BABY ITS HOT OUTSIDE

Friday's Forecast: High 101F, heat index near 110F. The next 10 days look the same.

*SIGH*

What happened to this chunky monkey??? My baby girl is growing up way too fast.

...SOBBING...

Oh how these last two summers have quickly flown by.

...more sobbing...

SHINE

Little girls are the nicest things that happen to people. They are born with a little bit of angelshine about them, and though it wears thin sometimes, there is always enough left to lasso your heart.

Happy-Go-Lucky Girl

These pictures were taken a few hours after the ones in the last post. See how she sets the mood of the shoot. I love both sets of pics, but they are totally different due to GiGi and her constantly changing attitude.

These two amazing outfits are from the fall collection of TJ Designs. I have worked with the designer for the past year and she is awesome. If anyone wants more details, please let me know. Just shoot me an e-mail or leave me a comment.

Country Girl

I never know what type of look I am going to capture on Miss GiGi. Sometimes she can look so serious, and other times she looks so playful and happy...stay tuned tomorrow for the post of those pictures.

Do you want a piece of me?

What kid doesn't love admiring their own shadows. GTO was enjoying the look of his big muscles.

Home Again

This just about sums up our weekend. It was another relaxing weekend at the lake, and the kids had another great weekend swimming and playing.

Concept of Time

My kids have both had difficulty with the concept of time. When GTO was younger, he didn't have problems with the past so much, but had trouble with things happening in the future. To him everything was counted in "how many sleeps until". I can remember saying to him "next week, we will do this, or tomorrow, we are going here. His reply would always be "how many sleeps is that?"

GiGi has had a hard time with articulating things in the past. For the last year, everything that happened previous to today, she would say was last weekend. "She would say last weekend Santa Clause came, or last weekend, we went on vacation." I guess, we started correcting her, so for the past month she has changed her "last weekend" saying into "LASTERNIGHT". It is a great word isn't it! We hear it often. "Lasternight, we went skiing. Lasternight, we ate there. Lasternight we saw that movie." It's these wonderful quirks that I hope to hold onto forever.

The pink OU hat is one of MY favorite hats. She picked it up last night and put it on which got me thinking about the countdown to football season. 44 more days until kick-off. August 30, OU VS. Chatanooga, 6:00 p.m. I know you appreciate that informative piece of information. :) BOOMER SOONER!

Avast, me proud beauty!

ARRR! Shiver me timbers! Off to find a treasure today at me pre-school.

PEDAL TO THE METAL

Any advice for teaching a 5 year old to ride a bike?

Ear Infection Cure

I wanted to post this information in case anyone else has had a miserable time with ear infections.



GiGi has had recurring ear infections most of her life. She has had three sets of tubes. The pediatrician always put her on one of two antibiotics (Augmentin, Z-pak) which never seemed to help. The ENT's answer always seemed to be to put tubes back in her ears which I didn't want to do again if we could avoid. Her right ear has been clear for a while which led me to believe she was starting to outgrow the ear problems, but her left ear is a different story. It has had green gunk running out of it for the past year. I am not exaggerating when I say A YEAR. It is one infection that will NEVER go away. I knew there had to be another alternative. Before we left for the lake last week, I decided to take her to an am/pm clinic that is by our house. I finally had a physician that sat down and discussed options with me. She stayed in the room for at least 30 minutes and actually seemed to believe me that GiGi had the one infection that would not respond to oral antibiotics. After we discussed it for a while, we decided to try a very strong antibiotic shot called Rocephin. She warned that it would be very painful, and that the shot would have to be given three days in a row. I hated to put my baby girl thru pain, but I really wanted her ear to be healed before the infection caused any more hearing damage. Since the dosage for the shot was so strong, they decided to divide it into two shots. The first two days(4 shots), GiGi did wonderful...hardly made a wimper. On the third day, we got a different nurse who didn't divide the shot into two, and it must have hurt really bad, because she SCREAMED in pain. It was horrible, but I am happy to say that her ear seems to be clear. I am so relieved! Thank you, ROCEPHIN!

Side Note - Yes, it is the middle of summer, but GiGi HAD to wear the red sweater. It wasn't worth the battle. :)

Back to Normal - maybe?

We are back to work, and the kids are back to their summer routine. We had a wonderful time at the lake, and I actually feel fairly rested. I wanted to post this picture of GTO. Looking back thru the lake pictures, this one is probably my favorite. It just reminds me of the great time we had. I love his sun kissed cheeks, and his blurry water filled eyes from hours of swimming off the dock. I know some of our fondest memories will be ones from summer weekends spent at the lake and the hours we spent on the boat. It just doesn't get much better than this.

A long day/Happy 4th

The beautiful dark haired girl is my niece, Morgan.
Patiently waiting on the golf cart parade to begin.
Below is one of the many decorated golf carts. I selected this pic to show that even Texans know the team to root for. GO SOONERS!
My wonderful family watching the parade go by.
After the parade, we were off to the carnival.
Didn't win at the ring toss...
BUT GIGI WON A CAKE AT THE CAKE WALK. In GiGi's world, this was equivalent to winning the lottery. She would have carried that cake around all day to get home with it. She was very proud of it.

Waiting on fireworks to start.

What a magnificent day!!!
THE END

Life is GOOD

We had another great day on the lake. We did a lot more skiing and a little tubing and wakeboarding too. We spent about 6 hours on the boat, and we were tired when we came in, but the kids could not wait to go fishing, especially since their Papa finally made it here to fish with them.

GiGi caught the biggest fish.

She also caught a few perch which she loved to hold.
GTO thought he was reeling in a big one. He was excited (and a little disappointed) at what he found on his line.
This guy put up a fight.
And gave us a smile for the camera. :)
He thought he would give it another try.
Successful.
Three very tired kids!

A Proud Day

Guess who skied today??? I could not be any happier to see both my babies on skis. It was a joyous moment. GiGi wanted to go first and got right up on her skis. She skied all over the lake. I can't believe my three year old can ski. I am so proud of both of them!!! We had a great day on the lake.

GiGi skiing

GTO skiing

FIREWORKS

We are leaving tonight for the lake. We are ready to get the fun started. I hope everyone has a happy and safe holiday weekend. Wishing you a Happy 4th of July!