Blake's Nerf Birthday Party...

It's soooo hard to believe that my baby boy is EIGHT YEARS OLD!!! A few weeks before his birthday, we were trying to figure out what kind of party he wanted... if you have kids, you've hosted a birthday party and you know that it's always hard to figure out what to do! Swimming, roller skating, Chuck E Cheese, etc, etc, E.T.C... there are a TON of options! Oh, internet... what to do, what to do?!
Alright... let's back up a minute.... BEEP, BEEP, BEEP... (sound effects... I know, my blog is super fancy.) So, the day that T got his cast, we had another appointment later that afternoon, so we dropped by Kids Space to waste a little time... while there, we saw a bunch of teenagers with Nerf guns... they were there for a birthday party... and if it hadn't been daytime, you could've seen and heard the light bulbs over our heads go "DING!" like a 1981 model microwave! So, a party was born!!

It was absolutely without a doubt, the easiest party ever! Trey's almost 13, Blake is now 8... so that means I've done 21 parties in all... this was THE easiest and a TON of fun!!! All the boys (and one girl!) loved it!!

In the days leading up to the party, I was searching for ideas on what to give as party favors, what to serve, basically what else would the kids 'do'??  Well, turns out there wasn't much information about a Nerf party online... so, that's why I'm writing on my bloggity, blog, blog about it! Who knows, maybe there's a Mommie out there in internet-land that just had a 1981 microwave DING at her and she's looking for information!! (I'm telling you, Internet... soooo fancy.)

So, here ya go...
Everything revolved around the colors, orange and lime green because that happened to be the colors of the Nerf gun that Blake picked out to use on his invitation (see above!)... so check out the cool balloons...

This next photo is chock-full of information...I'm sure you noticed the cupcakes and plates, etc... I'll tell you more about those in a sec... at the 'idea' party, the kids were using different colored bandannas to signify the teams... that was an awesome idea until I started looking at the cost & shipping time of orange and lime bandannas... I looked online and found where I could purchase large lots of them but I didn't need that many... so I took a look at local stores at Michael's and Hobby Lobby, well, I wasn't willing to pay that much AND they only had like 2 in stock of the colors I needed... so, while getting plates, napkins and such at Party City, I found Duck Tape in orange and lime!! So, check out their sleeves...we made 2 teams... it was cheaper and the kids thought it was pretty cool!

Now on to the food...
We decided pizza would be easy and cheap...

Cupcakes... at Wal-Mart, you can get a pack of 10 cupcakes for $5.00, so I requested 1/2 of them to be white cake and 1/2 of them to be chocolate cake... of those, 1/2 had orange icing and the other 1/2 had lime icing! We also mixed up the ice cream and got the little cups... 1/2 vanilla and 1/2 chocolate... PERFECT-O!! I bought orange plates, lime napkins... and clear treat bags!

We made a BUNCH of treat bags...

Inside the treat bags... were round lime and orange slice candies plus 2 Nerf bullets.. we then tied the bags with the same ribbon used on the balloons...

BTW, speaking of the balloons... don't buy those little helium tanks unless you don't have a florist that you can get to on the day of your party... at Party City, the tank was going to be $30 to blow up 30 balloons... my local florist blew up 30 balloons for only $10!! No joke.

I looked up rules for Nerf gun, airsoft and paintball wars... but it turns out that we didn't even need them! Their rules were:
1. NO hits to the face.
2. No running over kids that were not with our party.
3. Have fun!

Here are a few pictures from the war...

 

Even the little bitty boys had a great time!!

Well, I hope I've helped you Internet-land Mommies & Daddies!! You're more than welcome to email me at karenwlong[at]gmail.com if you have any questions!! I didn't provide a link so I don't get spammed...

Happy Birthday Blakers... I love you. ~Mom :-)

My Generation...

I got this email from a friend of mine and boy, it made me feel old... and I'm only 33!!! I've changed a few things and added my thoughts... leave me your comments!! :-)

Adults used to tell me all about how hard things were when they were growing up... like walking twenty-five miles to school every morning....Uphill... Barefoot... BOTH ways… yadda, yadda, yadda.

  I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way I was going to tell kids about how easy they've got it and how much they've grown... but now that I'm over the 30, I can't help but look around and notice all the changes and well... how much they've grown...   

When I was a kid we didn't have the Internet.  If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!
 
There was no email!!  We had to actually write somebody a letter - with a pen! Then you had to walk it all the way to the mailbox... then it would take like a week to get there!

Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us.  As a matter of fact, grandparents and the parents of all my friends also had permission to spank my butt!

