn Star shop, and just enjoyed hanging out together!  When they had to go home, we had a couple more days left.  First, we rented a Honda Goldwing and road out to Hoover Dam.  It was super fun, however super HOT!  It was 107 degrees that day, but the heat coming from the asphalt had to be double that.  Man, it was hot!  Totally worth it thought to feel the wind in your hair, per my hubby.  Then the next couple of nights we had some dinners to attend for the Teammates for Kids foundation that is run by Garth Brooks that we are a part of.  Each year he has a big thank you dinner/concert, so because he has a show in Vegas right now, that's where it was.  The food and hotel were fabulous, we stayed at The Wynn, but his show, by far was the coolest thing.  It was just him and his guitar, literally nothing else.  The main idea of the show was him telling where he got his musical influences from, what his parents listened to, his siblings, he went through music of the 60s, 70s and 80s.  He sang music from George Jones, Merle Haggard, James Taylor, Aretha Franklin, Billy Joel, Bob Segar, Elton John.  And the really cool thing was that he would play a couple lines from say, Bob Segar, and then go right into his own song so you could really hear the connection there.  It was just really neat to hear the stories about his family and his journey of becoming a musician.  We were so grateful to have some time away together.  I'm so blessed to have been married to my BFF for 8 years!  He's the best!  And after almost a week in Vegas we were refreshed and relaxed and ready to get back home to those little girls!

Our ride

Inside the power plant at Hoover Dam.  This little tour made my hubby so happy! :)

Hoover Dam, behind me is an old man, then behind him is the dam, then Lake Mead :)

Down below, the power plant

This was the other direction, looking south, you can see the Colorado River flowing at the bottom.  That bridge is new and bypasses the dam now.  Before you had to cross the actual dam to get to Arizona.  That had to be a transportation nightmare...

Lake Mead.  You can see on the rocks where its lighter.  They've had to lower the lake, it's only at 42% capacity, because they are expecting a record amount of snowmelt to be making its way down soon.  Sometime in the 80s they didn't do that and the lake was only 7 feet from the top of the dam!

Ben's liked the intake towers

This was our view from our room at The Wynn.  I can't even believe how fabulous this room was.  It had remote shades. Super cool. I never have stayed in, and probably will never stay in, such a nice room again.  Thanks Garth!

Heading to dinner and the concert

Father's Day

The girls had to celebrate their daddy a day early this year since Ben and I were leaving to go out of town on the actual day.  Now that Whitney is older, it's fun to let her pick out gifts for people.  She really thinks about it and gives good reason.  She initially wanted to get him a "tool to work on stuff".  Once we got to the tool section in Target she wasn't really impressed with the selection so as we looked around a bit.  When she saw lanterns and said that's what she wanted to get him because "that way he could see out in the shed because there isn't any light out there, mommy."  So cute and so thoughtful.  Lindsey of course agreed with what her big sister picked out.  I'm so proud of my daughter's daddy.  He's a super duper man!

Garden Update

Our garden needed some major attention and TLC so we had a family bonding night Tuesday with the Mocks and worked on getting things back in order over there.  The weeds were taking over.  We got it all picked and pulled and tilled and now she is looking good!  Unfortunately, our corn is a-goner, we think the deer tracks might have something to do with that.  And our pea plants are sparse, we only have a few of them coming on.  But everything else seems to be doing well.  After adding some fertilizer, we expect it to start growing like crazy!  The kiddos had a fun time making mud pies. :)

Bored

So last weekend we went back to Ohio for Ben's football camp.  We decided to drive this time.  It was the first time we had driven to Ohio and the longest trip so far.  We got to visit with a lot of family and the camp was very successful, around 200 kids.  The girls did great in the car.  They got about every snack imaginable and watched a lot of cartoons.  They seemed to be entertained fully.  Except maybe on the way back home to Georgia.  Apparently Lindsey had enough of snacks and cartoons and books and coloring books.  And I mean just coloring books.  As in, she still wanted color, with marker, just not in coloring books.  We thought they were just being quiet little girls, having fun watching Clifford...we laughed.

A Special Day

Ben and I have been on a spiritual journey, really, all our lives, but more intensely in the last couple of years.  All of that became public on Sunday, June 5th, 2011 as we were baptized in small, sweet ceremony with most of our closet friends.  A year or so ago when we made the choice to make Georgia our home, we immediately knew we wanted to become members of our church.  But after speaking to them, we lacked being baptized after we had made our commitment to Christ at a younger age.  Ben was baptized as an infant in the Presbyterian church he was raised in, but not by immersion.  I was baptized in a Baptist church when I was seven, but couldn't even remember the date or really, for the most part, the experience.  And I had been questioning within the last few years whether or not I should be re-baptized now that I understood more about the commitment.  But we really struggled with the fact that our church, not God, was requiring us to be baptized.  For the last year or so we thought about it, prayed about, talked about it with family and friends until we finally came to the conclusion, really I think it was God changing our hearts about the issue, that we wanted to make this public profession.  We did it to become members of our church, so we could raise our girls telling them we were members.  We did it so that they would see this as a step of obedience, so that hopefully someday they too would choose to do the same thing.  We did it because we love the Lord and we felt it was time.  It was the perfect way for us to do it.  We had a great friend and counselor, Bruce, perform the baptism at our Sunday school teacher's pool.  Most of our friends and their children were there.  These people mean the world to us.  They are a special group!  Our girls were there, little feet splashing in the pool, waving to us as we stood in the water.  After we were both baptized little Lindsey shouted, "You did it!"  Such a precious moment.  Such a great day.  So memorable.  Perfect for us.

Shoes

The girls did a little shoe parade for us the other night.  The whole time they were parading in and out of our closet I kept telling myself that I needed to get me lazy tooshie off the couch and go get the camera, but I didn't.  And as it was happening, Ben and I commented on how these were the things we were going to miss down the road. That still didn't convince us to leave the comfort of the couch to get the camera.  Once the shoe show was complete and it was time for bed, I asked Whitney if they put the shoes away, back on the rack in our closet.  Being the compliant one she answered yes and off we were to tuck them in for the night.  It wasn't until a couple hours later when we were heading to bed that we found their "putting away". 

This was too good not to get the camera.  Plus, I was already up off the couch, so I didn't really have an excuse at that point.  I love how the shoes are hanging from the rack.  And that most aren't with their pair.  And that some are lying down on the rack.  Some are shoved under the rack.  And still some didn't even make it to a rack at all.  Funny thing too is that I remember Whitney bellowing to me during her clean up process that "Mommy!  Lindsey just keeps making a mess with the shoes!"  Hmmmm....I wonder what Lindsey was trying to do to contribute to the process.

P.S.  I'm proud to say that after a few days, the shoes still look like this :)