We Be Festin'

Today's lesson for the girls - the fine art of enjoying live music.  One of the many reasons that we put up with hurricane evacuations, ridiculously high homeowner's insurance, and the knowledge that we push to the back of our brain, that the possibility that next hurricane season our house may be under twenty feet of water is not very far-fetched.

While throughout most of the U.S., October means falling leaves, and picking apples, in New Orleans it means festival season.  That means lots of great live music and lots of delicious festival food.  A couple of weeks ago, we had the Gretna Fest, which has gotten pretty big in the last few years and it's great because it is within walking distance from our house.  One of our favorite performers was Trombone Shorty, a young trombone player from New Orleans, who had a rockin performance, complete with second line.

Another great happening is the free concerts at the river in Gretna.  On Friday evenings on the banks of the Mississippi, Gretna hosts a different performer each week.  It's a great place to hang out with the family and enjoy some good music.

Marley had a blast listening to Bag of Doughnuts and she looks forward to "dancing at the fest with papa" again soon!

Uncle Jessie joined us for some good food and so he could get in some good practice since he and Aunt Amanda are expecting their own little bundle of joy in June!  Congratulations you guys!

Things from all over

Mackenzie has been using her "I'm the baby" status as well as trickery to work her way into our bed occasionally - usually by begging for food at 5:30 in the am.  Usually after we have gotten up to help Mars to the potty at least twice.  I know it's terrible but you know you would like to wake up next to this little snugglebug too!  We have been working on breaking her of this bad habit that we have let her develop - she is not happy about this and is quite persistent - usually crying for at least an hour.  She is getting better though.  That tricky baby!

Marley is LOVING school, just this morning she was begging me to take her even though she doesn't have school today.  She must miss me desperately when she's there!  Last weekend the school had a Family Fun Day and the kids performed on stage some of the new things that they are learning.  They sang Jesus Loves Me and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and danced the Chicken Dance as well as several others.  Mars did great and we were so surprised that she wasn't nervous at all.  It really made us happy that we got her in the program.  It's amazing how proud you can be of the chicken dance - our little superstar!  Startin early!

Wednesday was Tre's little brother Wesley's 30th birthday.  Yes I said little brother, Tre' is getting up there! His wife, Heidi threw him a surprise party on Saturday complete with Dunk Tank.  I recommend the dunk tank for any occasion, birthdays, anniversary, weddings - whatever.  It was a blast!  They are internet shy so here's a pic of Tre' at the party - I just love this one.  Happy Birthday Wes - your youth is gone!  I hope you enjoyed it!!!

Finally, Mackenzie is getting old enough to really interact with Marley and since she has been training since the first day of her life, she can hold up pretty well to Marley's roughness.  Anyway, they are just starting to really play together and it is awesome to watch!  Marley has been doing really well with sharing and she usually makes sure that Macks has something to play with, especially when she takes her current toy and wants to stop the crying before she gets busted!  These girls make my heart super happy!  Muah!

Nine (and three quarters) Months!

Tomorrow Mackenzie turns 9 3/4 months old and I thought it was about time for an update on all of her current developments!  Last week she went to the doctor for her (late) nine month check up as well as a sick visit (a cold that turned into ear infections in both ears).  My little sack of potatoes is currently weighing in at 20 lbs!  She currently has her two bottom teeth and is trying to cut approximately 37 more!

Apples are her favorite type of teething relief.  She has absolutely no interest whatsoever in eating baby food and appalled that we would actually try to feed her such rubbish.  This is what I gather from the way that she gags when I try to feed it to her.  However, she will somewhat appease me when I make homemade baby food, a little.

She is very content with the (very) nutritious milk that I keep on tap for her along with some table scraps of whatever we happen to be eating at the time.  Her first "word" was Mama (woo-hoo!) spoken for the first time on August 2nd - the day of Marley's birthday party, because cutting her first tooth was not enough to steal the show!  She also says da-da, papa, na-na, ba-ba, and MARLEY STOP TAKING AWAY ALL OF MY TOYS!!!  Ok, maybe not the last one but I'm sure it's coming any day now.

She thinks that this diaper makes her butt look big.

She is now officially cruising, crawling on all fours, and is enamored with the dog's food and water bowls (arrggghh!).  She is most interested in touching and tasting anything that she shouldn't, ESPECIALLY if mom has suggested otherwise, or if in any way whatsoever Marley would be interested in said item.  Which is pretty much anything that she even looks at.

Last but not least, she has started training for the 2024 Olympics after being inspired by Beijing and Shawn Johnson!

Marleyisms

   The other night as we ate dinner Marley announced to us, "Jesus says give us our dolly bread, Im in!  A lesson from the day's Jesus Time no doubt.

First Day Jitters

Oh Father Time, why do you steal the days away so quickly!  Upon our return from our evacucation, my sweet Marley girl started school!

