Should NOT be blogging this today

Gigi and Emery

Noonie and Grandy

I woke up this morning to some poopy news with Blake's job. We thought he had another couple days together before we didn't see him for 6 months, but they need him to come in Fri-Sunday (as well as Wed/Thurs). We had planned to surprise the kids with a quick trip to the beach Friday morning. They've never seen an ocean before. So I am a wee bit crabby, and for the first time since we got here I am feeling like Negative Nancy. I miss my friends and family soooo bad and now he's gone.

SO I am finally posting the pics from the kids' swim party before we left.

Seriously. What friends let you take pictures of them in their bathing suit 6 weeks after having a baby? But I couldn't NOT post this...she is such a dear friend. We met for one last coffee date before I left and she gave me a sign that says: "There are some people one loves instantly and forever, just to know they are in the world is quite enough." Is that not the sweetest quote? So I hope you forgive me for posting this pic, but we just don't have many pics together!!!

The sweet Satterfields! Boy, we are gonna miss you guys!

If I crop my butt outta this pic, I crop my sweet baby out too. Shoot. Love you Shettron crew!!

My neighbor Samantha!!! Thanks for the coffee and my new mug!!! I LOVE IT!

Awww! The Proctor family (minus their 2 adorable boys who were busy swimming with my lil men). Proctors, sometimes I get frustrated with God for the fact that we just met this past year. But when I think about how much I love you all, I know that knowing you longer would've only made this goodbye harder...if that's possible. We all tried not to cry, but we just couldn't help it. Look at Cailey covering her eyes...it makes my heart ache seeing this pic.

Samantha and Rachelle, more sweet neighbors! It's amazing how God brought us all together.

No way. Is my son really checking out their booties?

My mama. And to think when I was little I used to make fun of her big sunglasses! We looked like such goons saying goodbye to one another in front of the MARTA. We didn't care. It's hard leaving your mama no matter how old you are!

My sistas. Jamie brought her kiddos Jackson and Savannah "Bena" as Sadie calls her. And my sis Laura brought her littlest Luke, who Sadie is smitten with.

We had the party in the morning, so we had 10 dozen donut holes and a bunch of fruit for the kids. We only had 8 donut holes left over!!! Emme sure enjoyed some herself!!!

Keely Beth!!! Thank you for coming to swim with the kids. We sure do love you sweet girl!

Cailey and Chenna! Girls we miss you so much and hate the idea of starting school without you being there with us!

Looks like trouble to me! Nah. These guys sure do love their cousin Jackson!

My sweet Auntie Mary Anne! On my dad's bday (which is 2 days after mine) my parents had a lil party for my dad with the family. It was a good chance for me to get to squeeze everyone one last time.

Now, I realize that to most of you this probably seems absurd. Sorry, but it's just how I feel. I am a relationships kind of girl. To walk away from those dearest to me is beyond difficult. Even if for just a year. My peeps help me to be a better mom. And I take that job kind of seriously.

For lunch the kids and I used our new smoothie maker I got for my birthday. We had so much fun creating smoothies and even more fun when I took the lid off and proceeded to push the blend button. It went flyin and blobs clobbered my face and hair. We laughed so hard we all about tee teed right there in the kitchen. God knew how much I needed that!!!

I know I will just be fine, but I had to share these pictures while I was thinking about you all!

A Promise Is A Promise

The LOVE of my life. Blake and I will have been together HALF of our lives this August! What an incredible blessing!!!!

MY BOYS!!!!

My stairstep dream!

Obviously, my kids are adorable!!! BUT look at these two work the camera?!?!

It helps that they ADORE the girl behind the lens!

This is Emery's flirty smile...it's so cute!!!

Nothing better than lovin' from daddy...

My supermodel

BabyCakes herself. Have I told you that we call her Chocolate? We have a book that we love called The Colors Of Us. Its a wonderful must read. Anyways, wherever we go here every brown person we see gasps and calls her chocolate. She just has the most beautiful skin and you wanna eat it!!!

All of these pictures were taken by Lesley Proctor photography! She is a mom in Edmond, OK and she does photography on the side. Thanks for letting me share these sweet friend!!!

We made it!!!

These are just a few of the pictures that I talked about in our last post. Hope I am not reposting the same pictures??? (I totally did!!! GRRR! Spent an HOUR uploading the same dang pics!) We just got our Internet working FINALLY and it's SLOW! I can't post as many pics, so I will try and post more tomorrow!