There were no MP3's or iTunes!  If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the
record store and shoplift it yourself! But the best way was to wait around all day to tape it off the radio, and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and mess it all up! There were no CD players!  We had tape decks in our car.  We'd play our favorite tape and when we'd eject it, the tape would come undone or get twisted up... sometimes you'd get lucky and could use your pinky finger to roll it back up! Most of the time, it was so wadded up, you'd have to throw it away and BUY a new one!!
 
We didn't have fancy stuff like 'call waiting' or 'caller ID'!  If you were on the phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal! And when the phone rang, you had no idea who it was!  It could
be your school, your parents, your boss... you just didn't know!!!  You had to pick it up and take your chances!
 
There weren't any cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn't make a call or receive one. You actually had to be out of touch with your friends. OH MY GOODNESS !!!  Think of the horror... not being in touch with someone 24/7!!!

We didn't have any fancy PlayStation or Xbox video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics!  We
had the Atari 2600 and Nintendo! With games like 'Space Invaders', 'Asteroids', 'Pong', you actually had to use your imagination!!! Those games just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died!  The best had to be Duck Hunt, though... I could play that for hours!!

We had to use a little book called a "TV Guide" to find out what was on! If you were super organized, you'd highlight and dogear the pages to make sure you didn't miss your favorite shows! Channel surfing?! Oh yeah... You had to get off your butt and walk over to the TV to change the channel!!! Thankfully remotes came along when we were in middle school and high school!!
 
And quite possibly the worst was that we could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning!!  Do you hear what I'm saying? We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons!

Our parents told us to stay outside and play, do chores or read! No electronics to soothe and comfort us!

 

Car seats - oh, please! Mom threw you in the back seat and you hung on. If you were lucky like me, you got to stand in the front seat as your daddy took you to the store and you got the "safety arm" across the chest at the last moment if they had to stop suddenly!

 

See!  That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled rotten! You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980 or any time before!  
Regards, The Over 30 Crowd

 

That email definitely brought back memories!! I had to post it, my kids will never believe I had to wait a week to watch Tom & Jerry!! 

Happy Mama's Day!

Well first off, Happy Mother's Day!! :-)

Mine has been awesome! We started off Mother's Day at church this morning and it was TERRIFIC! Mom invited Memaw to come to BBC with us! Much to my surprise, we sang many of my favorite praise songs, "This is How We Overcome", "You Said", "Jesus, Lover of my Soul", etc, etc, etc (If you know anything about me, you know I lerrrve me some praise!! anywho...) all the Mama's received a pink carnation and Pastor Lon had a great sermon about the many women that accompanied Jesus to the cross... it was a great mornin' at th' church house! :-)

After going by Mom & Dad's to change clothes, we headed to the cemetery to put new flowers on my Grandaddy's grave for "Decoration"... (maybe you're wondering what Decoration is... well, basically it's tradition... deep tradition... many cemeteries hold it on Mother's Day, others just hold it on any ordinary Sunday... for us, it's on Mother's Day... I suppose it's because that's when folks used to come home to visit and it was stamped in time forever to be on that day...)

Well, then we headed to Red Lobster for lunch!! It was me, Steve, Trey, Blake, Mom, Dad, Memaw, my aunt Phylliss, uncle Frankie and cousin Jr... we were missing 8 of our crew. :-( I hate they couldn't make it... Even though we had to wait for about 45 minutes, it was soooo good! The talapia was YUMMY!! Let's back up a minute though... while we were waiting, there were other people outside sitting around chatting and all of a sudden, we hear a guitar and a voice singing... yep, right there on the grass outside the Red Lobster! That kid was really good! I don't know what songs he was singing, but since they were "PG", I let Blake go over to watch and listen... I wanted soooo bad to take a picture, but I was one of only a few chickens at the seafood restaurant... I was definitely the only live one. Believe me, I won't let that happen again. I had my camera in my purse and was too chicken to get it out! I don't know what was wrong with me... lesson learned.

*This is where a picture of a kid playing guitar outside Red Lobster should be. When that happens again, I'll post a picture for you. I know, I know...

Steve & the boys gave me a gift card for Kohl's!! Steve put on the card that it was only $10... but I know him better than that! I told him with only $10 I'd have to stay in the earring section 'til I picked out a pair!! :-) Turns out it's a $200 card!! WOOO HOOO! Looks like I'll be goin' shoppin' this week!!

