The Pierce Family Blog

I'm 3 now!

I think I've heard the phrase "I'm 3 now!" at least 100 times in the last two days, Luke has told everyone he's come across!  Today was his baseball party that we've been looking forward to for at least two months.  It was a great party, hot, but alot of fun!  The kids had a great time playing, the adults had a good time chatting and there was cake, sounds like a good party to me!  Luke also got so many wonderful gifts!  I told Eugene when we left that every single gift he got was something suited exactly for Luke.  It means so much to me that all our friends and family really went to alot of thought for him. 

I have lots of pictures to share, but for now I'll leave you with one from his party today......

 

and one from his little Spiderman school party yesterday!

As our month of birthdays comes to an end I feel like we've fulfilled our parental duties of having two great birthday's for our kids.  Even though their birthday's are two weeks apart we want to make sure they know that they are both very special to us and we want to celebrate both of their birthday's as individual events.  With that said, I'm looking forward to September!

The day our lives changed forever.....

You may hear in the news today that it's the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. 

August 29, 2005 is also the day the Pierce family changed forever.....

Our precious little Luke was born.  On that day I thought my heart would burst out of my chest with love for him.  Today he's turning 3 and he's definitely not a baby anymore, he reminds me often that he's a big boy!  Everyday with him I just try to eat up the stage he's in and everyday I think I grow to love him more!

Happy Birthday Lukey!  Mommy and Daddy love you very much!

 

Busy Day!

I feel like I did alot today but I'm not sure I got anything done!  The kids and I ran several errands today and we hit Chick fil a for lunch.  That place is so nice for kids.  Luke enjoyed the playground while Caroline enjoyed her fruit cup and I just sat and enjoyed the peace and quiet, and I cleaned out my purse, I just can't sit that long without doing something!  Funny story.....we walked over to Goodwill to browse, they occasionally have some pretty neat stuff in there.  I did find a few things, I like to look at their furniture and I found a little something to redo for Caroline's room.  When I get around to working on it I'll post a picture.  Anyway, Luke was looking around when he spotted a toy that we'd dropped off a few weeks ago!  It was a Blue's Clues doll my mom had bought Luke when he was in that phase.  Luke really didn't understand what his toy was doing there and was begging to buy it.  After much persuasion and the promise of something else I was able to talk him out of it.  I just couldn't bare to buy something that I had donated to Goodwill already! 

This evening Eugene did yard work and Uncle Bub took Luke to pick grapes out at a farm.  It was just me and Caroline in the house, I was feeding her supper and just got this wild hair to go to the pond and take pictures of her.  We quickly got ready and I took her hot pink chair with us.  I've had an idea for a picture in my head for a few weeks now and just haven't had a chance to do it.  Well, it ended up going south quick.  It was so nasty hot outside, my lens kept fogging up, then I got about 10 ant bites on my big toe!  Also Caroline decided to be completely unresponsive!  She just starred at me or looked the other way, no smiling!  Arrgh!  Tonight I just got around to looking at them and I just had to laugh when I saw this one.....why does she hate bows so much???  Hopefully she'll grow out of that!

  

Hump Day Happenings.....

Halfway through the week already?  This week is going by fast!  I've got to get cranking on getting things done for Luke's 3rd birthday party this Saturday!  We're having his party at a baseball field, of course Luke is uuber excited about it!  His sports obsession is crazy!  Not only does he like to play sports but literally 24/7 he's acting like he's on a sports field.  He has to run everywhere, throw balls, kick balls....his new thing is drop kicking balls!!!!  Even today while we were playing he'd run in the other room then look back at me and say, "come on team!" 

Caroline has big news as well, she's standing up by herself!!!  Two nights ago she was almost doing it, then today she just figured it out completely!  She keeps standing up, then she'll look around and make sure we're looking and cheering her on!  Too cute!  It's kind of funny, most kids pull up on things to stand up but my kids have both just started by standing up in the middle of the floor.  Here's a little video proof!

Untitled from Mindy Pierce on Vimeo.

Tonight the family celebrated Aunt Jenn's birthday which was this past Saturday.  I cooked supper and my mom made a no-bake chocolate cake, which is a family favorite!  The kids of course had a great time running around like wild animals!  Here's a quick picture of Aunt Jenn about to blow out her candles, of course she had lots of help! 

