Random Cuteness--

Isn't this the absolute sweetest thing you've ever seen? She doesn't realize it yet, but one day, that boy will give her everything her heart desires. He adores her in the sweetest way possible. He loves being a daddy--and I do mean LOVES. I tell him all the time that he is a better dad than I am a mom. He's so patient, so sweet with her. Sigh...I just love the two of them so much. I think this is probably one of my all time favorite pictures--as if I could even have a favorite, but you know what I mean...I really really like it!

Just look at those curls!!!

Happy Halloween!

Foshe-Diggs

What a treat to get to spend the afternoon with Ashley, Will & Gracie! We don't get to see each other all that often and I hadn't seen Gracie since she was a tiny little girl! It was so fun and the girls had a blast as well. The boys--well...they indulged us, like good husbands do!


Here are some cute pics--I took 354 pictures today--and that is an exact number. So these are just a few of the one's I've gotten to play a little with--there will for sure be more to come.

Beautiful Gracie

She's absolutely beautiful and the BEST photography subject ever!!

Ole for Jose!

We went to dinner tonight with Ashley, Will & Gracie. We went to Jose's. We walk in, all four of us, and two babies. Here's what went down:

Hostess: How many?
Brandy: 4 and 2 high chairs
Hostess (in a I don't really want to be at work, you are bothering me sort of way): Sooo...you think you can all fit at a booth?
All of us, in unison: Uh, no.
Hostess (thinking and looking highly puzzled, pausing, then): Sooooo...you want like.......a table then?
Will: Yah, by process of elimination
All of us, in unison: laughter
Hostess: I don't think you'll fit at one of our tables either.
(as if we are some large mass of people or something)
Hostess (in that same, you are bothering me voice): I guess I could put you at one of our BIGGER tables.
(well, now THAT is a novel idea).

And then we sat and had a great dinner, while the two cutest babies ever entertained us!

Throwback Thursday-High School/Friends Edition!

In honor of old friends--here are some high school pictures!

These are a couple of my "Senior" Pictures. I know what you're thinking...."Man, I'm sure glad she decided to start plucking those eyebrows and waxing that lip!" Yes, in high school I had very little knowledge of cosmetic things. I've come a ways since then :-)

This is me and Jessica at our Senior Prom. We were all hot and sweaty from bustin' some moves!

And here we are in some classroom in high school---again, the eyebrows and lip~geez!

And here's me and my bff, Ashley again--prom, junior year--no, we didn't plan the dress thing.

Prayer Request...

I wrote about my friend, Claudia a few days ago. I got a message from her today telling me she had been admitted into the hospital for a blood clot in her brain. This is very scary news. The doctors are going to try to get it to disolve with medication, but if they can't, then she will have to go into a very risky surgery. Please pray for Claudia, the doctors, her family, and everyone involved. Thank you!

Ashley is Coming, Ashley is Coming!

It's been 7 months. Approximately 210 days. A long dang time. Since I've seen my best friend, Ashley. And they are coming to visit THIS WEEKEND!! I am so excited I can't help myself.

Ashley and I met in the 8th grade. 12 years ago. I've known her nearly half my life. We weren't instant friends, and according to her, she did not like me much when she first met me. She thought I was loud. Which, is a fair assumption, that most people make when they first meet me. The fact is, I am pretty loud. We met in math class at school. She had just moved there. I have a horrible memory, but as I recall our friendship started when she invited me to church. Her dad is a minister and at that time was serving as a youth minister at a local church. The church was having a revival and it was youth night and she invited several people from school, me being one of them. I went. The rest is history. But for blogging sake...I'll indulge you.

I became a regular attender of the youth program and eventually became an active and involved member of the church. We were best pals. Everyone told us we looked like sisters. Even our teachers at school got us confused in classes--which we could never understand. I mean, really. Our last names were alphabetically usually next to one another, so our lockers were always next to each other, if we ever had to sit alphabetically, we got to sit next to each other, and when we graduated high school---we got to sit next to each other, which was really neat.

