Road Trip!

This past weekend, Eden and I had the opportunity to go to New Orleans to attend the 9th Annual Memorial Spaghetti Dinner to raise money for the American Cancer Society. The dinner is in memory of Lane's grandfather who passed away in January of 2002. It was nice to be able to go and be with family, even if Lane wasn't able to attend the dinner with us. Lane and his cousin, Jacob, were the only 2 grandchildren who weren't able to be in attendance at the dinner. I thought this was very ironic, because they're the 2 Marines in the family and they were both off, doing their Marine Corps thing (Jacob at Boot Camp, and Lane in Flight School).

Enjoy the pictures!

May 20 - Eden hanging out at Aunt Jeanine's house. She loved Woody and his toys! The first thing she noticed after we got there were "Baaaaaaaalls" that belonged to Woody.

May 21 - Eden sharing with Bentley at {Great}Grandma's house.

May 21 - Eden with the recorder at {Great}Grandma's.

May 21 - M and Eden playing with the wind chime at the spaghetti dinner before people started arriving for dinner.

May 21 - the Memorial Garden that is set up with {Great}Grandpa's picture.

May 21 - A candle that is lit in memory of someone special. I liked that the rocks around it said "smile" and "hope." I took this picture for Sara and Adam because they had just gotten news this morning that his fathers cancer had spread. Since this picture, there is another angel looking after us, Bruce passed away this week and he will be forever in our hearts!

May 21 - Bentley just plopped himself down in the grass. I'm sure he's looking  at Eden thinking "That's my cup" because I'm sure she was drinking his water...she was constantly drinking out of his cup and not wanting her own.

May 21 - And there she is...with Bentley's cup...little thief! 

May 21 - Chantelle collecting donations and giving out raffle tickets for dinner.

May 21 - The spaghetti dinner has traditionally been weeks before the Relay for Life, but this year it was the weekend after the Relay, so they were able to collect the luminaries that were around the track that had been placed for {Great}Grandpa and have them on the tables at the dinner.

May 21 - M and David talking about the memorial garden.

May 21 - The great grandchildren gathered together to sing happy birthday to {Great}Grandma - her birthday was the day after the dinner this year.

May 21 - Uncle Ronnie re-lighting {Great}Grandma's birthday candle.

May 21 - All the great grandchildren together for a picture. {Great}Grandma did join them, but I didn't get a good picture with her in it.

May 21 - The grandchildren, minus the Marines.

May 21 - Eden with {Great}Grandma and half of Grandpa.

May 21 - I caught Aunt Angela trying to take a picture of her and Eden in the mirror in the bathroom, so I took one for her as they were coming out. I'm going to assume that these are the looks of surprise!

May 21 - Aunt Jeanine kissing on Priscilla as she's reading a letter from Jacob.

May 21 - Blythe, Jacob's girlfriend, reading a letter from him.

May 22 - Eden and Daddy were excited to be reunited when we got home on Sunday. 

May 23 - I brought some of Louisiana home with us so Lane could enjoy!

Everything...

*~...A Story Told With Pictures...~*

May 8  - Talking over our Mother's Day cinnamon roll for breakfast. De-lish!

May 8 - Mother's Day morning.

May 9 - Daddy's doing a good job watching Eden!

May 9 - Yep, that's my car...in the garage! We finally got all the boxes out and cleared out enough stuff so the car fits in the garage! Lane knows how to make me happy {even if I did have to do most of the work}

May 10 - Eden and I visited the aquarium with some of our friends. Eden was a little unsure of the dolphins during the show, but liked them when she could look at them through the glass.

May 11 - Eden is loving blocks. Stacking things is one of her newest tricks.

May 12 - The first rain we've had since moving to Texas, hail included!

May 13 - Lane found a Momma Possum in the back yard giving birth to this little guy {or girl}. We thought she had passed away, however, upon further research we learned that she was just "playing possum" and she still had more babies to give birth to {after pest control heartlessly placed her into a garbage bag - I cried}.

