Happy 7th Birthday, Beautiful Bella Ann

Dear Bella,
I kissed you goodnight for the last time tonight as a 6 year old.  I came downstairs and worked on my last few continuing education hours to renew my RN license.  I need to go get you and your sister's Christmas gifts out of my car, but the house is silent and I don't want to wake anyone.  Now I am writing you a birthday love note. I have written you and Lucy one every year on your birthdays so far.  Our lives are so busy.  I do try to shield the chaos and how overwhelmed I get from you and Lucy.  I know sometimes you see it and you try to help me.  You say, "mama, go sit down.  I will finish dinner and clean up."  We compromise and do it together.  Teamwork makes the dream work. Tomorrow during your last day of school, you'll have your 1st grade Christmas party.  I have some cupcakes to  share with your class to celebrate your birthday also. The following day, we are going to ride the Polar Express for the 1st time and then have our slumber party at Mimi and Pops and that next morning have a big breakfast and exchange gifts.  So much goodness is slammed in the next few days.  It'll be awesome.  

This year for your birthday, you had a small, friend-birthday-party a couple weekends ago.  You and I decided on the theme: Bella's Crafty Christmas Birthday Party.  We giggled at how long the name of your party was.  It was fun!  You mostly invited friends from your school, you all made 2 adorable ornaments that we picked out together from Pinterest.  Tomorrow night, we are meeting with our family after school/work at a restaurant to celebrate again!  Daddy and I got you a bookshelf in your room.  For over a year, your books were piled up in a laundry basket in the corner.  I knew you needed a better bookshelf, so we went shopping.  You picked one out at the local antique store.  We came home and told daddy, the next weekend it was loaded up in the back of his truck and carried up the stairs and now sits beautifully in your bedroom.  It's filled with books and toys.  I love it!  

Over the last year I have often thought, "what if this is the last time that I carry you to bed?" your legs hang almost to my knees and it is not easy carrying you up those stairs when you are sleeping. But I don't want it to be the last time, so I carry you again and again. You have changed and grown up quite a bit from 6 to now 7 years old!  You've lost almost all of your baby teeth.  You are growing so tall.  

This summer you were in the Sylacauga Community Playhouse's Tarzan play.  You practiced 3 nights/week for 9 weeks. You really enjoyed it. You chose to skip peewee cheerleading this football season.  However, you are back in gymnastics and are doing really well. If you keep working hard, I know you will move up to pre-team and maybe even be on the team.  This summer we also got a boat of our own.  We went almost every single weekend until after Labor Day.  We had a blast!  We would get up Saturday morning, load up the picnic basket, towels and our lake bag and be in the water by about 9-10am!  If we weren't camping then we would get back home usually after 10pm, shower, sleep then do it all again the next day.  

This summer we also got our 1st family pet.  Daddy and I knew one day we wanted you girls to grow up with a beloved pet, like we both had when we were growing up.  We agreed that this was the year.  We discussed and cautiously decided on a breed.  We wanted a German shepherd.  Daddy grew up with a German shepherd mix dog, named Roxie.   She was a total sweet heart.  I loved her just as much as daddy.  We talked closely with a breeder and decided to go meet her.  That morning, I told you and Lucy our puppy plans for the 1st time.  You girls were so excited!!!  You ran and told Mimi, "this afternoon, we are going to look at a SHERMAN PEPPER!"  We laughed When we saw her dark markings on her face  we knew she was coming home with us and would be named "Pepper".  She's an inside dog.  There have been frustrating days raising this puppy, but we know she will grow up to be your and Lucy's close companion.  She will be our camping and lake buddy.  

You also got a new baby cousin this year!  Sweet Grayson was born on August 8th!

You are doing good in school.  You have a great group of friends in your grade!  We talk often about being friends with everyone!  In the 1st grade you don't need 1 "best friend", it is better to have 100 great friends instead.  You enjoy math and tell us for Christmas, you want a science kit.  We have a few fun science projects in our near future!  You write daddy, Lucy and me sweet notes almost every day!  You sneak them on our pillow or bathroom, where we will find them.  Your little heart is so full of love.  

Bella, you are such a blessing to our family.  I love you so much and I am so grateful for you!  I hope today, tomorrow and all the days after that are filled with faith in God, love, family, peace and joy.  

