Our TV Star...

Here's a commercail that Steve's work did and Emily was able to debut as a TV Star! We have actually seen it on TV - she was so excited to see herself!

Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!

I told you so...

See, I told you that I would blog again! So, for today's episode...

This is our dear friends, Danny and Michelle (and Cate). They are expecting their 3rd child at the end of the month. They already have Carah and Cate, and now they are expecting Caleb. We are so excited for them to finally have a little boy!!! Some of us ladies at the church decided to throw them a baby shower, since all they have is pink and I don't think little boys like wearing pink. It was a really great day and they got so much!

Here's a few pictures:

If you can't read what the onsie says, it is "Go Tigers". It's hard to believe that I like them even though they are Auburn fans. Come to think of it, this church has really broadened my friend base - I have so many friends that are Florida, Auburn, Kentucky and even Alabama fans! I have so many more pictures, so I will blog again soon!

We are alive...

in case you were wondering. It has been a crazy few weeks, which led to a crazy couple of months. There's so much to update you on, that it's going to take me a few blog post to completely update you.

Emily is as much of a stinker as before! She's getting so big! It doesn't seem possible - she is her own little person now. And she knows exactly what she wants and how she wants it done!

Instead of saying every little detail - here's a few pictures of Halloween and on.

As you can tell Steve was the hit of Halloween. The Singles Group sponsored a trunk in our Trunk or Treat at church. Our Theme was Sports. It was so much fun - and I do believe we were the most photographed trunk thanks to Steve!!! No one could believe that he would be willing to embarrass him self like that - apparently no one know Steve!!! My favorite part of the night was being able to put make up on my husbands face! It's the small things in life that make me happy! :)

We had Thanksgiving lunch with my parents and my granddad at his retirement home. We didn't get a lot of pictures but this is one that I found.

Check back later for more - baby showers, Christmas cookie cooking, tree decorating and more!

I Promise...

I know that it has been forever since I have blogged. And I apologize. With training a new person to take my position and starting the new job, there has not been much time. I promise that in the next week I will post again with new pictures. We've been very busy around Casa de Barrios, and Steve and I are very excited about this weekend! We actually have a whole weekend off together and my parents have Emily! :) I know that sounds like an ungrateful mother, but it is really nice sometimes to have a break!! We are going to a marriage conference about communication. I will have to update you after the weekend....I think we are going to go to dinner with some of our closest friends - Danny, Michelle, Travis & Elizabeth. We've been friends for quite a while, yet we have never, ever had time with just adults!!!! I'm very excited about that. Okay, well it is after 5:00 on a Friday and I'm the only one left in the office...I'm going home to enjoy my weekend!

Over a month...

Wow, how time flies!!!! I kept meaning to blog and just never got around to it. Then I had a sweet friend remind that it was time to blog...thanks Christi! It's been a pretty busy end of summer. We've had birthday parties, garage sales, shopping, family visiting from out of town, and interviews. I'll try to recap very briefly...

This is Emily with our friends Lindsey and Holly at John's birthday party. She loved being on the 4 wheeler! I think we are going to have to be calling Uncle Boo to see about getting us one soon! It was so much fun riding with everyone! Steve even rode a dirt bike for the first time - I think he is addicted now!

My grandaddy celebrated his 86th birthday a few weeks ago, so my aunt was in town for it. Emily had her first big girl hair cut while Bonnie Jo was in town. I will have to post pictures of all that fun later - I was not thinking and left my camera at home so I had to buy a disposable camera and I haven't had it developed yet. I know, I know, I should receive the worst mom of the month award for forgetting it on such an important day!

And yes, I am the one that went on the interview. I had really been praying that God would just drop some amazing job in my lap - and He did!!!! On October 15th, I will be the new Business Manager at Rezult-IT, Inc. I'm very excited!

Well, hopefully in the next few weeks I will be able to blog more! Sorry for the lapse in blogging! I'll leave you with a picture of Emily in her swimmies at Me-maw's pool!

More beach stuff...

So, I hadn't added anymore pictures yet. I have a little break at work and thought I would add more...

This is one of our favorite places to eat...they have the best grouper sandwiches! It is packed everytime we go, but it is definitely worth the wait!

This is Emily showing me how she could go under the water! She has been a little hesitant with the pool until this trip! She would love to show people how "big" she is by going under. She met all kinds of friends around the pool, in fact one day she asked a man that was sitting near us reading a magazine if he was going to come into the pool and go swimming with her.

This is my sister and me after a morning at the spa! It was so nice to be able to go and relax with her. It's not very often that she and I get to do things like that! I love my sister more than she could ever know and love getting to spend the time with her!

We went down to the beach one day around sunset time and took some pictures of the family. I will have to share those on another post. I want to share how we ended the vacation now though.

One our way down to Florida, Steve had seen a sign for a BBQ joint that was the 7 time national champions and he talked about wanting to stop there on our way back all week. I didn't think we would be able to find it. We were almost to Athens, AL and I had given up hope. Then my mom pointed out a sign that had a Norman Rockwell picture on it. And guess what sign was below that!?! It was the sign for Big Bob Gibson's BBQ. All I see is the 7 time national champions part, so we get off the interstate and have no clue where to go! We stop at a gas station and ask directions. When we get there we realize this is the BBQ joint that we have heard our friends the Davidson's talk about - so we got our BBQ and then came home. And it was definitely worth the extra hour it added to our trip! We will be stopping there many more times!!!

