One super cool thing

 Today while driving around at the park, we saw this.....HOW COOL!! TONS OF PELICANS!!

A closer view

CLOSER!

WOW!!

Even caught a pic of two of them coming in for a landing!! How awesome! It was such a sight to see. Not sure why there were all there, but alot of people were stopping to take pics. Mike said they were there yesterday too when he went on his bike ride.

Just had to share, it was very cool.

Here are just a few

Well before the New Year I thought I'd post a few pics from Christmas. I haven't done my big upload yet so here are just a few. Daddy wearing the Santa tie the boys got him. It was funny because it was small and wouldn't even tie correctly since it was short, he wore it anyway. 

The boys had a great time with their Cousin.

Bry even got friendly with his dog Cousin! LOL...what an accomplishment! Dev is still scared.

The elf Cousins sat together on their last night before heading back to the North Pole. The kids loved it!

Mommy and Bry working on a lego project.

The finished project!

Dev didn't need help on his triple decker bus.

Christmas Eve night we got a pic of the kids in their matching jammies. Cute! Of course we have to always do the crazy pic!

Got in a 3 mile run today. Whoo hoo..my last run in 2011. Hoping to get back into my running routine for 2012. I really slacked off this last month. At least I got in a run and didn't break my streak of running every single month since Aug of 2010. I know I ran alot before that but don't have the log to know for sure if I ran in every month or not before Aug 2010. So happy for my accomplishment though. Maybe one day I'll run a full marathon. We'll see.
Really looking forward to the New Year 2012 and hoping for great things to happen. Going to bring in the New Year with some great friends. Excited to see friends and have a great New Year's!! Hope everyone has a great New Year and that everyone stays safe. Cheers and I'll see ya next year!! 2012 will start my 6th year of blogging! Wow, can you believe that?! My very first post was in November of 2006!!! Wow!!! If you are ever feeling like a flashback there is a link on the bottom left area of my blog called blog archive and if you click it you can pick a month and year and have a Carter flashback....LOL!!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

We're back!

We are back home. We had a wonderful holiday sharing time with all the family!!
Best news happened today....Bry is actually eating again!! He has lost 4 pounds, and I was getting worried. He would hardly eat anything....but the meds started working. He ate a little more last night and then today a semi-breakthrough!! He ate a toaster struedel for breakfast, then lunch we had breakfast again. He had 3 bowls of cereal, 2 pancakes and now a twizzler! Wow, it's such progress. He would basically only eat yogurt and a jelly sandwich. Oh yeah, he did start out yesterday eating an egg/cheese biscuit without the sausage after a few bites. Today was the last day of meds so I'm hoping his appetite and swallowing gets better and better. Maybe we won't have to go to the follow up Dr. visit after all...we'll see.
The boys had a wonderful Christmas and loved all the gifts from family and Santa!! It was fun for the boys to spend it with their cousin too!
I'll have lots of photos to share soon. I think I'll upload to shutterfly first and then put a link on here.
Today has been a great relaxation day. Its 4pm and me and the boys are still in our PJ's!! Nice!! House is a mess with toys but who cares!! LOL....tomorrow I'll get back to business and take the tree down, clean up and make a grocery trip. Looking forward to the New Year and hope it brings wonderful things!!

Good stuff

Good news! Took Bry to Dr. and he said his tonsils were medium to medium large. Nothing quite emergent so that's good. He put him on a steroid and antibiotics to see if it will shrink the tonsils a little. So we got back in two weeks to see how it's working. But I do think after three small doses of meds he seems to be eating a little better already. 

Today was the last day of school for break. I went to the school for the parties. Lots of fun!

Bry got to decorate a cupcake like a reindeer of course!

He also got made into a snowman!

Dev was having relay races outside.

Its the Rudolph reindeer relay race. Look at the pic above, the nose has become his eye!! LOL!

So after bath time we got all dressed up for the Christmas pics! Just the boys that is! They were definetely hamming it up for the camera!!!

CRAZY PIC!

On other good news....we have a house showing tomorrow and also a different person on Friday!! Whoo hoo..we also still have a buyer that is trying to pick between ours and another house.....so....Dear Santa we've been good....so bring us a buyer with an offer on our house for Christmas!!!!! Please!!!

Keep your prayers coming.....it's working!!!!

Took the boys to see the chipmunk movie Chipwrecked today... They loved it! It was a very cute movie, we did it up right and had popcorn, Sprite ( a real treat) and candy too!! wow!!! They like the royal movie treatment! LOL!!

Hoping to make it to the store today for a few ingredients to make some sweet treats. Although, I think it will have to be Walmart....eekkk...putting on my PATIENCE hat for sure!!!

