Savanna Is Six

By this time 6 years ago, God safely brought our precious girl into this world. I can remember everything about that morning. It was a scheduled C-section because she was breached throughout my entire pregnancy. Jody and I were running a little late in getting to the hospital that morning and I was SOOOO nervous. I had no clue what to expect and I remember just holding Jody's hand and us both saying that we can't believe this is happening - our first child and knowing that our lives would never be the same. What a WONDERFUL change to our lives. Savanna Jo Stanley has been one of the best blessings in our lives.

Following is 6 things to know about our Savanna:

1) She loves doing girly things - playing dress up, putting on makeup, playing house with her dolls, etc. And she loves to draw and color.

2) But she also likes being outdoors playing with her kitty and new puppy (which was recently lost but found) and riding her horse.

3) She is a great big sister. There are a lot of times that Shane really gets on her nerves and they fight, but for the most part she acts like a second mother and takes care of him.

4) When it comes to making friends, she is not shy. I sometimes worry that she may run new friends off because she can be pretty bossy and try to show off for them, but she just wants to have fun.

5) She obeys really well. She has her moments, but usually she wants to please us and does as she's told.

6) She has such a sweet and loving spirit. Out of the blue she will come up to me or Jody, give us a big hug and tell us that she loves us. It always makes me smile.

It has been such a joy watching her change and grow. I just wish time would slow down so I can truly soak it all in. Happy Birthday Savanna!!

My Little Shopping Girl

This past Friday, Savanna and I went shopping with my friend Sherry and her daughter Amberly (who is going to be a sophmore-which I cannot believe is possible-time flies). We left out early that morning and had a great time except for Savanna falling down in the Chili's parking lot and scraping her knee.

With this little excursion, I have found out that I have a little shopper on my hands. She loved going into every store picking out things for herself. And once we got into the dressing room her comments just cracked me up - "Doesn't this look so cute on me!" and "Oh, this looks so good!" and "I will wear this the first day of school!" I don't know what I am going to do with her once she gets older. She will probably put us in the poor house, but I look forward to going shopping with her in the years to come.

Visit from my BFF

Ok, I promise - this will be my last post to catch up for the month of July. I probably won't write again until September to catch up on what's happened in August, but I am going to try and do better.


On the last day of July my best friend, Shelley, came out with her 3 kiddos, Maddie, Walker, & Arden. She was in town visiting her family and she and her mom, Peggy, came out to let our kids play together. We just had the best time! We cooked hot dogs & hamburgers and I picked up a cake to celebrate her birthday early. It's August 9th. Shelley and I have been friends since the fifth grade, were college roommates, in each others weddings..... so needless to say we have been through a lot together and it is so great to have a friend that I can always pick right back up where I left off. But something about this day just got to me - I didn't get emotional but it made me reflect on a lot of things after they left. Seeing our kids together and the times we would talk about who we would marry, how many kids we wanted and their names, etc. just made me realize how great it was and is to have a friend like Shelley.


Thanks for all the good times, Shelley, and I hope you have a great birthday!


Shelley's mom - Peggy. She is so funny and sweet. I am so glad she could come.


Shelley and her youngest, Arden.


The sliding gang. They all had a great time and we are going to have to get together more often.



Arden-he was the best baby!

Tagged

Man, I am on a roll with posting stuff. I received my first tag from my friend Jill. I am to list 5 songs that I am embarassed to admit that I like.

Here are the rules:
1. Link to the person who tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share 5 songs you are embarrassed to admit to others that you like and tell why.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of post and include links to their blogs.
4. Let each person know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Ok, here goes.

#1 - Honky Tonk Badonkadonk by Trace Adkins - I like to dance for Jody to this song at night - oh, just kidding. He wishes, lol. Seriously though, I like the beat and catchiness of this song.

#2 - Do-Re-Mi from the Sound of Music - I absolutely loved watching this movie as a kid. I would sing every song, except the one when the head nun sang about climbing every mountain - ooo, too high for me. And now that Savanna has watched the movie we sing this song together.

#3 - All Night Long by Lionel Ritchie - I remember having this tape and listening to it on family vactions. I just liked the party atmosphere it gave off in the song.

I am not a big fan of rap music but these last two are rap songs that have stuck with me after hearing them and I am embarassed to say that I like them.

#4 - Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice - This is the only rap song that I had totally memorized back in the day and I can still quote a few lines of it. Too cold, too cold.

#5 - Lose Yourself by Eminem - I like the way this song sounds with the beat and the piano mixed together, and because it tells a story of what his life was like before and after he made it big with his music.

Welp, that's my list. I am now going to tag:

Allison
Amy
Jaci
Shelley H.
Shelley W.

Airplane Ride

I just had to add this video of the kids taking off in the airplane and Savanna saying, "It tickles my belly."