Over the next 4 years, through high school, we became very close. I was close with her parents too. Her parents were and are very special to me. Her dad was my youth minister all those years and her mom....well, she was a mom to me. She loves me and she's a special lady. Her dad performed our wedding ceremony--they are family!

Ashley went away to college after we graduated. She went to Russellville and I stayed here. It was sad. I kind of thought we'd go to college together---get married around the same time, have babies, be neighbors....have playdates---plan parties, join the pta, bake and sing--I had it all planned out. But, she's so darn musically talented that she got a scholarship and had to go where that took her....away from me!

She was down there for a while and then her parents moved down to be part of a church in Conway. I think because I had maintained a long distance friendship before for many years, I wasn't really that afraid that Ashley and I would not be friends. I have kind of always known we'd be friends forever.

Then we got married--1 year apart and we had babies...2 months apart. So the other things I thought would line up, have. Now, if we could just be neighbors, sing and bake!

I miss her terribly. I cannot wait to see her this weekend!

I couldn't resist posting some old pics of us--I have like a BILLION pictures of the two of us together---but here's a handful.

I love you Ashley!

Photo Editing...

It's become my favorite hobby--to take a photo that is good---and try to make it better. I sometimes get tired of playing with pictures of Jordan all the time. (Gasp) But sometimes a different subject can be refreshing. My good friend Casey had a friend of hers get married a couple weekends ago and she snapped a few pictures. I took a couple of her straight out of the camera shots and played around-

Here's the original--
I love the shot-a true, precious, in the moment, unposed moment of absolute beauty and love.

So I took it and did a few editing tricks in God's gift to photos, Photoshop--and here's what I got.

To me, the blur effect, gives a romantic feel to the photograph.

and of course, some pop color is always nice...

Old Friends...

My oldest friend is Claudia. I have known her since I was in the 5th grade and she was in the 4th grade. We met when I lived in Little Rock. She lived two houses down from me. She went to a private Catholic school and I went to the all black public school at the end of our block. I don't quite remember exactly how we met, but I think someone may have introduced us. At any rate, we became instant friends, as far as I can remember. She lived with her mom, stepdad and little brother, Michael. I think he was around 2 at the time. We would watch Barney with him and sing all the songs....lol--I think we even had a CD. At any rate. We spent many afternoons together. We rode her four wheeler, played catch, ate pizza and hid the boxes in the ditch, had many a sleep-overs that involved Dr. Pepper and Splashers in the wee hours of the morning. And that one time when we thought her mom was chocking in the middle of the night--- We sang in my living room to Alan Jackson's Chattahoochie at the top of our lungs, snooped in places we shouldn't have snooped in for things we shouldn't have snooped for---good times!

I only lived in Little Rock for about 2 years. Then we moved back to NWA. I cried and cried and cried. She was the best friend I'd ever had to date. I really believed that when I moved away, that our friendship would end. I was wrong. We remained friends. We wrote---LETTERS folks, real live snail mail letters. I have an entire box of letters that I got from her over the years. We visited a dozen or so times in person while we were in high school. At first, we wrote a lot, stayed in good touch, and then we wrote less...and then for a while we lost touch.

When I was getting ready to get married, it had been a few years since we'd been in contact...but I thought about her often. So I decided to try to get a wedding invitation to her. I googled her and had no luck. I did find an address for her mom and sent the invitations there. She wrote back. They were coming. I couldn't believe it. I loved her mom very much...she was a neat lady that was a 2nd mother to me during those 2 years. We were close.

So they drove the 3.5 or so hours to Fayetteville after years of no contact to see me say "I do." It meant a lot. It was sureal. I guess at some point I surrendered to the fact that we'd grown apart, partially due to distance and partially to growing up and becoming different people. I had grieved the loss of her friendship years prior and here they were, in the brides room huggin my neck. It was emotional, to say the least.

Since then we've been in and out of touch here and there. She had a baby a few months after Jordan was born and we've been in pretty good contact since then.

This picture is the only picture of us that we ever took back then, that I know of anyway. It was taken when I was a junior in high school. Years into our friendship.

And this is Claudia now, with her beautiful daughter, Jayce.

To many more years of friendship----

Yah...Right!

