Grandparents

Yesterday was spent in childcare, meal prep, menu planning and grocery shopping. It was super nice to go shopping by myself and leave the children with Grandpa and Grandma Joyner!

We got to have Grandpa and Grandma Bryan over for supper last night. Alyssa, Kylie, and Gavin got to come over too.

Playing concentration

Alyssa got Anna giggling

It was a fun evening of grandparents time.

Gardening, Catan and Fellowship

Saturday we got to enjoy having James home. 

Daddy helped Anna stand up.

Making biscuits for Saturday breakfast

 I added Aunt Pam's fertilizer to my little garden and planted it.

Lily had a bath and a change of clothes after getting soaking wet "helping" with the garden.

Sitting beside Grandma Joyner

Steve, Emily, and baby Keith came over for supper and Catan.

Mom helped Lily have her first ponytail ever!

Dad, Rebecca, Kristen and Amanda arrived from Texas at 8:30pm. We talked about their week and their travels until late Saturday night then settled the houseful of guests down for the night.

Sunday was busy. The entire group went to Sunday morning church, then we came home and got some pictures of the girls with Becca's awesome camera. After lunch Rebecca, Kristen and Amanda left for NC. Dad and Mom Joyner will stay until the middle of this week.

The children's choir practiced and then sang Sunday night. They did a great job. After church we all went to John and Vanessa's house for their first Sunday night fellowship ever! It was fun and well-attended.

Little kid's bench - a great idea!

Quiet Day

Mom Joyner let me rest yesterday morning, after I fed Anna, by watching Lily for me. That was nice!

Reading to Daddy from a catalog

 James got out a game of concentration yesterday evening and we played with Lily. She sort of almost got it. :-) She enjoyed turning the cards over for sure! It is hard to find games that two-year-olds can participate in. This one worked well.

"Dis one."

Busy Day!

I was bursting with energy yesterday and started running around the house cleaning and getting stuff done. I declared it anti-procrastination day in honor of Fly-Lady.

 After Anna was fed at 6:30am and put back in bed, Lily was lying there awake, so I laid in her toddler bed beside her and chatted about two eyes, one mouth, one nose, two arms, etc. It reminded me of hopscotch, so I made the game in the living room. Lily kind of doesn't know how to hop on one foot yet though.

Lily played by running in circles around the room yelling "one, two!"

Our sheets were in the wash - then I heard "I did it!"
She hauled the bear onto the bed by herself.

Lily woke up early and was tired mid-morning. I couldn't hear her for awhile (usually that's trouble) and found her in her bed lying down.

I managed to convince Lily that going outside to play was better than a nap right then, so they swung while I helped Grandma Joyner with the setup on her new car. Lily also helped me wash Grandma's car.

After washing the car and setting it up, we were ready for an instant lunch, so we drove to Dairy Queen.

Double chocolate cookie dough

Anna had issues going to sleep for her afternoon nap. She got overtired during the morning and just screamed and screamed instead of going to sleep. After 20 minutes of screaming, I tried burping her. She was happy to be held and giggled at Lily's antics beside us in her toddler bed. I figured she was fine and put her back down. 20 minutes of screaming later, I repeated the process. 20 minutes of screaming later, I brought her in the quieter living room and got her to sleep on my shoulder. Lily said hi to us when we came back in the room, and woke Anna up. Anna screamed again for 10 minutes in her bed. Finally I decided to get Lily up so it would be quieter and asked Mom to watch her. Mom volunteered to get Anna to sleep and I gladly let her! She rocked Anna into deep sleep but she awoke and cried when we transferred her to her bed. Mom patted her back to sleep and she slept for a long time. Having so many issues was unusual these days - most of the time Anna can get to sleep on her own.

I asked Aunt Pam if I could have some fertilizer as part of my anti-procastination day. Getting my garden going is something that needed to be done - two weeks ago. In the late afternoon while Anna was sleeping, I took Lily to Aunt Pam's farm to get the fertilizer, the Sunday School curriculum, and deliver a check to Becky.

Lily loved the chickens and took off running to them.

Lily so enjoyed the chickens.

 We walked to Mom Bryan's house to deliver a check to Becky. I got to say, "Hello the house!" as we walked up. That was fun. :-)

They matched! I just had to get a picture.

We got home and fixed and ate supper, then played Catan: Traders and Barbarians with Mom.
I won!

Sidewalk Chalk

Mom Joyner was sick Wednesday. Thankfully she is better this morning. I tried some of my Yarrow tea on her and she said it helped.

We inaugurated our new side porch step with sidewalk chalk. It worked well!

Welcome Home, Daddy!

Anna - just sitting there being cute

Wednesday night I had church nursery and we stayed for choir practice - nothing hugely eventful happened. Except that I seriously missed that one high note. :-)

Tuesday

Mom Joyner had fun reading to Lily from a book of action rhymes. 

I think this was "Where is Thumpkin"

 We met James at work and drove together to Foley, AL to eat supper at Lambert's Cafe - Home of the Thrown Rolls.

Anna was good during supper.

Lily got to sit in a booster seat.

We caught our thrown rolls and enjoyed them!

Anna decided she didn't want anything from the menu after all.

Home again with full tummies.

Anna's Appointment

I left Lily with Mom Joyner and took Anna to Gulf Breeze for her neurologist appointment by 9am. The receptionist went on and on about how cute Anna was.

