A shovel is like a big spoon, right?

The shovel on the kitchen counter caught his eye while he was eating supper.






Jared informed me after porter had been eating with it a few minutes that he had been picking up dog poo with it in the backyard a couple of days ago.

Tara
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Fun Saturday.... Til the end

I am enjoying not being on call this weekend, so we started off the weekend last night by eating at hilltop restaurant and going to the AHS boys basketball game. They are currently ranked 2nd in the state and were playing their first game of the area tournament. They beat straughn and will play again Monday night. We let porter stay up late, and while I was hoping that would mean he would sleep later this morning, I knew the odds were slim. We were up at 6:00, as I expected. He has been sleeping until 6:30 a lot of mornings during the week, but he takes a break from that on the weekends. This afternoon we took porter to his firstbmovie at the theater!!! We saw Knomeo and Juliet. It was a cute movie, but the bigger news is that porter made it through the whole movie and actually did pretty well!!! He made it almost a whole hour without wiggling, and then with a little candy and a few reminders to watch the movie, he settled down. Yea! I have been looking forward to this day. There have been several movies I wanted to try to take him to, but was afraid he would disrupt the entire theater. In the first 15 minutes.
Saturdays are my cheat days for my little bodybuilding contest, and I decided I was going to have popcorn at the movie, something different (not healthy) for supper and a little ice cream after supper. We decided on steaks, porter's favorite, and I fixed "tay-o's" (mashed potatoes) for the boys, but I didn't have any--until a few bites as I was putting away the leftovers. Then we went to dairy queen and I got a *mini* chocolate extreme blizzard. It was gone before we got back home. I enjoyed it for a little while, but then I started getting a headache, and feeling queasy and crampy. I am definitely paying for my cheating. I won't be cheating this much next week. I may be just adding a little more splenda and cinnamon to my sweet potato. This is yucky!
Anyway, we had a pretty great day, and I hope porter continues with greatness by sleeping all night--again!! I don want to brag to quick, but he's doing really well in his real big boy bed so far. He's slept all night 3 out of 5 nights and only gotten up once the other 2 nights.
I don't have any good pictures to post tonight. I might drag out my "real" camera tomorrow afternoon if the weather is as good as it is supposed to be. And I still have some flip video to edit.
Night night! :)



Tara
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Our new Vicki art!!!

Once again, we are so thrilled with what Vicki Popwell does with her camera! Here are the images that we got this time. The first one is a cameo portrait that is in our hall and I have stopped and looked at it every time I have passed it since we hung it last night. We also got another gallery wrap. It's the landscape houndstooth hat portrait. The other houndstooth hat pics are framed 5x10's that are hung together. I'll sprinkle in some of my own pics that I took of them while we were hanging them.






These two are smaller for desktop frames.














In the dining room....


This one will eventually go in my office when it's finished ring built.


Hung in the foyer for now...



Love the side of the canvas!!!



I know it's an Alabama football thing, but you have to admit the pics are cute and the side of the canvas is creative.


Tara
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So far so good....

Porter is asleep in his bed! After a few reassuring talks and one minor threat, he decided he would rather go to sleep than risk receiving the business end of the threat.
This afternoon when it was just the frame and no mattress he said, "Mama, this new bed is broken." he thoroughly enjoyed jumping on it the whole time I was trying to get it all made up and climbed up and down the footboard onto and off of the bed a hundred times.
We had a few issues with bed rails, but that has been partly resolved. Let me elaborate and maybe save somebody else some time and money. We have a pillowtop mattress, and the standard bed rails are not tall enough. When we got our donated set together and the mattress on there was only 2-3 inches of bedrail sticking up. So I got the dexbaby brand set at walmart that says it is for thicker mattresses, but still not tall enough. I sent Jared back to walmart to return those an get the safety first brand that has an adjustable "thingy" that will make it fit on a taller mattress. It clamps down on the mattress so it's tight and even has another little piece so that there is no room between the edge of the mattress and the rail. The only problem is that it is not a set, and just a single bed rail. And that was $15 more than the dexbaby set. Luckily porter's bed is next to his bathroom wall and only part of the bed is unprotected. We just put his big stuffed alligator that until now was just in the way and awkward on that side of the bed and told porter that now his alligator got to sleep with him. We may need to get another rail for the other side at some point, but tonight that's what we're working with. (Refer to picture below if that doesn't completely make sense--it shows what I'm talking about.)



Tara
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Big boy bed

We fully converted his crib to a full size bed today. This is with temporary bedding until his comes in.





Tara
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Whew!

There are 4 new posts below; the last of which is a new video edited with imovie. It was being difficult and took a while to load, but now it's up!
I've already got more stuff to edit!

Bathroom Renovation

I guess I should really call it the "Master Suite" renovation, because we did much more than just add a bathroom. We moved a big wall to make the bedroom a little larger, turned an old half bath back into a closet, AND turned a glass porch into a bathroom and walk in closet. I'm happy with the results. Really happy when I'm soaking in the tub.

Millions of monkeys drumming on drums

That's a line from one of our regular bedtime books, "Hand, hand, fingers, thumb" (Dr Seuss).
Here are more pictures that I never posted from Christmas. It's the parade that we had going on at my parent's house after Porter and company got ahold of the drum kit he received.

Cookie Exchange and Christmas Cooking

Recently I realized that I never blogged about the cookie exchange I went to around Christmas (probably partly because I forgot to take any pictures), and tied into that was our Christmas cooking. So. I was invited down to Niceville to my friend Nancy's cookie exchange. I was so excited. I love love love cookies, and was excited to get to do "girl things" since my return to normal life. I used our annual Christmas goody baking day to make the cookies (Pumpkin White Chocolate Chip) and got some pictures of the cooking action.
We had a great time at the cookie exchange, and I was able to fulfill a lifelong dream of eating cookies for three meals a day for a while. The guys took Jack and Porter to play while we socialized.
Two fun days: cooking and exchanging!














I can't even remember what all we cooked. This is certainly not all of it. Probably about half of the stuff we did. Soooo good.

Flip Snipits: Playdoh and playing in bed

Last week I got a couple of little playdoh things from the clearance aisle at wal-mart. I have been reluctant, because Porter is not a very neat or clean player and I could just imagine how playdoh would look smushed into all the rugs. And he's not one to sit and color or do other similar activities. However, he loved it! The first night I plopped him on a stool and he played with it at the kitchen bar for about an hour. It was heaven to be able to just cook without having to hunt a mischievous 2 year old and redirect/threaten the entire time. Of course the new has worn off and he still wants to play with it some, but he's quickly on to something else. Oh well, these are the days..... Enjoy....