~Bella's stint as a flower girl~

I hope everyone is having a lovely Memorial Day weekend! We started ours out Friday with the wedding of some friends of ours. The groom ,Vincent, is an officer on my husband's squad and the bride, Lisa, we have known forever. Her mother keeps Bella for us and also was Hailey's babysitter about 9 years ago. I was a little concerned with how Bella was going to do, with her being only 22 months old, but she made it down the aisle successfully carried by the bride's daughter, Casey. It was adorable. The only problem came when Casey handed Bella off to me so that she could arrange her mother's veil. Bella decided that she wanted to be up front and made a beeline for the wedding party. I used my quick momma reflexes to grab her, but unfortunately she was having no part of that and started to throw an all out tantrum. Right in the middle of the wedding. The ceremony was outdoors so I took off with her across the grass away, from the action, so that the ceremony could continue without interruption. Have you ever tried to run across grass with 4 inch heels while carrying a thrashing toddler? Well, my ankle turned and I ended up having to kick my heels off across the grass and run barefoot with her across the lawn. How's that for entertainment? From what I hear the rest of the ceremony went off without a hitch, but I wouldn't know because I was in the building where Bella's screams could not be heard:) The rest of the night was great and Bella danced until 11pm that night. I mean, did not leave the dance floor. Danced her little heart out. She's a life of the party kinda girl. I have a feeling we may have our hands full with this one;)

25 Secrets of Happy Moms~ Secret # 21:)

I love reading parenting magazines for a lot of reasons. To get new ideas and insight, to find out the latest info, to read about things that relate to my life right now, and to feel connected with other moms like me. When editors ask questions that inspire me, I usually respond. I have been lucky enough to have two responses I've written published in American Baby magazine within the last year and a half. I thought that was kinda neat, but I was really suprised when I saw something I'd written in this article by Parents magazine! Check out "secret" #21 at this link written by yours truly;)

25 Secrets of Happy Moms

Hope everyone is enjoying this lovely spring weekend and soaking up lots of family time!:)

Beachy Post:)

I am one lucky girl:) To celebrate Mother's Day this year we made the short 1 1/2 hour trip to Emerald Isle for the weekend. ( I so appreciate how convenient it is to live so close to the beach!) Our Saturday was spent with our sweet friends the Braxton's on the beach soaking up the sun. Unfortunately we didn't get too many pics that day because we were so busy chasing kids:) But my girl's sure did love their 10 month old Knox and I loved getting to have his momma Jordan to hang out with:)

Day 2 ~ Aka~ Mother's Day was awesome. We spent it playing with the kids on the beach near fort macon and relaxing just the 5 of us. It truly was a perfect Mother's Day. Of course Hailey, who has been studying the pirate Blackbeard, was filling us in on all kinds of fun trivia. Like that Blackbeard's house, the Hammock house, is a few miles away in Beaufort and that his ship is, according to Hailey, underwater 12 miles off the coast at fort macon. I love that she is really into history like her momma:) We saw lots of fins in the water which were, of course, dolphins. Though you never know on the NC coast!. Tons were out Mother's day, jumping all around near shore. It was so much fun for the girls to watch! And the subject of fins brings us to our all time favorite week of summer~~~~ SHark week~~~. Yes, we know we have a couple of months to wait, but we are shark fanatics here and we anxiously await it every summer. And we are getting so close to summer! Just a few short weeks of school left for the girls and then off to Myrtle beach for our summer vacation! Can you tell I'm getting just a little bit excited for summer.... until then here are our pics from our beach Mother's Day!

Happy late Mother's Day to all of my fellow blogging mommies!! ( Okay, I'm a few days late but, hey, I'm a mother of three and part time worker bee. But I do try:)

Happy Nurse's Week!!

Yes, I have a stomach of steel (except when I'm pregnant) and absolutely nothing embarrasses me:) Happy Nurse's Week to all of my fellow nurses:)

~A Happy Birthday Weekend~

Happy Friday!! Work tonite and then on to the weekend!! We are celebrating Mary Kathryn's birthday Saturday, complete with a sleepover, movie night, and trip to the yogurt shoppe. Below is a picture of her after school on Wednesday (her actual bday). She wore her "birthday girl" pin and took lots of cupcakes for her classmates at snack time. Yes, the ones I stayed up all night to bake:)

Happy 7th Birthday to my precious Mary Kathryn!!

Part II of photo catch up

Well, It's midnight and I have just gotten home from a very busy night at work with some very sick people. And it's a good thing that I am way too wound up to sleep, because I am baking 3 dozen cupcakes for Mary Kathryn to take to school for her birthday tomorrow. And what do I notice on the kitchen counter when I get home?? Krispie kreme donuts, that's what! How in the world am I supposed to ignore those when the smell of cupcakes is making me want something sweet??!:) I"ll let you guess whether I ate one or not....:)
So before I ramble on anymore in my sleep deprived state, I am going to go on and post the pictures we took Easter Sunday:) Unfortunately, Michael had to work that weekend, but the girls and I went to church and then to my sister and brother-in-law's house for dinner and an Easter egg hunt. It was a gorgeous day and Crystal and Chris are excellent cooks, so we all had a blast and brought lots of food home for Michael to eat when he got off work.
I could not, for the life of me, get all three girls to look at the camera, but this one is the best of all three that I could get.

The girls and I

So now I am off to bed to get a few hours of sleep before the girls wake up. Luckily no work tomorrow yay!:)

~Part I of our photo catch up~

We are having a fantabulous day around here! The girls are at school and Bella and I have cleaned up, done laundry, made a trip to Target and now we are getting some rest time before picking the girls up. These are my kind of days!! And luckily they are more and more common around here:) I am ignoring the fact that I have to work from 7-11 tonite but maybe I can get a little nap in later;). Now on to a few of the many pictures I have stored on my camera, just waiting to be documented permanently on this blog. I'm seeing a blog book in the future and I want to make sure we are all caught up from the last few months of a crummy work schedule. These pictures were from a really warm day we were having and I was chasing Bella around the yard snapping away. The girls were at school but I have plenty of them coming up on a later post.

I think Bella was completely over our impromtu photo shoot by the time we took this last picture.

I would think she would be used to it by now:)