March Favorites

A friend of mine did a blog post on her blog about some of her current favorite things.  I enjoyed reading them, so I decided that at the end of each month, I am going to blog about my top 5 favorite things from that month.  Here are March's favs!

1. The "Abram's Daughters" book series by Beverly Lewis.
These fiction books are about an Amish family who has some very interesting things happen in their lives.  I LOVE historical fiction, and these five novels were fantastic!  I could not read them fast enough.  I am looking forward to reading more books by Beverly Lewis.  I find the life of the Amish very fascinating!

Abram's Daughters Series Website

2. Lovin' Spoons 

Lovin' Spoon is a self serve frozen yogurt store.  They always have about 10-12 different flavors of fat-free or lowfat frozen yogurt to choose from plus a self-serve toppings bar.  You pay by the ounce, and if you check facebook for the "word of the day" you can get 10% off of your bill.  There is a Lovin' Spoons in Pooler next to Publix and in Savannah across from Toy's R Us.  It is fantabulous!!!!

Lovin' Spoons Website

3. Cuisinart Mini-Prep Food Processor

The perfect appliance for making home-made baby food.  This inexpensive appliance has come in handy as Little R has started eating baby food.  So far, I have made all of his food (which has proven to be much cheaper.)  He has liked all of the foods so far and has had green beans, peas, zuchinni, brocolli, squash, sweet potatoes, apples, pears, bananas, and avocados.  The next foods I am going to try are carrots, cauliflower, and peaches.  Yummy!!!

4. SouthernSavers.com

Southernsavers.com has helped our family save a ton of money on our grocery bill.  Yes, it does take some time to look through this website and then find the correlating coupons, but it has become like a game to me.  Each week, I try to save more than the week before.  If you have never visited this website, you should!!!  It lists the weekly deals for all of the grocery stores and drugstores.  It then tells you where to look for coupons so that you can save even more money.  It also contains a coupon database where you can look up individual items to see if there is a coupon for that item.  Many of the coupons can be printed from the internet!  

Southern Savers Website

5. Brooke Davis Photography 

Need I say more???  Just look at this photo and view this post!

6 Month Photo Shoot!!!!

Rewind to the summer of 2002, my first summer of working as a counselor at Epworth.  There were 9 other girls on the "Leadership Team" with me.  One of them was a girl from Vidalia named Brooke Roper. I LOVED getting to know Brooke that summer.  We had so much fun together working at camp.  We were counselors together, survived a week of traveling around South Georgia together, and were partners in crime during our end of summer "Murder Mystery" dinner!

Fast forward to 2010.  I find out that Brooke (now Brooke Davis) and her husband are living in Savannah and we finally get to hang out again!!!  Her little boy, Palmer, is a few months older than Reives, and Brooke has been someone who I have called upon to answer many of my "baby questions."  Brooke is also a stay at home mom, and she is wonderfully and amazingly talented at photography!!

Last weekend, Trey, Little R, and I met Brooke at Forsyth Park for Little R's 6 month photo shoot.  I am so pumped about how the pictures turned out.  They are truly better than anything I could have imagined, and Brooke did such an amazing job capturing Little R at this age.  There are way too many to post all of them, but these are some of my favorites:

I am so thankful to have these pictures of such a special time in our lives!  THANK YOU, BROOKE!!!!

Who's the Boss???

A very good friend of mine gave me a book called "The Mission of Motherhood: Touching Your Child's Heart for Eternity" shortly after I had Little R.  The book is written by Sally Clarkson and focuses on a Biblical perspective of motherhood.  I have been trying to read a few pages of the book each day, and God used something that I read today to really catch my attention:

As it is, after eighteen years of learning the truth of living sacrificially, I have found that embracing God's call to motherhood once and for all has brought me great peace.  Instead of seeing fusses and messes as irritations in my day, for instance, I am more likely to see them as opportunities to train my children to be peacemakers and to learn to be responsible for their own messes.  Instead of resenting the interruptions in my schedule, I am more likely to accept them as divine appointments.  (p. 54)


These few sentences really got me thinking about how I view the unexpected things in my day.  By nature, I am a very scheduled person.  I like a schedule, and I like to stick to it.  Having a baby has definitely challenged this nature in me as babies seem to be the most unpredictable, sweet, little things under the sun!  Needless to say, sometimes I view the unexpected things in my day as annoyances; after all, they do not fit into my neat, little, scheduled plan.  The more I have pondered this nature that I have, the more I realize that it is all a power struggle with the Lord.  It really comes down to who is in control.  I like to be in control....to make my schedule, to plan things out.  I like to be the author and "write my own story" of my life.  If I embrace the view that God is the author of my life instead of myself, which clearly He is (Hebrews 12), and that everything I have is a gift from Him and ultimately belongs to Him, then I am much more likely to embrace the unexpected.  I mean, let's face it, we are NOTHING apart from Him.  This life that we have is a gift from Him, and who are we to determine what God's gift entails.