Really it a Mother's Day Out program, three days a week.  The children get to do lots of art projects as well as learn the basics: colors, numbers, alphabets.  Most importantly though Marley gets to interact with other children because apparently I am not entertainment enough.

I reluctantly looked forward to her first day, though I knew she would enjoy it, this was MAJOR on the scale of growing up.  The thought of leaving her with someone besides family was terrifying to me!  I just kept praying, please don't cry, please don't cry because if she would have - and looked at me with those sad, wet, please don't do this to me eyes, I would have had to home school her for the rest of her life!  But sweet Marley took it like a champ and Tre' and I saw her sitting in her cubby and pouting through the window as we left - but no tears!  I didn't cry either even though the scenario that I played in my head over and over again involved much more drama!  Thankfully she loves it!  Every morning she looks forward to it and at the end of the weekend she begs to pweese go to school tomorrow!  This morning I dropped her off as her little friends looked excitedly out of the door I heard one of them say "Wook! There's Marwee!  Too Cute! She has however, promised me that she will stay little forever, so I'm pretty stoked about that.

Diary of (another) evacuation

Well as most of you know, August 29th was the three year anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina.

It was also the day that I had to pack up as much of my home that I could fit into my car, carefully selecting which items would be most devastating to lose should the levees on the westbank fail and put our home on the bottom of the bathtub that officials were predicting.  According to all of the predictions Hurricane Gustav was headed straight for us and things weren't looking good.  I was so grateful Friday morning when Tre' asked me if I could be ready to leave that night.  The thought of sitting in HOURS of evacuation traffic with the girls was not a pretty one, so to get out of town early was a great plan.  

 

So far, I have two sets of pictures like this - I do not hope to add to this collection.  Before we leave for a big storm, I go through the house and take pictures of everything in case we lose it.  This hopefully would help us with any insurance claims.  Notice the awesome view of plywood as well as the news that I can't seem to turn off during these things.  Too. Much. Information.

This is exactly what it looked like when we left at 4 am and I was running on one hour of sleep.  This is good compared to the Katrina evacuation when Tre' and I both went 36 hours without sleep.

We are so fortunate though because our journey ends here - Black Bayou Lake.  My Aunt Kay and Uncle Mike have a beautiful home and 5 acres on this incredible lake and they are ALWAYS our shelter from the storm.  They are always so gracious to take us and our many animals in, hurricane or not.  Aside from worrying about losing everything we own, evacuating to their home is like a vacation!

Thanks to her Parran's evacuated 4 wheeler, Kenzie got her first off road experience - and she loved it!  Uncle Jessie and Aunt Amanda came along for the ride.

Our gracious host, Uncle Mike, took us for a leisurely Labor Day cruise around the lake.

Kenzie enjoyed her very first boat ride as she made the rounds.

She spent some quality time with our cousin Chad.

But she made sure that she shared some lovin with Papa.

Marley quite enjoyed spending her time on the lake playing with her new friend Evan.  That's why she is so thrilled to take some time out for a family photo!

We also go to check out Chad and Amency's new home, currently under renovation, and we got to meet the horse that they board on their land.  We were thrilled that our good friends Lauren and Laine got to come along. 

Our budding little country girl enjoyed her first encounter with a horse, here she is telling Papa she wants a pony!

Amency finally convinced Marley to go for her very first four wheeler ride, and after that we had to drag her off!

Then little Mars spent some time picking flowers in the field.

Alas Gustave finally caught up to us!

But Mars played us some music to cheer us up on a rainy day!

Finally the time came for us to return home and this is some of the scenery that we saw along the way.  It seems like Baton Rouge got more damage than New Orleans.  Our home on the other hand, made it through with no damage and we made it home just in time to start worrying about Hurricane Ike.  Seems like we have dodged the bullet once again and hopefully Ike will leave us alone soon and we can take all of the wood off our windows - then I can stop going nuts. Living in a cave is not for me!   

A girl can dream

So for the last nine months whenever someone said "Wow!  Mackenzie looks just like Marley!"  I'd say "really, I just don't see it."  Their noses were different, and their mouths seemed different as well as the shape of their face. I mean they have always looked like sisters to me and I will admit that they have always seemed to have the same big brown eyes though, but other than that I could totally see so many different features between them.  Then. . . Tre' took this picture and when I loaded it on to the computer I said "OHHHH! Now I SEE it!"  The eyes of course, but the eyebrows, and now the noses, the mouths and don't forget the ATTITUDE! (Double click the picture for further verification) It all matches!  I would say that in general the consensus has been about 60% Macks looks just like Tre' and Marley and 40% Macks looks just like you (bless you all)  with the occasional "Gee Sam, when are you going to have a baby that looks like you at all".  I am still going to hold on the the fact that ONE day there will be some resemblance to prove that I in fact gave birth to these children without having to solely relying on their birth certificates as proof.