Two Weeks in Review

I know, I know...it has been a while since we have talked and I am so sorry. Life just gets busy sometimes and let me tell you, we have had a lot going on. Shelby and JP had their first day of school, then we left for Tennessee for almost a week and then I had a lot to catch up on from being gone for so long. This blog may be long, but it won't be because of all that I have to say, it will mostly be because of the pictures.

Shelby and JP started school on September 8th. Late, I know. Their school always starts after Labor Day and since Labor Day was a little late this year so was their first day of school. We had such a fun morning getting ready for school that day. JP was on cloud nine since he got to go to school with Shelby this year. We let them pick out what they wanted for breakfast and they settled on cinnamon rolls and ham/egg/cheese sandwiches. This was their first experience with cinnamon rolls and they ate the mess out of them!!! Great job on us...hop them up on sugar and then send them off to school!!!

Here are two pictures from that day....we have tons of pictures and I tried to pick out two good ones...

Shelby and JP showing the love.

Shelby and JP sporting their awesome school bags.

The children started school on Tuesday. We had CBS on Wednesday morning and then at 11:30 we met Pratt at home, loaded up the car and headed up the road to Tennessee. Grandmother hosts a golf tournament, The Katie P. Reed Classic, every year at the local course to raise money for her senior citizen center. This year, Pratt, John, Jake and Sandi teamed up to show all those people from TN how we play golf down here in the lowcountry. It was a wonderful trip!!! We had so much fun visiting with his family. Steve and Catherine were gracious to us and opened their home to us. It worked out great because Shelby and JP had a great time playing with Reed and Grant.

Pratt first meal at the adult table. On Thursday night Grandmother had everyone over for some her fabulous home cookin'. Let me tell you, this is some of the best food that will ever go in your mouth and what made it even better this time was that Pratt finally got to set at the adult table. I guess 9 years of marriage and two children was enough to move him on up.

I just love this picture of Granddaddy and JP, don't you!?!? JP was so excited to get to see Granddaddy's tractor and he even sat on it for a brief second.

Jake, Shelby, Papa, and Pratt....Saturday night, after the golf tournament, we all got together at Steve and Catherine's for a little grill-out and football. It was so much fun...there was target practice going on, the children running around, great weather, wonderful food, and some pretty good football that day. Shelby had a lot of fun that night playing with Uncle Jake and Papa. I just love it when she gets that belly laugh going and this night she really laughed a ton!!!

All good things must come to an end...so after church on Sunday and one more round of Grandmother's cream corn and mac-n-cheese it was time to load the car up and make the journey home. Shelby and JP really did a wonderful job in the car on the way there and on the way home. It was so much fun and I am really looking forward to the next time we can visit with our family up there again. Thanks to everyone for such a wonderful trip!!!

So, like I said, last week was spent catching up on all that there is when one has been away for so long...bills, laundry, grocery shopping, just getting back into the routine of life and getting rested from being off routine for so long. Shelby and JP jumped right back into school and are still working on catching up on sleep.

Friday night we made dinner early for the children and then had family movie night upstairs. We popped popcorn for them, sprinkled in some m&ms and watch Veggie Tales: Dave and the Giant Pickle. What a cute little movie!! I love all the Veggie Tales stuff. It is short, sweet, funny, and loaded with good lessons from the Bible. This is a picture of our little makeshift movie theater. Shelby and JP loved having their own bowl of popcorn and sat pretty well through the whole movie. They even laughed at the funny parts!!!

After we got them down for the night Pratt and I had one of our in house date nights. We had made our own little "Corks" cheese trays complete with apples and honey for dipping, and a great bottle of wine. Since I was out on Thursday night for Dana's birthday we used this time to watch some of our Thursday night shows which we are so glad to have back on the air. The Office was a little disappointing I have to say, but that new show, Community, was so stinkin' funny!!!

This last picture was just too cute to not include. Shelby and JP got all cuddly in my bed on Saturday to watch cartoons while we watched some football. Pratt and I are so blessed with these two cuties!! They are great children and they love playing together. I could just sit and listen to them all day!!!

A potty training update-we have had a break through....if JP is naked he has no problem going potty on the potty, both number 1 and number 2; in fact, he goes all by himself and then yells at you from the bathroom that he went potty, but as soon as there is something on that little rear of his you can bet that he will make a mess of it...

The other day he called to me from the bathroom and said that he made a battleship (number 2) and so I came running to help him and when I got there he said, "I made three battleships! No, that one is a fishy, that one is a turtle and that one is the battleship."

