Welcome December!

This year seems to be passing us by at amazing speed, huh??  I haven't been updating my blog much lately but I have a good reason, I promise.  I've just been living life!  We had a wonderful family Thanksgiving at our house, with Mama, Daddy, Ami, Brian, Miss Dale, Kyrie and Alita joining us, Juan, Rhiana, Elizabeth, Emma and Baby Charlotte for turkey, dressing and all the trimmings.  Ami made Mama's famous dressing this year and it was absolutely delicious!!  Larry and I roasted the turkey again in our Oster roaster and it turned out just as juicy and perfect as last year.  Again, don't follow the instructions that come with the roaster.  Get your meat thermometer out and check that bird!  I baked a ham, too, and made Brussels sprouts, sweet potato casserole and a butternut squash risotto.  I took the easy way out with the pecan pie that Larry wanted and I got Wilson's Bakery here in town to make it.  I just couldn't beat their $9.99 price, not even with my Kroger Plus card.  :)  The pecans alone would have been nearly that.  So I had them make that and a brownie pecan pie and both were, well, Wilson's usual stupid crazy amazing good.

We had a group picture made outside with our Tom the Turkey inflatable that we picked up at a yard sale for $7 last summer.  It turned out great.  Lizzy is doing bunny ears over Emma's head and that's hilarious. 

I had the best time with Baby Charlie!  I had a hard time putting her down and then letting her stay down.  She's just the sweetest little thing and I just wanted to gobble her right on up.

I wanted to have a Peanuts-themed Thanksgiving for the girls so I found some really cute plates and napkins and cups and tablecloths a couple of months ago and I also found some Snoopy Thanksgiving stickers on eBay for everybody to wear.  Larry and I found a singing, dancing Snoopy wearing a Pilgrim hat out in our travels somewhere and I bought a little plush Snoopy for each of the girls.  I have some really wonderful childhood memories of the three big holidays and I want that for them, too.



Juan and I took Lizzy and Emma to see the new Peanuts movie Thanksgiving night and that was a lot of fun, too.  It is such a cute movie and I've said this at least a dozen times since Larry and I went to see it, I am SO amazed at the animation in that movie!  They sure don't make Charlie Brown like they used to.  Larry's been collecting the McDonald's Peanuts Happy Meal toys for me, too.  We've got 10 of the 12.  Two to go!  Fifi is my favorite.  :)

I had to get new brakes for my car on Friday (joy joy) and after the girls and I decorated our gingerbread house and my car was done, all of us went and had the Black Friday Family Experience.  Now that we've done that, we don't have to do it anymore.  I hope.  I hate Black Friday.  It really wasn't bad, though.  We just went to Target and Hobby Lobby.  The girls got a toy and I got some ideas for Christmas.

Friday night, Larry and I wanted to give Rhiana and Juan a little break and a chance to get a good night's sleep so we kept Charlie in our room and she did so good!  She slept right through her 10:00 feeding and I let her so she woke up around 2:00, I changed her britches, gave her a bottle and she went right back to sleep and slept the rest of the night, until 7:00!  Such a good baby!

We watched movies and ordered pizza Saturday afternoon and then they got packed up to go home.  We so enjoyed having them and are looking forward to Christmas Eve at their house!

Larry and I have managed so far to get the Christmas stuff down from the attic and into the garage.  I've put up two garlands, spread a tablecloth and we put up a little tree on the front porch tonight.  We have just been so tired this week!  Hopefully this weekend, we'll get a tree and get some lights up zzzzzz snork.

Welcome, December, with your dreams and secrets and whispers and surprises and 77-degree self.

Independence Day Weekend

We were so happy to have Juan, Rhiana, Elizabeth and Emma with us for July 4th!  They came down yesterday after stopping by the hospital to see Charlie, who is doing soooo good!  She's breathing on her own and off the nasal cannula so she celebrated her very own Independence Day!  Yay, Charlie!!  She's going to start trying to nurse tomorrow and we're very excited about that.

Since July 1st was Emma's birthday and she wanted a Mickey Mouse party, Larry and I threw her a Mickey Mouse luau!  I had so much fun last week putting together decorations and making plans and everything turned out so cute!!

I didn't make the cake.  Publix made the cake.  :)  This is the only Mickey Mouse cake that they have permission to make and this is where I got the luau idea.  I was skeptical at first but I was able to find so many cute things that I was really, really happy with it and I really, really got into it, too!

