So now it's my day

I refused to take my camera out of my purse during the month of May since I had so much going on but it seems I forget to take it out for pictures quite often too. Most of my birth day was spent working since it was just any other Tuesday to most people. I did get to go to one of my favorite sushi places and have dinner with Bryan so that made it nice. Thankfully Bryan and I both love to travel so we decided to spend my birthday/memorial weekend in Charleston South Carolina. We had some friends that were supposed to meet us but were unable at the last minute. So we spent a nice weekend alone. We got to Charleston about lunch time Friday and started by going to the Magnolia plantation. It's one of those must see's for the area. It was actually a really beautiful old mansion with tons of history, beautiful wild life- several different birds, gators, snakes, peacocks. We spent most of our days walking through downtown Charleston exploring the place looking at beautiful old houses and landscape. There is no telling how many miles we walked over the weekend. We visited rainbow row where homes go for multiple millions of dollars, battery row where soldiers help defend Charleston. They were also having an art festival so we came back home with several different pictures of the area done by local artist. We spent one day at the beach. It's not quite like the beaches in Alabama since the sand is dark and wet but it was still the beach. The best part of the trip was the incredible food we ate the entire time. We ate at some of the best places so if you're ever in Charleston go try these places- Coast- they have the best creamy grits, 82 Queen- known for it's She crab soup and shrimp and grits both of which were pretty good, and Hanks- Grouper with shrimp and lobster risotto. The risotto was by far the best thing we had the entire weekend. We also ate dessert two different nights at a neat little place called Kaminsky's. The places were amazing, the company was wonderful and the food to die for- It was an amazing way to celebrate my 27th birthday.


Magnolia Plantation

My favorite house on rainbow row. It was absolutely breath taking!


The beautiful bridge traveling onto the beach in Charleston. I love the last one!


From turning 26-27, I've traveled to Atlanta, Memphis, Nashville, Gatlinburg, New Orleans, Arkansas, Gulf Shores, Colorado and Charleston. I put my baby in Kindergarten and started my first grown up job all in the same day. I've become quite the self sufficient mother I always knew I could be. I've learned that growing older isn't all that bad, it's actually been a lot more fun! I hope they only get better from here on out :)

How many times do we do this??

My baby turned 6 on May 20th, that is so hard for me to believe. I told her not to long ago she had been trying to kill me since before she was born. She didn't quite understand what I meant but some of you no doubt remember. Six years ago on May 19th I went in for a regular ultrasound and realized that my baby had a high heart rate and was in trouble. It took the Dr's about 30 minutes to realize just how much trouble we both were in. It's amazing to look back now and realize just how close my baby girl and I came to dying. I delivered my sweet baby girl the next morning weighing only 3lbs 7oz. She spent only 16 days in the hospital before she was allowed to come home weighing only 3lbs 14oz. She hasn't grown to much since then seeing as how she only weighs 32 lbs now but boy does she think she's grown. In our family everyone has their own day, so not only did Taylor get a birthday dinner, my dad and I got one too! All individual of course. My heading came from something Bryan said about all the celebrating we do for our bday's. My philosophy is we only have so many in our lifetime so they all should be celebrated. The first picture is from Taylor's actual birth day dinner at our local mexican restaurant. They came out and put this big hat on her which she loved. The part she didn't love however was when he tried to get her to pick up a cherry dipped in whip cream with just her mouth. It was a fun night non the less.


My brother Jay and Van

Me and the birthday girl

So what does every 6 year old girl need???.......a diva party of course!! Our birthday party included the cutest invitation with purses, and lipstick and flowers. A beautiful purse cake pictured below, a lipstick pinata and of course a little art studio so we could paint a purse on canvas. We invited 5 girls to come join us for our day and they sure had a blast. The cake turned out so pretty and everyone loved painting pictures they could keep forever. She got all kinds of cool gifts too. I got her several outfits and some really cool shoes, a game to go with her nintendo ds. She also got a few other outfits, some toys and games. Her favorite thing however was a cd from Mr Bryan. We had to jam out to Justin Beiber's Baby Baby song the entire first night he gave it to her. We even had to hang his portrait that was included in the cd on her wall. I guess she officially has her first idol crush!


This is Taylor's purse she painted. We added silver dots once it dried a little so it looked like rinestones on the purse!

Our purse pinata before the girls smashed it to pieces. The girls even managed to smash the candy inside, guess we have strong girls!

About to start painting her picture

Our beautiful birthday purse cake.


