Birthday Party @ The Birmingham Zoo

Birthday Boy passed out from too much fun!

What a great party! All of our friends and family that came were so precious and generous to Orren and we cannot thank everyone enough for coming and being with us. Especially in the heat! My goodness I don't think it could have been any hotter! It was so wonderful to have everyone together and we missed everyone who could not be with us. We just realized that we do not have any pictures of Chief and GrandMaMa at the party! How did that happen?

Orren how old are you? ONE!

Orren and his cousin Grayson, all the way from MS
Orren's Birthday Cake from the ZOO

The Hayes boys eating cake and ice cream!

Olivia and Ameer petting the snake during the animal showJoey, Andy, Zachary, Ramsey and Ameer eating cake with Olivia
Daddy helping ride the Giraffe
Aunt Jo, Aunt Clancy, & Grayson
Ready for the train ride with everyone

Mommy, Daddy, Aunt Michelle, and Uncle Salah

Happy Birthday Orren!!!!!!!!!

Today our little prince turned one! We had a BBQ with our sweet precious friends the Hayes family and the Bonham's. We all got to eat enormous hamburgers and play together and celebrate Orren turning one. We had ice cream cake and lots of fun fellowship.

Everyone was so kind and brought him gifts that were so thoughtful and fun.

The Hayes family gave him a rocket ship to help learn to walk. He has been practicing with it. He will hopefully be walking soon. His Birthday Party will be tomorrow at the zoo!

Happy Father's Day

We had a great day, and I hope Joe enjoyed it. We went with the El-Fallahs to Oak Mountain State Park. We grilled, played on the beach and swam. Then we returned to our house and swam some more. It was a great day!

We also are saddened by this news:

This is about one of my oldest and most precious friends, Shana. We have been friends for over 12 years. We have fought, we have laughed, and we have cried. Tonight we have had a loss that we never saw coming. She has lost her baby at 4 1/2 months. She was to find out the sex of the baby tomorrow, now has found out the heart has stopped beating. So instead of shopping in celebration tomorrow she will be preparing for delivery of a baby that will never take the breath of life. She is as you can imagine, devestated, as we all are. We are mourning this loss of a child which is far different than a first trimester miscarriage( which she had earlier in the year). Over the past few months she had many ultrasounds (weekly). She has seen this child grow. The smile,the fingers, the thumb sucking. As wonderous as technology is and such a gift, it certainly contributes to sheer devestation when something like this happens. Please, please pray for her and pray for my ability to offer support, love and strength. It is only through our Holy Father that anyone could survive the death of a child. I pray for his grace and love over all of us.

I hope that everyone has a great week. We will certainly stay in touch!

The end of Bible school

Well, Olivia has finished all of her Vacation Bible Schools for the summer. Olivia has been on the "friendship Trek" and "surfed her way through the scriptures" this summer.

We realized summer is about half over now. That excites us and makes us sad. We went to Dairy Queen after Bible School to celebrate and Olivia had a sundae the size of her head. OH MY! Orren had a good deal of ice cream as well. He thought that was very good. I cannot wait until next Friday when he will have his first birthday cake and be a year old.

Olivia received her FIRST PLACE certificate in the Desoto's Coloring Contest( a place down at the Gulf where Mom and Dad often frequent to eat). She gets her meal comped the next time she comes! She has on this once before and she is very "proud" to have won a second time.

We are saddened to hear of the death of a great journalist today, Tim Russert. We have watched him on Meet the Press every week for years. The news world will be left with a void because of his death.

Lots of storms and rain AGAIN, today. Perhaps it will soon clear up.

Olivia has issued a challenge to us that she get 5 dollars for every book she reads this summer. She got the idea from her little friend Joey today. So we will see how much money she earns by August 10!

We will home school again, we just love being together all day. She is just happier at home with us.

Orren just has no interest in walking. If we try he just gets down on all fours and scoots. He is so fast!

This is what Joe wants for Father's Day. Gee I wonder if he will get it? If so we will have our own movies in the park.

Well, for now we have Friday Night flicks in the park at the park. It will be wet! I need to go get everything together! Love to all

Olivia's scare

We had a little scare today Olivia fell down a flight of stairs. Thank goodness she is just fine. She has a few scratches and booboos but all and all just fine. Thank you dear God for watching over her.

We had a great day other than that and some hiccups with the neighborhood pool, I hated to leave our pool and safe little world to go there, but duty called.

Orren is learning so much and I cannot believe our first year is winding down. Only 11 days until he is known as a toddler. (sniff, sniff)

Huckleberry is back inside as the mercury is reaching unsafe levels for man or beast. GrandMaMa will not be happy about that, but we have to let him stay somewhat cool. We can't have the children's dog die.

I will post some again this week! Have a great one!

Lazy Saturday

Well, we started our morning off with Eggs Benedict and Champagne. That should tell you the day we had!

We had such a fun day today. We spent the day in our pool and enjoyed all that our backyard had to offer. We had a pic nic and stayed in the pool until we were prunes! Orren and Olivia both had so much fun. I love hearing those giggles and laughing. It makes our life seem perfect. I love every moment that we get to steal from the world where it is just the four of us and no one else matters. Of course we love being with our family and friends as well, but the days we have just as a family are so special!

It was another year without a triple crown, Big Brown came in dead last! How could that have happened? We were disappointed and yet intrigued once again by the equine world! We can't wait for next year!

Another week over

Aunt Katy in Honduras doing such a great service and selfless giving of her time!

Well, it has been quite the week! Olivia finished up Vacation Bible School and will be starting another one next week! She is loving swimming and summer. Joe was very ill to start the week off and Orren is ill to end the week. Olivia and I are hopeful that it won't infect the girls.

Aunt Katy is back from Honduras and seemed to really feel good about her work there. We are so proud of her! She and Uncle Jarrod will be headed down to the Gulf for the spear fishing tourn. in a couple of weeks. They will do some diving while down there also. They exhaust me just thinking about all that they do and have done.

Orren will be a year old in less than two weeks so we are getting ready! We will have a "family" party here at home on his actual birthday and his BIG party at the zoo the next day! I know he will love cake.