south bound and truckin'

Emilia went on her first road trip! Mama bought some cigarettes. After 3 days of not smoking and a 2 1/2 hour trip that took us 4....my nerves were shot, but Emilia did great, considering. Yes, we got misplaced and yes we had to make a few potty stops, but we eventually made it. I did find out that she may get carsick. The vomit on the way back home clued me in. I don't know though. I guess we are going to have to test this theory again to make sure....not looking forward to that.

Anyway, we went to Tampa to see Aunt Amber and Uncle Justin since they are headed back to Hawaii soon. This was their last weekend in Florida, so we had to take advantage. They were super great hosts and Emilia and I had a great time! Emilia was smitten with Uncle Justin...I think Uncle Chris has a run for his money.....

Here are some pictures from the Florida Aquarium. I highly suggest that you make the trip down, it was pretty fun and it was exciting to watch Emilia see all the creatures. There is also a great little playground and waterpark outside of the Aquarium. Emilia had a great time!


looking at and petting sharks and rays



Emilia showing Justin the cool sea creatures







River Otters



Emilia found Nemo



Bonnethead shark.....not to be confused with a hammerhead shark.



The guys looked like they were having fun!



This eel was like 6 ft. long and so nasty!



Aunt Amber and Unlce Justin



Playing at the waterpark....it was 81 and beautifully sunny!






You know you are a redneck when you let your kid go naked at the waterpark. ha,ha



and her first frosty afterward!

It was a good day!

mexican and daughtry...does it get better?

The only way it would be better is if it were Kenny Chesney. Mexican and Kenny Chesney would be way better, but this was pretty darn good!


Daughtry came to town on 11/30...boy that was fun! I had a pretty good time...woohoo!

It was Cavo, Theory of a Deadman and Daughtry. Lots of eye candy!


Mexican...mmmmmm



Amber, aka Sugar Lips, and a yummy corona light



Tammy, aka Sugar Britches, and her pitcher of Miller Light



Me, aka Sugar Mama, and my yummy corona light



good times!


Theory of a Deadman....cool guitar!



Chris Daughtry....last pic before my camera died. He's hot!

thanksgiving

I hope that everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving. We didn't do a whole lot. My folks were out of town and we had Thanksgiving with Ricky's family on Friday, so our actual Thanksgiving day was spent relaxing and putting up the Christmas tree. It was kind of nice not having to go anywhere or do anything. This year, Emilia was excited about the tree and wanted to help. Here are a couple pics of her hanging the first ornament...she couldn't quite figure out where she wanted to put it.

don't make me mad!

This is what happens when you make mama mad!

J/K

It looks like someone beat her over the head.....it's ketchup, I promise! She smelled like ketchup for 3 days!

hey guys!

Well, I have no pictures to show you, but I will have one coming that is a must see.

We were having hotdogs the other night and we were letting emilia sit on the couch and eat while she watched Max & Ruby, her favorite thing in the worked right now. Max and Ruby now outweigh Dora, but she is still in a close second. Anyway, she was being real quiet, so we thought she was really enjoying her hotdogs.....we should have known better! I walked in there and from the middle of the top of her head to her nose was covered in ketchup. My living room smelled like a big tomato. Luckily she was smart enough not to wipe it on our tan couch, but she looked like someone had cracked a baseball bat over her hard little head. I took a few pics, but she had started to wipe it off after I told her that I should beat her.... That girl, I have no words. She is a mess.

In other Emilia news, she is doing fantastic with the potty training. She does still have accidents, but it's only because she gets distracted and lazy and doesn't want to walk to the potty. She also has taken to pooping on the living room floor. Again, no words. I hate chasing doody balls. thank goodness we have tile floors. I want to beat her. I am about to have to take drastic measures.

Not a whole lot has been going on with us. We are actually getting a date night on Saturday. I am pretty pumped because we are going to go see New Moon. I finally broke down and watched Twilight which led me to read the book, which my fabulous Aunt sent me while I was in the hospital. And then it was a snowball affect. I read Twilight in a week, then I read the other books in the sage in week following. I COULD NOT put those books down! Loved them and suggest them to anyone. Anyway, Ricky watched Twilight with me and now we are going to see New Moon. I am pumped!

