The Gingerbread House Fiasco

A couple of weeks ago, I saw and bought a Gingerbread House kit for Josie and me to work on together. In my mind, I imagined it as this wondrous moment of mommy/daughter bonding time in which we smile lovingly at each other and take turns putting candy on our beautiful gingerbread house. It's what our favorite Christmas memories are made of, right?
WRONG! This "experience" totally did not meet my expectations (which, as usual, were probably set a little hight). In hind's sight, I don't know what I was thinking. I know it's ludicrous to place a 3 year old at a table surrounded by sugar and expect her to 1.) decorate the house in compliance with my OCD standards and 2.) not eat it. I wouldn't mind if she had some, but she just kept on pushing my buttons. Needless to say, my "happy memory making time" turned into me yelling at her to STOP EATING IT!!! (It was by far NOT my greatest parenting moment.) When she swiped her finger across the roof of our house and licked the icing off her finger, I'd had enough. She sat in the time-out chair while I finished the house. I guess I'll chalk this one up as a FAIL. Maybe we'll try again when she's 10 instead of 3.
On a positive note, we did complete the house and it is beautiful. :-)

Do you see the mischievous look on her face??????
She KNEW she was getting on my nerves and she was doing it on purpose!!!

Christmas at Opryland

Tonight we went with some church friends to eat dinner at Cock of the Walk and then on to the Opryland Hotel to see the Christmas lights. For my Texas friends who have never been to Opryland: let me just say that the pictures do NOT do it justice. The hotel has 3 different "conservatory" type indoor garden areas that in and of themselves are spectacular with water falls and plants and hidden pathways. It's like a fairytale world. But at Christmas....it's extra special. We had a great time walking around looking at all the lights. There must have been a million poinsettias planted throughout the hotel. It was absolutely beautiful! What a fun night with new friends. We are so blessed! Merry Christmas!!!!!

Josie and Rachel in the giant rocking chair at Cock of the Walk

Rachel, Josie and Jonah

"Wow!!!!"

It's an elephant! Roll Tide!!

A giraffe! My favorite!!!

Our group at the Poinsettia Tree

Outside the hotel

GW Ladies Night Out Wreath Project

Last night our Ark Builders group at church had a Ladies Night Out event. We enjoyed a meal together at California Pizza Kitchen and then went to the church building for "craft time". We all brought our own supplies to make these wreaths by stringing Christmas ornaments onto a wire clothes hanger. We had a lot of fun and everyone's wreath looked great! It was interesting to see the different ornament selection everyone brought and everyone's unique creative taste.
This is how mine turned out. (I'm so proud of my bow!)

Recent Sewing Projects

Since we've moved I've had more time and space to try more sewing projects. By no means at all am I a master of this craft! But I'm practicing....and I'm very proud of the things that I have made. My mom actually bought the fabric for this pillowcase dress. We were on the same brain wavelength one week. She had seen dresses like this for sale at a consignment shop for $30+, decided to make one, and bought this fabric. That same week, I had ordered a pattern to make "pillowcase" dresses and shirts. We never communicated about our ideas until.....Josie and I went to their house to visit that weekend, and what do you know....she had the fabric and I had the pattern! We put our "projects" together for this dress! It was SUPER easy! We had it cut out and sewn together in 2 hours while Josie took a nap. For my next project, I appliqued Josie a "pumpkin" shirt for the fall.
Since it's football season, she definitely needed an Alabama dress. Roll Tide!!!!
Next, I decided to applique a turkey shirt for Thanksgiving! I was going to make his "feathers" out of ribbons, but I found this fabric and thought it was too cute! Now, moving on to Christmas projects.....

