Days with the Family Part 1

Starting in July we planned for family to come to our house for a visit. Needless to say, it's been very busy at our house!
First Carlee and Dewayne came to visit on July 9th and we've been having TONS of fun with them. Since visiting baby Dewayne has learned to drink from a cup and I think we can officially say he's walking! Pretty soon he won't be a baby anymore! He turns 1 soon and is growing up way too quickly!

Then last week my parents arrived for a short visit. The girls had so much fun jumping on Grandpa, learning new silly games and watching movies. Jula didn't participate in the games, instead she watched safely from the sidelines.
My dad had a plastic ball that he would pretend to throw. It confused the girls for a few seconds but then they realized the trick. I was amazed at how fully entertained they were!

Then my dad got on the floor and boy he didn't realize what he was in for! 2 little girls weighing about 100lbs total dove on him. He took it for about 10 minutes and then we had to pull them off.

Of course when he sat up the fun had to continue!

I was able to catch a quick impromptu picture of everyone!

Now we are packing for the next segment of our "Days with the Family"! Stay tuned....

PAR-TAY JCrew Style!

We promised the girls we would all watch the Hannah Montana 3D concert when it premiered on the Disney Channel and even though it was painful we followed through!
We picked up 3D glasses for everyone, I made a spinach artichoke dip and lots of other fattening finger foods! I set up the food in the living room, we ate dinner LATE and in front of the TV. The girls had a GREAT time and in the end it was great family bonding time!

Date Night!

I don't know about you but "Date Night" (for Mama & Daddy) is a very foreign concept in our house. We never have a babysitter so we never go out alone.
My wonderful Sister-in-law is visiting with us for a few weeks and she kindly agreed to watch the kids so we could catch a movie. Last week we had TWO nights that we got out. This week I think we'll get out 1 night and hopefully we can squeeze 1 more night in before she heads home.

Of course we had to get a pic or 2 of the HOT Mama & Daddy (check out my SHOES!)!

Cheesy things!

What kind of cheesy things do you do when it comes to your family/kids/spouse, etc? Don't you find yourself doing some really corny/cheesy things and wondering why you're doing them? I find myself doing it all the time!!!! Someone came up with the whole "JCrew" tag for our family and then I became "Jgirlsmama" and it's stuck ever since! Now, when we talk about our family we say "Jgirls/JCrew" and my oldest loves to say "she's the JGirlsMama" LOL!

We are adding a NEW layer to the cheese. I just ordered this today....

Special collage

One day I realized that I have a picture of my dad holding each of the girls when they were babies. So, I was on a mission to find each picture and put them together in a collage. I also thought it would be cute to add a recent picture of them to it. I ended up running WAY behind to do this done for Father's Day so now it will be a "Just Because" gift.

Here's the final product:

New Dress!

Jula received a super cute dress for her birthday from Auntie Amber and SweetPea Lauren. I tried it on her again the other day and it fits perfect now plus I think she looks just darling in it and I wanted to show it off.
I had to share all 3 pictures because I couldn't decide which picture I liked the most. She just won't stay still or smile once she sees the camera so we were chasing her around the house, thus the different backgrounds LOL!

Kitchen -- Before and After

Before - blah!


After! YAY! (Please ignore the mess)

Silly Babies!

I have some great video(s) to share! The first one is of my silly Jula dancing one night. Unfortunately you'll have to turn your head to view since I don't know how to rotate the video. I thought about trying to get new video filmed the correct way but I don't think we'll get this great of a repeat performance! Enjoy and I hope you laugh as much as we did!



The next silly baby video is from last night. Our nephew, DeWayne aka Dewey, is visiting and we are having so much fun with him!!!! He does silly baby things that our "toddler" doesn't do anymore and we are taking full advantage of it!



(yes, I know he probably isn't really saying JEN but come on, humor me a little and let me revel in the moment LOL)

Home alone

My family is on the road headed to Raleigh to pick up my wonderful sister-in-law and I am home alone. I can't remember the last time I was home alone! Eeeeek what to do, what to do LOL! I do actually have a major project to tackle and I should be starting that but look at me - I'm blogging!!!!

The project is to get the kitchen wall painted. 1 wall only. Major project right? Well, it's going to take long since I'm working alone...I have to tape, paint, paint again and possibly paint again - since it's orange it might taken THREE coats! Fun, Fun! Hopefully I'll have it done before 3pm when the gang arrives. It better be done - not only will my sister-in-law be here but my 11 month old nephew too! Another baby in the house for 3wks...interesting to say the least!

I'll edit the post to add a bright orange picture! Say a few prayers for me LOL!

The Evolution of a Garden

Since moving into our house in January I planned to plant some flowers come spring. In late March it started to warm up just enough to start, so I made the girls help me get the ground ready. I didn't know what we had in store for us! We found lots of 'treasures' including glass, rocks, nails and other misc building materials. We got out as much as possible and then planted some flowers. I rushed at first because I wanted to get them in before the rain came...the rain came and almost ruined the flowers! I salvaged what I could and then started to expand the flower bed and then decided to relocate some of the bushes. I thrive on consistency and it made me happy to have all alike bushes together! Unfortunately the entire left side of the house isn't consistent - it's a hodgepodge of plants including one very strange one - lets just say we'll soon enjoy the "fruits" of our labor LOL!!!

So, here's the slideshow of all our hard work. It really was a team-effort; even Julian got dirty digging up the clay so that I could get the flowers in. We are getting lots of compliments from those that pass by and it's nice to hear. I can't wait to do further work come fall...our hot season came on strong and fast and I think adding anything else will just be pointless.

Starting out!

I can't believe I'm doing this blogging thing but here I am! Life is all about change right? And to maintain you have to change so I'm changing - slowly and painfully.

We'll see how it works out - hopefully I'll remember to update and if not someone remind me!

Here's to change! WHOOT!