We are also getting our family pictures made this Saturday. Emilia is sick, naturally, she has purple rings under her eyes like she hasn't slept in days. GREAT! This will be our first family pictures ever. I am pumped about that too.

I have been super busy with getting ready for the Craft Show and then preparing orders. I feel like I am going to die from all this. I am not very hopeful about this year. I am having to lower some of my prices in hopes to just get rid of some stuff. Frankly, I am tired of storing it. I am tired of it taking up almost a whole closet. Anyway...I don't mean to complain. Sometimes I just wonder why I am doing this. I should take more time with my family. I remember my goals when I started this, sometimes it's just hard to keep perspective and remember the ultimate goal of this. say a prayer for me. I hope that I at least make my booth price that weekend. It's the first weekend in December. If you are in the Gainesville area, come out and check it out. It's 12/5 -12/6 at the O'Connell Center.

Well peeps, I'm out. If I don't get on here until later, I hope that you all have a fabulous Thanksgiving!

xoxo

This is how we roll when we watch Dora!

potty training 101

Well, I have to say that potty training has gone better than I had expected. She has adapted well to panties during the day and she finally let me get a pull up on her at night. This morning she woke up and was ready to go potty right away, she was dry! She had held it all night! I was so proud of her. Yesterday, she had no accidents at school, but had 2 once we got home. I hope that she makes it this morning with no accidents before school. We may have this done sooner than I expected. I am so proud!

monday, monday

Well, I don't have any pictures to show, but I wanted to update you guys on what's been going on with us.............not much!

We are getting ready to go to MS, woohoo! We don't have much planned, which is kind of nice. We are going to a friend's house for food and fun on Friday night and the game on Saturday, but other than that, we don't have any plans.

Emilia is just getting so smart. I tell you, she amazes us with the things that come out of her mouth. She got a boo-boo on her knee several weeks ago and we are still putting band aids on it, not because she needs it, but because she insists that it needs one, even though the band aide goes no where near where the boo-boo was. The other night, when she actually needed one, I asked her if she wanted me to put it on and she says "no right now, mommy." What!?!?!? Where did that come from. And her latest is "leaf me 'lone, mommy." This goes right a long with what she used to say, which was "go night-night, mommy."

She is obsessed with her Uncle Craig's pets, Trapper and Dominick. She is also in love with Delta, her Aunt Debbie and Uncle Frank's dog. She talks about them all the time. She has become quite the little chatter box. She talks about all kinds of thing. She is even still talking about Amber, who stayed with us a month ago. She says "see amber soon." I can't tell her that she is going to see Amber again in November, she would be pestering me nonstop if she knew that.

I even found out that there is a little boy that she follows around at school. Could this be her first crush? It is too cute. For the longest time, she talked about Jacob and sang Happy Birthday to him all the time. Now I find out that she follows Heath around...she is boy crazy already. Sheesh!

She is getting so cuddly. She likes to snuggle in my arm pit while we watch cartoons and she curls up in this little ball. She can be so sweet. She is still a mama's girl, which makes me happy and so frustrated at the same time. I try to slow down and take a step back because I know it won't be like this all the time and I will miss this not to long from now, but for right now, I am eating it up. I now know all about Handy Manny, Dora, Diego and the Backyardigans because of this. She never watched TV until probably August and now she watches it all the time. Dora is by far her favorite.

I love my little nugget to death! She is the coolest kid I have ever met. I know all parents think that bout their kid. To clear things up, I have met some pretty cool kids, I mean, really cool kids, but she is by far the coolest to me!

Peace out party peeps, holla!

amber's visit

My friend from Hawaii came to town this weekend and we had such a good time. We sat around and caught up on all things Brandon, Hawaii and Florida. We didn't do much, which was nice. I think on Friday we were out and about for a total of something like 2 hours or something and came back home and watched Grey's Anatomy, which I DVR'd from the night before.

