A Great Give-Away!!!

I've had my eye on the Silhouette SD for a while now and there are some great ways to win it out there!

Check it out over at www.tidymom.net contest ends soon!

Yeah, I'm a bad blogger loser....

It's true, I'm behind and feeling like a loser at the blogging thing. I hate that saying "it is was it is," but in this case, well.......it is! Allie had her baby in October, which was AMAZING and beautiful, and I'm so thankful that I could be there. I quickly settled in to falling in love with her new little bundle of joy. What a sweet little guy! I swear that my uterus contracts everytime I get to love on that little guy. Makes me want a baby again...except for the fact that I need 9-10 hours of sleep a night. (It's legit, I'm not making this up. I really do get run down and sick if I don't get it.)


November was a blur with birthdays, Thanksgiving and Christmas preparations. December, if it's possible, was even more of a blur. Holly and Grace turned 10 and 9, respectively. We celebrated at home with a pajama birthday party and a bunch of their friends.


John celebrated another birthday at the beginning of the month, then we snuck in a visit to Florida in late January (I think!), which was good, given what was soon to come.


In February we started feeling really anxious about John's job and decided that we needed to start seriously looking for another position for him. The economy was continuing to fail and the outlook with his current employer was not good. With that in mind, we began to search in just the southeast; our hope being that we could stay close to John's side of the family and our older kiddos and their families. When that didn't yield anything, we decided to open it up to places that we'd like to live, as well as the southeast, and we prayed. It was, well...... so dead that it you could almost hear crickets chirping. Scary! At this point, about two weeks had passed since we started the search. It was then that John received notice that he would be laid off at of the end of April. We tried hard not to freak out, opened our search to the entire nation, and prayed harder.


He had phone interviews with companies in Oregon, North Dakota, Louisiana and Tennessee, plus a couple that I've forgotten about. We travelled for interviews in Louisiana and Tennessee, and started looking for rentals in those places in case a job was offered. We were hoping for Tennessee. We reallyliked Tennessee. Then we waited for an offer to come. And waited. Sometime in the middle of waiting, he got a call from a company in Kansas. Kansas, really? We had never even thought about Kansas. It caught us by surprise. He interviewed via phone with them. Then they flew both of us out for him to interview in person, and for us to check out the area. It was cold and windy, but it felt....right, somehow. Our focus shifted to this Kansas job, as did our hope. We went back home and waited some more, praying that an offer would come soon. About three weeks into the search, and feeling foolish about starting to pack our house up, John got notice that he would be laid off two weeks earlier. Awesome. No pressure!


Then, late one afternoon, and offer finally came in. From Tennessee. And we were confused. We WANTED Tennessee, only it didn't feel right. Added to that was the fact that no other offers had come in, and that we were running out of time. In the minutes after the offer came in, we were rather frantically reviewing our situation and talking about what we should do. WHAT THE HECK SHOULD WE DO?!?! And no kidding, not five minutes after the offer came in, the Kansas company called to see how we had liked Kansas, and how John had liked the company. It was a risky thing to do, but he told them that he had actually just hung up from receiving another offer, but that his preference was to come to Kansas, both for the job and the location, and that if they were considering making an offer soon, he would REALLY like to consider it. We fretted and prayed a lot. At 7:30 the next morning, they called with an offer.


That was almost three weeks ago. In that short amount of time, we packed up our lives and all of our stuff (wow, we have TOO MUCH stuff!!) and moved it a thousand miles away from our home in the woods of Alabama. We are now residents of Wichita, Kansas. John starts his new job in just a few days! We are happy and blessed, and so incredibly thankful for divine providence.


And that, my friends, is why I am a bad blogger loser. Sorry, no photos! I did say that I was a loser, didn't I? Update coming soon!!!

Hanna's Baby Shower

Hanna is a friend from church whose baby is due in early November. Missy Howell and I decided to get together and throw a baby shower for her on the 17th of this month. Missy (on right) opened her home for the occasion.

Because Hanna had already had another shower hosted for her, she decided that she'd like this one to be a diaper and wipe shower. It worked out pretty well! She ended up with quite a few packs of diapers and wipes to get her started off once the baby arrives. Here's a shot of the diaper cake that I made. She has chosen pink and green to decorate little Faith's room with, so this will match with that if she decides that she wants to leave it as a decoration for a while, before disassembling it and using the diapers.

Among the food at the shower was this chocolate hazelnut mousse, which was so yummy and so easy and quick to make. I piped it into small cups and sprinkled it with shaved chocolate. (I'll include the recipe at the end of this post.)



Here's our pregnant mommy, Hanna. She's checking out some sweet little burp cloths trimmed in pink and green ricrac and made from cloth diapers.

