Daycare Parade

A friend of mine sent me this cute picture of Josie and some of her classmates from Friday. They had a little "musical parade" down the halls of the daycare.

They are making fun memories!

What We've Been Up to & Josie-isms

Our sweet little girl was sick for a little over a week. Poor thing was pitiful! She had a fever off and on for the first few days and her eyes were puffy, had a runny nose and was so sleepy. The doctor said it was just allergies and had to run its course with a little help from some medicine. We missed the last 2 days of swim lessons, because Josie was sick :(

We have been busy the past few weeks. We went with my in-laws to eat at Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen in Memphis to celebrate our birthdays. It was WONDERFUL! We had such a great time.

Josh and I also took Josie last weekend to Lambuth Day to say farewell to our alma mater. The day went a little differently than expected due to rain. However, we enjoyed seeing some great friends and catching up. I wish we could have stayed longer, but it was still a fun time! I didn't get a single pic that day, because it was so hectic, but we hope to take Josie back soon to get some pictures on the LU campus. We are so sad to see the university close. We made many friends and great memories at that special place!

Josie is ALL better now!

Our sweet girl LOVES to be outside. We haven't used her new swimming pool in a couple of weeks since she's been under the weather. Now that she's better, she enjoys watering the flowers and has discovered that a water fight is fun, too! If Josh had been here the other night, I would have gotten him to take my picture after my child totally attacked me with the hose! It was pretty funny!

I think Josie has changed so much recently. Josh and I laugh and say that she will say ANYTHING! She asks all kinds of questions.... "What's that called?", "Where did (fill in the blank) go?", etc. She talks about everything and is very observant. She will say the craziest things! Her new favorite line is, "My tummy hurting!" We are still trying to decide what she means by this. I think sometimes she says that when she is hungry and even when she wants attention. She tells us this at least 10 times a day. She makes us laugh every single day. She also is going through the "terrible two's"... major temper tantrums and fits. I need to get it on video asap :) We are really working on this! A couple of times she has thrown a major fit, she will look at me and say, "Happy Mother's Day, Mommy" -- I guess that's supposed to make it all better :) I try not to laugh! Also, Josh told her the other day not to do something and she came running to me saying, "Daddy told me no! Go get him!" ha! She's a sensitive little gal. She is constantly telling us that we hurt her feelings or that we are bothering her. Obviously they are learning to express emotions and different feelings at school!

We are still working on potty training! She's doing really well with it. Josie's in "big girl panties" all of the time now except for nap and bedtime. Knock on wood, NO TEE TEE ACCIDENTS lately! We are still working on the other kind, but she did do it in the potty this weekend and we did a "poopy dance!!!" She picked out a new toy, too. We are hoping this will be more consistent soon. Josie's VERY proud of going to the potty and will completely go on her own now and then tell us. Then, she will say, "cookie for potty??" or "candy for potty?!" Smart girl :)

Our sweet girl loves to say the blessing at meal time. She says, "Thank you God for our food. Amen." This is her blessing from school. Such a sweetheart :) Makes my heart happy!

Josie says her prayers every night at bedtime, as well. She tickles me with the funny things that she prays for and she never forgets her friends and family.

Josie is still a bit of a picky eater. She still will not eat much fruit except for bananas and apples. Absolutely NO strawberries. She loves cheese, yogurt, cheetos, blueberry muffins, green beans, peanut butter, granola bars, pancakes, turkey and chicken. I'm trying to introduce her to new things often. I do not want her to be a picky eater for life!


Josie's imagination has started going wild! She seems to pretend and role play more lately. She plays with her babies and will hug and kiss them and tell them to stop crying. She will pretend to read books to me and her dolls. She loves to go grocery shopping in the house and then come to me so that we can ring it up on her cash register. I love seeing her personality come out!

My Handy Husband ;)

I am a "sucker" for the Extreme Makeover show or ANY magical home transformation with some good before and after pics....

Well............

I wish I could say that I had really great dramatic before and after pics for you, but that's UNFORTUNATELY not the case here. My very handy husband recently decided to tackle lots of "to do's" on his Honey Do list :) Well, these are actually projects that we have wanted to check off our list for YEARS. With our crazy lifestyle, these projects were put on hold for too long. Josh told me a few weeks ago that he was going to shock me and actually get to work on the list! Ha! Before I knew it, he had started painting our living room the color that we picked out months ago. I walked in one night and he had started the transformation. The awful red room is now a pretty golden color that I LOVE! See the last two pics! All of these changes have happened so quickly and I cannot believe that I don't have good pictures to show the dramatic changes!

This first picture is of the new WHITE trim in Josh's office. Look VERY closely... You can see the side of the window is a fresh coat of white paint and the top is still the cream color that the trim in our house has been since we moved in. Looks much better, huh!?!? Humor me :)

Below is Josh's office.
This is the mess that we are currently living in, but it will be so worth it!

Josh has been fixing the wall below the big window in his office. Rain has damaged the wall and it looked awful. I soooo wish that I had a before pic of this one... the large hole in the wall was terrible! As you can see, that is our back door (off of our carport) and this room is seen by everyone who comes over. The hole in the wall was a major eye sore!