So after Taylor's day of celebrating with her friends, we went to eat for my dad's birthday since it was his actual birth day. We also invited a few non family members along and celebrated mine and Taylor's as well. Within 5 days we have to celebrate Taylor's bday, my bday and my dad's! Bryan's parents joined us and even our friends Tom, Amber and their baby little Tom. It was a day FULL of fun

Taylor and my sister Ali at dinner. Tay was wearing one of the new outfits I got her!

Bryan and I at dinner. Another one of our few pictures together!

The start of May

Wow I can't believe it's been over a month since I've blogged. May is sure a busy month for my bunch! I guess I"ll have to split this post into several different ones since we've had tons of stuff going on this month. The pictures below are from Taylor's church program. It's a program that she goes to on Wednesday after school and at the end of each year they do a program. It's the same program I did when I was her age so I'm so happy she is able to continue to do the same. I can always remember it being so much fun. They sang several really cute songs and did several different hand motions and used several different props. She is of course the one right in the center that's a whole foot shorter than everyone else. She did some of the motions backwards and it was just so cute. I actually got teared up watching up on the stage perform. She loves to perform that's for sure!!




This is one of Taylor's best friends Tully, who was in her class this year and also went to the G-force program after school.


We spent much of May celebrating Taylor's accomplishments this year. On May 26th by sweet baby girl graduated from Kindergarten. This year has flown by. I'm a little disappointed in how this year went with her learning because I don't really feel like she learned all that much but she was pretty advanced to begin with so I guess she's not really behind at this point. Hopefully we will have a wonderful first grade teacher next year who will teach her tons. We plan to spend the summer going to the library and learning to read better. She got the Star Student award in her class and she had already gotten the Citzenship award earlier in the year for always being friendly and helpful. For the most part that sounds like my child. She looked so grown walking across the stage. How time flies!! School wasn't actually out until the next day but it was optional to go. Taylor opted to sleep late but she did ask if she went would she be in first grade already. She's so excited to find out who her teacher is already. The first pictures is of Taylor getting her diploma. Notice her shirt was tied in the back. The smallest I could get was a small (6-8) so it swallowed her with her little shorts.


Me and my baby girl celebrating her day!

Sitting at her desk for the last time this year!

This is just how I look!!

My heading is written from Van's point of view of course because this is just how he looks. I've been waiting almost a month to post updates about what might possibly be wrong with my child and I'm happy to say that God has blessed me with a happy, healthy and perfectly normal child. Our cardiologist said he was so unimpressed by Van's heart murmur that unless something changed later on down the road he'd never need to see us again. Then I heard on Monday that our chromosome test came back perfectly normal. The Dr's I work for will continue to watch and listen to him about every 6 months for the next few years but as for now he's just healthy! He's getting smarter by the day as well. He's such an easy going, loving child. It's amazing how different two children can be.



The picture below is how I found my son the other day. He's gotten a new big boy car bed so he no longer uses the crib but my dad hasn't come up to take it down yet. Therefor his room is rather crowded so his slide got put in the bed. So my little monkey climbed into his bed so that he could not only slide down the slide himself but so that he could roll the ball down it as well.



So now on to my wonderful almost 6 year old daughter. I'm getting a little sad about how big my child is getting. She's about to graduate from kindergarten and turn 6 all in less than a month. So I"m in the wonderful but stressful process of planning a party that will top all others. How come those start earlier and earlier now. She's only 6 and it's already gotta be cooler than all her friends parties. She's my drama queen. I sure hope our attitude gets better with age! I also hope we can be in a better routine with school next year and make both our lives simpler. But for now we are just looking forward to the summer. I only hope I find a babysitter soon!!

What a weekend!!

Well I spent my weekend doing things that many don't get the opportunity to do. On Saturday I went with a good friend and watched the Alabama spring game. You wouldn't think that a game where there isn't a real opponent could bring out almost a 100,000 people but it's Alabama and we live for Alabama football. The game had over 91,000 people at it. After the game I got the chance to go with Bryan to Coach Nick Saban's house for an after party. His million dollar home was amazing, his wife seems so down to earth- she greeted everyone at the door when they arrived and when they left! I have a few pictures below from the experience. Bryan laughed at me for taking pictures with my phone but at the end of the day I'm a fan and might never get that close to him again. After all the man just won the national championship for the biggest sport in our country probably, if you don't know what he looks like you at least know his name!! I also got to meet Sandra Bullock's dad.




This was Nick Saban arriving at his house after the A-day game. The car literally pulled within inches of his house and let him out.


