BASKETBALL

Well I am about to leave work and they will probably want to shoot me for it. Syd has a her first game of her county tournament and they scheduled it for 3:45. What about people who have to work. I just will never understand why they continually schedule stuff that early. Anyway wish her luck.


GO LADY EAGLES!!!!!!

UPDATE:

Well its about 9:30 here and we just got home from the boys game and I am sad to say that both teams lost. :(

Now we start softball.

ESCAPE

I need an escape. Do you ever have those days when you just really, really, really, and I mean really want to get away. Well it’s those days for me right now. I am tired and I need the BEACH!!!! I am tired of getting ready for taxes, tired of the end of the month (work stuff), I am just plain tired. I need the sand, the sun, and the quiet of a tropical island somewhere. Somewhere like Jamaica. :) We went a couple of years ago, and I really want to go back.

Now when I first found out we were going, you would think I would have been just absolutely ecstatic. Not me though, I actually started having small panic attacks. What if something happened to both of us while we were gone, who is going to take care of the kids? When I finally realized, and came to the understanding that I was going, I finally got used to thought of actually getting on the plane and going. I had never done anything like that before; the farthest I think I had been was either Houston or Michigan.

The stories I had heard of the drive from the airport to your resort, they were freaking me out. I thought surely it wont be that bad. Boy was I wrong. I didn't know a dump truck and a van could fit on a small rural road on the side of mountain, side by side. It was just a little crazy. We drove so close to one truck, that was so full of people that were hanging off the back of the truck, that someone in our van yelled I think we hit that guy. I don't think we did, but you just don't hear that everyday. We also drove through two funerals on the way. Now here in the south you respectfully stop on the side of the road and wait for the funeral to pass by, and Heaven help you if you don't. In Jamaica they were walking in the street and had bands and everything. Now when I say we drove through two funerals I mean through. We didn't stop we just drove around everybody. I'm telling you I wasn't used to that. One thing I did enjoy about the ride though was we had gotten there on a Sunday and all the little girls were walking home from church and they were all dressed up in their best frilly dresses. They looked so cute. Well we got to the resort in one piece, and we had a wonderful time.

I think what I loved the most was the nature and the scenery. It was absolutely gorgeous. We went horseback riding in the ocean and the ride to the beach was awesome. Everybody was complaining about being sore, but I didn't care it was one of the coolest experiences of my life. I recommend it highly. It was really neat to be able to see a completely different way of living.

Anyway I was just looking at some old pictures and found the ones from Jamaica. I thought I would share a little bit with you. Jamaica is a great place and the people are very friendly and helpful. If you haven't gone, you need to.

I NEED TO GO BACK!!!!!! Logan are your reading this. Logan... Logan...

MAMA :)

My Mama is:

Sweet

Funny

Beautiful

a very good quilter

a Breast Cancer Survivor

very special to me

HAPPY BIRHTDAY MAMA!!!!!

Photos courtesy of my sister Lisa. :)

(I'm her bestest sister ever ya know)

S'MORES

What are a couple of teenage girls to do when you want to make s'mores, but you just dont have all the right ingredients? You improvise. :)

If you don't have big marshmellows, use little ones. If you don't have hersheys, chocolate chips will do.

MMMMmmmmmm these are so good aren't they J. Yep these sure are some good s'mores S they are a bit messy though.

decorating again

I don't have to much to say right at the moment. I am off to decorate for yet another event. I don't do this all the time, It just so happens that Homecoming for my middleschooler and a chicken dinner fundraiser for my highschooler were about a week apart. So I'm off to the highschool to go decorate. I'll talk to you later today. :)

Happy Birthday to you :)

They say its your birthday, well Happy Birthday to You. :)'

Happy Birthday Deta, I love you!!!!!

Your Bestest Sister,

Valarie

CLOWN

So in case any of you have watched my little slide show thing at the bottom of my page and thought what in the world is going on with the clown picture, I will explain it.