I know Aunt Jenn might be embarrassed but I just have to say it......it's amazing how Jenn just gets prettier and skinnier the older she gets!  If I didn't love her so much I surely would be jealous of her!  She's beautiful, she's sweet, very smart, and she's a great wife and mother!  I tell my brother often that he got a good deal marrying her!  Anyway, Happy Birthday Aunt Jenn!!!!  We all love you very much! 

Homework

I'm up tonight working on Luke's homework project, how exciting!  Friday afternoon when I was going through Luke's school things I couldn't help but get excited that he had homework!  I'm sure that feeling will wear off over the years, but for now it's exciting!  His homework is actually more of a project though, his teacher sent home a half sheet of poster board paper and he's suppose to decorate it with pictures of his family!  I'm printing off some pictures tonight so we can work on it tomorrow.....I'm trying hard to let this be his project and not mine! 

We've had a great day around here.  We took our last showers away from home last night at my parents house and today I've been able to use water with no problems!  Good thing seeing as somehow Luke missed the toilet in both bathrooms today and I had to wash all our bathroom rugs!  I really think little boys are kind of like wild animals, sometimes they just have to mark their territory!  Eugene worked a little late tonight so the kids took afternoon baths and ate early so they could just play with Daddy when he got home.  Eugene and Luke turned our living room into a baseball field tonight, I think at least one thing gets knocked down daily by a flying ball in our house!  After the kids went down Eugene and I ate a nice quiet dinner.....aaahhh, adult conversation, we weren't interrupted and we didn't have to spell out words as we talked!  Of course I had to update Eugene on all of the storm activity.  I've been obsessed with the National Hurricane Center website  I know exactly when storm updates come out.  I look at all the charts and read all the discussion about the storms.  This next storm, Gustav doesn't look so good, I really hope it steers off and doesn't hit the US.  I'm thinking it will probably be Thursday before we know the general direction it's heading....we'll see.

I have to post these two pictures Jenn sent me tonight!  They went on vacation this past weekend and these are two pics of the girls swimming in the pool!  These pictures just crack me up!  Grace and Claire Mae are such beautiful little girls and they are so full of personality as you can see from the pictures!  

Is this day ever going to end?

I literally just asked Eugene if the news was on yet, he said no, it's only 9:30.  What?  It's only 9:30!  It's amazing how long a day can be when you spend most of it without any electricity, somehow changing poopy diapers by candlelight can kind of get the worst of you!  Let me rewind....

Yesterday it was all rainy and I was literally beaming with excitement!  I wanted a nice warm and cozy meal when Eugene got home so I slowly cooked a nice roast in the oven!  I even made homemade yeast rolls that were pretty scrumptious!  Since we were going to have so much food I invited my folks over as well.  We all sat down and had a great meal together!  I'd opened all the blinds in the house and we got to just watch the rain come down and the wind blow!  As we were finishing up with dinner the lights went out.  We sat around some more, put all the food away and just kind of waited for the lights to come back on.  My parents had called a neighbor and their lights were off as well so they just hung out with us.  After about an hour the lights were still off, and it was starting to get dark....and hot!  Good news though!  My parents got word their lights were back on so we all packed up and headed to their house for the night.  I am a girl that can rough it when need be, but if I can sleep in AC I'm driving across town to do so! 

We enjoyed our evening away from home, we read, watched a little TV and went to bed.  This morning we woke up, called our house and the answering machine went off!!! Yeah!  Our power was back on!  So we headed back home.  On the way home we saw a tree down over a power line....it looked pretty fresh to fall.  Then we noticed no one's lights seemed to be on....of course we got home and our lights were off again!  We thought about staying home anyway, but it seemed the power might be off for awhile so we got some more clothes and headed back to my parents.  My mom cooked us a nice big breakfast and we were again all sitting around the table and the lights went off! 

The next few hours we sat around, read.....we introduced Luke to two new games!  Slap Jack and Perfection!  It was fun....for about 3 hours, then we were ready to get out!  My mom and I took the kids to walmart....we spent forever in there, just walking around looking at things.  The kids had a great time and Eugene got to enjoy some reading time. 

Around 4pm the kids were getting tired and frankly I was ready to be home so we thought might as well head back to our house even without the power.  We came home, Luke and Eugene put their rain boots on and walked down to the pond!  Eugene kept trying to tell Luke they were going exploring but all Luke wanted to do was go fishing!  I guess he thought with all the water there would be fish in the puddles?  Not really sure?  They got back....and guess what, my parents get their power back.  I really really didn't want to go back over there (no offense mom) so I start calling around trying to figure out when we might get power back.  I finally talked to a lady at the fire department that said it didn't really look like we'd get power anytime soon, maybe not even until tomorrow/Monday!  So what do we do?.....load up and head back to Mimi and Pop Pops!  This time we took meat from the freezer, oh and at this point we already have Caroline's milk in a cooler that we load up too! 