I love you,
Mama

7/26/2016

Just a normal summer weekend for us, having a wonderful time!
7/30/2016

Family days on the boat on Lake Martin
7/30/2016

You and some of your cousins on Grayson's BIRTHday 8/8/16

meeting Gray

 7/4/2016

Tarzan play!  7/17/2016

7/17/2016

Bringing Pepper Epperson home!
8/5/2016

This was our last weekend on the lake this year.
9/11/2016

Pepper and I came to pick you up from school one day.  I couldn't figure out who was more excited!  
9/30/2016

This was in a photo booth during our family beach trip!  We have fun no matter where we are!
10/21/2016

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Las Vegas!!

I would love to say that we went to Vegas for Jacob's 30th birthday, but truth is he had to go for business meetings and I tagged along for the fun! We still celebrated his birthday there. Every second that he wasn't in meetings, we were enjoying Vegas!  When he was in meetings, I was hanging out by the pool at the Mirage, where we were staying.  It was beautiful!  I must say....Alabama has hot summers, but Nevada has hot summers too! Everyone kept saying that with the decreased humidity there that it wouldn't feel as hot, but with temperatures over 100* everyday...it didn't matter...it was HOT!

Staying on the strip was so much fun.  Everything was at our fingertips.  We walked the strip every  night.  Going into almost each casino, giving them a little of our hard earned cash.  We gambled a little and lost every dime.  We mostly played the 25 cent slots and 3 card poker.  I can see how people get addicted to gambling.  It can be fun...but it really hurt my feelings to lose our money and never hit it big.  We didn't get carried away and lose too much.

 While I really did enjoy every minute of our little get away, this evening was my favorite of the entire trip....

We ate dinner at Top of the World restaurant, which is more than 800 feet in the sky. It had breathtaking views and the food was delicious.  We watched the sunset as we slowly revolved in the sky, getting a full 360 view of all that Las Vegas had to offer.  Even though it was a splurge, it made for a very romantic dinner and wonderful evening.

After that amazing dinner, we hit up Fremont Street which was different than the strip.  Jacob and I thought it was super fun and we stayed until the early morning hours.

I really enjoyed The Golden Nugget casino, I thought it was a very classy and beautiful casino.  However I wasn't able to get rich quick while we were there.

We stayed at the beautiful Mirage

We went one day to the Hoover Dam.

 Of course we walked the strip quite a bit...

And we rode the roller coaster at New York New York

watched the gorgeous water show at the Bellagio

This is just too funny to not share...conversation between me and my sisters.  They keep me rolling!

Random act of kindness: Jacob & I had seats on the last row on our connecting flight (Dallas to Bham), which means that then engine would've covered our window. It was ok-at least we had seats together. Before boarding, a flight attendant got our boarding pass, we didn't know what she was doing with them. After about 10 minutes she came back with 1st class/priority tickets, turned around & walked away, never saying a word! We still don't know why she switched our seats on the full plane or why she chose us. But we thanked her! We plan to pay the random act of kindness forward

I was so excited. Drinking my diet coke from a REAL glass, eating my snack mix and spreading out in the roomy seats....Jacob slept.

We had a blast in Vegas!  I'm happy as long as I'm with him!

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Quick trip to Baltimore & Washington DC

Jacob and I had the opportunity to go on a quick trip to Baltimore earlier this summer.   

I jotted down a little timeline while we were there...

Day 1:
It was the 1st time I had flown...that I can remember.  I think I had a couple times as a kid.
3:30am- wake up, get ready, hit the road.
5am-arrive at airport.  check in. security.  Chick-fil-A breakfast.  Score a window seat!  Overly excited as I watch a gorgeous sunrise.

6:10am-I was impressed that our 6am flight was prompt in leaving on time.

 6:30am-Jacob snoozes on the flight.  Me?  I am taking the coffee and peanuts (don't even eat peanuts, but it was part of the experience, right?!?