Lets see it was three halloween's ago and we were having Trunk or Treat at our church. If you don't know what Trunk or Treat is, I'll explain that too.

First, Trunk or Treat is when you decorate your car for halloween and kid's come to the church and do the trick or treat thing in the parking lot. Its sortof like trick or treating and a fall festival all in one.

So anywho, my friend Melinda, her husband and my middle daughter, decided on a the theme "Big Top". Now theres one thing you need to understand, Melinda and I are just a teenzy weenzy bit competitive when it comes to these things. :)' We tend to go overboard. We don't even decorate a car, we decorate an E-Z up and normally take up two parking places, and have a generator and working lights and stuff. We even went had caramel apples, and would have had cotton candy, but we ran out of time. So by now I'm sure you guessed it, that we dressed up as clowns. We not only dressed up as clowns we had the following.................................................

........................................................

Ain't "she" purty :)'

Heres a picture of our whole theme.

It looked much better in person.

HMMMMM

Interesting very Interesting.........

TO BE A KID AGAIN :)

Saturday my sister Robin and I decided that we would go for a spin around the neighborhood like in the old days. We used to ride our bikes all day long around the neighborhood. We would go up and down the hills, stopping on the side of the rode to eat our picnic of Little Debbie cakes and drink our thermos of kool-aid that we fixed. Usually that hapened within the first 5 minutes of our trip. :) One time Robin was attacked by this vicious little white dog that came out of nowhere. I, being the big sister and all, had to rescue her. The dog I think had planned a sneak attack on us. Just waiting for the right moment to strike. We had been riding in that same area all our lives and then all of the sudden when we couldn't peddle anymore up the hill, we got off our bikes to walk them the rest of the way when out came this little white blurr. Robin still carries the scar on her leg today, reminding us of that awful, awful day. Bless her heart. :(

Well anyway back to what I originally wanted to say. We wanted to go for a spin like we used to.

So we hijacked our kids bikes.

I had to adjust the seat on mine it was a little low. My big butt apparently needed more height.

Finally we get going.

WooHoo here we go this is going to be so much fun!!

Ok we are back we forgot our Little Debbies and Kool Aid and we cant go up the hill without that :)'

And we did not come back because we couldn't make it up the hill. No sirree we could have made it up that hill no problem. We just needed our Little Debbies and Kool Aid for energy, yeah thats it energy.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY!!!!

In honor of my Daddy's birthday today, Little Logan and I made some cupcakes. Well actually Little Logan made them all himself with just a little help from me.

Look at how well he breaks eggs. It makes a mother proud. :)

Yep, You poured them all in there.

So now lets mix it all up and put it in the cupcake thingies.


p.s. I like to call stuff thingies, dohickies, and thingamabobs yall just need to know what I am talking about ;)

Cooking Note: Did you know that if you spray the cupcake thingies with Cooking spray they will come out of them much easier and the cupcakes wont get all stuck to them and stuff.

You knew that already huh, I bet your saying duh Valarie everybody knew that. Well give me a break I didn't, but know I do. So anyway back to the cupcakes......

Mommy its ok that you didn't know that I love you anyway. Well thank you Little Logan I love you too.

Here Mommy have a cupcake it will make you happy. :) Ok I think I will.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY!!!!!

My Daddy

My Daddy is:

a Man of God

Strong

Faithful

Loving

Kind

Handsome

Smart

Ingenious

a Good Cook

has a Green Thumb

a Good Singer

a Great Father to Six Children

a Grandfather to so many kids I can't even count them

77 tomorrow :)

Happy Birthday Daddy

Love, Valarie

I't isn't what I'm called, It's what I am called to do!

Ok so today I am going to get real personal. I am posting something I put on my myspace page. Now that I have started this blog, I thought this would be a good place to post my previous thoughts. Maybe someone will see it and it will help them, or maybe they know exactly where I am coming from. I got the idea for doing this particular post from a song by Branden Heath / I'm not who I was.

Before:

I needed to be Loved. I looked for attention and what I thought was love from people who did not love me at all.

