ZBB!

I saw Zac Brown Band in concert! It was an awesome concert!

Retreat

This past weekend I attended a Quiet Retreat in Belleville at The King's House. It was wonderful! When asked by my family if I had fun, I said it wasn't a "fun" retreat. It was very much a spiritual retreat. I was able to relax and attend some good conferences, get a little closer to God and learn to let him into life a lot more. I just hope I can continue that. I enjoyed it and I will probably go back next year.

Meet Max

This is Max. He's a beagle..and I just fell in love with him when I saw him..he looked like a Bassett hound.

My mom has the most gorgeous Mums!

September

The month of September is always busy. Two very important days fall in this month: Luke's birthday and our Annivesary. 2011 marks Luke's 7th birthday on the 22nd and Dallas and I have been married 9 years on the 21st.
This year Dallas sent me a dozen beautiful roses to my office! I loved them, they were beautiful and I love showing them off to my staff!

Luke celebrated his birthday with a party at Star Dance Studio with his friends. They had a blast...they got to jump in a foam pit, jump in a bounce house and on trampolines!

On the 21st we bought our second minivan. The other one was starting to become somewhat of a moneypit and it had over a 100,000 miles on it. So we searched high and low for a van with a DVD player in the back (trust me it is a necessity). It keeps the boys occupied and they don't try so hard to kill each other and drive us nuts when they've got a movie to watch! Anyway we got a 2011 Dodge Grand CaraVan...it was my first ever brand new vehicle!! I've always had used vehicles. It's pretty sweet! It's very mom and kid friendly! I must say Dodge thought of everything!

Disrespect

Really...disrespect. I expect that from my 4 year old..not an educated, professional adult. I'm learning that NICE gets me nowhere. So there are ones in my office who feel it's ok to tell me what they are going to do and what they are NOT going to do. I had to go around the corner and look at the name plate on my door to see if I am still the DIRECTOR or not. I checked...and yep, I am. So, I got that taken care of right away. I think they are still picking their chins up off the floor.

Summer is Here!

It's my last day of vacation. Back to the grind tomorrow..Thursday...why didn't I take the whole week off?...well it's end of the fiscal year and well let's just say there is ALOT going on at the office, plus I want to save some vacation days for the upcoming months.

We took the boys to Moline, IL to see the John Deere Tractor museum. They loved it, but it wasn't quite worth the almost 5 hr. drive to only spend almost an hour looking at them. So we headed down to St. Louis and went to the Zoo. St. Louis Zoo is wonderful! I haven't been there in years! We came home a day earlier than planned, and I'm ok with that, it's been nice being at home! We got a new swimming pool yesterday. It's one from Wal-Mart, but it does just fine! It's about 3 ft. deep, perfect for the boys. I told Dallas I'd be happy to get 2 summers out of it, he agreed! And when we upgrade to a "cement pond" it will be even better..Ha!

Here's what I learned about going on vacation:

*Take lots of movies and food
*When (my) boys are bored they either eat or fight
*Mama can't handle being in an enclosed area with fighting/screaming children!
*It's ok to jump on hotel beds (because it's not MY bed)
*I don't even care if the mattress is half off the hotel bed, because it's NOT MY BED!
*We are not going to Disney World anytime soon!
*I was happy to hear another mother at the Zoo say to her boys, "we're going to get kicked out of here if you don't stop." I wanted to say to her, "I've been saying that all day, but they never kick us out!"

The boys had a great time and that's what matters. They're as happy as clams in the deep blue ocean with their new pool and they think that's Disney World! ...and that's ok by me!