Not sure if I'll blog again before Christmas or not...so...just in case:

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL OF YOU!!!!!

Almost!

It's almost Christmas!! Wow!! The boys are getting so excited! They only have 1 1/2 days of school left.

So one morning the boys found Mark trying to roast some marshmallows!

Bry drew a picture for Mark to take to Santa. I forgot to rotate it before I uploaded it.

Then one morning Mark was caught take his nap!!

We made homemade strawberry banana milkshakes one evening. The boys drank them out of there flashing glowing cups!

Another Mark spotting! We got this awesome live wreath from a great friend Denise and family!! The boys were so thrilled and we were too! It was our first ever live wreath!! It smelled great!!

Saw this cute little idea online. I'm going to give it to Bry's teacher and assistant for Christmas gifts. It's not much but just a little gift of thanks that they can use!

So it's going to be a busy start to the week. I need to get everything gathered for our trip before the boys are out of school. Much easier when they are at school than at home. We didn't get to the movies this weekend, so maybe Tues or Wed we are going to try to go see Chipwrecked. Although, I also have to try to fit in a Doctors appt for Bry. I think his tonsils are swollen. He has been having a few issues and seems to be having trouble swallowing. I looked in his throat and the tonsils seem big and swollen. I am only comparing to Dev's though and I'm not totally sure. But, putting it together with his trouble swallowing things lately, it makes me wonder. He isn't complaining of any throat pain either. So I'm going to go ahead and make an appt to get him checked just to make sure. I don't want them to swell any larger!!

Otherwise we are all excited about the coming week and weekend!
Well that's all for now. Hope everyone had a great weekend.

Oh yeah!!! By the way, my pepper steak turned out great!! I will definetely  make that recipe again!!! It tasted great and was really easy!!
Toodles.

A surprise and some randomness

The boys got a big surprise today. Mark our Elf sent them a card in the mail with a special reminder to be good! the boys were very excited!

Just thought I'd share our new ornament this year. I like to get a new ornament each year preferably with reference to something in our year. I thought this would be appropriate for our new relocation to Saints country!  :-)

We were in the store yesterday and saw this! It's the spot to take pics with Santa. Notice the alligator in the bottom of pic! Ha ha....only in Louisiana do you get to pose with Santa and an alligator at the same time!!!! LOL!!!

The boys thought these huge fish were really cool too!

Wow, I think it was 75 today! How nice! I stopped after school and let the boys play a little football again with some of their classmates. I got to meet a few of the Mom's also. Slowly but surely we are adapting and blending into our new school environment.

Tonight is an attempt at a new recipe for dinner. Mike requested pepper steak. Ok, I've eaten it before but never made it myself. We'll see how it turns out, yummy I hope!!

So proud of Dev!! He brought home his test grade folder today with tons of A's!!!! He had six tests and got A's on all of them!!! I am so proud of him!!! I've been giving him a quarter for each A he brings home in his test folder. There was also an extra incentive of an extra $1 if he would have 10 A's in a row without any other other grades in between. So far he did not achieve this goal, until today!! Whoo hoo, he has 10 A's in a row exactly! Wow, so today cost me $2.50!! wow!! I am so proud of him though, did I already say that??? ha ha!

Well gotta run and work on my pepper steak. Toodles.

Visiting time

Mom and my sis came for a visit this weekend. Of course we had to go and eat some Alligator!! Not too bad actually!

It was Ok, I probably would not order it again though. It didn't help that I've watched the show Swamp People where the guys catch the gators....hmmm..
At least I tried it!

Jen enjoyed her Jacked Up Shrimp! Now those were awesome!!

We also had to let Mom and Jen try their first Beignets!! Oh so yummy!!

It was a first for the boys also. yes, we will definetely be going back for more of those!!

Saturday night was the company Christmas party. So we got dressed up and had a night out. It was alot of fun!  We started with drinks and snacks and played a few games before dinner.

My honey won a gift card for a dance off!! whoo hoo....$100 !!!

I won a guess the M-N- M's in the jar game. ha ha, go figure! I do this all the time at my parties! The total was 420 and I guessed 398. I got $25! whoo hoo!!

Another spot we found Mark the ELF.

Had a nice visit with Mom and Jen. Sad that they are gone......

I can't believe it's only 2 weeks till Christmas! The boys only have 5 1/2 days of school left till break! wow!!
I only have an item or two left to get before Christmas so I'm happy about that. Excited about the holidays with family.

Still praying for our house to sell! Please keep praying for us!

The weather is supposed to be in 60's and 70's this week, wow! Love the warmer weather. The boys have early dismissal tomorrow, not sure where we might spend our afternoon yet. Hoping for maybe a day trip to the zoo or maybe even New Orleans this weekend if it's nice.!
Toodles for now.