Practice School and Boiled Peanuts

This past week was "practice school" for Shelby and JP. They both loved it so much!!! Whew! I was a little concerned with how JP would handle it, but he hopped right out of the car the first day with Shelby and then never really wanted to come home....that's my boy, loving school so much that he doesn't want to come home!! Anyway, yesterday Shelby had practice school, but JP didn't so I left him at home with Pratt while I dropped her off. It is going to be a very interesting morning the first time I drop Shelby off and he has to stay in the car.

One of the neatest things for me was to look at Shelby's work that she brought home yesterday and compare it to what she brought home the first week of school last year. What an amazing transformation in it!!! It was just really cool to see all the progress that she has made from the last year and even over the summer while we were at home. One work that she did on the easel (which currently is her favorite thing to do, yes, she is also talking a little bit more after her day then she did last year!!!) was a picture of a stick person (a girl I believe as she had on a dress), a sunshine, some grass, and a flower. She also wrote her name, my name and JP's name; then she crossed them out because she didn't want to leave out her daddy and she couldn't remember how to write his name. When she was showing Pratt her work she said, "Daddy, are you sad that your name isn't on there because I couldn't remember how to write it?" Of course he said no and that he was proud of her work; but isn't that so sweet!!! It just melted my heart that she was that concerned over hurting her dad's feelings, maybe we are doing something right after all with her:)

These are just a few pictures from the last few weeks that I couldn't resist....this is JP walking around in his daddy's shoes. We are still potty training and having good days mixed with bad. Hopefully the good days will start to out weigh the bad soon.Of course you know I can go on much longer without saying something about Clemson Football!!!! We are only a short 7 days away from kick-off!!!! Can you believe it? I know that you are all just as excited as I am!!! So in honor of our fun filled fall approaching, here is a picture of JP sporting his Clemson shirt. My family got it for him when they were visiting Matt this summer. It is kind of hard to read, but the shirt says, "Hold on Tigers....I'm coming." and it has a little tiger dressed up in a football uniform. I just love it, love it, love it!!!

And then, last but not least. Last spring we joined a CSA (community supported agriculture) Farm. It was great. Every Friday we would get a delivery of fresh, picked that morning fruits and vegetables from a farm in South Carolina. Let me tell you, those were some of the best fruits and vegetables I have ever eaten!!! The farm (Pinkney's Produce) breaks for the summer and yesterday we picked up our first delivery for the fall season. We got peanuts, zucchini, squash, corn, field peas, banana peppers, green peppers, etc. As soon as I brought that box in, Pratt started making some boiled peanuts with our peanuts. He let them boil for at least 2 hours and then soak for at least another hour after that. Once we got the children all bathed and ready for bed we sat down together on the couch and ate a bowl of boiled peanuts together. It was a great way to end a very busy week for us....just being together as a family. One of Shelby's favoritest things on earth is boiled peanuts and I think she ate the most out of all of us.

Apple Bottom Jeans

Last night when Pratt was putting Shelby to bed he asked her to put her pull-up on. As she was trying to get it on it got caught on her little hinny (I think that she has been blessed with the Harris hinny). She got a little frustrated and asked Pratt to help her and when he came out of the bathroom to help she started to shake her thing and sing, "Apple Bottom Jeans, Boots with the Fur." Pratt said it was so funny!! I so wish that we had gotten a video of it!!!!

Fashion Diva?

So this morning I told Shelby to go get her self dressed so we could be out of the house on time. After a few minutes Pratt went to check on her and she said, "Daddy, I picked out this shirt to wear because it matches my purse."

Hold up!!! What am I going to do with her? This is definitely uncharted waters for me. One day it is purses and shirts and the next day she is going to have to have everything matching down to the color of her nail polish. Yes, I need to start praying now!!!

Some Picture Fun

The gangs all here....JP, Ella Grace, Eliza, Lucy, Neely, and Shelby

JP playing in a hole that Neely dug. She did a great job digging a big and deep hole.

Shelby checking out the famous starfish. Only Ella Grace was brave enough to hold it.

These are just two pictures that I think are super cute of JP and Shelby. Don't you just love their smiles and that twinkle in their eye!!!!!

New and Old

So, I am sorry once again about my lack of blogging lately. Due to the economic conditions I have had to take over cleaning the house by myself, and while this really isn't that big a deal, it does take a good bit of my time that I would otherwise spend on the internet.

Tomorrow I am leaving for a little girls' weekend to the lakehouse. I am super excited about going and having some time with some really great girls. It is going to be so much fun, but before I go I wanted to catch up on a few things that have been going on around here.

