ketchup

Yes yes, I know it's been a while. I'm sorry but here are photos to catch you up a bit. The following are photos taken from the past month, June was busy busy busy! We just spent a week at the beach with the Venable clan (AWESOME TIME - and gazillion photos) and are pooped from traveling. Stick a fork in us. So forgive me for my lack of my usual rapier-like wit in this post, I am totally mailing it in. Later this week I'll post from the trip, Matt took the BEST photo of Lottie Sue on the beach. It is great! We've never seen her happier, she absolutely LOVES to run on the beach and kick in the water - she was giddy. It was awesome...

These were taken one afternoon when Harlan was in town, he and Lottie Sue had some major pool time that week.

uh yeah, she's cute

mr. harlan filled up the pitcher and emptied it about 100 times

lottie sue taking a moment

shoving match

happy kids

Here we are after dinner, Daddy/Uncle Matt read a few books to the kiddos.

books r good

Here is a photo of Lottie Sue taken one day on our way to MDO at church. She loves her backpacks (she has two that she uses) and will tell me she has one like Dora all the time.

puppy/babbit in buggy with backpack ready for school

Here is a photo of Lottie putting raisins up her nose one morning.

what class

For Papaw's birthday we took a stroll through the UT trail gardens and then went down to the river walk. Here are lots of photos, you'll feel like you were there.

happy birthday, papaw

If it is quiet then you know Lottie Sue is into something, this is a RULE. During a silent moment I found her in the study with Matt's drawings, notice the pencil mark on her nose. Caught red-handed or black-nosed, if you will (hahahahaha).

busted

The Carsons also stopped by for dinner a few weeks ago. They were traveling to Michigan to visit family and made a pit stop here. The kids are GROWING (eek, so fast - please stop). We didn't take many photos but I hope to steal some from Lara or Josh.

lottie sue pushes claire around while tommy pushes max

a hug that we made them do for a photo

mr. max, he is now a little boy

I will end with photos from lunch with Patterson, Cassady and Carrie a few weeks ago. I have to steal some photos from Carrie's page. She has a photo of me and you need to see my nose, it has grown with this pregnancy again. It happened with LS but after she was here it went back to normal size. I think it's funny, but I'll post a photo later. Anywho...

lottie sue tends to cassady, she is giving him his pacifier here

and she's ready to take him to the car

lottie shares a laugh with carrie and cassady

carrie (having a very good hair day) with cassady

And one last photo of hubby extraordinaire driving the boat around Norris one weekend.

captain mowmow

And a few headlines for your reading pleasure:

• Blink Twice If You Like Me, I had no idea I had a meat market going on in my backyard.
• I now have the evidence I need to cut down on exercising, think of the extra time I'll have: The NY Times did a story on getting fit in just minutes a day. Sounds good to me! But all kidding aside, there really is a science to working out getting results. I read a lot about it. The more I read lately reinforces the idea that an hour of cardio just isn't that great. I spend wayyyyy more time working with weights that I do cardio. If you want to change your body (trim up, lose weight) it seems it's all in strength training. Here's another article on it: Iron Maiden, Weight Training Secrets.
  
• Here's a list of the The Best Kids' Books Ever from a columnist from the NY Times.
• Food and Water, and article on how to refuel your body after a workout.

OK, have a great Sunday! We are going to settle back into life at home today. We made a pit stop at Ikea on our way to the beach and bought furniture for Lottie Sue's new bedroom. She's getting kicked out of the nursery very soon for baby brother's arrival. We are very excited for her to move into her new cool room. I'm making the curtains and we almost have everything put together. I see a "before & after" post coming up...

Over and OUT.

a little bit about lottie sue, cupcake MANIA, sydney is a year older & a venable throw down

Greetings and salutations! It's Thursday afternoon and I just put LS down for her nap. I know I put a lot of photos up but I need to write more about what Lottie Sue is doing (and saying). Here are a few items of interest that came to mind, bullet-point style.

• She is truly hilarious. She loves to laugh and make others laugh.
  