Real World...

We've been on vacation the last week, so that's the reason for no blogs lately. We had a wonderful time, yet we were glad to be home and back into our routine! Emily loved the water and has almost conquered the whole swimming thing, if we would have one more week of being in the water constantly she would be completely on her own in the water. Here's a few pictures and I'll keep telling stories later (work has been crazy and that's where I tend to do my blogging).

Size doesn't matter...

So as many of you know we have 3 dogs. Two shitz su's and one boxer. They range in size from 5 pounds to about 35 pounds. The other day I had gotten them all chew bones. Little bones for the two smaller dogs and big bones for the larger dog. Well, when I looked out later, Gracie (our smallest one) had the big bone and Makayla, our boxer (the 35 pound one) had a smaller bone. Any time that Makayla would try to get the big bone Gracie would growl and scare Makayla! I guess it goes to prove that size doesn't mater! I had to take pictures so that Steve would believe me!

I know, I know...

It took me too long to add the last birthday celebration for Emily's birthday. There really are no excuses except for just not feeling like blogging. It's awful, I know. So, for the last celebration we had Colleen, my roomate from college and closest friend, and her two boys Logan & Tanner up to go swimming. Memaw & Pepaw gave Emily a great swimming pool for her birthday. So the kids got to hang out and play in the pool while Colleen and I caught up on our lives. Emily has so much fun playing with her friends! I love the fact that Colleen and I have children around the same age. When we lived together we always talked about living near each other and having kids at the same time, yet we never really thought it would happen. We were living in Johnson City, TN at the time. And yet now we both live close to Nashville and both of our first children are around the same age! It's funny how God works sometimes! Here's a few shots of the kids enjoying the pool:

The end of the celebration week is coming...

So, it looks like the weeklong birthday festivities are coming to an end shortly. Last night we went to a Sounds baseball game with Memaw & Pepaw. Emily had a lot of fun and ate way too much ice cream! Steve and I are so fortunate to have both of our parents live so close to us! Emily really enjoys spending time with all of her grandparents and hopefully as she gets older she will get to hear all kinds of stories about both sides of her family. Heritage is a big thing to me and to know that she is going to be able to learn from her grandparents is such a blessing!

I have to say that Emily doesn't fall from the tree when it comes to her social abilities! I was laughing so hard at her last night - she had the outfielder from the visiting team waving and flirting with her! She then proceeded to yell at him and the umpire, just to let them know that it was her birthday and that she's 3 now!

There was also a band playing when we first got there, so of course she wanted to go see them for a little while. As soon as we got over there, she started asking to get on stage with them! I swear, I think we have a future rock star on our hands!

Tomorrow Colleen, Logan, and Tanner are coming up to visit, so that will be the end of our birthday festivities. I'm sure that she is going to be disappointed that it is over, but she has had a pretty awesome birthday!

This was the sun setting right before we left, so I just had to have a picture. It was gorgeous!

And the festivities continue...

Today is Emily's actual birthday and as I've said before she celebrates her birthday for a week! When she was 1 we started the tradition of having a birthday cupcake for breakfast, so we couldn't keep up tradition. She then had doughnuts when she got to school for her school "goodie" (she got to pick it out). Today is going to be an exciting day for her - Pepaw & Memaw came to pick her up from school this morning. They are going to swim and spend some time outside playing, then I'm going to meet them at Grear Stadium to catch the Sounds play a little bit of baseball! I can't believe that my little baby is getting so big!!! This morning she kept asking me if she was three now & kept reminding me that now she can chew gum (I didn't set that rule so I don't know where she got that idea because she chews gum pretty much every day). I was talking to a friend today about how it feels like yesterday that she was a little baby, yet then it feels like she's been around forever. I can't imagine what my life meant before I had her. What did I do with my time? I would never trade my sunshine for anything!

More birthday fun...

The birthday festivities are not done...Sunday we had her actual party. We normally do it the weekend after her birthday, but several of her friends were going to be out of town, so we decided to do it before her birthday. She had so much fun! It was a Flower Power Birthday. I think I had more fun planning the party than she had at the party! There was lots to do at the party, the kids got to play on the playset, play in the sprinklers, plant flowers to take home with them, and the one thing that Emily asked for was a bouncy thing. So, our great friends Danny and Michelle came through for us - they brought her a bouncy thing! She told me that Miss Michelle could get her anything she asked for and they definitely came through!!! Here's a few pictures of the party.

I have to show off her flower cake - it really turned out cute!

Life Father like Daughter...

Until Steve, I had never known someone who could make their birthday last for at least a week...and now I realize our daughter is just like him! Her birthday is not until July 12, which is this coming Thursday, yet she started the celebration festivities on Saturday night. My Aunt Becky and Uncle Boo sent Emily her birthday card and inside it was the first of many gifts for Miss Emily. She has been begging me to go to Chucky Cheese's, and like many other mom's I just hadn't broken down yet. So, being the sweet Aunt and Uncle that they are, they sent her a gift card to Chucky Cheese's. And of course Emily, being three, is not very patient. Steve and I had to end up taking her on Saturday. It was a really great night for us to spend together as a family! She had so much fun!!!! Thanks Aunt Becky & Uncle Boo!

Stay tuned for pictures of the remainder of the week's festivities!!!