Visitors from TN

We have company for the Bowman Girls' Birthday Week. Meme, Pop, and cousin Eli came to visit us. Their trip has been lots of fun... for us.

Eli's Mommy, though, is missing him like crazy.

It's his first trip away from her.

Aunt Amy, we're taking very good care of your little one, see?

Doesn't that picture give you peace about his well being? ;)

Eli spent most of today hanging out with the adults and Audrey. This was right before his morning nap. He actually let Audrey hold him for several minutes. She was thrilled.

After Julia got home from school, we went to the church playground.

I think... maybe, just maybe... he liked the slides the best! Closing his eyes in eager anticipation was totally cute. He also looked cute playing elsewhere.

Please know that Eli's receiving lots of hugs and kisses while he's down here. They aren't as good as hugs and kisses from his Mom, Dad, and Brother but I know you guys will catch up on those as soon as he gets back home.

We'll make sure Eli calls you first thing tomorrow! Love you, Amy!

Julia is 6!

400th Counted Blessing!

391. Free 10x13 of the girls. It's from Walmart's Picture Me studio so it's not creative or artistic, but it's a free picture of my girlies and only took about 30 minutes of our time.

392. Audrey being fever free for over 24 hours now. She had a high fever (our highest tympanic reading was 104.6) from Wednesday night until Saturday morning. We got in lots of snuggle time, but it has been a long few days!

393. Audrey's fever being easily brought down by medicine. I did wind up spanking her the last 2 times we gave medicine :(

394. Fun times cheerleading this year (although Julia and I were both ready for the season to be over)

395. Audrey finally opening up and cheering with us a little last weekend.

396. I said I'd never make homemade pizza again, but since we still had pizza sauce in the refrigerator I decided we should try out biscuit pizza. It was much easier. :)

397. 2 successful "new to me" recipes Friday night. I made cheese grits and biscuit doughnuts - so good!

398. Audrey feeling good enough to come to Upward's closing ceremony this afternoon (good thing since Matt had something he had to do work related at the same time as Upward.) Here are the 2 of us right before Audrey fell asleep on my lap. She may not be sick any more, but her body is still extra tired!

399. Someone willing to video for me so that Matt could see Julia's performance. I wanted it for myself too since I couldn't watch just Julia during the show.

400. My Cheerleader Julia!

Yes, the above one is posed immediately after they finished. That's why Julia is the only one with poms up! Coach Mama had to get a still shot! The picture below is with a fellow Cheerio!

This may be the only time Julia ever cheers, and that's A-ok. (Just say "NO" to skimpy cheerleading outfits!) I just really enjoyed spending this time with her learning a little about something that was new to both of us.

Audrey's had a high fever since Wednesday night. She fights so hard when I mention the word "medicine" that I don't give it to her until she hits 103+. I guess the good thing is that even when her fever is a 104 or so, she still finds the energy to run and hide in her room, locking the door and crawling under the covers of her bed. (A pretty good hiding place, really, since she hasn't actually slept in her bed more than twice the past 14 months). When I chase her down with medicine in tow, she's well enough to clamp her mouth shut and shake her head emphatically. She's well enough to argue that "Julia might get sick if she gets close to me. We need to share the medicine. I get a little. Julia gets a little. I've already had a little. That's Julia's." She's well enough to dribble the medicine back out of her mouth or even force herself to throw the medicine back up once I give it to her.

I've threatened to spank her the last 2 times I've given her medicine b/c of all this. Fortunately, she's given in before I had to actually do it.

Her only symptom of illness is this fever. 45 minutes or so after the medicine has been given, her body temp feels close to normal and she's back to eating (AK had too many Pringles yesterday... but it's hard to say "no" when she's sick and when Momma still feels guilty for threatening spankings for a sick child. Just Saying)

She's on the couch catching up on sleep right now. I gave her a dose of medicine at 3:00 or so. It's a little after 9 now and she still feels cool. Let's hope it stays that way.

Tuesday

Tuesday was the last day of a very long weekend for us. Here is a little of what we did.
We ate breakfast together.

Julia was so distraught when Matt had to go to work, we decided to make him a cake.

I'd love to say that the girls decorated the cake all on their own, but that would be a lie. I am just THAT untalented at cake decorating. What I'm pretty good at though is frizzing up my my hair, specifically frizzing/curling my hair with socks. (Don't ask. HA!) Julia liked it, but Audrey didn't. I enjoyed it for a few minutes, but it was soon in a ponytail - like usual!

We also spent part of our day just posing for the camera.

And as any mom does, sometimes I just have to force kisses on my children.

See the frizz I mentioned??? HA!

I love my girls!

Homemade Pizza

Publix has lots of Italian foods on sale this week. I had a much larger than usual shopping list to take advantage of these deals as the girls and I shopped earlier today. I even decided to try something new out in the kitchen. Homemade pizza. I bought the bakery prepped pizza dough, canned pizza sauce, and cheese (all of the items BOGO, of course).

All afternoon, I had glorious visions of making this homemade pizza with my girls right by my side to help me. I really should have known better...

Those glorious visions began all right. I had just 1 helper (the other decided she'd rather watch TV with Daddy). Helper Julia started off playing with the "smushy" stuff (soft and mushy = smushy... good thinking, Jules).


There are no more pictures of us preparing the pizza, because... well... because things quickly turned ugly. The pizza dough just wouldn't spread out anymore than it is in the above picture. The dough wasn't nearly as easy to shape as I was hoping. The youtube video I watched did not adequately prepare me. Watching my "stepsister" (quotes because we've only met 4 times and it feels odd calling her that) a Papa Johns employee, prepare a pizza over Christmas break did not adequately prepare me either. My glorious visions of wonderful pizza preparation dissolved into nothingness and left me kicking Julia out of the kitchen while I went about pounding, tugging, pulling, and glaring at the totally uncooperative pizza dough.

I don't like pizza dough anymore.

Eventually, I wrestled the stuff into an almost circular shape and called Julia back into the kitchen. She helped spread the sauce and cheese on top, and I spooned garlic butter around the outer crust. When we had the pizza in the oven, I made sure to apologize for snapping at her when I was actually annoyed with the dough. Poor sweet baby.

I then let the girls play on our flour covered work space for a few minutes before we cleaned it up.



Here's our finished product.


It tasted just fine but was definitely not worth my tears.
We will not be attempting this again.

381. The simple fun of last night's campout in the living room. Audrey took a long, late nap yesterday afternoon, so she didn't go to sleep until 1:30-2:00. I was asleep well before then. Matt stayed up with the night owl.

By 3AM, Matt was up with a stomach bug. Blessing 382 - we were in the living room and didn't waken to the sound of him throwing up. Blessing 383 - Matt's main illness was short-lived, although his exhaustion and achiness is still going strong. Blessing 384 - as of 9:30 Friday night, the girls and I have yet to come down with this stomach bug.

385. A zoo membership to take advantage of in order to do something "educational" on Julia's excused absence day and in order to give Matt some quiet time on his sick day.

386. Bravery for the girls to feed some of the animals. Perhaps soon we'll be able to feed the animals with our hands and not just by holding out a cup.

387. Picnic lunch while watching Tigers!

388. The humor of one child posing for the camera and the other one not caring a bit.

389. Pizza Hut "Book It" coupons that Julia has earned. After reading 20 books, Julia turns in her reading list and receives a coupon for a free personal pan pizza. We got one of these for the girls to share this afternoon.

390. Much needed nap time for Mommy when we got back from our zoo adventure.