May 14 - Excited to be playing with her rice bucket!

May 14

May 14 - Though this may look like a rat tail to some, to me, it is Eden's first curl! Her hair is finally starting to grow out! YAY!

May 14 - Eden scooping out some rice.

May 14 - Happy Birthday Dance? Nope, he's dancing to the new game that he got to go with his new xbox 360 {that he got from his awesome wife for his birthday}.

May 14 - I just had to post this one because I love that smile!

May 15 - I signed up to be a Bible Leader at VBS at our church this summer. I'm excited to be able to do VBS again!

May 16 - We were flying places {from our living room} and I got to be the co-pilot!

May 17 - The plane that is flying over our house. Eden loves these things. She's now started saying "pane" when she hears them.

May 18 - The frames I have to go over our TV. I {once again} used decals, but this time it was much easier - I just had to put them on the glass of the frame and call it a day. I've seen something similar, but it cost me much less to do it myself!

May 18 - This mirror isn't 100% put together, so its sitting on the floor in the kitchen and Eden loves to talk to the baby in the mirror. She also gives her kisses. She's such a sweet girl.

May 18 - Talking to the "other baby."

May 18 - Quite possibly my favorite of the bunch! You can just see the excitement on her face.

May 19 - On our way home from the grocery store I asked Eden if she could smile and this is what I got!

Discovery

In the last week I've started doing some soul searching {in case you didn't notice}. Last night I came to a realization...I hate to clean. Ok, I already knew that {and so does my mom! All those times she ever asked me to clean my room...oh Mom, I'm sorry!} but I have come to learn why I dislike cleaning so much.

You only clean to get things dirty again. There you have it! Cleaning is a joke...I can say this because I'm sitting here with a basket of clean laundry sitting next to me and a dirty kitchen too. By the way, these are my 2 least favorite chores to do. The only reason to clean the kitchen is so you can get it dirty again. The same goes with laundry, you only wash and fold laundry so that you can wear it again and get it dirty...

I guess the kitchen is calling my name. I have to get it clean so we can eat dinner tonight {and so that I can clean it again after I cook and eat...}!

Watch Me Grow

Here's my other project for the week, Eden's height tracker. I'm excited to have this finished because I've wanted one for her for a long time. I think with the next child I will start on it when I'm pregnant {after we know the sex of the baby and after the nursery decorations are picked out} so that I have it from the beginning! I also might cheat and put Eden's measurements from her well baby appointments during her first year on the tracker. Part of me feels like that would be cheating though, so I don't know if I'm going to do that or not.

The project did take me much longer than I thought it would, but it was SO worth it because I love the way it turned out. The dots are what took so long to paint. I had the whole thing painted within the first 30 minutes of having the materials in the door! Then I had to draw the dots, paint them white, figure out what colors should go where, and then paint them...one. color. at. a. time. Ugh, I am NOT a patient person, so I felt like it took forever. I can't really complain about it though because I did it while I was watching tv.
Here is the journey of the height tracker:

All the dots painted white, just waiting to dry to paint them their colors! This is the stool that I did for Eden's room when we were originally decorating it, and it is what the height tracker is supposed to "match."

The words cut out, and 2 of the 4 colors painted {I put small dots of paint in the centers of the circles to make sure the colors didn't end up next to the same color dot. Good thing I did, because I had to re-do and re-do again the colors}. I also ended up re-cutting the letters because I wanted them bigger than the numbers.

I marked out the board and mod podged the numbers down...almost done!

You got a bonus in this post! I decided to add pictures of the rest of Eden's room because it's by far my favorite room in the house. I wish her window was the same size as our previous house, but such is the military life. Her room is one of the few rooms that I took time to decorate {in the last house, and in this one}. Hopefully with my new crafting sense, I'll start decorating other rooms in the house soon!