Kindergarten Graduation

It's official... we have a first grader! He was so cute and so proud up on stage. All of my "on stage" pics are blurry or dark because I was towards the back of the auditorium, so here are some other pics of my sweet boy....
He got some money from Gran Gran for his good school work, and he begged me to go buy him a suit for graduation and for church. He said, "I want to wear that stuff like PawPaw wears to church... you know with the pants and the jacket that match and the tie." That made my daddy smile when I told him that Micah wanted to look like PawPaw. I am so thankful that my children have such faithful christian examples to look up to.
And for those of you who are wondering, NO I did NOT cry at graduation.... I had 3 little distractions with me in the audience! I am so proud of Micah and his great first year of school.... now many, many more years to come! :o)

Handsome Boy!

Proud Daddy and Mommy

Micah and Mrs. Allen

REWIND

I have been a abad blogger lately, I know.... life has been totally crazy here! But this blog will someday be where I get all my info to make all my scrapbooks (in all my spare time, ha!) so I need to keep it all in order.... SO... I have backtracked and caught up a bit... just thought I would let you all know to scroll down to see our pics from our beach trip and from Coby's graduation and water day.

Our Annual West TX / New Mexico Tour

950 miles, 7 great-grandparents, 4 different houses to stay in, a brand new baby cousin, plus 3 more fun cousins, several aunts and uncles, lots of movies in the car, several potty-breaks, an entire box of goldfish, and tons of fun later.... we are back home from our annual west tx/nm tour. The kids look forward to going every year, and this year was no different. I literally downloaded 0ver 200 pictures, so here are a few of my favorites:

We stopped first at Noodle, TX (outside of Abilene) to see Mamaw and Papaw. The boys had a great time riding the tractors they finally got to meet our newest little nephew, Jarrell... He is just so sweet!

Mamaw and Cason

Papaw and Cason

Bryson was so excited to meet Jarrell... he would go over and check on him in his bouncer or in someone's lap and say, "be-be?!"




If Jarrell was awake, Coby was near him. He LOVES babies!

Bry is usually a little hesitant around new people, but he took a special liking to Papaw. It was so sweet!

Cason said this is his favorite picture because he remembers that Jarrell has soft hair!

Mamaw and Papaw with "the boys"

GiGi and Gdad with all 5 of their grandsons! Could they be smiling any bigger??!!

Then we crossed the state line and headed to Jal, NM to visit my grandparents. We also got to see my big brother, Josh and his family. We dont see them very often, so it was a treat to have extra playtime with them. Josh preached and taught bible class, so that was special, too. He did a great job!

Here is KK and PopPop with the boys

Cason and Dylan

Micah and Dustin

Coby and Dylan

The whole gang with Nana and Dandy

Feeding the ducks and the big slide at the Jal park... a crowd favorite!

Nana gave Bryson his first ice cream push-pop.... he loved it!

Then back to TX to see Gran Gran in Coahoma on our way back home.

Now my house looks like hurricane katrina and I have laundry running out my ears, Micah has 2 more days of school and a kindergarten graduation this week, and this weekend is my 10-year hs reunion (gulp... has it really been 10 years?!), and my baby brother, Jordan is getting married this weekend, so all my blog-world friends need to prepare yourselves not to hear from me for another week or so! I still need to back-track and post pics of our beach trip, Coby's graduation, water day, etc... maybe later! :o)

Coby's Preschool Graduation and Water Day

No way is my sweet Cobyu old enough to graduate from my class and head off to kindergarten. Yes, I gave him his diploma with tears in my eyes... and yes, I bawled like a baby when I gave my farewell speach to all the kids and their parents. This class is so special to me!

My Sweet Class

Coby sporting his new hat from his awesome teacher!

WATER DAY!!! My favorite day of the year! :o)

Best Family Beach Trip!