Nashville 1/2 Marathon

This morning I ran my first 1/2 Marathon. It was the Nashville Half Marathon sponsored by Hard Rock Cafe and "I Run for the Party". (There was a block party at the end sponsored by Michelob Light....because everyone feels like downing a beer after running 13.1 miles, I guess. Ha! And no, I didn't have one.) I was really nervous because I did it all by myself. But once I got there and the race got started, I was fine. For the first 8 miles or so, my pace was in the 8:50s. I even passed the 2 hour pace girl (she holds up a sign and runs at a pace to finish in that time). Then our route went out to Shelby Bottoms and mile 9 was coming up out of the park. That hill about killed me. It was awful! So, I had to stop and walk some. Then I was fine until mile 12. The last mile was really hard because I was running into a very gusty wind and I had an EXTREMELY full bladder! (but I didn't want to stop!) Lane and Josie were waiting for me at the finish line. I didn't realize it until the finish line, but a friend from church, Melanie Neal, was right behind me. Her finish time was 2:12. My official time from the results website was 2:10:46 with a pace of 9:59. (Still faster than a 10 min. mile!) However, I honestly don't think the course was mapped correctly. I've been running with my Nike GPS for a while on my IPhone. I've never officially calibrated it, but it's always matched what I clocked with the car and what I mapped out on mapmyrun.com. It says I ran 13.5 miles at a pace of 9:44. I just think that's a big difference. My phone would tell me I'd completed a certain mile long before I could see the mile marker flags. Hmmmmm..... Regardless, I FINISHED and at a somewhat decent time! Based on the results, I was ranked 45th out of 182 in my age bracket (30-34 females).
Will I ever run one again??? We'll see....not any time soon! haha

GW Trunk-or-Treat 2011

Trick or Treat!!!!

My little Ladybug

Josie and Braden

Josie and Braden with Ms. Peggy

Josie and Rachel

Josie really enjoyed being my helper and handing out candy to people.
She kept saying "This one will be your favorite!"

The Infamous Widick Hayride 2011

Every October, Lane's family gets together to have a weenie roast and hayride for all the kids. We've lived too far away to be able to go....until this year. Josie got to experience her first Widick Hayride. We started out the afternoon by just letting the kids all play for a while. Josie loved raking up leaves at the bottom of the slide (or truthfully, having someone do it for her), and then sliding into them. She did that for a really long time! Granddaddy built a huge bonfire and we roasted hotdogs for dinner. Then we had s'mores for dessert....Josie wasn't a big fan of her s'more. She actually took it apart and ate everything separately. Go figure. One it got dark, we loaded up in the back of Granddaddy's truck (filled with hay, of course) and drove around for a while. (Shhh....we know it's illegal. But Granddaddy went pretty slow, and we stayed on country roads!) We sang songs and the kids all loved throwing hay out of the truck.
After living so far away, events like this mean so much more to us now. I am SO thankful to be closer to family and that Josie is making memories to share with her cousins.

My Little Bed-maker

For the past two mornings, Josie has made her bed all by herself! (Without me ever asking her to do it in the first place!) I've never said anything to her about making her own bed. I guess she sees me making our bed every morning, so she's learned by example that that's just what you're supposed to do. She does a really great job of it, too! I'm not tempted at all to go behind her and "fix" it. I just hope this spirit of "willful tidiness" will continue as she gets older! So proud of my growin' girl!!!

Fall Fest and Nashville Zoo

On Saturday, our church had "Fall Fest" as a community outreach event. We had all kinds of fun activities on the church lawn: a bouncy house, a HUMONGOUS inflatable slide (which Josie and I went down about 5 times. It took me an hour to talk her into it, then she loved it!), a car show, awesome food, face painting, a petting zoo (complete with a camel!), and pony rides. It was a lot of fun and it seemed to me that we had a TON of visitors from the neighborhood. Please be praying for our church as we follow-up with those visitors and continue to share the love of Jesus with them.

Josie's face while looking at the petting zoo from a "safe" distance.

Josie and her new friend Rachel with the goats.

Not a fan of the pony ride.

Josie's favorite event of the day (other than the slide): popcorn.

Today we met my sister-in-law, Mary Anne, and her kids (still on Fall Break) for our first trip to the Nashville Zoo. This zoo didn't have as many animals as the Houston Zoo, but it was very nicely maintained and laid out. I must say that the playground area is AWESOME, and would be worth the membership fee just to have access to that all the time. Seriously....there's a huge castle/fort with a 3-story tunnel slide. So cool!!! We had great weather and it was such a nice day to walk through the zoo. Here are some pictures:

Josie in the garden at the "farm".

We got to go inside this bird "sanctuary" and feed them nectar from little cups. I don't remember what kind of birds they were, but they were very colorful and pretty. They would land on your arm and eat from the little cups. The kids all loved it!

This picture totally makes me laugh. My niece, Faith, had just tried to pet the bird that was on her hand and it pecked at her. I just happened to get her reaction. :-)

Josie and John Derrick watching the elephant. We wanted him to stick his trunk in the water and spray, but he never did.

Josie's transformation from being deathly afraid of the goats on Saturday, to being in an open pen with them and brushing one on Monday. Go figure.