Josephine's 3rd Birthday

I forget that the blogger uploads photos "backwards" - so the last photo you choose is the first one that shows up on the blog. I'm just going to go with it and blog backwards! Jo was such a trooper today and she stayed awake and payed hard until about 5:30 when she PASSED out. Her friend Mikaiyah was here and covered her up with her blanket. Sweet thing!
Jo - passed out after her party.
Opening presents - her crown was a project that we worked on during the party - they had a scavenger hunt (like Dora - complete with a map). The first stage we made bracelets like Dora and the second stage we all made crowns. The last stop was the house where we sang "Happy Birthday" and blew out candles.
Opening presents - you can see Mikaiyah's crown (behind Emily).
Josephine got a personalized plate from her cousins - Emily, Annie, and Lilly Grace.
Eating cake out on the sunporch...
Blowing out her candles. She tried really hard to blow out the candle, but she was just too little - so we all had to help. The girls were more than happy!
Annie Bug with her tiara.
Josephine - showing off her map, bracelet, and crown from today's activities.
Ready for her party! In her party dress!! :)

New House

We closed on a house in Tupelo at the end of December. We've been working (and working and working and working) to get it ready. We've done some really neat stuff with it (mostly new paint) and it's getting there! I tried to take some before/after pictures of the rooms we've done so far so you can get an idea. It's been a lot of work! Now I feel like sitting and enjoying it... for a little while. I'm already making plans in my head for what's next! :)

Nana and Jo in the kitchen - in the middle of its transformation. See how happy she was to be here??? NOT!

Jo cleaning the bonus room. I don't have any more pics of this room as we haven't done much to it but furnish it. Picture this - tv, rug, couch, glider, and ALL Jo's toys. That's what it looks like. It's a great room. Bonus rooms are fabulous - esp if you have children! :)

Don't know why Jo's in this picture, but she was probably demanding to "see Jo" on the camera. She was REALLY REALLY good when we were here working - all day, every day. She's such a good kid...

Here are some BEFORE pictures of the Master Bath:

The plan was to take down the French Country wallpaper and to repaint the top blue. After removing MOST of two layers of wallpaper, we realized this was a battle we weren't going to win. I tried to take a picture in an area where you could see just how many layers there were, and this is the best I could do. We had the French Country wallpaper, next was a floral paper, then another floral paper underneath, then a paper with dots/circles on it. Perhaps more, I'm not sure. We quit with removal. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" became the theme. We rewallpapered with some paintable wallpaper at Lowe's. It's really cute. Now.

This is the bathroom in the middle of removal of wallpaper. Ugh. I think I spent the first 3 days of owning the home IN this bathroom. I didn't even know we had other rooms.

The AFTER of the Master Bath. Please excuse all our personal effects on the countertop. The bathroom's not really DONE. We've got to get a new vanity and redo the flooring. It's peel and stick laminate right now, but we're going to have tile put down. That will be a project in the future....

This is the BEFORE for Josephine's room. As you can see, there was really old, nasty carpet on the floor. We ripped it up and had new flooring put down. The new carpet is AWESOME. It's very soft and fluffy - and a dark brown. I figured, the darker the color the better in a child's room! I don't know if we have any pics of the new floor - will have to post some later.

Most of the rooms in this house have these really fabulous built ins. This room's built ins are great because we were able to fill it with all of Jo's stuffed animals. She has a lot of animals. Also, you can't tell because the doors are closed, but the bottom cabinets were built custom for record storage. Like, music records. Some of her toys are in between record dividers. Kind of funny. I'm glad Chip and I knew what they were! Haha.

Here's the AFTER for Jo's room. I painted all the canvases on the wall. They actually turned out pretty cute! The large one with the tree on it covers the electrical box which is located in her room. Her room is PURPLE because Jo requested PURPLE. I had every intention of painting it PINK like her last room. It kind of broke my heart to put purple in there. BUT, she's happy. Also, the bed spread and the curtains are a set that I had when I was in college and saved (for whatever reason...). They are GREAT in this room though. She loves them. I won't bother her and tell her they used to be mine...

See all the stuffed animals?????? The shelves are GREAT.

This is a BEFORE of the kitchen. Note the really ugly floors.

This is a picture of the kitchen doors. We sanded them and painted them. During sanding, we noticed that they had SEVERAL layers of paint. These doors have been white, pink, white, green, and white again. The bottom doors have also been blue at some time (don't ask me what that would have looked like with half one color and half another, but they were).

The kitchen AFTER. We ripped up the floors and put down peel and stick laminate. Which I'm normally against, but it was live with the floors above or take them out and put down something attractive temporarily. We ripped the floors out. They were terrible. These floors too had multiple layers. Peel and stick on top of 3 layers of rolled linoleum. Terrific.

The floors actually look pretty good, huh? I did them myself. Well, Chip supervised.

BEFORE pictures of the hall bath. This green is the same green as the green which was in the kitchen. It's kind of hard to tell. This green was not only ugly, but also pretty offensive. I hated it. I am SO glad it is gone. Also, note the ceiling. I have NO idea why that color or style, but we've redone it. It looks SO much better.

(See the ceiling? Eww.)
AFTER for the hall bath! Yay! This we did last weekend. On a Sunday. We primed and painted the ceiling, bottom half of the walls, and the walls. It took a while, but gosh - it's worth it! :)

That's about all for now. The house is coming together. I wish I had taken photos of the outside. It was pretty covered in pine straw and leaves and my Grandfather has had his yard man come out and clean our house. It looks SO good. Thanks Granddad!!!!! We really really appreciate that (as we've spent most of our energy inside!).

