Ahoy Matey!!!

Today was Bo’s costume parade at school.  It is always so cute to see all the kids in their costumes!!!  Costumes have come a LONG way from when I was little!  I am reminded of this every year!!  I remember being Lucy from Charlie Brown with a lovely plastic dress that you wore over your real clothes and a horrible plastic mask over your face that made it impossible to breathe and an oh so comfortable rubber band going around the back of your head that would get so tangled up in your hair you had to have your mother cut it out!  Oh but Halloween was fun, safe, not sure parents actually sat down to go through every piece of your candy before you ate it, and the worst thing that could happen was a sugar overload!  Oh well, times have changed! 

Bo had a blast at his parade today and the best part was daddy got to surprise him by coming!! It’s very rarely that Jarrod gets to do things like this, but I gave him a heads up early on enough that he was able to work it into his schedule.  Thank you daddy, it meant so much having you there!!!!  So here is Pirate Bo…oh and if you’re wondering he’ll have his side kick dressed up this weekend with him :)

 

         

Playroom

So some of you know that we have decided to turn our front room, it’s technically a formal living, but no one uses those now, anyway…we have decided to turn ours into a playroom.  We had an actual playroom upstairs in an extra bedroom, but Bo never wanted to go up there unless I was upstairs cleaning, doing laundry, etc… So we had toys upstairs and toys downstairs because over time it had just started to become the “unofficial” playroom.  It’s right when you walk in our front door and I would absolutely cringe every time I walked past it, it was just the big empty bare room with toys! Made me crazy.  So after talking about it for a while we decided to convert it to an official playroom.  I painted the room, we bought a wall unit with organizing baskets, weeded out toys, we added drapes, and two lamps because when the house was built they didn’t put any light fixtures in??   We still aren’t completely done Santa is going to bring a table and chairs set that match the wall unit and I still need to get a rug, but…toys are put away and they even have their own tv in there for movies, Wii, etc…  He still has some toys that aren’t down here and my plan is to pack some of these away in a big box and bring the box out every now and then.  That way it will be like getting new toys and I don’t have to look at them all the time.  It was nice this weekend, Jarrod and I finally felt like we had our own space back.  Oh and for any family/friends buying Christmas and birthday gifts…please let’s talk first.  We are going to concentrate on adding on to collections that he has and really plays with versus buying all new stuff that we don’t have room for!  So here are a few pictures.  I wish I had taken a good “before” picture before I started, but I didn’t. 

First though…what can a few 2 x 4s, some material, and L brackets get you…

 

CURTAINS!!!  My sweet friend Janice, who sews, helped me make these!!  I’ve still got to play with them a little bit to get the material to hang just like I want but aren’t these cute!!  And MUCH cheaper than you could buy any for!

 

 

 

Apple Pickin’

Well that post title is a little misleading… “Apple Picking” would imply that we had gone to a location and picked apples…wrong!  Apparently apple orchards can run out of apples!  This past Saturday we headed up to Ellijay, Ga with Uncle Sam, Aunt Rachelle & Parker to go to an apple orchard.  Honestly I just wanted to go to be up in the mountains, see the beautiful leaves changing colors and be outside!  The apples were just going to be a bonus and we knew the kids would love it.  So we head out early Saturday morning, it was supposed to only take a little over an hour.  Well as usual, we got lost…several times!!!   It would take me all day to tell you how many times we stopped, turned around, re-routed etc, but let’s just say the theme coming out of Bo’s mouth was “why are we turning around” and “where’s the apple porch” (he kept calling it an apple porch)!  It took us an entire extra hour to get there!

So as we are getting close, although still unsure of where we are I get on the phone with my Uncle who was already there are this point and he’s like “don’t worry, take your time, and oh…by the way…they’re out of apples”!  Now if you knew my uncle you would know not to ever believe a word the man says so naturally I thought he was just pulling my leg so I asked to talk to Rachelle.  She confirms “nope, there really aren’t any apples on the trees”...seriously, you can’t make this stuff up!  I absolutely fell out laughing and so did Jarrod.  If you had been in the car with us, at times thinking one of us isn’t going to make it, and then get 2 miles away and hear there are no apples.  I don’t know the last time I’ve laughed that hard!!  Apparently they had harvested all of the apples off the trees and you could still get apples, but they were all in bins up front…kind of like the grocery store as Jarrod so kindly pointed out!  But we were there and we were going to make the best of it if it killed us!! 

So the boys had fun running around the apple orchard, shooting the apple cannon, and visiting the “petting farm” which looked like all the rejects from the other petting farms, poor animals!  They even had turkeys??  Who has turkeys in a petting farm??  Anyway, afterwards we had a picnic, which really was fun…when the kids weren’t fighting!  After lunch we talked the dads into taking the boys on a “hayride”.  Which basically consisted of a man on a tractor pulling a long trailer with some hay thrown in it, about 30 people and lots of fumes and dust!  The men said they inhaled enough fumes to knock out an elephant.  So once again a fun little family adventure!!  We had A LOT of laughs and just kept reminding ourselves we were making memories.  NEVER a dull moment in the Lawson house, never!  Let us know if you want to come along on our next adventure!!!!

 

 

Umm, where are the apples??

We turned around and he had found a random, rotten apple on the ground about to it eat!!

     

 

    

 

 

         

  

GO VOLS!

Last weekend Jarrod and I had the chance to go away for an entire weekend without kids!!!  It was fabulous!  Honestly, we had not even been to dinner alone since Charlotte was born and she just turned 5 months!  We have had so much going on the past few months and haven’t taken the time to find a sitter for both kids.  The one sitter we had who I would have left both kids with is now off at college.  Anywho…a HUGE thank you to my aunt and uncle for keeping Charlotte and Bo for the weekend, there’s no way we could have gone away without their help.  The kids had a blast and so did we, it’s so nice to know they are in good hands and we don’t have to worry about them.   

We had SO much fun.  We went up to Knoxville for the TN vs LSU game.  We knew it wasn’t going to be the best game for the Vols, but we knew it would be fun.  We met up with our good friends Patrick and Robin.  It was so fun to see them, we hadn’t hung out with them without one of us having kids with us since about 2005!  Our tickets were also with Jarrod’s good friend Tim.  So all the way around it was such a fun trip, even if there was a big loss!  We came back Sunday to two happy, worn out kiddos.  After this we realized this is definitely something we need to focus on doing for just us.  These days we can’t do anything alone so it was a MUCH needed getaway!!!!!