Does Money Really Grow on Trees?

I have found myself wishing today that I had a money tree. A real life tree growing fifty and one hundred dollar bills. I would really take care of that tree the best I could. In fact Willie and I try to take care of our finances the best we know how. We are re-learning how to budget and cut back in areas that we don't need to spend as much. With baby #3 on his way we feel like we need to spend our money on some necessary things. Ever since we were married (5 years) I have really wanted to get our home into a look that matches. Wood color matching, couches matching, etc. In the last few months we have made two really big purchases. The first we found on Craigslist. Along with my outstanding deal for our kitchen table I have found a new living room set. I will not disclose the price, you may guess. We purchased a love seat, couch, 'hot chocolate' (coffee) table, end table and a rug with matching pillows. I love it. For the first time in three years we have been able to lay full length on a couch!! I consider this my birthday present. Another good thing about it is that they are used so when the boys first colored on the table with their crayons I wasn't too terribly mad. The only thing I have right now for a look at the couches is a video.

Our second big purchase was a new ride. Maybe not in the size we could have dealt with but we thought long and hard about it and decided what was necessary (something bigger). We enjoy the Honda brand. We knew that the trusty old civic just wouldn't hold three car seats. Parker will need a booster seat down the road but even then three won't fit. We wanted an upgrade, especially before the due date. We are excited to welcome into the family our new Honda Odyssey complete with CD player! Yes we think the two biggest perks to this new ride is the CD player and mega air conditioning. We have gone on a long time without even a tape deck in our civic and now we get a CD player. Poor Lincoln always looks like he just got out of the pool when he gets out of the car. He sweats so much and the air never gets to him, now the air will blow strong, hard and cool on his little body. In the end I guess we wanted to be like my two sisters and my aunt and everyone in Georgia.The third big purchase is still in the works. We would like to upgrade Parker into a new bed and give Lincoln the crib and the baby will get the pack n play. Kind of sad that we don't use the crib for the baby but that's what we live with. This one we are searching for on craigslist, I always love to find a good deal. If the baby comes before the bed then no worries, we have two pack n plays and Lincoln will probably be a little tight in his by then but he's a good kid and doesn't complain.

Birthday Boy.

Not much was planned for Parker's birthday. Willie was working and many of Parker's friends were out of town. So we kept our day pretty chill. I asked Parker what he wanted for breakfast, he replied "toaster noodles." We prepared the 'toaster noodles' by placing them in the toaster and he pushed the handle down and let them cook. He enjoyed spreading his own little packet of frosting. Then I decorated another for him and put a candle in it. One of the funniest things is that I think this boy has forgotten how to blow out a candle. I suppose we should have practiced before his birthday came. For at least half an hour these two goofs played in the pack n play. They have so much fun jumping and falling and who knows what else. Unfortunately I don't have pictures of when we had two friends join us to play in the morning. I think we would have done something more fun and outside but it was really hot and swimming for some reason didn't become an option. No matter though, the boys had a great time playing with Anya and Austria. Thanks for coming to play girls.
I made sure that we took the birthday pictures with Chester and Freddy. Lincoln is 18 months now so I figured it was time he had his taken as well. Parker was a perfect little model and Lincoln did okay, he wouldn't sit where I wanted him to. I thought Parker would enjoy a train cake this year. It was a small disaster. I baked the cake, that was easy. Then I cut out the rectangles for the train cars, not too bad. Then I realized I didn't have too much frosting, bad idea. I saw that someone had baked a small cake in a bean can for their locomotive, why not just use a cylinder shape to cut one out of the rectangle? Bad Idea. This cake was looking pretty miserable for awhile. I used neon food coloring, which I think Parker didn't mind since he likes pink and purple. I tried to make it boyish though. I used a small layer of frosting for the pond and then added some Swedish fish to the pond. The marshmallow is suppose to be the steam from the train. We had leftover candy from the parade and that helped with the wheels. Something you don't see in the picture is that only half of the cake is frosted. There wasn't enough to do the back side. Willie had come home that night and saw the cake from the back side and said something like "that's an original idea." I just started laughing. Parker did compliment the cake by saying "that's a pretty beautiful cake mommy." So to the three year old eye this was a pretty beautiful cake and it tasted good. Thanks buddy. We are happy to have you in our family. You bring us so much joy.

Camping.

Over the Pioneer weekend and Willie's birthday we headed up to Lake Lanier to try out the summer camping. I've been wanting to camp for awhile now, but perhaps we should have been wiser. We picked a very hot and humid Georgia summer day to go. We picked up Wendy's along the way because we realized that we really didn't want to start a fire. In the end we made a little fire to roast some marshmallows to eat with our "crackers" or cookies. Before our trip Parker saw a picture on the Friend magazine with a family roasting marshmallows. He thought they had crackers so that's what we had. After setting up the tent we went swimming in the lake. We were having a great time. Lincoln would get tired every so often, a late night for the boy. Parker had a lot of fun until. . . yes we mentioned the fish in the water. They had been nibbling at our feet on occasion. We thought he would love to see the fish in the water. Oh my are we insane!! Yes! Our little Parker wanted OUT of the water and FAST! Poor kid was so scared to get back in the water. Well our swimming adventures were pretty much done. We told him there wouldn't be fish in the morning. He tried it a little bit in the morning but still no joy.
The boys opened up some presents from my parents. They received new sleeping bags (which were way cute but too hot to sleep in), a tent (which we didn't get to use), and new camping chairs (which they loved). They had so much fun opening presents. Happy Birthday to Parker and Happy Camping to Lincoln. Thanks mom and dad. We baked a cake before hand for Willie's birthday. We enjoyed singing to him and the boys had fun blowing out the candles. We didn't take too many pictures and only one short video.