We gave Mom a food chopper... that's what she asked for, I promise!! Her 'old faithful' broke, so she needed a replacement... I had no idea of what else to get her, so instead of getting another little cheap one like she had, I went to Williams Sanoma and got a good'en...
So after lunch, we (me, Steve, Trey, Blake, Mom, Dad & Memaw) went to a movie... "Letters to God"... it was a fantastic movie, but so sad! I don't want to ruin it for you, but let me warn you... TAKE A BOX OF TISSUE!! I looked terrible when I came out of there!! The kids love to watch me cry during a movie and believe me, they got an eye-full today! Sheesh!! It was so good, though... I highly recommend it!!



On the way home, we stopped by Arby's for a milkshake... Life is good today...

So here's my Letter to God for you...
God, Thank you for the person reading this post... there's no reason that they should want to take time to read something that's written by me... but maybe they need to know You. Maybe they're reading this to see what I'm up to, but I pray that they only see You." Love, Karen

Aw Geez...

Well, instead of sitting in Gatlinburg, TN on the BBC Couple's Retreat, I'm still sitting right here in Lickskillet, AL. I wish I could say it was because of some 'cool' reason, but no.

Yesterday afternoon Blake gets back to the church from Chuck E Cheese and he says "Mommie, my tummy hurts." When he didn't want to go to his first baseball practice of the new season I knew he was serious. I made a quick call to his coach to let him know that we weren't going to make it and headed home... by this time, he was starting to run a fever and his throat was bothering him too...

The night lasted much longer for him than it did for me... he was in bed and asleep by 6pm, that's not a typo... 6pm. His temp was 102.4 and climbing so I quickly got him some meds and prayed that he'd get better... quick!

Well, needless to say, today did not go as planned. We took off to the doctor's office this morning and (...btw, props to Physicians Medical Walk In Fayetteville!! They were AWESOME! We got there at 9:03 and had a prescription in our hand and walking out the door by 9:45!...) he has strep... with tonsils the size of watermelons, it's hard to miss... but the folks at PM were great... very small wait time and ready to help! We'll definitely visit them again, but I hope not any time soon!!

After picking up the meds, we headed home... the boys stayed there while I headed to work to finish up some stuff that has to be done for Sunday... I was there longer than I wanted, but I got everything done that 'had' to be done... the rest will just have to wait!

Well, we have hopes of leaving in the morning-- after 10am-- to head up to Gatlinburg, but with Dad having bronchitis and the shingles, we'll have to just play it by ear. Geez...

Just cuz I know posts with pictures are better... here ya go... it's a random pic of my sick little baby boy. He'll be up-n-at-'em again real soon!!

Slacker!!

Hi everybody!
Oh I know, I know... it's been FOREVER!!!! And it's been eating at me that I haven't paid you any attention what.so.ever. There have been many times that I've visited my own blog and thought, 'wow, that girl needs to update her blog...' yea, I talk to myself like that... don't hate.

So here goes... blog posts are always better with pictures, so I thought I'd just SHOW you a few of the things I've been doing since I glanced over at you last... it's really been like an elementary school relationship, huh? 'I only know you on the playground when my friends are around'... I'm really sorry, but thanks for always getting on the merry-go-round with me anyway. :-)

So, there was Steve's 48th birthday, Jamarri's 7th birthday and Braden's 2nd birthday...

(it was a spa gift card!)

Jamarri was so excited about all of his gifts!

Braden had a ton of fun opening his presents all by himself!

And oh the basketball games... wow did that taken up a LOT of time!! But it was so great... the boys love basketball, especially Blake... as you may have come to know, Blake has a LOT of energy, and I mean a LOT of energy... he's very aggressive and fouled out of a bunch of games! Trey's a great 'bottom guy', he can box out and "put a butt on 'em" to get those rebounds and back up for his 'signature shot'!

He made it!!

This kid is over 6' tall... seriously. He wears a size 13 shoe!

Then came Thanksgiving...

Anna Kate decided she was hungry...

Then Christmas!


However, this was no ordinary Christmas! Gilly came to visit again! "Who's Gilly?", you ask? Well, he's our mischievous little Elf that visits every Christmas!! He gets into trouble, but thankfully, it's the kids' job to clean up!! If they don't do it themselves, then Santa comes to pick up Gilly the next night. Yep, that fast! Santa don't play.


Before Gilly went back with Santa, he left the boys a little message... out of marshmallows. Then Beau (our doggie) ate the message and had a tummy ache. Not pretty.


Awwww!! Look at my sweet new pajama'd boys!!
But this is the real truth!!

The BBC Choir went caroling to shut-in's and then to Bridge Street in Huntsville! Sooo much fun!!