We arrive, the kids eat dinner (ham and green beans, nothing fancy), then they finally get baths!!!  yeah!  At this point I'm just counting down the minutes until I can take a bath too!  We are twice a day shower kind of people and the fact that it was 8pm and I hadn't showered even once for the day was just about to make my skin crawl.  While I got the kids out of the bath and ready for bed Eugene went and took a shower, when he came down stairs he says "I just called the house, we have power now.".....we debated about what to do and decided we were just ready to come home, no matter what.  On the way home I was really almost at the end of my rope.  I don't really get there much, especially over something as silly as this but I guess I was just tired, smelly and kind of cranky!  I told Eugene that after we got the kids down I was retreating to take a shower and have some chill time!  We got home.....put the kids down.....then we started smelling something coming from the kids bathroom.....the toilet was gurgling, apparently some septic tank issue...which means no long hot shower!  I really could have gone over the edge at that point but I quickly started going through my thank you's in my head.....Lord, thank you we are all safe from the storm, Lord, thank you that I have a roof over my head....Lord, thank you that we don't have a tree through our roof.  It's amazing how that can snap things back into perspective!

In the end I was able to take a tub bath but not let the water out....not really my favorite way to get clean but hey, it was better than nothing!  It's still raining....actually some areas around us have gotten up to 25 inches of rain the last two days!  Crazy! 

All is well around here and I've shaken my almost bad attitude!  Check out these cute pics of Luke and Eugene from today!  Have a good night!

Friday already?

This week has been a little off for us.  Eugene and I have both been sick with the nasty stomach bug that's been plaguing T'ville!  Today were both feeling all better but the last two days have been rough! 

Luke's at school this morning and Caroline is down for her morning nap, I've got to do a little cleaning around here and kind of de-sick the house.  Change sheets, Lysol and get ready for our rainy weekend!!!  I'm so excited tropical depression Faye should hit us this afternoon!  I love, love this kind of weather!  Luke's excited about "the storm" as well.  I'm not sure why I love storms so much.  I think it's because growing up on the coast we were always tracking hurricanes and storms.  We had this big magnetic board and every time the news would come on they'd give you the new coordinates of the storm and we'd put little magnets on the board so we could track where the storm had been.  Now adays with the Internet there is no need for the tracking at home kind of thing.  Maybe I should have been a meteorologist, or a storm chaser?  ....but then again chasing after Luke and Caroline can kind of be like storm chasing.  They can be very destructive and unpredictable!

Have a good weekend! 

Trying something new....

I'm not usually one to post during the middle of the day, but today the kids are napping and everything is quiet so I thought now would be a good time!  Plus I've got a pampered chef party to go to tonight so I would likely not post later tonight anyway.  We had an early morning around here.  Caroline woke up all bright eyed and bushy tailed at 6ish....she actually woke Luke up as well but I was able to get him back to sleep.....I told him it was the middle of the night and we were all going back to bed!  Good thing he can't tell time yet!  I took Caroline back to our closet area to crawl around and watch a little PBS, I didn't want to chance waking up the monster...I mean Luke!  Just kidding....anyway, our closet is kind of hard to explain, it's really big and we kind of use it as an extension of our bedroom.  Our bedroom is kind of small and only has our bed and reading chairs in it.  We keep our dressers and clothes all in the closet and since it had a cable hook up in it when we moved in we set up a little TV back there.  Caroline crawled around while I ironed Eugene a shirt for the day.  Can you believe it?  I iron now!  Crazy!

All day has been pretty low key and quiet...I've been in character all day as "Mama Bear".....Luke's obsession with the Bernstein Bears continues....he insists I call him Brother Bear and Caroline Sister Bear!  I've been stealing little snip its of the day to read the book, The Shack....my brother recommended it to me.  I was actually on the phone with him while I was in Walmart and walked over and bought it right then and there.  I started it Friday night around 3:30 am....I had to make myself put it down and go to bed.  I'm about halfway through now......maybe I can finish it today.  Eugene's breathing down my neck to finish it so he can read it too! 