Hide and Seek.

This can really only be expressed in a video. Willie decided to teach P-man how to play. Lincoln was observing and trying this game out as well.

Temple Trip.

Our first sacrificial temple trip since the Atlanta Temple has been closed for remodeling. Willie says that our temple trip to London was a sacrifice but I think it's just that we planned to attend the temple while we were on vacation. This trip was different though. We planned to leave Friday night and return Saturday. On this trip we made a few discoveries. First, we are grateful that we have always been blessed to have a temple within 20 minutes of our home. Second, the pioneers sacrificed a lot when traveling across the plains; it shouldn't be too big of a problem to travel three hours to attend a temple session.
When we arrived at the hotel I was going through our things and realized that we had left our temple clothing (no rentals at this temple), and my temple recommend (in my temple bag). We had become so worried about other things that we forgot the MAIN thing. We thought that maybe we could see if there was some way we could borrow some clothes and maybe do a phone interview or something to make it all work out, but we couldn't call because they didn't open their doors until 5 pm. Small temple means that you have limited operating hours. Willie left us around 3:30 to head back to Atlanta for our things. He drove six hours total and ate lots of pretzels to keep him awake, as well as listened to sports radio. I took the boys swimming. Kind of scary doing it all by myself. I bought a pizza, which I had troubles in doing. The weather turned dark when we were getting out of the pool and luckily we were inside when the thunder started, Parker doesn't like thunder. The pizza guy came early and the ATM at the hotel was out of money. In the end it all worked out and the boys got a bath and were in bed by 7:45.The next morning we were off to the temple. Willie went in first and I took pictures of the boys. The weather was a bit warm and the humidity was pretty high. I was excited that the boys posed for this picture. I love how happy they are.The boys found a few sprinklers to play in. It was pretty funny. Parker would watch for the sprinkler and move just in time not to get wet. Lincoln wouldn't be watching and he would get hit right in the chest and face. Poor kid was soaking. They had fun together.

The temple was really nice. I always enjoy going to the temple, it's a nice recharge to my life. We didn't realize that we had to go European to get to Birmingham, Alabama. The sign below shows Oporto (the place we lived in Portugal) and Madrid (Spain). The sign brought back some interesting memories.

Lincoln's first.

Each night we rotate who says the prayer. Parker's turn was last night but he refused, like most times. I saw Lincoln ready for prayers with his head on the table so we let him say the prayer. Parker helped at first with "Dear Heavenly Fadder..." Then we said "thank you for..." and this is where Lincoln helped out "daddy, mommy, parker and (very well pronounced) baby." He didn't say his own name in the prayers but he did great. Then we thanked Heavenly Father for "Jesus," I can't spell how he says it, but he's working on it. Parker helped to end the prayer as well.

Willie and I are so proud of our boys for learning how to pray so that hopefully one day they will know where to turn when we aren't around.

Happy Independance Day.

What better way to celebrate our country's birthday than by going to a good old traditional Major League Baseball game. We dressed as best we could for the holiday is the most red white and blue that we could find. We took our friend, John with us. The Braves played the Marlins. The final score was 4-1 for the Braves. All of the runs were in one inning. There was some fun excitement. I took tons of food because the game was during dinner time and we didn't want to spend the money for an expensive burger at the stadium. If we had been in our original seats we would have roasted, but we found something nice and high in the shade. It was a really nice day.The boys did really well for awhile and they stayed in their seats and watched parts of the game.

Lincoln and Parker eventually made their way into the stands and ran from one end to the other. This was partly another reason for sitting so high, room to run. Lincoln was the only one to sport Braves gear, maybe before we leave Atlanta we will have collected a few more items.We made sure to bring Parker's glove. He was really excited to bring it along, you know in case we would catch a ball. This reminded us of a classic movie, The Sandlot. In the movie 'Smalls' has a plastic mitt that breaks when he's playing catch with his step-dad. Luckily this mitt hasn't broken yet. We are ready for Parker when he really wants to play catch though.
This is the bit of proof that Willie got of me actually at the game. I guess I'm not really keeping an eye on Parker but that's okay. He didn't get hurt. Only Lincoln when he tripped from running too fast down the isles. On the actual 4th of July we heard wonderful testimonies born at church. One Sister stood and said that she had it "click" during conference why she was okay with her sons serving in the military. She bore a strong testimony on the Plan of Salvation. She had come to understand that if anything did happen to her sons while either on their missions or serving the country that they would get to see them again one day. Many members from our ward also spoke about how grateful they are to be living in America, but they have lived in very poor places throughout the world. Some people spoke of all the freedoms we have in this country and that we don't think is a luxury. We forget sometimes to thank Heavenly Father for these blessings. I am grateful to live in America. I'm grateful for the many blessings Willie and I have had in the last few years.
On the 5th of July we attended the Dunwoody Parade. There were some highlights and there were some low-lights. We did enjoy our time as a family though. At this parade they weren't allowed to throw candy. Which turned out to be good for us, we didn't want to be taking home too much. This was the coolest float. We never saw any horses. I think there was a firetruck. A couple of boats and a whole load of campaigners. Parker was a walking billboard by the time the parade was over, elections are at the end of the month. I thought this turned out to be a pretty cool picture with the flag. Parker and Lincoln enjoyed their American flags.