I had a few photo sessions for children, engagements, and my first wedding in December too! (Well, not my first wedding... it was Amy & Josh's wedding, just my first wedding to shoot!!!)

Amy & Josh are such a darling couple!! They are very grounded in their faith in the Lord and share a precious love for each other. There's always something that happens (or in this case doesn't happen) at every wedding that isn't planned... at Amy & Josh's wedding, it was the kiss... yeah, the KISS!! You got it... Pastor Lon forgot to tell them to KISS!!! Josh & Amy knew it, and did a little 'half-peck' but some of us didn't realize it until it was time to go to the reception!

I heard someone mention something about the kiss and I looked back through my images and thought, "What?! I didn't get the kiss?! Have I lost my mind?! Why didn't I get the kiss?!" I was seriously about to have a heart-attack... I really thought I had missed it!! Then Josh told Pastor Lon that he didn't tell them to kiss... WHEW! I was really freaking out! but then Pastor Lon had some 'splainin' to do!! He announced them at the reception and made up for his little boo-boo...

Here's a few shots from those photo shoots:

These are the adorable Burke children... aren't they sooooo cute?!

Here's a quick pic of how much 'energy' little Mr. Burke had... yes, I chased him... a LOT! :-)
And these two were so much fun!! Their grandmother wanted some photos of them in their jammies at Christmas... they thought I was crazy when I laid on the floor to get some cool angles! :-)

And then Kristen & Andrew!!! We had SOOOOO much fun shooting their engagement session!
Poor Andrew was so hungry! They used 3 outfits and 3 locations and he was about to pass out!
He was a trooper, even though he was starving, he didn't mind the 5 hour make-out session! :-)

AND, because K&A were such fantabulous models, I submitted a few of their photos to CreativeMYK, a Christian website that helps graphic designers and photographers alike... we share images and clipart to make our presentations and advertisements really fabulous! Here are the ones they accepted!

I did a little traveling in January!!

First I went to Lewisburg, TN to the 5th annual Grove ladies retreat with my step-daughter-in-law and daughter! It was a wonderful weekend, filled with worship and learning more about God's grace and mercy...

My other trip was to Stone Mountain, GA with a bunch of pre-teens from BBC and Flint River to the SuperStart Conference! This trip was for 4th-6th graders ONLY! Katy bar the door!! No little kids allowed!
While there, we learned about doing Good Works for God... we heard about some amazing kids that are doing some amazing things for an amazing God!!

Not to brag or anything... ok, well maybe I am... but I was #2 of #26 on my first time to ever play Laser tag!!
This is one of the cool pix I got in the laser tag place!
This just proves you can get cool pix just about anywhere! :-)

Fast forward to this month:

Daddy turned 60!! He thought we were just taking him out for his birthday,
but much to his surprise, some of his brothers and sisters (and their spouses) were at the party!

This is only 1 of 2 photos I have of me, my Mom and my Memaw!
(Yep, they're so cool... they totally rock Facebook!)

Ok, so I did a little more traveling...
My latest trip was to Nashville for the Sandy Puc Tour last week! I. LOVED. IT!! I would love to be able to attend more photography workshops... maybe when my rich uncle gets out of the poor house. (**This is a shameless plug for Hubby, Mommy and Daddy to take note of!**)

I really did learn alot and was VERY inspired to give back by using my camera... I never really thought about it, but I can stop time....... think about that for a second. Your camera stops time... you can remember that moment forever!! I'm trying to figure out exactly what to do, but it will definitely have something to do with Relay for Life coming up in May. If you have an idea, please let me know, I'd love to hear your ideas!! One thing I've thought about is having a drawing for a FREE photo session! I'm thinking each entry could be a dollar or two, or maybe do a strip of tickets for a certain amount, then draw for the winner on the night of Relay... hmmm... idk, tell me what you think! Another of my fabulous ideas is to do a photo session for our local Survivors... now my wheels are really turning!! I'm getting excited just thinking about it!!

This is Ms Brenda Baeder, she is one of our BBC Believers leaders...
we did this photo for an article that will appear in the Hsv Times in the next month or so...

To quote my friend Sharon McClure, "I don't think I can take much more of this Global Warming!" I'm with you, Sharon!! :-) Snow, Snow, go away, come again some other day!

So there ya go... I FINALLY posted something! I guess this one is long enough to last me another 6 months! :-) Just kiddin', I'm really gonna try harder... :-)

Anna Kate is 9 months old!

It's hard to believe that our grand-baby girl is already 9 months old!!! She's grown so much... time passes too quickly...