 I am certainly challenged today to live in the freedom that He is in complete control, even of those annoying, unexpected things that pop up!  After all,  I would much rather a Sovereign God who sees the big picture write the story of my life than little, old me with my tainted tunnel vision.  What freedom there is in knowing that we don't have to be in charge!!!

Yard Work

Spring is here, and the grass has started to grow once again.  Last week, Little R, Chip, and I were having our daily time in the backyard.  Basically, this time entails me playing fetch with Chip and Little R watching.  I usually set Little R in his bumbo in a shady place where he can enjoy watching Chip run around the yard.  One day last week, the only shady spot I could find happened to be right in a patch of long grass.  Well, the little guy sure did love the tall grass.  He spent all of his time pulling out clumps of grass and inspecting it.  He even tried to eat a few blades.  I am considering setting him at the edge of the flower beds so that he can help pull weeds!

St. Patty's Day Fun

Growing up, St. Patrick's Day was always an exciting day in our house.  My dad always got up very early and went downtown to stake out our spot on Calhoun Square where we always watched the St. Patrick's Day Parade.  Later that morning, Laura, my mom, and I would meet friends and ride the CAT bus downtown to meet up with my dad.  Then we all would walk across the square to our church, Wesley Monumental, and eat pancakes at our church's infamous St. Patty's Day Pancake Breakfast!  This was always one of my favorite traditions growing up.  After some yummy pancakes, we headed back to our spot on Calhoun Square in anticipation for the parade.  Growing up, my favorite parts of the parade were the bands, the Alee Temple belly dancers, and the Keystone Cops (which I later learned my father in law was a part of.)  The Keystone Cops would walk up to kids and give them "police tickets" for looking "too nice" or "smiling too much."  It was always too funny to us kids!

Because Trey works downtown on the parade route, the past few years, we have watched the parade together outside of The Savannah Bank with some of Trey's co-workers and their families.  Now, that we have a child, I cannot wait for him to enjoy the parade just like I did as a kid.  Little R and I have both had colds all week, so I was not sure if we would make it to the parade this year. It was a last minute decision, but I decided that Little R and I would head down to meet Trey, who was already at work.  We got downtown after the parade had started, so Little R and I had to walk about 15 minutes to get to the bank.  The day was a blast!  Little R seemed to love watching the bands and all of the people walking around.  He especially loved the fire trucks that drove by flashing their lights.  Here are a few pictures from the day:

 Our family at the parade!

 My cute St. Patty's Day Baby!

 Little R loves visiting Daddy at work and playing in his office!

 Getting sleepy towards the end of the parade.

Later that day, Little R and Daddy had some fun playing in the backyard:

Then it was off to bed early for the little guy!  He was all tuckered out from the St. Patrick's Day fun!!!

Nursery Rhyme

This is my nursery for everyone to see.

I love this place, the perfect room for me!

The colors are fun, yellow, green, blue, and red.

My crib is so cozy and great for laying my head.

My room is filled with crabs, boats, and fish,

Fun pictures and even my baby dish.

I love looking above my crib at my name

And laughing with Mama when she plays the tickle game.

Rocking in my chair with Daddy is one of my favorite things

Along with reading books and having my diaper changed.

I have a radio that always plays special songs

About how Jesus loves me and will help me grow strong.

I have been wanting to show off some pictures of my nursery,

And my mom finally took some for everyone to see.

I hope you can come and visit me soon,

So that you can see for yourself my very special room!

Love, 

Reives

A Very Merry Half Birthday to You!

I cannot believe it......My sweet, Little R is 6 months old!  Happy Half Birthday!  Little R is changing and growing so quickly that I cannot savor each day enough to keep up with him!  He has really "grown up" over the past month.  I mean the changes in him from 5 to 6 months have been crazy.  Some of his accomplishments:

-sitting up (he still falls over from time to time, but he is pretty much there)
-grabbing everything in sight and putting it straight to his mouth
-locating his paci in his crib and putting it in his mouth himself about 60% of the time
-rolling over onto his back from his stomach effortlessly (still has not rolled from his back to his stomach....I know that he could, but he hates being on his stomach and has no desire to roll there)
-banging two toys together
-eating green beans, zuchinni, and brocolli (he does not like peas)
-sucking water from a sippy cup
-tracking Chip run around
-has learned to squeal at all different very high pitched levels

He has been such an easy, little baby lately (knock on wood).  He laughs and smiles alot, and he seems so super happy.  It is so fun to already see a little bit of his personality.  He is definitely a busy body and sometimes takes a few minutes to warm up to new people and places.  He is ticklish and loves to laugh and smile at people and dogs.  He can be very loud when hungry and frustrated and lets us know with alot of loud squealing (showing that little temper).  He also squeals loudly when he is happy :)

I attempted a 6 month photo shoot with Little R....here are some of the pictures:

I could not get a picture of him looking at me because he was so busy watching Chip run around!!!