This is the fabulous living room that was once red. Imagine this room BRIGHT RED.... yea, see... you can appreciate the new look, right?!!? We still need to get pictures hung back up and do some more decorating, but I'm enjoying this room so much! It's our formal living room and gets very little use, but it now feels cozy! I would love to get some pretty window treatments next!We have also replaced the white fan in our kitchen to a nice new light fixture (and even better than the new appearance is that the light bulbs don't blow out every few days like the crazy fan did!)

I'm so thankful to have a handy husband who can tackle these projects. I think Josh is feeling the pressure to get as much done as possible before he starts school in two months! He's on a roll!

Father's Day!

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!!!

We had a very low key Father's Day around here. Josie gave her daddy a nice gift and slept til almost 9:30 this morning (although we were up much earlier than that... why is that always the case?!?!) Josh has been very busy working on some "home projects" at the house (more on that later) and we allowed time to slip away from us and we missed church today :( Josh worked ALL day on some projects. It seems like a bad way for Josh to spend his Father's Day, but he enjoys "projects" and staying busy! Have I ever mentioned that I'm married to a workaholic?!?! Josie enjoyed being his helper! Josie and I went to visit my mom, grandmother and uncle for a little bit. After leaving there, Josie and I went to the cemetery to put flowers on Josh's dad's grave. I plan to make this a tradition for us on Father's Day. I can't wait to tell Josie more about her Granddaddy Shearon as she gets older. He was very special and loved her VERY much.

My dad is out of town. So, we hope to celebrate with him once he gets back to town! We usually try to go out to eat for Father's Day, but we actually ate all three meals at home today! Josh said he really enjoyed having homecooked meals for a change :) We did finish off the day with a DQ Cookie Dough blizzard.... that has become our Sunday night tradition! Can you tell that we love food?!? After our ice cream, we stopped by to see JJ and wish him a Happy Father's Day, too! Josie sure loves her JJ!

Josie helping her Daddy open his presents :)



the mug that Josie made for Daddy at school :)


I am so thankful to have such a caring and supportive dad, who has always been there for me. I am also blessed to have such a wonderful husband who is an incredibly loving, patient and generous daddy for our sweet Josie. We are also celebrating all of the other special men in our lives that are wonderful father figures and we are remembering all of our loved ones who have gone to Heaven. We miss them so much.

BIG NEWS!!!

Josh and I are excited to FINALLY announce our good news.....

Josh will be attending Law School at University of Memphis in the fall!!!!!

Josh has had the dream of going to law school for years and was actually accepted several years ago before we were married. He just didn't feel the timing was right at that time due to family obligations, etc. It's always been something that has been in the back of his mind. We finally decided about a year ago to pursue this dream of his again and just see what would happen. Josh began studying for the LSAT, took it twice this past year and then applied to law school. At that time, we also knew we needed to be taking steps to get a steady job for me to be able to provide health insurance and a steady income if Josh did decide to go to school. We prayed and prayed.... prayed REALLY hard that God would open and close doors to allow us to see clearly what His plan was for us. It's pretty amazing that Josh received the email with his last (and GREAT) LSAT score AND I received an email from Sysco with my written job offer ALL WITHIN 30 MINUTES!!! God is GOOD!!! We

knew at that time that this was something that we were meant to pursue further. Over the past few months, we have been making more plans to make this dream possible. We have actually had Kreme Kastle for sale for the past several months hoping that we could find the perfect person to take over the business that we have worked so hard to build. As of now, we still have not sold it. We are currently working on plans for what we will do if the restaurant is still not sold as of August. The restaurant will NOT close. We will carry on as best as possible.

When we took Josie to the zoo last weekend, we drove downtown to check out the area around the Law School. This is where Josh will be spending LOTS of time over the next 3 years......

Josie and I are VERY proud of Josh! We completely support his new endeavor and are so excited to see him follow his dreams. I feel that Josh will appreciate this opportunity now more than he ever would have several years ago when he was accepted to law school the first time. God ALWAYS has a plan. God has taught us many lessons over the past several years and has given us many experiences to lead us to this wonderful opportunity at this time in our lives. It's happening for a reason. We are grateful.

Josh was so sweet to sacrifice so much to help me pursue a dream of mine with owning a restaurant and now it's his turn to follow his dreams......

So thankful for this opportunity.

We are ready to begin this new chapter of our life.

Swimming Lessons

Josie has really enjoyed swimming lessons the past two weeks. It's been a great class for her, because it has been with all of her 2 -3 year old friends. We do our swimming lessons at CJ's house. Josie was VERY unsure of the whole situation the first night and I wondered if she should be a "swimming lesson dropout!" However, we have done much better ever since. She has learned to kick her legs, dig with her arms and blow bubbles. Her favorite part is jumping to me from the side! She even goes completely under water! The moms get in with the kids during the lessons, which is fun but means no action pictures to share :(

Tomorrow will be our last lesson for this summer. I'm hoping to get some fun pics of Josie with her friends. I will share soon :)