Posts are always better with pictures, so here ya go!

You can see more on my Flickr... (look under 'babies')

Piggies2

Well, last week I told you about a contest I entered over at IHeartFaces...
I didn't 'place' in the contest, but my pic ended up on their 'lead in pic', meaning the picture that is posted above where they reveal the winners...
Little Braden's grass covered piggies are in the 1st column, 3rd row!

Make it a great one!!

My Little Blakers' B'day Weekend...

This weekend was really... well, great!

Friday: I was able to be off work which is pretty rare... I went shopping and had some fun out messin' around with Mama & Blakers and lunch with my hubby! We went b'day shoppin' for Blakers, can you believe my BABY is SEVEN YEARS OLD!??!?!! Besides asking for a 4 wheeler or dirt bike, we had it pretty easy... we took him to Toys R Us first... and crazy as it seems, he really didn't want too much! He wanted a Pitch-back (pitch a baseball, it bounces back) and some baseballs, but then he wanted to go to WalMart... yeah, WalMart... that's where he went partially crazy. He started wanting everything!! He wanted a bunch of 'odd-n-ends', so instead of making him tell me different things that I could go back and pick up later, I went ahead and let him just put them in the buggy so he got exactly what he wanted... but he didn't know that Mom had gotten him a new PSP at Toys R Us and he didn't know that I had gotten him a new game, so he was REALLY surprised!! It was so funny to watch him open the game before the PSP! He was so confused...
Saturday: Steve was off work, which was VERY rare... we slept in (another rare-ity) then went to get fireworks... that was super-fun... well, for the boys that is! Dad and Uncle Wayne met us over there... they were checking out the Big Stuff while the boys were throwing stuff in their baskets faster than Lil E on race day! We left with $220 worth of fireworks... this is the yearly 'boy trip'... I always go along, but I don't answer questions such as "Mom, can I have this" or "Mom, what does this do"... I throw my hands up, raise my eyebrows and make a wierd 'i dunno' face and say "This is a boy trip, ask a boy"... I love it!!
Then we headed to Aunt Ann & Uncle Jip's new house for Dad's side of the family's get-together for the 4th.... there was food, fun and swimming! We had a ton of fun... I took Blakers a cake (that he picked out!) and everybody sang "Happy Birthday" to him!
Then it was time for Fireworks!! Chris, Jackie, Ethan, Anna Kate, Jamarri, Mom, Dad and Memaw came over to see the whole neighborhood 'light up'! It's always fun to watch one road 'battle' the other!
Sunday: We slept in again... yes, I was convicted... but I'll have to say it's been a LONG time since we've done that... anyway... we went to eat and then to see TRANSFORMERS at the IMAX!! It was definitely a great movie and a cool way to see it!!

Well, that's our weekend in a nutshell... time for nighty-night!!

Stupidity... and Mastercard...

This has taken me way to long to post, but I had a lot of folks asking what I did to my SUV a couple of weeks ago... well, here's the story:

I backed into the garage to unload the groceries as usual, but what was UNusual was that Steve was home to help unload... so he opens up the back hatch and takes in a few bags. Nothing bad about that, right?! That is FABULOUS! Here comes the bad part... I realized I had parked too close to Steve's van to get me and the supper out of the car, so I thought I'd move over a tidge... (yeah, you know where this is going)... I forgot that the hatch was open when I pulled up!!!!!!!! The rear windshield wiper got caught on the bottom lip of the garage door and bent the door... but that's not the worst part... because of the pressure on the wiper, the BACK GLASS SHATTERED! Here's a nice little pic of my damage:I have to take a moment to brag on my hubby... he didn't KILL me! This is my 2nd run-in with the garage door (pun intended)... we bought the current door only 3 years ago, so I thought I was a goner for sure... he did turn around and walk back in the house to the refuge of the 'big chair' in the living room (his non-matching eBay find) for about 10 minutes, then he walked to the front porch and said "Don't worry about it, we'll get it fixed"... WHAT?!!?!! I said, "Are you ok, are you in shock or do you have a fever?" He chuckled and said he was fine and came over and gave me a hug and said, "That's why we have insurance."
I was blown away!!! So to all you hubbies out there, take this little piece of advice from me... next time she does something really stupid, just take a time out and evaluate what's most important... her or the boo-boo... I bet you'll react like Steve did if you take this little gem of advice!

So now for my MasterCard commercial:
1 garage door repair: $110
1 rear glass replacement: $250
1 husband that didn't scream or kill: Priceless