San Antonio

Warning: This is going to be a long post, so you may want to come back when you have more time to read :)

After Jody got back from his trip to Denver on Monday, the 21st, I had planned a spur of the moment family trip to San Antonio. The company I work for is really great - very laid back and casual. The president of the company I work for lives and has another company in San Antonio and every Wednesday he flies the company plane in to our local airport and then flies back on Friday afternoons, so we caught a ride when the plane would be empty (I didn't want the kids to be bothering my boss). It was the greatest thing - a trip that would have taken us 5 hours driving only took 1 hour. We took off around 6:50 am and landed in SA at around 8:00 am with the rental car waiting for us to load up our stuff. The only problem with our trip was that Dolly (the storm) was on its way. The pilot asked after we landed if we could see Dolly off to the left and I said, "Dolly Parton?!" - Oh my, I am so stupid sometimes - Jody had a good laugh with that one.

Anyway, we got out our trusty maps and followed the signs to the zoo. On the way, we stopped to eat breakfast and at the end of that I was changing Shane's clothes because he spilt chocolate milk all over them - oh well, we just go with the flow. The weather was perfect for the zoo - cloudy and breezy. I highly recommend the San Antonio Zoo. The animals are so close and the kids loved it. Outside of the zoo is a great park (I think it's called Brackenridge Park ??) and they have a train ride that runs through it, so we rode on it - it was fun. After that we checked into our room and rested a while and then got dressed and went down to the riverwalk. Of course when the kids saw the tour boats floating down the river, they wanted to go. So... we did. It was very interesting to hear about the history of the riverwalk and all the old buildings that surround it. Jody and I were in awe about how much we were able to do in one day and joked about how we rode in a plane, train, and automobile AND a boat. :)

Now Thursday was a different day. I am going to try and stay positive, but Hello Dolly - Goodbye Sea World. Thursday was going to be our Sea World day, but God had a different plan. It started out good - it was sprinkling when we entered the park and all the reports we heard said that it would clear out by lunch time. So we hit the indoor shows until it did. We saw the 4-D pirate show which the kids did NOT like and the wonderful Shamu show, and then the bottom fell out. After that, it would come and go - heavy rain, light rain, heavy rain, light rain. The only good thing about the rain was that the park was not crowded at all. We were the only dummies that would not give it up. Finally they closed the park down around 1:30 and then we stood in line the rest of the time trying to get our money back because we didn't want to take a rain check ticket and come back on Friday since we couldn't be there all day. So, after they asked what shows we were able to see, they prorated it and gave us 87% of our money back - yeah! After we got back in the car, I noticed I had missed a call from my mom, so I called her back and she said that my cousin Carla was in San Antonio with her family. They were at a gun shooting contest for her boys, so we went out to visit them since I hadn't seen them in so long. The boys had really grown!

Friday was a much, much better day. We went back down to the downtown area and riverwalk. We went to a children's museum that Savanna and Shane just had a blast playing in. They had all kinds of educational and fun things for them to do. I think they could have stayed there all day, but we headed on over to the Alamo. What a great history lesson there. Savanna was actually interested in learning about what happened there and we tried to explain it to her in a way that she would understand. Then we went over to the Buckhorn Museum and restaurant and spent the rest of the aftenoon there (until 2:30 - our flight left at 3:00) eating lunch and going to the two museums they had inside. I can honestly say that I have never seen so many stuffed animals and fish in one building - Jody just ate it up. The Texas Ranger Museum was interesting too. I didn't get to read about all the stuff like I wanted to because I was chasing kids, but we had a good time. On this day I didn't get any digital photos because my camera's battery went dead. So we purchased a throw away camera while we were there. It was funny because after I take a picture on my digital camera the kids always want to see what the picture looks like right after it flashes, so when the throw away camera flashed, Shane came running up saying "I wanna see, I wanna see" but I had nothing to show. Ah, the good ol' days of having to wait until a ROLL gets DEVELOPED before you could see what the picture looks like are over. LOL - no more suspense. Anyway, here is just some of the stack of digital photos I took of our wonderful, rained out, quick vacation to San Antonio. Enjoy.

Anderson Family Reunion

July continued..... On the 16th, Jody went out of town for a sale so we spent the weekend with Mom & Dad. On Friday, Aunt Debbie (my dad's sister) and Uncle Richard came for our annual Anderson family reunion. It was her birthday that day, so we all celebrated with her.


Before their arrival on Friday, Mom & Dad's neighbors had a couple of new baby donkeys, so we went down to see them.

My grandfather (my dad's dad) was one of 13 children (10 boys & 3 girls) The ones seated are the only ones left. Uncle Kenneth, Aunt Dorothy, Uncle Arlon, Uncle Avon.

Todd and Penni catered our lunch. Todd is so talented - he loves to cook and really needs to open his own restaurant. He fixed brisket & sausage with all the trimmings. Everyone else brought desserts. It was so good!

The picture above shows all the first generation cousins and the picture below shows all the second generation cousins. Since the original 13 where so spread out in age (my dad actually played more with his uncles) we are natually all spread out in ages. I remember going to these when I was younger and there was always so many people there, but over time it seems as though the numbers in attendance keep decreasing. I find it sad, but in a way I can understand - there is just so much distance between everyone and it's hard to keep up the tradition, but as long as it keeps going, I will be there.