• She has food audibles (shout out to the Linkers here) and if she eats something she likes she'll go MMMM-MMMM!!! Over and over again.
  
• She wants to eat whatever we are eating, even if she has the same thing in front of her - the food on our plates must taste better.
  
• She says "peez" and "day you" (please and thank you) without being prompted most of the time.
  
• She calls a cat a dat and a dog a gog. She'll say just about any word you ask her to say and she has a large vocabulary. She also talks about 90% of the time.
  
• She likes to repeat our names over and over again, I will often here her mumbling "Mommy and Daddy. Mommy and Daddy".
  
• She LOVES to be chased around and could do it for hours.
  
• Lottie Sue also loves potato chips, they are not in her usual rotation but if you Matt you know that he would die for a bag of Ruffles Cheddar Potato Chips. If Lottie Sue sees them she goes nutz.
• Lottie Sue loves to look at her butt in the mirror. She thinks it's hilarious.
  
• She loves bubbles. Very much so.
• She calls her blanket "babbit" and is very attached to it and to her pink puppy. Grandma gave her puppy right after she was born in the hosptial. I bought three extra ones on ebay in case we lose one.
• If you are taking her photo, she says "CHEEEEEESE".
• She loves to pretend cook and feed her babies.
  

I'll write down more soon, she's growing so fast it's hard to keep up! This photo is from last Saturday during the big clean. She fought Matt for the dust buster, I promise we are not making her do hard labor.

dusting and saying "CHEEEEEEEESE"

OK, you might have read Carrie's post about her Cupcake Extravaganza so this will be old news to you. But if not...

Mom bought me this book for Christmas - it is awesome.

click on the image to take you to amazon to purchase

I knew that Carrie would be all over it so I told her about it and I was right, she went bonkerzzzzzz. She organized a cupcake decorating party last weekend and it was truly awesome. I had so much fun. We made four different kinds from the book, take a look for yourself...

The first kind we made were sunflower cupcakes. You had to have "the touch" to do them, notice the faces of concentration in some of the photos. They turned out so well!

adorable!

The next kind we made were my favorites, little owls.

patterson creating a baby owl

here is the tray of the flock we made, could they be any cuter???

The third kind we made were creepy crawlies. They turned out particularly well. My favorite is the centipede you'll see below. But these are hard, you have to have a steady hand for sure when making the critters. You lay wax paper down and then trace the bug design with chocolate. This one was a little intimidating but the more you do it the easier it gets. These just scream Halloween.

here is carrie tracing while kat plops in the m&ms

here is my go at them
(you leave them here to dry them place them on the cupcake)

scary! but cute!

The butterfly cupcakes were the last ones we did. I have to leave a tad bit early and don't have a great photo of them. You make these the same way as the critters, by tracing them on wax paper. The chocolate you use is warmed, Kat had a blow out but quickly recovered and started up again.

uh oh, oopsie

here's one hurried photo, these are really pretty

Later that afternoon everyone gathered at out house to wish Sydney a very happy birthday. Mom and Dad brought over the scrapbooks and we had a "this is your life, sydney garlington" show. It was neat to look back at all the good times, Mom takes a lot of pride in her scrapbooks - they are works of ART!

syndey blowing out her candle
(she had the pick of the litter from the cupcake extravaganza)

gramma, papaw, lottie sue and michelle smile for the camera

matt hams it up on the swing with lottie sue

all the mowrer ladies (sans lottie sue), we took about 10 of these and this was the best one

Later on Lottie Sue got into Papaw's wallet and helped herself to some dollah billz. Her excitement level was high.

show me the money

And I'll end it with a few photos from the Venable Valentine's Day Throw-Down. I meant to take a lot more photos, but it didn't happen. But I'll share what came out alright.

shawn and marty, looking good

matt and sam prepare the smoke meat for mass consumption

lottie sue plays with marty (i have to tell you that lottie has a crush on marty, she smiles at him A LOT and is always game to play with him)

a happy max

Alrighty, I hope this post finds everyone well. Word.