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!