Our beach trip was AWESOME!!! On thursday night, Clint and I were coming home from some last minute grocery shopping and he notice that the car was acting funny. He thought the alternator might be messing up, so we stopped and got one just in case. Sure enough, as we were pulling out of Micah's school at noon on Friday to head to PortA, the alternator DIED! So we headed to my mom and dads for a quick lesson in car repair. Thanks to my handy-dandy hubby, we were only set back by about an hour or so. We simply moved the picnic that was going to take place on the road into Mimi's living room.... so here is the first leg of the trip:

And the rest is history... rather than boring you with lots of type, I will simply say that it was a blast, and I will leave you with what we can call "best family beach trip photo album"

Bryson is just taking it all in!

Coby loved the "big, big waves!"

Bryson went face first into the sand... and we all laughed, so he laughed at first... and then he was ready to have it off!

Micah digging for sand dollars... with out any luck!

Cason's favorite hang out spot

The family

Coby and Micah on the boogie boards.... I took the 2 of them out while the little ones napped, and they had a blast!

"The Boardwalk"

These 2 had so much fun together!

Cason checking out the view

Bryson is too cool

too much fun!

We love the beach!!

Jarrell Alan Best

Our new little nephew, Jarrell was born last thursday. We have yet to meet him but we just cant wait to get our hands on this sweet little guy soon! (Dixie, I stole the pic off your blog! :o)) Isnt he sweet!

We just got back from our beach trip yesterday, so I will do a post on that soon with lots of fun pics, but for now I am behind in showing what a proud aunt I am, so here is a quick shot of this sweet little fella! Congratulations, Uncle Russell and Aunt Angie on our BEST nephew!

PS-- he has that shiny golden hair like Bryson and Coby had when they were born... brings back sweet memories!!

Light at the end of the tunnel

First, an update on little Bry... he is still very sick. Fever last night was 104.3. Today it is down to the 102 range. Still high, but better. He does not have pnemonia... and what ever he has has moved into his eyes, so they are all bloodshot and goupy... sorry that may be TMI! The DR thinks it is either bronchialitis (sp?) or a cold on top of some asthma and allergies. So he is on a perscription antihistimine/cough syrup, breathing treatments, eye drops, tylenol and motrin... I am praying hard that he feels better soon... not only bc it is so hard to see him so sick and lethargic, but also bc we are planning to go to Port Aransas this weekend, and it will totally crush the other boys to have to cancel the trip!

OK... so the drama.... I took 18 4 and 5 year old kids to the Zoo yesterday for our field trip. Clint took a sick day to take care of Bry so I could go have a break and go on the funnest day of the year with my kids... crazy, but fun! When I got home, I headed to my room to change clothes and check email, and my entire bedroom floor was covered in water. I couldnt figure out if it was my waterbed leaking (a quick, easy, cheap thing to fix) or if it was coming thru the wall from the bathroom (messy, time consuming, and super expensive to fix)... and it was the latter. We have a busted pipe in our master bathroom. Clint went to the street to turn off the water while I headed for the towels and mop. We got the mess cleaned up... kinda... and headed to my mom and dads to drop off the kids and head to Lowes. We have taken the 4 of them to Lowes before, but it is a total zoo, so since Mimi and PawPaw are way more fun that Lowes, we went with that option. We decided that we were going to have to spend quite a bit of money anyways on the tile and it was going to be hard to match and patch it, so we decided to just go ahead and retile the whole thing. Well, while we were there, I got to talking about my yukky old bathtub and the hard water stains and rust that we cant got off of it (we now have a water softener, but it was too late for the tub). There is also some cracks in it, so it is impossible for me to get it very clean, and if we are going to replace it, now is the time while we are breaking out all of the old tile.... SO.... I talked clint into a new bathtub. As we were pricing those, we saw a spa-jet tub ON SALE, and mothers day is right around the corner, and it was not going to cost thatmuch more in the big scheme of things, so we went for it!!! yay!!! I have always wanted one of those!! Happy mothers day to me!! So it is super annoying that we are down to one bathtub right now, (especially since we have company coming on thursday!) but my light at the end of the tunnel is that in a few weeks, I hope to be basking in my new spa bath tub with cool jets, reading a good book and sipping on something indulging! (*fingers crossed real tight*)

On a totally different subject, my little nephew (my "best" nephew) was due last week and he is still cookin.... We are praying for you, Jarrell! And we are ready for you to come and meet your precious momma and daddy! Angie... you hang in there! We love you and we cant wait to see you as a mommy!