We had a nice time and it was a great reason to get friends together on a Saturday morning. Girl time is awesome!

Chocolate Hazlenut Mousse

1-13 oz. jar Nutella (chocolate hazelnut spread--look with the peanut butter to

find this)

1-16 oz. tub of Cool Whip, thawed in refrigerator

Spoon Cool Whip into a large mixing bowl and follow with the Nutella. Using a wisk, mix the Cool Whip and Nutella together until well incorporated. Leaving some streaks of white and chocolate is pretty, but optional.

It's ready to eat immediately, though I prefer it chilled for a few hours. It's pretty spooned or piped into small serving dishes for a pretty impression. Enjoy!

Reaching maximum capacity and a Cutie Patootie

Allie's belly at 38 weeks is truly a site to behold. Best described as large and EXTREMELY pointed, it is a sight that frequently draws stares. The picture really doesn't do it justice, as it must be seen dimensionally in order to fully appreciate the shape. To me, it strongly resembles the bough of a ship. Most times when we're out, she is asked by more than one person how many babies she is having. That's how large it is. I exaggerate not! This is either a very big baby, or there is a hidden and undetected twin lurking somewhere in the depths. We find ourselves speculating about it all of the time. Unbelievably, with two weeks left to go, it will continue to grow. Her navel has turned completely inside out and protrudes in a bizarre manner. It really is crazy. To help take some of the stress off her back, which is becoming a problem, we have found a belly band. It works!

Today she is in town with Tamia to house hunt. They'd like to get out of Birmingham and be closer to us. I'm trying not to get my hopes up yet. So, we've looked at a few places. One or two are possibilities, but time will tell. How cute is Tamia?!?!? She was such a good sport during the house hunting.

A Baby Shower for Allie

We got together here at our house on the 12th of September for a baby shower for Allie and little Tim. We're a month out from her due date at this point, and her belly has grown substantially. Brianna has come in from Tallahassee for the occasion, and we have several friends from church here as well, and a total of three pregnant ladies, including Allie.

We enjoyed some yummy breakfast food, including sausage quiche, monkey bread, and grits casserole.

Everyone helped to assemble scrapbook pages that we later slipped into a baby scrapbook.

We had a great time! It was fun to get everyone together and enjoy a morning togther with 'the girls.' Girl power rocks!!!

In attendance: Lisa Smithson, Debbie Clark, Laine Morse, Ashtyn Clark, Brianna Howard, Alicia Motley, Renee Howard, Hanna Heaton, Missy Howell, Moeata Santos.

Before Brianna headed home, we managed to sneak in some girl's time. We had a late night scrapbooking session (Allie was cracking the whip to get those pages done!) and stayed up 'til the wee hours laughing and talking. It was a great weekend!

Baby Belly Pictures

Well, Allie's pregnancy is moving right along! She is at 28 weeks now, with about 12 weeks still to go. She's excited, Tim is excited, Tamia is excited.......pretty much everyone is VERY excited. Holly and Grace are anxious to assume their roll of Aunt for another little one, and Holly is plotting ways to be there when the baby is born (sure!) and pretty much how she might use him as a live baby doll to feed and change and hold to her heart's content.

The last big announcement regarding the baby, is his name! He will be Timothy Dewayne Motley II. If all goes as planned, we'll see him sometime around October 12th!

School's Out!

The girls are undoubtedly excited by the prospects of summer and all of it's glory. As a mother, it always seems sad to me when the school year ends, and not just because I'm afraid that the kids will drive me nuts over the next 12 weeks. (Which they always do.) The thing is, I have a real appreciation for the work that my kid's teachers do and I try to do all that I can to support them during the school year. I send my girls off to them every day and they become our partners in parenting for that school year.

This year we had great teachers! Holly spent a couple of hours each day with Ms. Gilliland (left), who helped her with Math, Language Arts and Spelling, and was with Mrs. Warren (right) in a regular classroom setting. Both of these teachers were nurturing, patient and encouraging.

Grace's teacher this year was Mrs. Price, and Grace had a lot of fun with her. She worked hard with the children to teach them to be self-sufficient. Grace loved her classmates this year, and especially all of the girls in her class!

We made the rounds on the last day of school and the girls gave each of their teachers pen cups (filled with felt tip pens, highlighters, scissors, pencils and erasers, dry erase markers and permanent markers) as a special thank you for a great year.

So, Summer---here we come! We're looking forward to following John on some business trips to Huntsville, swimming, sleeping in, and watching Allie's baby belly grow. When school starts in August, we'll be at a new school. They've finished an elementary school that's only ten minutes from home, which means no more 75 minute bus rides!