On Saturday we went to the Santa Fe Teaching Zoo. Wow! It was so much nicer than I thought. Emilia LOVED it, I mean she really, really LOVED it. She was excited about every animal and I have to admit, it was interesting to learn more about the animals. Our guide was a little weird, but hey, whatever. Poor Amber had stroller duty because Emilia got so excited, she tried to run around the place and see all the animals up close. The poor tour guide was probably exhuasted by the time he was done with us. Our 45 -60 minute tour lasted an hour and 15 minutes thanks to my little explorer. We encoutered a mama peacock and one of her babies and the tour guide saw Emilia making her move and backtracked to make sure she didn't chase them....just doing his job. I chuckled to myself though....like I can't tell her not to do that. Oh well, like I said, I chuckled. She got the most excited about the Llama. She ran up to the fence, and I mean RAN saying "yama, yama, yama." She impressed our tour members. A couple of them remarked on how smart she was..... I just told them that we had recently started watching Diego and there was a show on Llamas the other day. It was cute, she was soooo excited!

Later that day, we went to the park for a birthday party. Emilia was being very antisocial, but had a good time none the less.

Here are some pics from the weekend:

where did the peacocks go?

If you look closely, there is a baby on the mama's back...too cute!

Emi in her super cool shades and Hawaii shirt that Aunt Amber brought her

chewin' on his tail

lunch afterward with Aunt Amber

at the park, swinging so high

my boo!

TN Tailgate

Here we are again....after several years and many goings on, the girls of the SAO party again. It sucks that I was the only sober one, but hey, I had my kid! This past weekend was the Florida v. Tennessee game. I had some friends come in from Colorado, Tallahassee and Lake City to celebrate. I brought Emilia along to have some fun too....she loved it! I have already blogged about this, so I won't bore you any more with it, but here are just a couple pictures of us from the tailgate. I didn't take either of these...if I had I might have angled the camera a little different to not make me look so large, but I can't complain, it's a picture of me and my baby...she makes it better. Plus, I figure you are looking at her and not me. :)






Thank you, Meredith, for taking these pictures!

more school spirit!

We are somewhat of a house divided. Growing up in MS, I was a Mississippi State fan, and still am. You can't forget where you come from and you have to stay true.....Go Dawgs! Emilia's Aunt Kristi sent this to her for Christmas. Isn't it too cute. Now, of course living in Gainesville and her Daddy growing up a Gator fan, she has that outfit too, as seen in a previous post. On this particular morning, she was sporting both outfits, hence the Gator skirt under her MSU cheerleader outfit. My crazy girl!

long time, no write

Hello party peeps!

I am back in action after being out for a few weeks with my emergency surgery! Boy, what a crazy ride that was. Emergency gall bladder surgery! The Dr. tells me that it was "necrotizing" which I didn't know what it was until my gynecologist explained it to. Crazy, huh! The surgeon wasn't very forthcoming with the answers to my questions, it's like he spoke in code or something. Anyway, I am better, moving around much more and I am able to pick my youngin' up now, so she is happy. She still likes to see my boo-boos and count them....uno, dos, tres, quatro. It's really cute until she does it in public and pulls my shirt up...I don't think anyone wants to see that!

So, how about them Bulldogs and Gators??? I love football season, college ball, that is. Emilia has her cheerleader outfits for both teams and looks adorable in each. I will get pics of the MSU one up soon. I have them, just not downloaded yet. We went to our first, and probably only, tailgate of the season this past weekend. Miss Emilia had a blast. She wore her orange and blue and was a big hit. She was on her best behavior. She ate some party food and watched the airplanes and the "big boon" (blimp) fly around the stadium. She was stoked to be there. We stayed for about 3 hours, then she got tuckered out. It was hot, but we had a good time sitting around, seeing and catching up with old friends. We had some friends in from Colorado that hosted the tailgate, so it was great to see Marilyn and John and spend some time with them. Emilia enjoyed the stroller ride through the field at J.J. Finley, where the tailgate was, and looking at all the Gator and Tennessee fans. She even told someone "Go Gators" through the window as we were leaving. Later that day, she watched the game with her Daddy while I was out shopping with my mom. She can now say "Tim Tebow." That's my girl!

