Getting ready for school

The girls head back to school on Thursday so I have been busy busy busy getting school stuff taken care of. We were smart by shopping early to not have to make the last minute dash but there was still registration day, volleyball tryouts, shopping for lunchbox stuff and practicing getting to bed early. As far as the getting to bed early, let's just say mommy and daddy don't have a problem with that. The girls... you should hear all the chatter and laughter going on for 2 hours after they supposedly go down for the night. Makes me remember when my sister and I were that age, we did the same thing. Yeah, my mother always said I would get my share of all what I have done. I get my little doses here and there.

We had to pay fees for the girls at registration. I thought I was stroking a check to pay for tuition to a private school! Can you believe that if your kid takes an honors class that gives you high school credit (if you pass with at least a B average) you have to pay for it? I thought they actually have to earn the credit! I better stop complaining and know that it all goes to a good cause, my kids' education.

I am going to miss those knuckle heads while they are at school. I was so lucky to have 2 extra sets of hands with the baby. Speaking of baby, he weighs almost 20 pounds now! He's in size 4 diapers. The bigger the size, the fewer in the package. Not fun. I know the girls will miss their little brother and he will miss them too.

The hubby has to finish getting my car prepared for my school year job as a chauffeur. You know what, I would not not have it any other way. I love taking the girls to school and picking them up. I love to listen to them telling me all about what happened in school all day. The sweetest thing is they always ask me first how my day was. Okay, now I don't want them to go back~!

Don'tcha hate it when.... Wednesday

Okay, I have been slacking so here it goes...

Don'tcha hate it when...

• You make an extravagant meal that took hours to cook and your family enjoys it. Then you make a 1/2 hour meal and the family is raving as if they were eating steak and lobster.
• Your hubby is actually right. Damn.
• Your baby boy discovers he has "boy parts". Now I have to look at him and the hubby grab their parts. Not attractive.
• Your children bring up your faults in front of company. I don't recall ever saying that I was perfect to begin with.

My list could go on but that would make me sound bitter LOL! What bugs you? Hit us up in the comments...

And the winners are...

We have randomly selected our winners for our 200th post giveaway contest and they are:

Katie from boyz in the hood...er, suburbs

&

Lisa from LisaCWrites

Congratulations ladies and we hope you enjoy your coffee! Thanks to everyone that participated.

Giveaway reminder

Don't forget you have until midnight on August 10th to enter our Starbucks coffee giveaway.

Bawbi has a new look

The temperatures this week in Columbia, South Carolina have been in the miserable 100's. Actually it has been that way for much of the Summer. This is no fun when you carry around what feels like a fur coat on top of your head. The fur coat I speak of would be my hair. I have been growing it out for about a year now so that I could donate it to Locks of Love. I have always wanted to do it but either my hair was too short, too layered or the one time we had a ponytail incident that messed up my chance to donate it. Let's just say that you should not play pass the ponytail. It could get real messy! Here are some photos of what my hair looked like before:

It sounded like my hair stylist was sawing through my hair! It took an entire minute to cut the ponytail off. There were a few other ladies waiting for their appointment and they all sat there nervously watching me get all my hair hacked off. I was the only one that was happy. Everyone else thought I was nuts.

I knew I had a lot of hair but did not realize it was that much!

After losing about 15 inches, this is the end result:

Country girls

Today the girls did a very interesting thing that they can certainly say they have never done before. They shelled speckled butter beans. My father-in-law is from the country and he took a trip this past weekend. He came back with a HUGE bag of what I thought were sugar snap peas or something related to them. He said that they were speckled butter beans and that they had to be removed from the pods in order to cook them. Usually he brings them from the Farmers Market all packed in pound sized bags already shelled and cleaned. Let's just say that 2 1/2 hours of manual labor yielded about 1 3/4 pounds of beans. I helped a little until my fingertips were sore. It is kinda fun and the girls enjoyed doing it. We explained to them that a lot of people in the country grow their own produce and have to do all the cleaning and sorting. I thought they would have moaned and groaned and asked why we can't just go to the store to buy some. They really had fun doing it. What they found to be really cool was that the shells that looked all brown and yucky gave you beans of the most gorgeous purple shades. It's great that my kids are content with doing such simple things with no complaints. I guess I could learn a thing or two from them huh?