Time Out

Last weekend I had the awesome chance to go to San Antonio for Time Out for Women. If you haven't heard of it, it's just what it sounds like--a chance for women to get away and have a "time out" while listening to great speakers and musical performers and spending time with other women. I did miss my boys, but it was nice to get away from the everyday demands of life, work, and motherhood and just spend quality time with these wonderful ladies.

Erin almost didn't come, due to the possibility of her birthing her baby at the conference, but she decided last minute she didn't want to miss out! As it turns out, Little Miss Kaycee Evelyn didn't get the memo her mama wanted her out by now, so Erin is still pregnant a week later! I was so glad she came; it wouldn't have been the same without her {read: not as fun!}

Friday afternoon Emily (cousin), Aunt Cindy, Mom, Erin, and I met up at the hotel, grabbed some dinner at Fuddruckers, and then went to the Friday evening session.

Sheri Dew was the speaker Friday evening. She spoke with a great mix of humor and wit, as well as a deep love and knowledge of the scriptures. She talked a lot about dealing with situations in life that are not ideal. And no matter what our circumstances are, whether life is going the way we'd like it to or not, we cannot be truly happy if we are not fulfilling our divine missions as women of God. She said, "Despite our weaknesses, there is power available to help us do the things required." Loved her remarks.

Saturday was an early morning. We walked back to the conference center from our hotel and had a full day of speakers and musical performances. Here we are by the Riverwalk on the way over.

Erin and I felt like a bit of a side-show attraction. Many, many people who saw us together had to stop and comment on our matching big bellies. It is fun to be pregnant together, I have to say. We had our first babies together (11ish weeks apart) and now our third babies are due 7 weeks apart. It's nice to have someone to share the excitement with, and let's face it, other times misery just loves company. We talk multiple times a day, and we can each feel eachothers' pain--heartburn, achy hips, swollen ankles, weak bladders, cravings, and all those little joys of pregnancy!

For lunch we hauled our little selves to a Mexican restaurant on the Riverwalk, then hauled back.

There were several speakers on Saturday. My favorite was Emily Watts, who spoke about developing "happy habits." We are going to develop habits either way-good or bad-so we might as well focus on doing a few things to make life happier for ourselves and our families. I loved what she suggested:

1. Develop a thick skin--people don't always use good sense. People judge when they don't know all the facts. So don't judge others and don't get offended if people judge you!

2. Expect hard things of your children {love this one!} and ignore the whining. I loved when she said, The road to greatness is paved in whining. Children will naturally resist doing hard things, but it will benefit them, and you, in the long-run.

3. Give your children the stability of a few, well-chosen traditions. Traditions are like road signs that read "happiness ahead."

4. Work hard to catch people doing things right, rather than nagging or reprimanding too much.

5. Let your heart rejoice. Our hearts naturally want to be happy; sometimes we just have to slow down and let ourselves be happy!

In between speakers we {Mom} rocked out to Jericho Road:

We also saw some friends!

By the end we were physically tired from all the walking, swollen from all the walking and sitting and eating out, but completely recharged and inspired.
Thanks, ladies, for a great weekend!

Still here

Just so you know we're still alive...

Family Fun

We are so excited that Erin and her family are in town for a while. They are in transition between Utah and their new home in Austin and we have been having SO much fun. Last time they were in town Boston was still in his *biting* phase so the boys had to be watched like hawks and Boston spent a good amount of the time in time-out! But this time they are playing so well together. They can often be found running around, sharing toys and snacks, and giggling at each other! Here are a few pictures from the last few days.

*Erin and I after a late night run to the gas station for snacks!
*These boys love their Grammy...and she loves them too!

*Today Erin and I were making the cookie cake for Boss's party tomorrow so we parked the boys in front of a movie with some snacks and they had a great time!


*Boston was thrilled when my mom came home from the store today with a new Swiffer duster. He carried it around for at least 2 and 1/2 hours until I made him put it away at bedtime!

Happy Birthday Brenda Beth!

Today is my mom's birthday! I am not kidding when I say I have the BEST mom in the world. To know my mom is to love her. I admire her in so many ways. Look at this lady-does she look 50*something*?? (I won't tell you how old she actually is...a woman should never have to tell)

So for her birthday I wanted to write a special post dedicated to my angel of a mother. I thought about posting 50+ reasons I love my mom {that would be narrowing it down} but you'd need popcorn and a drink to get you through a list that long...so here are just a few random thoughts/memories I want to share:

1. She was always there for me when I came home from school. Even through the teenage years when I'm sure I didn't appreciate all that she did for me, deep down it was always a comfort to me to have her at home.

2. A fun memory I have of my childhood was eating apple slices, cheese, and crackers for dinner while watching TV when my dad was on trips because she didn't like cooking and us kids thought it was a special treat!

3. The woman doesn't take herself too seriously. Like the time we were waxing our eyebrows at home for the first time and she agreed to go first and she waxed her entire eyebrow off on one side. Anyone else would have been in shock. Actually I think we all were but we were laughing too hard to realize what was going on and she never really thought it was too big of a deal. She just got herself a good eyebrow pencil=)

4. There are several words in the Lightsey family vocabulary that originated somewhere along with lines with my mom. "Fuvy" for example is either a noun: a comfort item like a blanket or it can be used as a verb: 'to fuvy' is to do some repetative action that gives comfort, like rubbing a piece of material between your thumb and first finger.