This week has been a pretty exciting week in the Reed house. We are in full potty training mode with JP and while he has already had more accidents in three weeks of training then Shelby has ever had, it is going more smoothly than I could have ever imagined. This week was huge because we had our first successful poop on the potty. It was just perfect timing really. I was calling JP to get dressed and when I found him he said, "No mommy, I still pooping." So I promptly grab him up, stripped him down and put him on the potty before he could finish. No more than 5 seconds later we had victory!!!! Shelby and I were so excited for him (actually she was excited for herself because she knew that she would get two m&ms out of the deal). Today we had another success and this time he told me that he had to go poopy on the potty, so, we are making progress; but of course in true JP fashion he did have two accidents today. I am grateful for the ease that we have experienced with him so far, but I really do hope that this accident thing passes quickly as I am getting a little tired of cleaning pee, poop and doing laundry everyday.

Last week we had great fun. On Thursday we went to the beach with some friends. It was the most perfect day for it. The sun wasn't too intense and it was warm enough, but not too hot. The children all had so much fun playing with each other and we found our first star fish on the beach. I think Eliza found it and all the children enjoyed looking at it and talking about it.

Some other minor details....Shelby and JP are really enjoying playing mommy and baby right now. I am sure that you can guess who takes which role. It is so amusing because half the time JP does baby talk, baby whine, and baby cry and the other half he is making sounds like a cat. Sometimes I am not sure which he is supposed to be until Shelby says, "Baby....." We have also rediscovered the Wiggles. A lot of adults find them somewhat annoying, but I kind of like them. Their songs are great and the children love dancing and singing along. I have tried desperately to sneak a video of Shelby dancing to "D-O-R-O-T-H-Y". It is so funny to see her copying the moves and hear her singing along. Hopefully soon I will have that for you because I know that you will enjoy it. We went shoe shopping this week and it truly hit me hard that my babies aren't babies anymore. I got their feet measured and of course, they grew. I knew that, but what I didn't realize until I held JP's little big foot in my hand to put some socks on how much his feet had changed. Yes, I do put his shoes on everyday, but for some reason this particular moment I took the time to examine his foot and see that it wasn't a baby foot anymore. Oh, forlorn!!!!! My heart breaks just thinking about it. Today I went through Shelby and JP's sock drawers to make way for new socks and I found so many of JP's socks from when he was an infant. It was just one of those things that really took me back and made me miss that stage of motherhood soooooooooo much.

Well, I think that is about it. 'Til next time...God bless!

Potty Training and Play-dough

No, you aren't imaging things...I am actually posting another blog...2 blogs in 2 days! I am on a roll!!

Today has been such fun that I felt like documenting it now instead of relying on my not so good long term memory for later. This morning JP slept until 6:55!!!!! Isn't that awesome!?!?! And to make it even better, Pratt got up with him!!! Also, Shelby slept until almost 8:45!!! It is a Thursday morning miracle! We had a nice morning. Shelby woke up and when I got into her room she instantly started crying because she didn't want to go to the dentist. Reassuring her through the whole morning got old very fast and in an effort to distract for a few moments, we decided to try our hand at making our very own play dough. And it worked, Shelby didn't cry about the dentist for about 30 minutes and we had so much fun making play dough together. I was amazed at how easy it was and how much the children really enjoyed helping mixing the ingredients. Shelby got right to work with hers and made all sorts of shapes and she insisted that she get a picture of them. So here you can see she made a butterfly, ice cream cone (yummy!), star, and a circle.

JP just loved mashing his fingers in the dough and cutting it into tiny pieces with a little knife. They both really got excited about being able to pick which color they wanted and how much it made. I have to say, I was very shocked at how much one serving was. Hopefully it will last a long time before hardening.

The dentist went much better than expected. Last time Shelby cried and flailed about so much that I had to basically lay on top of her so that the hygentist could do her job and once we were finished she and I looked like we had just been in a fight. We were both covered in sweat and the chair was soaking from her sweating so much. This time I just had to hold her arms and we only had whining!! Score one for that!! In fact, it was such a peaceful experience from the last time that we attempted to get pictures of her teeth...that ended up not happening, but for one brief moment she was sitting in the chair with the apron on and actually held the film in her mouth, but not long enough for the picture...oh well, making progress!!!

Finally, Pratt and I have started the process of potty training JP. This is one chore I am not looking forward to. Shelby was so easy and in a sense pretty much potty trained herself, I think JP might not be so smooth. So far, he is doing pretty good. I haven't been forcing the issue and when we are home I have been letting him run around bottom bare. Yesterday he actually went the whole day with only one pull-up, but today, not so much. This morning we spent a considerable amount of time playing on the potty and I just couldn't resist taking some video of him singing along with is little potty. So I hope you enjoy this little show!