The nurse practitioner asked tons of questions about Anna's history and my pregnancy, and looked Anna over. I held Anna while the nurse used her light to look in the baby's eyes. Anna did her astonished face and the nurse said, "You're a genius! I need to look in your mouth and you opened it!" Later we laid Anna down on her tummy to see how far she could raise her head. Anna was playing with a toy and the nurse asked me how far the baby could raise her head. Immediately Anna cranked her head up as far as she could and made us laugh again.

Exam table

Anna got a clean bill of health from the Doctor. They said her fontanel has closed early, but she shows no signs of disease or ill effects. That is great!

I left Gulf Breeze and raced to Milton to attend James Bloomfield's funeral. Mom Joyner brought Lily and met me at the church where she watched both girls. I slipped into the back of the room right after the funeral started. It was a bitter-sweet time to say farewell to a wonderful man. Bro. Bloomfield had gotten saved one month before he fell and his health deteriorated.

Mom, the girls, and I went to Chick-fil-a for lunch and saw Pastor there too. Then Mom stayed in the car and watched the girls while I shopped for groceries in WalMart.

I had borrowed a DVD from Becky Sanders by Michael Pearl about child training. While I watched it that afternoon, I heard both of my girls crying in their rooms while I learned about creating joyful times with your children. :-)

I got Lily up and had her help me put the frozen juice away in the freezer.

She learned about getting cold hands from handling frozen food!

We had supper with James after he came home, then he and I visited Mrs. Bloomfield. She was already resting, so we got ice cream and walked around the war memorial in Milton.

Mom watched the children again for us. The tables are turned and she is my built-in babysitter during her visit! I was always the built-in babysitter for my younger sister growing up.

Mom is Here!

I promise not to apologize every time I let time lapse between posts. Let me hasten to say that I am sorry for the delay, but I know it is annoying to have the first page of a post explain why the author didn't post for awhile. So now that is over, I will proceed. :-)

It has been eventful and fun around here! Friday was spent enjoying James' time off from work. He finished his third huge embroidery project just in time for Mom Joyner's visit. Mom had loaned us her thread, the pattern CD, and some fabric to make another nativity tile scene like the one we made for her in January. James finished the last of the 20 blocks Friday so we can give her the thread back during her visit. I am still trying to finish the other nativity scene and haven't sewn any of these blocks together yet. It will get done - but perhaps not right away.

Friday night we had hoped to go to Bear Lake for a cookout. I got just a taste of camping last weekend, and I wanted to enjoy more outdoor time. Unfortunately, it rained so we moved the party to Dad Bryan's house. Three of the five Bryan families were able to be there. Dad Bryan got to experience an Anna giggle fit. She enjoyed the antics of Kylie and Gavin Sanders very much.

Saturday was spent preparing for guests and looking for an exciting package to arrive on our front porch.

I sent this picture to my traveling relatives to hasten their arrival.

The package arrived one hour before Rebecca, Kristen, and Amanda.

It was Catan: Thieves and Barbarians along with an extension to play the game with more than four people. James was so thrilled to get it all out and attempt to figure out how to use this new version of Catan! It is a mind-bender to un-learn the Catan: Seafarers version so we could play this version. We just got it out and were starting a game when the girls arrived from NC.

This is a random picture from the web of this game version.

Kristen, Amanda, and Rebecca all went to the Navarre beach. Amanda hadn't seen white sand beaches before. My girls were napping when they were ready to go, so James and I stayed home and waited for them to wake up. We beguiled the time away by playing a game of Catan together. It was fun to learn new rules and play a different version. I was so close to winning, but James won instead.

By the time the babies woke up and were ready to hit the beach, Rebecca called to say that they were sufficiently cold and wet and were ready to come back.

Aunt Becca with an astonished Anna!

Kristen, Amanda, and Rebecca got to waltz with the babies.

Lily got to waltz with the big bear and Becca

 Mom and Dad arrived from NC in their car just in time for a lasagna supper. After supper John, Vanessa, and Carlie dropped by. It was fun for my parents to get to see baby Carlie, and John played the first part of a Catan game.

After I was done with baby care, I took over for John when he left and we played the game with five people. Again, I was super close to winning, but I ran out of cities - I had a handful of cards that would have given me the last victory point, but I didn't have a city left to build! Guess who won - James. It was fun to play with more than four people. You are allowed to build what you want at the end of anyone's turn.

We settled the houseful of guests into bed and said goodbye to Dad, Becca, Kristen and Amanda. They left early Sunday morning for Texas, their tent camping experience, and their homeschool conference. I was astonished to learn that this will be Becca and Amanda's very first time to tent camp. Ever.

Sunday morning we went to church, came home, napped, went to men's choir and children's choir practices, evening church, Burger King, and home.

This morning I have Anna's doctor appointment, then I would like to attend Bro. James Bloomfield's funeral. The doctor's appointment was made six months ago while Anna was in the NICU. The appointment is with a neurologist to see if everything is normal because she had issues at birth. I don't anticipate any problems since she seems to be developing very well. But we shall see!

Fun at the Playground

Wednesday was spent cleaning up and cooking for our stay-cation. We also went to church that night. Lily was still worn out from camping. That afternoon she got her pillow and blanket from her room and took a nap on the living room floor.

Thursday we went to the Benny Russell Park playground. I got lots of pictures of that!

Anna was a little un-impressed at first.

She figured she needed a little more security.

I thought at the time that this swing looked
more comfortable. :-)

Someone with Anna's name signed the wall

Lily enjoyed herself hugely at the park.