Here's a clip of Caroline swinging from yesterday....and of course Luke walking around with his new toy....yes, a fly swatter he wanted at CVS last week, I bought it....I figured it could be pretty useful, now he loves to find and kill bugs for me!

Untitled from Mindy Pierce on Vimeo.

Two posts in one night!

I was looking back at some pictures I took of the kids today and this one just stood out to me, it's the little Caroline smile that just melts my heart!  This is the smile she gives you when she's just so excited she can barely handle it!  It's when she shows those big teeth coming in and her big ol gap between the two front teeth!  I took it today while she was swinging out back in her new swing from Pop Pop!!  Yesterday Eugene and I cleaned off the carport on the building out back and made it a little kids play area.  We put the climbing toy, Caroline's new picnic table from Nana and Papa and a few other plastic toys out there.  This just gives us another place to play outside.  We hung out there awhile today, of course we also made our trek down to the pond.  Being outside is fun but I know we'll enjoy it so much more when it cools off some.  Today when we came in from outside Eugene was just getting home from work, he was literally laughing at the way we all looked!  We were all hot and sweaty, red cheeks....and I'm sure we didn't smell all that great either, but we'd had fun!  I also think it helps the kids sleep better at night, they get to burn off some steam.  Speaking of bedtime...wow, it's been so nice!  We now have Caroline on the same schedule as Luke, we lay them both down a little before 8 PM and they go to sleep!  Most nights are drama free around here, of course I say most nights.....we do have the occasional hiccup but it's nice to usually have a calm evening at home.  Well, I think that's enough blogging for tonight!  Have a great Tuesday!

Still alive and kicking!

I know, I know....I've slipped again posting, and no there is no good excuse for it!  I firmly believe that you make time for what you want to make time for in life and I have not made the time to blog in the last week or so....so my apologies.

I do have alot to catch you up on!  Let's see.....

Last week I went to the Pediatric Center (kids dr's) four times!!!  Ouch!  Not only did it completely drain my time but I didn't much enjoy writing those folks four checks either!  Last Monday I took Caroline in since she was sick...that was a long visit, they took some blood, took a urine sample then gave her a shot!  Luke didn't enjoy it either, when she was screaming in the room he'd cover his ears and sing take me out to the ball game.  Tuesday we went back to the doctor for a follow up appointment which didn't take too long.  Then Thursday Caroline had her one year old check up.  I thought we were through for the week but Luke started running fever and I took him in Friday!  Crazy kids!  Now both kids are healthy again so maybe we can stay away from the Ped Center for awhile.

I wanted to blog last Thursday to write about the great little morning of errands Luke and I had, but now since it's been a few days I can't remember all the details, is that sad?  Anyways, we dropped Caroline off at my mom's during her nap time and Luke and I ran errands.  Luke is a little shopper, he loves, loves to go into stores!  I'm not sure why he finds them so fascinating but he does.  That particular day we went to eight different places.  Finally when we were done with everything on the list and were headed to get Caroline he was whining that he wanted to go to one more store!  He just cracks me up! 

We really had a great, wonderful weekend!  Saturday was Caroline's party, it couldn't have gone better, from what I hear I think everyone had a good time.  I love love finger foods so that's what we had to eat for lunch......here's our little spread.  We even had a chocolate fountain that seemed to be a big hit

The cake,  of course was made by Mimi!  We decided to do a cupcake theme for Caroline since after all she's our little cupcake!  I thought the cake turned out super cute!  Mimi also made some really cute candy bar wrappers for Caroline.  After we all ate we opened presents!  Caroline got into it some...of course she had alot of help from her brother and cousins!

Here's another picture of Caroline in her high chair eating her lunch.  It's kind of funny to me....with her larger than life one year old picture behind her!

After the party we had a quiet afternoon then we went out with Eugene's folks to the Mexican restaurant.  The wait staff brought out a sombrero and played mariachi music for Caroline.  When the waiter tried to put the sombrero on her head she freaked out!  I guess she thought it was attacking her or something, it was too funny!  We've got a little Polaroid of it, she has her hands up in the air screaming at the top of her lungs.....that will be one of those pictures you look at and remember the story behind it!

As for the rest of the weekend it was pretty low key, of course there were some more Olympics to be watched!  Go Phelps!  As much as we've enjoyed them I'm kind of ready for them to be over,  the TV has been on every night around our house the past week or so! ...funny that I'm typing about the Olympics!  Eugene just called me in the den to watch the trampoline competition.....pretty cool, I never realized how many events there are!