I got this idea for the punch on Pinterest.  It was soooooo adorable and the punch was awesome.  It's Blue Hawaiian punch and lemonade.  That's it.  Equal parts.  Awesome.

I love the beach, I love pink flamingos so I was ALLLLLL over this tropical, beachy luau theme!!  Larry and I decorated the backyard with flamingos, a toucan, fishies, hibiscus garland, paper lanterns, beach balls, a hula girl, two coconut monkeys and we even got a pineapple and two coconuts to put on the table.  We had Mickey Mouse ears hats, noisemakers and we all had leis to wear.

It poured down rain most of the day yesterday but that didn't stop Larry from grilling those hamburgers!

And here's our sweet Emma.  She was so excited about her Mickey party and that made all the running around, planning and scheming that I had to do last week so very worth it.  Just look at that face.

Since real fireworks became legal in Georgia July 1st, we had an incredible show in our neighborhood once the sun went down.  We bought some sparklers and things to do with the girls and they just had the best time lighting those with PawPaw.
 

Today, our sweet neighbor, Randy, let us borrow his pool and really all it did for ME was convince me that we have to have a pool.  It was just too much fun!  Look at Larry jumping off the diving board!

 

We had the juiciest, sweetest watermelon and pineapple today.  The coconuts were a little past their prime but that pineapple mmmmmmore than made up for it.  Here's Larry teaching Elizabeth how to cut watermelon with a machete.

 
I made bacon-wrapped Oreos last night and chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast this morning.  We had birthday cake, ice cream, hamburgers, a summer luau, some pool time, awesome fireworks, sweet juicy summer fruit, the girls picked a cucumber and a bell pepper from our garden and our Charlie Girl is getting stronger every day. 

We are so blessed.

A Birth Day, a birthday and Daddy's day

What a weekend we have had!  Baby Charlotte was born yesterday afternoon, six weeks early and just over three pounds.  As was to be expected due to her age, she got off to a pretty rocky start but we are in constant prayer for her to grow stronger and for every little thing that's running behind to catch up so that she can join her very excited big sisters at home.

Here's a picture I took of her in the NICU.  She is soooo tiny and was struggling so hard to breathe.  It was the most heartbreaking thing I've ever seen.  Larry and I got to touch her and talk to her.  I reached in to touch her little head and said, "Hey, Booga" and she opened her eyes right then and I snapped this picture.  :)

Charlotte Rose Renee Villegas-Schneider
Born June 20, 2015
3 lbs 1 oz
17 inches long

Welcome to the world, Charlie Rose!  PawPaw and Gama love you so much already.

We celebrated Charlie's birth day yesterday and we celebrated my birthday today with my daddy on Father's Day.  My birthday's not until Wednesday but y'all know I celebrate the entire month of June and now I can take Charlie along for the ride!

Daddy and I got some gift cards.  He's going to Lowe's and I'm going to Old Navy and Kohl's.  Larry had already given me another shelf to put my Pyrex on last week and today he gave me a Troy's t-shirt that he bought when I wasn't with him, when he and Brian went to get some hamburgers before Mama and Daddy's anniversary party.  Sneaky-sneak.

Here's the shelf!  The one on the left, to match the one I already had on the right.  I know. I should probably try to get some help or something.

 And here's my PINK Troy's shirt!

Ami gave me this beautiful mixed media art that she created and I just love it.  Already have it hanging on our bedroom wall.

Mama's oven is under the weather right now so she had my sweet friend, Nancy, make my birthday cake for me.  I wanted a cherry cake with pink icing and that's what I got!  Big old fat cherries all in it and the prettiest pinkest icing you ever saw.  It was delicious!!

Once upon a time, in a land not too very far from here, Nancy and I used to swing in a tire my daddy hung from an oak tree in our backyard and we would listen to Alabama on my old beat up boom box.  Never even crossed my mind that that girl would one day make a cake like this one here.  It was pretty dang awesome.

Here's a picture of me and my daddy when I was a baby.  I love everything about it.  The vinyl couch, the plastic curtains, that Sir Henry Raeburn Boy And Rabbit painting that I look for at estate sales everywhere because of this one that belonged to my Maw, the way Daddy is looking up and how fat my cheeks are.  But the best thing?  The thing I love the most?  Is the sweet way he's cradling me, with his fingers wrapped around my foot.  I was the safest I've ever been right there, a few months old with my very young daddy.

Happy Father's Day, Daddy!  I may be pushing 50 these days but I will always, always be your baby girl.