The President

I thought this was exciting... Corby's brother, Matthew & his wife Erin were in DC last week visiting a friend I believe. Anyway, they know someone that knows someone that works at the White House (or something along that line) and got tickets to a t-ball game held on the South Lawn of the White House. They got to meet the president. I think that is so cool!

How did this happen?

Kensley has discovered how to sit herself up from lying down. You know when kids do new stuff, that's all they want to do even when it's time for bed. She loves to lay in bed & talk herself to sleep. Apparently she talked until she fell right over in bed...literally. I didn't put her this way, this is how she was sleeping when I went in to check on her before I headed off to bed. This looks so uncomfortable!

Healthy foods, high prices...

...this has been on my mind a lot this week. I've been shopping one too many times... groceries for the house, Sam's trip for the beach, Wal-Mart trip for the beach, another Wal-Mart trip in a different city for the stuff I forgot the first trip... anyway. Why is it that everyone is trying to get people to eat more healthy, but all the healthy food is so much more expensive? Looks like to me if they wanted us to eat less junk, all the junky/fattening foods would be the expensive ones and the healthy stuff would be more affordable. I know, reality is that probably costs more to produce the healthy stuff, but it's the underlying statement that I'm referring to. I would love to go to the store & load up on a weeks worth of fruit for a couple dollars. However, I can buy a bag of chips, fruit snacks, kool-aid and probably something else, for the price of maybe 3 days worth of grapes or apples. For example... my new chip that I love is baked pita chips. A very small bag at Wal-Mart is 1.98 (cheapest I've found). This might last a day or 2 if we all eat them, but if I spend about the same price I can get a big bag of Great Value regular potato chips that would probably last at least a week or longer. This just doesn't make sense to me...it seems backwards. When you live paycheck to paycheck and you have 5 mouths to feed, you just can't afford to eat healthy every day. I really hate that. Maybe I need to find a way to reverse this cycle... hmmmm....

Kensley's pictures

Today a friend of mine took some pictures of Kensley for me (her 9 month pictures). Kensley did not cooperate very well. She cried almost every time I put her down. She cried so hard that she got the red spots all over her face. It's kind of funny because my friend's camera does this cool thing where you can pick up on a certain color & everything else in the shot is black & white. Well, she set it to pick up the pink her her dress, bear & hairbow... however, in some of the shots, it picked up the red spots on her face too! Ha! We got a few good shots out of it. Here's the link to view them. Click on Kensley's 9 month pictures. You will have to log in to Snapfish to view them. http://hanelinefamily.snapfish.com/

By the way... we finally sold the gold van... Woo hoo! Didn't make much money off of it, but at least we are back to one car payment & only 2 vehicles to insure.

Kids Growing Up

The past few weeks we've had some pretty big milestones to be accomplished with our kids. I'm so happy for them, but it's been like "slam... your kids are growing up!" July 4 Carter learned to swim without floats and Kensley turned 9 months old and July 13 Chandler learned to ride his bike. I guess Chandler riding his bike inspired Carter to give it a go because yesterday, Carter learned how to ride too... without any help from us. He just got out there, scooted around a while learning to balance & then he just took off yesterday morning. We got Chandler a new bike Sunday afternoon (something a little bigger for him). Carter took ownership of the smaller bike & has been rolling around on it ever since. Also, yesterday morning, Kensley pulled up on the couch all by herself AND today she started clapping. Wow! That's a lot in such a short period of time. I'm so proud of my kids! I love to see them grow and see how much fun it is for them to accomplish things like swimming and riding bikes. I wonder what the next few weeks hold for us. Should be interesting to see.

College Girlfriends

Every 6 months or so, I try to organize a get-together with all my college girlfriends. Most of us live relatively close by, so we try to meet up in Charlotte. Today we all went to Joy's house (in Charlotte) for the afternoon. It was so much fun! All of us but 2 were there. It's so crazy to see how much we've all grown up and have our own families now. Seems like we should still be hanging out in Stroup dorm watching episodes of Friends or cramming for a test in someone's room. My how time flies by. Here's a picture of everyone with their family.


Scott, Leslie, Taylor & Luke Williams


Cheryl Moose & Wes


Janet & Corbin Brey


My family


Brian, Linda & Adam Davis


Dean, Joy, Coleman & Austin


Here's a picture of all the girls... minus Heather & Stacy


Something wild is that most of us have all had a baby within the past year...
Leslie & Janet had a baby in March 06, Heather (not pictured) had a baby in May 06, Stacy (not pictured) had a baby in August 06, I had a baby in October 06 and Joy had a baby in March 07. They were all boys except mine! How freaky is that. Here's all the kids...

Garage Sales

I'm done with em! Yesterday was my second garage sale in one month & I really have no idea why I put myself through that torture. It's ridiculous really how much time & effort you put into getting stuff ready for people to "dollar" you to death. You price it... it's really cheap... people still want it cheaper. At least they have guts to try. I love the excuses that you hear if I don't come down on the price. "It's not for me & I don't know if they will use it", "that's too expensive", "it's not the right size so I may not be able to wear it".... my response to all of this....it's a yard sale, it's really cheap..... puh-leassse! By the end of the day, I went with the mentality, well, something is better than nothing at all. With all that said, the remains of my garage sale belongings are now gone to the Salvation Army...no more garage sales for a while.

On another note... I did a MySpace page because I have several friends who are on there & I wanted to keep up with them, so you have to create a profile yourself. I HATE it! I'm getting all kinds of requests from strange people I don't know & getting spam! I'll stick with my blogging... it serves my purpose.