My act of trying to be discreet and get a picture of him with my phone. I made myself leave the real camera at home so I didn't seem quite so obvious.


This is his "man cave" aka the recruiting room. He has some amazing pictures on the wall including one of him and Tiger playing golf together. On the other side of this room was a pool table and card table. He even had a Blind Side corner and of course the bar in the back.


I spent today at a retirement party for Bryan's dad, Bill, who retired today after spending over 40 years in sports, the last 20 or so at Alabama as the director of sports medicine. He has trained thousands of kids and lead many to become outstanding adults and it was evident today by his turn out. He had an amazing number of people show many from out of state just to wish him well. It was great to be a part of the celebration. So the picture below is of Bryan and I at the party. I made him take one because we seem to have so few together. I think it turned out pretty good! So needless to say I had a great but busy weekend. I'm already looking forward to being lazy with the kids next weekend. We plan to make no plans- those weekends are few and far between so I plan to enjoy it!

The joys of spring!

Well I'm not the best blogger obviously but I'll try to update weekly at least. We are thoroughly enjoying the nice weather we have had lately. We had a wonderful Easter weekend filled with fun and laughter and pretty new clothes. On Saturday we headed to Tuscaloosa and got new shoes and hair bows and Van got a new hair cut while sitting in a yellow car, which was the coolest thing ever to him. We got awesome Easter gifts from Mr Bryan (as the kids call him)- including an ear piece for my phone for me and then lots of goodies including a singing bunny, a new video game system, a buzz toy and even new Easter baskets for the kids. Taylor got a bunny and Van got Lightening McQueen the car. They were so excited. Sunday the Easter bunny brought all kinds of outsides toys, a movie, golf set, bubbles and candy and a ZuZu pet. Van loved it so much I ended up having to go and buy another one. We spent the day with pawpaw and noni (my dad and step mom) eating lunch and hunting eggs outside.



Van's favorite place to be at PawPaw's- driving the lawn mower!


Today Taylor and I had a fun day on her first ever Kindergarten field trip. She was so excited to ride the school bus to Tuscaloosa with all her friends. We went to a place called the barnyard. She got to hold bunnies, chickens, ducks. She got to ride in a boat and on a miniature horse. She also got to feed a baby pig with a bottle which she thought was so fun. It's was a very fun day and the weather was so nice. After the field trip we left and had a mini girls day. We had lunch together and got our nails done. She was so excited, she got a light pink with blue stripes painted on them.

She's such a ham, all I had to do was say smile and she'd put on that beauty walk face she does so well


It's amazing to see how little she is once she's next to her class. Yes all those kids in the picture beside her are in her class and her age. She's just that tiny!

Not to make this post any longer than it already is but Wednesday we head back to the Dr again. This time it's for the cardiology appointment so please continue to be praying for Van. We are still awaiting news from our first appointment but expect to know something by the end of the month.

Prayers Needed!

Some of you guys may be aware of some concerns we have had with my son since he was little. He was speech delayed until last year and has always seemed to stay sick. Since I graduated from nursing school I have been working for a pediatric office so I have had the chance to have wonderful Drs taking care of him. So he had his 3 year check-up a few weeks ago and my Dr heard a heart murmur which had been undiagnosed for the last 3 years of his life. We have since been set up with an appointment to see a cardiologist to rule out any complications. We would normally just watch him as he grows because he shows no signs of trouble from it. However there has been some question brought up about him possibly having a very rare form of down syndrome so not only have we been set up with the cardiologist, we have also been set up with a geneticist! I found out today that his appointment for that is April 6th at 9:00am. So please be praying for him. It's a lot of blood work and months of waiting on the results.
So what is Mosaic Down syndrome..... like I said it's a very rare form (only about 4% in the world of people who have downs have this form) and unlike regular down syndrome that has an extra chromosome on every strand of dna, mosaic children only have an extra one on certain strands. Therefor it's very hard to diagnose. Children can show a wide range of symptoms from pretty much nothing but a few features to being full down syndrome. It is questioned in Van because of his speech delay and the shape of some of his facial features (although we feel he looks similar to my brother) and now the latest the heart murmur. With all downs children they can have major heart issues. Mosaic children also tend to have higher IQs since all of their genes aren't effected by the mutation. The heart condition is the only reason I have agreed to go ahead with the testing but please do pray for him. I know my child is perfect and no matter what label is put on him he will always be that way! I will update in a few weeks on this once we have had the appointment and know more about what's going on and what they are thinking. Please pray it's nothing though!