I have a friend coming to town this week, I am so excited. My friend, Amber, from Hawaii is coming to see me. I am so excited. I haven't seen her in a year and she is such a better friend than I am since I have yet to go see her in beautiful Hawaii. She is up in MS right now and is going to swing through FL before going home on Sunday. Have I said that I am so excited?

In other Emilia news, she is singing her alphabet song now. It's pretty cute. She can even sing the end "Now said my ABC's, next time sing with me." She sang that in the tub last night. It was a proud moment. Her vocabulary has REALLY taken off since having the tubes put in. She is making whole sentences now, not just broken ones. She is very bossy! She is doing pretty well on the potty, we just have to stay consistent. Some days she goes in the potty all the time, others she only goes in her pants, but I guess that's part of learning. She says "potty break," it's so funny! OH, and the funniest thing is that she calls Ricky "Wicky." It's so funny! I correct her every time and tell her that she has to call him "Daddy," but she still calls him "Wicky." He thinks it's great.

Well, I guess that's about it for now. I hope to have some pics up soon of the MSU outfit and the tailgate. I know I am due to show some new pics, so I will have them up soon.

Later!

show me that school spirit!

Today is school spirit day at school! She was so excited to wear a cheerleader outfit. She has many....and by many, I mean she has 2 different Florida cheerleader outfits and 1 Mississippi State outfit. I can't wait to see her in all of them. This was the only one that I didn't have to take tags off of, so it was the easiest since we were overslept this morning. Anyway, if you aren't a Gator fan, doesn't his make you want to be one???? This is the cutest Gator Cheerleader you have ever seen!!!!! Here are a few more to enjoy!

...and the sassiest one of all...

Go Gators!

red again!

for those who aren't on facebook!

tubes

We survived getting tubes yesterday. She was amazing. She was fine without having that first cup of milk in the morning, she was upset when they took her back, but that was expected. No big shocker there. I didn't cry though. She was only back there for about 20 minutes. She ran a low grade fever off and on throughout the day and didn't sleep that great last night, so I am pretty tired, but all in all, everything went well.

tubes next week

We went yesterday for Emilia's pre-op appt. for tubes.

We were really hoping to get through the summer, but no such luck. This time (11 days ago) she not only had a middle ear infection in her right ear, but she had swimmers ear on top of that. Her little ear was so bad that when they irrigated it with water, it bled...a lot. I think this may have been the only appt. that I wanted to cry at. You could tell it hurt so bad. It took 3 of us to hold her down. Poor thing! My chest feels heavy just thinking about it. Oh, and not only did she have the infections in her right ear, she had suction in her left ear that was sucking her eardrum inward.....crazy!

We go next Tuesday to have the tubes put in. We have heard WONDERFUL things about our Dr. and he is great with her. She still cries and told him, yesterday, that her Daddy was going to beat him up, but other than that, he is great with kids. I have had several friends, down here, that have used him and even one that drove from Tallahassee to have him put tubes in her daughter's ears. That says a lot to me, so I am comfortable with him. say a little prayer for us that everything will go well with the anesthesia and that she will be fine afterward.

mommy's so fun

...that has to be the sweetest thing that I have heard, next to "I love you." We were sitting on the bed last night, the 3 of us, getting ready for bed and she just busts out with "Mommy's so fun!" Ricky and I look at each other and tried to get her to say it again. She eventually agreed that Daddy was fun too, but she didn't say "Daddy's so fun"....ha,ha!

I love that little turd muffin!

my big date

I am so excited!!! I have a date this Friday night....with another man. I have butterflies! What do I wear? Do I need to buy a new outfit? What time should I be ready? I get giddy just thinking about it. I am so excited. Want to know who I have a date with????

Kenny Chesney!!!!!!!!!!!

What better way to turn 31????

show me your......beads!

She is starting early! She found my fishbowl from Mardi Gras and got out all the beads, even the one she shouldn't have!