Yah, right....we all know that Jordan looks more like BJ than me...but hey---it was fun test anyway!

I'm finally happy...

I am finally happy, thanks to my brother in law, Brad, who helped me work out the kinks in my HTML code....which I only know enough of to get myself into trouble and really frustrated. But at any rate, I think the kinks in the page may be worked out. However, if you are using IE6, it's possible that it may still look off--but I won't know until I get to work tomorrow and look at it on my work computer. If it looks strange to you, let me know.

In other news....here's a "fall" picture of my girl---more to come.

Ok---

GRRR, I'm irritated with this whole thing!

On my computer, where I use IE7--the site looks great....but in IE6---not so much.

Does it look like it is displaying right to all of you?? All of the text in the posts should display on the greenish color---not on the pink..it should just border the page.



Ok, I think this may be it.

Less white---and I think the header is MUCH better--I just like the feel of this one better. Whadda think???

Update---

Blogger is giving me crap and not letting me change/fix some things, so things may look strange for a bit--sorry--waiting on them to fix it!!



So I have the majority of it changed. There still may be some minor changes...and hey, even maybe some major changes. I am not sure how much I like this new layout---So PLEASE tell me what you think? Too white? Too open?? Needs more dividers??? These are all things I'm waivering on...so share please, share!

Absolute Cuteness...

It's true---they're too cute for words.

Throwback Thursday

Apparently my left side is my best side. LOL. The top picture is one of my favorites...I loved to play dress up in my grandma's stuff!

My Little Reader...

Jordan has gotten to where she LOVES books! Her favorite book is her Dora book that she got for her birthday from her grandparents! She can only read it if one of us is holding it though--which is funny. She gets really frustrated if we aren't holding it right. She's getting sick--some kind of cold. Cough, running nose, low grade fever.....restlessness, clinginess...poor baby! She was up from 4am to 7am this morning and I fear tonight isn't going to be much better.
But for now, here's some pics of my girl reading her Dora book!

Rainbow...

Did anyone see the GORGEOUS rainbow this evening? It was the biggest, brightest rainbow I have ever seen. I was kicking myself for not having my camera with me...I rushed home grabbed it and drove back out to the road and it was already gone---but man, was it a beautiful sight!

Just Jordan

I love this picture because she still looks like a "baby" in it. Most of the time I look at her and don't see many of her "baby" features left. She's growing up so fast!

This one just cracks me up. She looks so surprised!

This one....she just thinks she so big--she's climbing on a large piece of playground equipment...all the way to the top.

Family Picture...

This has to be the hardest age to photograph. She just wants DOWN!!! She wants to GO--wherever we are, she is SUPPOSED to be moving, on her own two feet. Definitely not sitting on a lap forcing a smile. This was like the millionth picture and it was the ONLY one that was halfway decent. And I'm not being over critical, it's the honest truth. It's not even that great, the color is terrible and I think it's a tad blurry, plus I haven't found an edit that will fix it to my complete liking yet, so this is what you get--the straight out of the camera shot--sorry, no frills today.





But then there's this picture. It just makes my heart melt.



I forget just how freckly I am until I see a picture like this, then I say, WOW, I sure do have a lot of freckles. Even my makeup can't hide them. I guess it's a good thing I don't mind 'em.

I laid down on the ground to take this picture and she was mimiking me---she's just too darn cute for words--which is why I click a few hundred pictures a day--I wish I were kidding.

Bj thought it would be cute if he clicked a picture of me sitting on the swing. It was cute. Not. Not cute at all, so I cropped the picture--the whole bottom portion of the picture, if get my drift. It was for the best folks. I was only thinking of you and your digestive system.

Change of SCENERY

I know that of the three of you that read my blog, you may be tired of looking at pictures of my absolutely stunningly beautifully gorgeous daughter.....SO for those of you who would welcome a new kind of photography...I give you some SCENIC shots of West Fork. Yes I said West Fork. Home of the West Fork Cafe, Georges and Jakes Pizza--and not much more. Isn't it beautiful? I can't wait until the leaves change, you'll get a whole new slew of scenery pictures then! :-)