We've been in Atlanta for a week now! We have been in awe of all of the wonderful blessings in this move. The drive was long (15 hrs in one day!) but uneventful. And the day that we got here the temp dropped to 77 degrees and we drove in with the windows down! Our POD got here on time, and we unloaded the entire thing in about 5 hours and barely broke a sweat!

My parents drove here with us, and we worked their tails off. They hardly saw the city, but spent lots of time loving on us by getting us settled. My mom unpacked our entire kitchen and played with the kids, while my dad and Blake unloaded all the big stuff. My dad did all those things that I hate doing in a move (he hung ALL our wall decorations, got the washer/dryer working, put the crib together, etc). The great thing is how much it filled my love tank right before saying good-bye, but it's amazing because now I think of them constantly when I see/use these things!

So some random things we've found so far:

There are more brown people here (yay!), but we still seem to stick out. Actually, we saw more inter-racial families in Oklahoma. I know, it's only been a week. I'll let ya know how my study goes ;o) You know I don't care if we stick out...it's just that I think the kids feel it.

Our first ride on the MARTA was crazy weird. It was a little scary. Okay, so at one point I thought we might die. A guy sitting across from Blake and the boys was listening to something and was talking LOUDLY almost shouting and making shooting noises and using his hands as guns. Luckily he was pointing those "guns" out the window. You should've seen Owen. Bless.his.heart. He was as scared as I was. So I distracted the kids with some scenic talk. Then a lady got on and tried to share Jesus with everyone riding. Mercy, she scared me and I believe the same dad-gum thing she was selling.

The Aquarium is AMAZING!!! But there were so many people there that we really couldn't see a lot. We plan to go back, but not on a Friday afternoon ;o) Babycakes wanted to get down and explore everything, but we just couldn't let her because it was so packed.

Our apartment is HUGE. Well. Not really. But it feels so good to have 2 full bathrooms, an oven, washer and dryer, a full sized refrigerator WITH an ice maker!!! OMGoodness!! We've never had an ice maker before! And the kids are running and jumping and you can't hear a thing!! I tell you what, God gave us that experience in Aspen so that we'd know what we had here. We are in heaven.

Thanks for all of your prayers! I will post more pics tomorrow!!

Birthdays and good-byes

So this last weekend brought my birthday and a little early birthday gathering for the kids to say good-bye to some of our friends. Owen turns 6 just a few weeks after we get to Atlanta, then Sadie turns 3 two weeks after that. So we gathered some of our friends to squeeze their necks one last time before heading east. Oh...it's so hard for me to say good-bye!

Our precious friend Lesley Proctor took these pictures of our family FOR MY BIRTHDAY!! What a HUGE gift this is to a mama, huh? We had so much fun and she was kind enough to meet us early in the morning to avoid the HEAT of Oklahoma.

I love how they turned out and how you can see so much of the kids' personalities in them. They would such good sports taking these. The boys certainly DO NOT like having their pictures taken, so it made all the difference in the world to adore the one behind the camera (who just happened to bring her two boys with her to get smiles!).

I will post some pics from the pool party later. My mom took most of them with her camera.

Homeless and loving it!

Oh my word!! We closed on our house last week, moved out the week before and have been living with our parents ever since. We are loving all of this sweet time with our families before we move. Thank you all for so much quality time. The kids doing fireworks (snapits) and they LOVED them. Owen was telling me he was making fire.

All 11 grandkids on my side of the family.

Sadie loves the pool!

Seriously. Look at my lil chocolate baby in pink!! Cannot get enough of her!

Look at those teef! This is one happy girl. And she loves the water too.

Sadie fell asleep while I was putting her twists and beads in. Sleeping beauty

Owen and Sutton at Emme's party.

For reals. Could my kids be anymore adorable? I know I am biased, but come on.

Sissy loves sweets!!!

And balloons! She was a hoot batting at this.

So a part of becoming homeless was packing our stuff in the POD for Atlanta which included us eating meals on the floor.

We've also loved some precious precious time with Emery's birthfather. I have TONS of pictures and what a treasure they are and will be for Emme as she grows. This is one of my favorites. Today we saw him for the last time before we head to Atlanta. It was hard to say good-bye, but I got one of the recordable books and it was so cool to have his voice for Emme to hear over the next year.

Look at her!!! She owns the place, huh? This was at the nursing home where we met her paternal grandma for the first time...her namesake!

Emery eating doughnuts for her birthday!