celebrate america

Sunday evening Jamie was playing golf with some friends so I took Audrie to the Bentonville square for the Celebrate America festivities. And WOW. It was really impressive. I was blown away by all the great music, free food and ice cream, salute to the soldiers and our country... the whole event just made me feel all emotional and patriotic. I loved it!
And Audrie loved her bottle of water. :) We ran into our neighbor friends, Sam and Becca there. Audrie and Nathan compared notes on their cute outfits...

The staff was handing out free balloons and American flags which Audrie had fun with.

Audrie did spill her bottle of water all over Kyla's legs and skirt, but Becca saved the moment by enthusiastically declaring how refreshing and cool that water must feel on Kyla's legs! (I took some mommy notes.)

I love this little snapshot I took of Audrie waving her flag in front of the very first Walmart store.

A very "American" photo...

This photo makes me want to go wake her up from her nap and kiss her cheeks!

The First Baptist Church of Bentonville put on a huge patriotic concert with singers, a full band in the pit, dancers, soldiers, speaking parts, white doves, balloons and Twila Paris sang (if you know who that is)... it was a really wonderful show. And there were a lot of my former singers and students on stage that I got to talk to later- so proud of them!

Audrie was enthralled and sat really well in my lap watching it all.

It was so nice to be reminded of how blessed I am.

springdale aquatic center

I've had a lot of friends tell me how much fun the Springdale Aquatic Center is so we finally went and checked it out this weekend. And it was awesome! There are several fenced off sections for various level/age of swimmers. Audrie LOVED the age 0-4 section that was filled with fountains, sprinklers, mist and a shallow wading pool. And I loved that I could sit in the sun (or shade) and just watch her play. They don't let kids over age 4 in that part so I didn't have to worry about her getting knocked over and there were only about 10 kids at any time in her section.

She splashed for hours and had such a great time! There was a lifeguard in her section that kept blowing her whistle and telling Audrie (and the other toddlers) not to run... yeh, right... good luck with that!

Donna was visiting this weekend so she came along to play with Audrie in the water, too.

We went on Saturday afternoon and it wasn't really that crowded.

Naturally with all the fun sprinklers and shooting fountains... Audrie was fascinated most by the drain!

And Jamie's Aunt Barbara was staying with us this weekend too with her two boys.

Michael and Ryan had fun in the other sections of the center that had deep swimming pools, water slides, high dives, etc. This place really is "fun for the whole family" as corny as that sounds!

And you can see in the background here there are large canopies covering different sections so you can be in the shade, too.

Michael and Jamie raced each other, but Michael is on his high school swim team back in Texas so he left Jamie in the dust.

Anyways, we loved it there and can't wait to go back! And it's only $4 (two dollars for kids under 5). The only bad thing for us is the hours (noon to 7pm) doesn't really work the best for our schedule. But Audrie can skip a few naptimes to go to the pool, right? It's summertime!

But in not so fun news... this terrible thing happened right when we arrived! Just as we were putting our stuff down we saw them pulling a little boy out of the water and his face was blue and he was not breathing. I was so freaked out! I just started praying right there that he would be ok. They did CPR on him and he made it, but it was super scary! Here's a news article about it... http://www.4029tv.com/news/19881423/detail.html

After that I didn't take my eyes off Audrie for one second that's for sure!

yes, more dancing

Ok, I think you're getting the idea that Audrie LOVES to dance, right? I'm guessing it's just a phase but I'm pretty sure she could be happy dancing ALL day long non stop if she could find a dance partner to keep up with her. The other day I think she found her match with her cousin Emma!

Emma was here playing with Audrie and we found some cute tutus in the closet for them to wear.

And they danced to music back in Audrie's room for almost an hour straight. They were so adorable together!

Thanks, Emma, for being such a great dance partner and babysitter all in one!

becca's jewelry

Several people have asked me about where I get my stamped jewelry. I get it from my talented sweet neighbor, Becca! You can click here on her website or email her at cross_home2001@yahoo.com.

mel and her boys

A few weeks ago I had the joy of taking some photos for our wonderful friends Mel & Brian and their baby boy Brett.

Mel is doing so amazingly with being a new mommy and all the "adventures" that come with this chapter in life.

And Brian is a pretty proud papa!

I loved trying to capture all the little faces Brett was making! What a cutey!

Love you, guys! Thanks for letting me take these photos for you and your beautiful new family.

all she wants to do is dance

31 going on 29

We always like to use my birthday as an excuse to throw a summer deck party. So I whipped up some awesomely tacky invitations and mailed them to our friends (I didn't put my name on it... just hoping they'd guess from the photo...)!

Jamie and Jim grilled some amazing food (Nathan supervised).

And a big thanks to Kim for snapping photos for me again! (you can click on these photos to see them larger)

I realize now that I didn't get one picture of our wonderful friend, Gloria, who came to stay with us this past weekend (except if you look real close you can see her in the corner of this photo holding Brett!). Love you, G!

Jamie was thrilled to discover that he was wearing the exact same outfit as our neighbor's 16 month old boy...!

Josh and Carrie are friends of ours from high school.

After dinner the guys started playing some serious games of Bag-o.

I think when the final game ended about 10:30 that night, Caleb was still undefeated.

The Beautiful Burris Fam.

And I just HAVE to share this RSVP that Kate and Dave (lovely friends in the photo above) emailed me to let us know that "their mom's would be bringing them to the party"...!!!It was a really fun group of friends. Thanks everyone for "checking Yes"! (We never did get around to catching photos of everyone who came... I was too busy trying to convince people I was turning 29 this year.)

(It's amazing what contacts, braces and some hair gel will do for you...)
I'm already looking forward to turning 28 next year. (That's how it works, right??)