When it rains it pours!

Little bry has had a cough since friday, but it was nothing more than just a cough. Well at our 1st sunday meal at church, he coughed until he puked... all. over. everywhere.... surrounded by all our friends... poor baby. We still wrote it off as allergies, drainage, a tickle, etc bc he was just as happy as can be and no fever, etc. So we took him back to church Sun night. The lady in the nursery said he didnt seem like he felt good, so we headed out to the car, and he coughed again until he puked again all. over. the. car. Yukk. We got him home, his fever was 103.8, we drugged him up and put him to bed. He woke up several times during the night coughing, puking, etc. I took him to the dr this morning (with my other 2 banchies tagging along). You dont realize how time those patient rooms are until you have 2 very healthy, energetic little boys and one very not-healthy, fussy, unhappy baby all in the same room. Just thinking about it makes me sweat. The dr thinks it is pnemonia. So we had to go do some lab work (still with my 2 extra friends)... it was awful. They said the results would only take 5 minutes so we could just wait in the waiting room, where they were playing "Finding Nemo" (God bless Nemo!) But again, Bry got to coughing. I tried his drink, his passie, but I was too late. He barfed all. over. mommy!!! In the waiting room, so we got up to leave, and I am literally dripping, leaving a trail all the way out the door and to my car. As we round the corner, TA-DA Daddy to the rescue. I called him when I found out we were doing blood tests and a chest xray but he was in a meeting so he could judt drop everything and leave. But he got there just in time to back track my steps and use the Clorox wipes (that I keep in my car for situations just like these) to clean up my dripping trail, apologize to the front desk and ask them to call my cell with the results.

So we headed home for a bath, some spray-n-wash, and a load of laundry and got back into the car to head to the chest xray. Clint took the 2 big boys to the courthouse with him to pay $150 for his ticket that he got last week for not having his seatbelt on (as he was pulling out of the parking lot and reaching back to put it on.... but that is a whole nother post!!), and I went to the healthcenter for the xray... this time carrying a big bowl/bucket... just in case! They got us back super fast but the xray itself was PURE MISERY... they strapped him in the most awful contraption and I cried right along with him. It was quick and the man was very nice. We put his shirt back on and he was fine as soon as we got back outside where he could see the birds. He loves the birds! It was about 120 degrees outside (or maybe I am a bit melodramatic when I am stressed, but whatever, it was HOT), and we get into my car, and you guessed it, the battery is dead... I cried again, called clint, and you guessed it again, TA-DA, daddy to the rescue!! We got 'er started back up, drove thru McDonalds (God bless McD's), and now we are all back in our cool, quiet, air-conditioned home napping.

I am almost scared to get back into my car to go get Micah for fear of what will happen next......
I will keep you posted on lil Bry.

This one's for my Coby

So I have way too many things going on in my life right now, and it makes me all stressed and I have been in a bad mood all week long. I have not been sleeping well because I have been making lists and "organizing" in my sleep, trying to be sure that I have everything all done... do you ever do that? Anyways, yesterday, Cason was had the throw up bug (seriously, it seems like lately, it is not a normal week in the Best household if someone has not thrown up... we have got to stop making this a part of our weekly routine!), so we had all just stayed in our PJs all day and we were just hanging out. I was reading a sweet email from my momma and it made me tear up... Coby saw that I was crying and he asked if I was ok.... and then he followed up with a big ol hug and kiss and he said, "Mommy you are my prettiest girl in this whole universe!" Sometimes I wish my sweet Coby would lend me his rose-colored glasses so that I could just have a peak at the stress-free life he leads.... I sure am thankful that God gave him to me to remind me to stop and smell the roses!