After:I found my True Love!! And In the process I found my second Love, my wonderful husband Logan

For those of you who don't really know me, here's a little lesson about myself.

I am a product of a broken home, but in this day and time their are not a lot of families out there who have not experienced this. When all that happened, I feel that I sort of got lost in the shuffle. I was truly loved by my parents and family. I can't think of a time when I have not felt loved by them. At the same time though I had a misconception of what "LOVE" was. You know the kind of love that you don't get from family. The kind that makes you feel butterflies in your stomach and you can't sleep and you talk to each other for hours and hours, and fall asleep on the phone with each other. Well In my young life I thought that being physical with someone meant they loved you and you loved them. I thought the only way to keep a boyfriend was to be this way. Boy was I wrong! Actually I had more hurt and disappointment in my live because of that type of "LOVE".

When I was 16 God brought into my live this redneck, countryboy with a mullet from Alabama. We were in "LOVE", and shortly after we were pregnant. When Jessie came along my whole life changed for the better. Yes we were young and really truly did not know what Love was, but with the help of God and Jessie we learned how to truly love each other. Since then we have had two more wonderful children, Sydney and Little Logan. God has truly blessed us.

Speaking of God, He is my first TRUE LOVE. Even though I did not know it at the time, and did not always act like it. He has always loved me for me and not because of what I could do for him. He knows that I will fall, He knows that I will fail, but He was and still is, THERE FOR ME! I cannot described the wonderful feeling it is to know that I am loved by Him so much. I don't have to seek anyone here on earths approval, because I am approved by Him.

Well enough about me. :) Who were you before and who are you now?

HOMECOMING

Ok so this is what I have been doing the last few days.

Its homecoming week at school, and I have been helping with the decorating. I took off Monday and Tuesday to work on taxes and ended up doing this instead. This was alot more fun. We hand made all the decorations, and I tell ya it was alot of work. Thats not even all of them. Those flowers are all over the place. We also have more decorations made to put up at the dance on Friday. I will show yall those this weekend.

SNOW

Oh my gosh, its snowing right now about an hour away from here. You would think we were getting a blizzard they way some people are acting around here. Now I would love to see some real snow, you know something you could sled on. The only thing is, is that I have been working on homecoming for 4 days now and I WILL NOT BE HAPPY IF ALL OUR HARD WORK IS SNUFFED OUT BY SNOW! Sorry about that. Ok so it can snow, but it needs to wait until Friday night sometime. No what a minute its my Daddys birthday dinner on Saturday it needs to wait until Saturday night. No wait then we might not be able to go to church on Sunday, and we have stuff going on there also. Anyway I think its all a conspiracy the grocery stores and news stations have going on. The very slightest mention of white stuff and there wont be any bread or milk left at the store.

Lord, please just let it snow and melt as soon as it hits the ground. AMEN

TIRED

I AM TIRED!!!!!!! Sorry had to get that out. I have been working on stuff at the middle school for homecoming week and I am..... P O O P E D O U T. I will put up some pictures tomorrow and show yall what we did. I have to admit its pretty cute.

Talk to ya later :)'

MY BOY

As his mother I am just sure he is talking about something very deep and thought provoking, like maybe how to find a cure for some disease, or how to make world peace.

But no... he is talking about wrestling or as we say in the south wraslin.

He can't hardly go a minute without talking about it. We even had to take his bunk beds down and just put his mattress on the floor because he kept jumping off the top bunk. Here are a few shots of some of the wrestling moves he likes to do.

Poor Pooh Bear :(

Fire in the Sky

We had some pretty good storms pass thru here last night. So after they left the area, I went out and took some pictures of the sun setting on the left over storm clouds. This is what I got.

TRAMPOLINE SHOT

TRAMPOLINE SHOT :)

Ok, I took this of my son and daughter the other day, and thought it was pretty neat.

As to be expected with loving brothers and sisters, this is what happened next.

And this is the final result. :(

Bless his little heart. He lived thru it though. :)