10ish- land in Baltimore.  Head to DC, excited that we have the entire day ahead of us and wanting to cram in all that DC had to offer.  Relying only on iPhone GPS, we get stupid-lost trying to get downtown as our GPS was contradicting what the road signs were saying.  In Jacob's defense, he is a great driver and usually easily navigates congested, confusing downtown roadways.  But DC was so screwed up.  Before we found a parking spot we were both pissed.  Even though I wanted to make the most of this day #1, we both were agreeing {in an argumentative way} that this was a bad idea!  We park in an underground parking deck and hope we can remember how to get back to our unfamiliar rental car.   15 minutes after parking, Jacob is tired of walking and announces that he has no interest in walking in all these museums.  AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

 12:00pm- Pass the castle.  I was most excited to visit the Holocaust Museum.   {In high school, I usually stuck to a couple topics for book reports, history project, etc.  I'm a Helen Keller and Holocaust wiz!}  I was disappointed to learn that I was supposed to already have gotten tickets to go into the 2-story exhibits.  So we just stuck to the main floor.  I was interesting what we did get to see.

 2pm-Even though Jacob's legs were about to fall off him, we made our way to the WW2 & Lincoln Memorial.  I enjoyed them all.  My papaw fought in WW2. Jacob's grandfather was in the National Gaurd for several years. We have a great deal of respect for our veterans & current soldiers.  It was humbling to see these memorials.

Selfie with Abe!

 3:00pm- our chicken biscuit from this morning was long gone, we were starving.  We found a Five Guys near where our car was.  We scarfed those burgers down and hit the road.  As frustrated and pissed off as we were navigating to DC, it was worse trying to make our way to our hotel in Baltimore.  After that stupid iPhone GPS got us making several wrong turns, we ditch the GPS and Jacob just uses the road signs to get us on the correct hwy.  NOW, we are stuck in traffic.  Shoot us.  What should've been a 40 minute straight shot, turned into an almost 2 hours of grumbling, huffs, puffs, a little cussing and silent treatment until we both started dosing off.  Remember, we had been going hard for a full 12 hours at this point.  Due to traffic, we were going a steady 15-20mph the entire time.  When we got close to the hotel, Jacob got a little over zealous & jumped the curb because he was so excited to be out of that car and finally to our destination!  Our room was nice.  It was directly next to the Camden Yards, home of the Orioles. {{FUN FACT: Jacob & I, along with our church youth group sang the national anthem on that field about 12-14 years ago!  They weren't playing any home games while we were there or else we would've tried to go to a game.}}

6pm-get ready for dinner.  Jacob picked out our dinner plans after seeing this ad in the plane magazine...

7:15pm-return the rental car.  Go on my 1st taxi ride to the restaurant.  Interesting.  Expensive.  So glad I have my own car and don't have to do that daily!  Dinner at The Prime Rib was amazing!  Delicious.  Romantic.  Fun.  

9:20pm-After sitting in the car earlier and that expensive cab ride, we decided to walk back to our hotel room.  It took us an hour. Only saw 1 homeless man sleeping. But the nighttime, city walk was nice.  The row houses were cool & different from what we are used to.  It felt good outside.  Although Jacob's legs were tired and hurting, he made it, with less complaints or maybe I had tuned them out.  Either way, I really enjoyed our long walk back. 

Day 2:

9am-It was cool and drizzly, but I refused to stay in the hotel room.  I went on a long run around the Inner Harbor, stopping only to explore the Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse. It was maybe my most enjoyable 5 miles ever!

12pm-shower.  Eat this amazing sushi at Edu Sushi.  I had the Harbor Maki.  My mouth is watering thinking about it.  So delicious.  I then explored the shops at the Inner Harbor.  Took a nap.

 6:15pm- Got ready. After sitting in the lobby, watching it POUR down rain, I was praying it would stop soon so we could explore the inner harbor a little more. It finally did clear up.  I picked out this night's restaurant.  Phillips Seafood.  It advertised the best crab cakes, I wanted to be the judge.   I must say it was pretty dang perfect.  I ate the "Ultimate Crab Cake"  8oz of crab meat, mac & cheese, asparagus.  Then finished it with a bourbon cookie pie with ice cream.  Holy-moly was it good!

 Day 3:
9am-ridiculously expensive breakfast at the hotel restaurant. lesson learned.
10am-taxi to airport.
11am-because our boarding passes had us boarding last, Jacob and I weren't able to sit together...not even close.
2pm-got our girls, gave extra lovin, hugs & kisses.  We were so happy to see them!

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