5. Writing about fuvying brings me to another funny story (and mom, please don't hate me for sharing this...you probably already know where I'm going with this!) One of the things my mom used to use for a fuvy was silky underwear. Unfortunately it's not really socially acceptable to have underwear lying around. The underwear was known to appear in some embarassing situations, like stuck to the velcro of someone's pants when he stood up from sitting on the sofa and the fuvy underwear was down in between the pillows (I think this happened to one of Erin's friends so maybe she can elaborate)!

6. Besides making up words, she also has several words that she has her own unique pronunciations for and we always get a good laugh staying them as only Brenda would say them...like sulsa (instead of salsa) and hIlarious (pronounced like hy-larious).

7. She's the only person I know who has ever stuffed herself in the overhead bin of an airplane. I'm not kidding...it's on video. (It was just her and my dad and the co-pilot and his wife on the plane so I guess she just wanted to see if she could do it; she could!)

I could go on and on, but I'll stop at 7 because that's the "perfect" number in our family. Happy Birthday, Mom. I hope you have a good day. Hopefully Boston can help make it a special day. He sure loves his "manny" and we do too!!

Planting Flowers

A few days ago Jamie came home from a boy's trip to Lowe's with a box of flowers for our front flower beds. I was really excited! We have some nice landscaping that came with the house, but all the flowers died over the winter and I have been saying I wanted to plant some new ones. Since I don't know the first thing about planting flowers, my mom came over on Saturday and helped me plant them. Boston was THRILLED that he got to hold his own gardening spade (aka "shubble") and he wanted to be right in the action, as usual. As these pictures show, I didn't do much of the work; my mom did. I just took pictures and did some watering...that's my kind of gardening=)

Boston helping Grammy dig a hole

Boston was the delivery boy; he carried the flowers from me to mom

After the flowers were out of the packaging, he was also VERY excited to throw away the trash

The (partly) finished project: we planted in the flower bed to the right of the sidewalk and some in between the rose bushes on the left, which you can't see. I need to go back to Lowe's and get a few more to go all the way up to the porch.After we were done, Boston was leaning down to admire some of the flowers. I thought he was just going to touch it, but he ripped the whole bud right off!! So we'll see how long these plants survive at our house!

My Parents

I have to write a post tonight about my wonderful parents. I have the best parents in the world.

Saturday my dad spent the whole day at my house helping me strip, sand and refinish a new coffee table for our living room (pictures coming soon). It was a bigger project than I thought it would be, but it was fun to work on a project together.

Today my mom came over and watched Boston while I slept, like she always does on Mondays. Today she stayed longer than usual because I had to work 2 nights in a row. I left for work last night so stressed because there were dirty dishes and 2 loads of clean laundry to be put away. Well to my delight I woke up today to a spotless kitchen, folded laundry AND yummy chicken salad and bread in the fridge. The house was all opened up and it was sunny and warm and it made my day!

Even though I'm *technically* an adult, its nice to be taken care of by your parents sometimes. Thank you Mom and Dad!

Our Anniversary

Thursday was our 4th anniversary so we left Boston with my parents and spent 2 nights at a nice hotel in Dallas. We ate at a Japanese steak house on Wednesday night where they cook your food on the grill at your table-that was really fun for me. Thursday we spent the morning at the Galleria Mall in Dallas, and then met up with Jamie's Dad and his new fiance for lunch. We went and saw the movie "PS. I Love You" that night. I have been wanting to see it ever since I first saw the previews. It was so good; I wasn't disappointed. I was either laughing or crying most of the movie.

Our fun night came to a crashing hault (literally) when we were involved in a hit-and-run accident on the way home from the movie. We were fine; it was just a fender bender for us but really did some serious damage to the other car from what we could see before she drove off. Immediately after it happened all I could think was that I was so grateful Boston was not with us. We had to stand out in the cold/rain for almost an hour before the police showed up. There were several people who saw the accident and saw the lady drive away, but the car didn't have any plates on it so we thought she was long gone and we'd just have to deal with it on our own. A little while later a car pulled up and said that he had been driving around looking for the car and found it abandoned in a Gold's Gym parking lot not too far away! What a blessing that there are good people like that out there in this world. So when the police finally got there we were able to show them where the car was and they got the VIN number and everything and I guess they will try and track down the driver. It may have been stolen or the maybe the driver was drunk or something; who knows. We are just grateful that we were not hurt, Boston was not with us, and that kind person went out of his way to help us. We are so blessed. It was an anniversary we'll never forget, that's for sure.

Meanwhile, Boston was having a blast spending one last day with his cousin, Jackson. It took a day or two for these two to get used to having eachother around, but they quickly got to be good buddies again. After they left, Boston kept asking for Jack. They are quite a pair.

I loved this picture of Boston and my mom. He definitely has her wrapped around his little finger. He knows Gramie is always good for treats and lots of hugs and kisses. In fact, the other day we were at her house and she took him in the kitchen to get a snack. He came back with a sippy cup full of koolaid and a handful of sweettarts. I had to laugh because I would never have given him all that sugar and I know she wouldn't have done something like that when we were kids, but I guess it's different with grandkids.