November

Early on in the month, Chip and I went over to Max and Leigh's to babysit while they went down to MSU with my Dad and Winnie to watch the Alabama/MSU football game. We had a fun time with the four girls. They play VERY well together and they are SO easy!

Lilly Grace had recently lost her front tooth - she was VERY proud of that hole!
All 3 of the little girls LOVE Curious George - they would PLAY PLAY PLAY and then one would sit to watch George, and then the others would migrate over that way soon enough.
Here they are - entranced! I took SEVERAL pictures and the flash didn't even phase them!
Emmie watching George - the other three were downstairs with Uncle Chip (see below...)

Here they are putting together a puzzle. Jo LOVES LOVES LOVES puzzles and she and Annie can do them pretty well, but they really need Lilly Grace's help - Jo's daddy decided to step in and help out too!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at my brother's house. They have an awesome swing set / play set in their backyard and Josephine calls it their "playground". She told us that morning she wanted to go to "Uncle John's playground". It was really cute! She LOVES it on their slide and swings.
First slide of the day! A few days later, she got to go over for the WHOLE day while her Aunt Leigh babysat - Jo said she had a GREAT time playing, but she got a "boo boo" on her "booty" from the slide - so now she says she likes the swings better. Funny girl.
It's hard to get good shots of kids - especially when they're swinging! In this shot, you can REALLY tell how much Jo loves to swing! :)
Annie with her Nana.
Grandma and Grandpa getting some pictures of the children...
Max / Uncle John - FIRST time carving a turkey! He did a great job - although I know he was skeptical being as it seems everyone makes it out to be such a difficult task. No sweat!
My Uncle David brought goodies for the family - one of the treats he brought with him was malted milk balls. The girls got in to them right after dinner. Up until the candy, they had been playing and laughing (and squealing/screaming) and then, all of a sudden, they got really quiet. When we went to go see what they were up to - this was the scene! Two girls stuffing their faces with CANDY!
Annie and Emmie have a hot wheels race track in their room and they were all 3 taking turns and shooting the cars across the room - can you tell Jo enjoyed it?
Annie taking her turn as Emily watches to make sure she does it correctly!
Emmie really wanted to take a picture - she loves looking at herself in photos. What girl doesn't!?

Pumpkin Patch

On Saturday we went up to Olive Branch to visit Matt and Aimee and their two children, Mikaiyah and Camden. We stayed in during the afternoon to watch the MSU vs. South Carolina game (ugh...) and then decided to go out for the early evening to a pumpkin patch and corn maze which was in between Olive Branch and Collierville. Here are the kids who just got out of the car. They were very excited...
Kaiyah showing Jo how to throw grass and dirt. Fun!
This was such a cute little area for pictures - they kids obliged!
Matt, Aimee, and Camden (you can barely see his little head, but he hung with us the whole time - albeit asleep). We're on the tractor ride to the corn maze here. It was not very far from the house, so this part was fun enough for the kids, but not uncomfortably long. Jo didn't even flinch about the tractor or the hay or anything. Jo's really good about doing EVERYTHING if Kaiyah does it...
Here is a picture of the corn maze. We decided - being the intelligent people we are - to solve the maze BEFORE we went in AS WELL as take a picture of it to have on our camera. This SAVED us.

We had a map of the maze which could only be revealed by red glasses - and certain parts of the maze had "checkpoints" where you could look at the map under red plastic. At one point, we got to a checkpoint - and since we were there, we decided to check ourselves. We knew we were mostly through the maze, but wanted to go ahead and see what the map said. Turns out - the map they printed to give to people was WRONG. Like, VERY wrong. We kept trying and trying to figure it out. Up until this point, I had been navigating using the picture on the camera. I eventually told our group we were just going to keep going using OUR own picture, not the one on the paper. LUCKILY, the picture we took was correct and we got in and out of the maze in about 45 minutes - only going the wrong way ONCE. (The maze isn't small - it was 8 acres - but certainly didn't feel that big when we were in there.)
Here are our brave warriors entering the corn maze.

We kept passing a large family (in numbers, not size) who had been in the maze for untold amounts of time. In fact, they were attempting to exit the entrance when we were coming in and then turned around. When we passed this family AGAIN near the end (they were a row over, but could see us through the corn), we heard a comment from one of the adults, "Let's follow the Mississippi State people..." I didn't really realize until later that his comment was probably a backhanded insult - being that we were in a corn maze and apparently Mississippi State people are comfortable there.... (maybe it's true - we did get through the maze quickly...). Anyway - those people cut through the corn and followed us out. Cheaters. We're pretty sure they were Ole Miss fans as well - being as one of their sons was wearing a Giants jersey and named "Eli". Perfect.
Dancing... they STILL had energy even after all the romping through the corn.
Look how BIG they are!

Family!
There were several "cornhole" games laid out at the fun zone. There was also a place to grind corn, play in the sand, there was a slide into a huge trough of corn, saddles on bales of hay, a place where you could practice "roping" hay cows, an area where you pumped water and raced little ducks, and a pumpkin patch behind all of that. There was SO much to do - and most of it would have been appropriate for the girls to both do. We really enjoyed our time there.
Teaching Jo how to play the game, she wanted to climb up the board and drop it in. Cheater!
They got their pumpkins! Jo also picked out a pumpkin for Camden... Sweet girls! :)