Our New Love........

The Little Mermaid on Broadway

Gracie and I have been going crazy over the music of the Broadway show of The Little Mermaid. It has the same songs as the movie, and some new awesome ones as well. Ariel is Gracie's favorite princess of the moment, and she loves the songs and sings along to all the ones Ariel sings. When the song "Daughters of Triton" comes on she says "Hey, those are my sisters!"

Check out this video from youtube that someone put together. The song one of my favorites! Also here is a preview of the Broadway show. Looks like we'll be saving for tickets to NYC!

SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE FEVAH'.................

Why isn't this show just on every day of the week? So, I can't wait for it to air tomorrow so I have to re-live, I mean watch some of my fave dances over the Internet and on our DVR. I didn't think last week was that exceptional of an episode. It always takes a little while for the partnerships to gel and for the dancers personalities to shine. The start of a new season leaves me missing the dancers from the previous season. Although some of the dancers have already become quick favorites. I already knew I would love Twitch because of last year...


so here are my favorites, in no particular order:

And, of course, Cat. The great thing about the show is that Jesse loves it just as much as I do! Gracie even gets into it by busting out in some pretty fabulous dance moves for a two year old!

Happy Father's Day!

I just have to let the world know that Jesse is a wonderful dad! Besides taking such good care of his family he is a great example to us. From the moment Gracie was born he has never stopped doting on her. No one can make her laugh like Jesse can, and no one is as great of a jungle gym either! I guess being a good dad requires you know how to have pillow fights and do body slams (Gracie can't get enough of these) and Jesse dose his share every night after a hard days work.

Jesse is a wonderful husband and I love him! Gracie and I are thankful that he is such a great man! We love you!


Love,

Stephanie and Gracie





Also..............................

Happy Father's Day to my Dad! You have been a wonderful Father and I love you! I wish we could be there to celebrate with you. Thanks for all the love through the years. Thank you for the example you have been to me. I love you! You are the best!
Love,
Stephanie

The leaning tower of Gracie

As I was cleaning the kitchen the other day I turned around to this tall tower that Gracie built. She hasn't been one to really like blocks so I was quite surprised to see that the tower was almost as tall as she is! Lately she has been wanting to build "castles" out of everything. Her favorite thing to build "castles" with is canned food while she sits in the grocery cart. In the picture she is pulling her "say cheese" face where she closes her eyes and usually tilts her head to the side. Silly girl!

Happy Easter

We were so excited to go to Atlanta to Mimi and Papa's for Easter, but this weekend has turned out to be not what we hoped for. We arrived in Atlanta Friday afternoon. Gracie had a blast playing with Ella and Ethan, and she squealed when she saw Mimi! (Gracie had been asking to go to see Mimi every day this past week) Things were all find and dandy until Gracie woke up at midnight with the stomach flu. I spent the night up with Gracie, and she was sick almost every half hour. Finally she felt better and then, guess what? Of course I got sick and was sick all day Saturday. At least Gracie felt good enough on Saturday to have an Easter egg hunt with Ella and Ethan.


We all stayed home from church today. I really hope no one else gets sick form us. We were trying to figure out where we picked this bug up, and Jesse helped me remember that Gracie has picked up some unusual habits, or maybe it is a toddler thing. WELL, she likes to lick stuff. I caught her licking a shelf at the grocery store (YUCK!) and then at lunch on our way to Atlanta she poured salt on the table and licked it up then stuck the top of salt shaker in her mouth. After that she got under the table and stared eating her chips that she had spilled off the floor.

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I bought Gracie two Easter dresses (they were both too cute to pass up) but even though we didn't make it to church today at least she got to wear one of them last week.

She is standing on her bed in her newly painted pink and green flowery room.

I hope everyone had a better Easter weekend than we did!

I got tagged - and I am finally doing something about it!

So, I am the worst person to tag......I have been tagged many times and I think this is the first one I have done. Sorry to everyone who has tagged me so far. Here goes:

Six things you should learn before you are 18

1. Learn how to cook at least one good meal that does not involve all pre-packaged foods.

2. Learn about health insurance- once you are off your parents insurance it is nice to know how health plans work.

3. Learn how to set and accomplish goals. Even if they are small at first, you will always be able to gain a sense of accomplishment form doing something you put your mind and heart in!

4. Learn that you should never have to settle: Be it in love, friendships, a career or even the college you go to, know that you don't have to just take what's around you. Go get what you want and don't ever feel ashamed about doing what is best for you!

5. Learn who you are by keeping a journal. The more you know about yourself the easier it is to be confident in all the relationships in your life. Journals really help you understand how you think and react to all the things life throws and you.

6. Learn to tell the difference between the who really love you and the ones who don't . A friend who really loves you will help you back on your feet- not trip you while you are getting up. This seems obvious, but you will run into situations where sometimes it is hard to tell.

Thanks for tagging me Ali. This was really fun!

Our Holiday!

Wow! I can't believe my last post was the end of November- I really need to do better! New Years resolution......right? Well- we had an awesome Thanksgiving, a fun Christmas and a great New Years.

Thanksgiving:

We spent Thanksgiving at Disney World and it was such a blast! Gracie loved seeing Cinderella's Castle and loved being with her cousins Ella and Ethan.

Gracie loved the rides and did really well waiting in line. She loved the Dumbo ride, but she especially loved the carousel.

I was a little worried that she was still too young for Disney World but she was so entertained by all the lights and shows. We say Cinderella's stepmother and stepsisters and Gracie didn't want to go near them and said "They're mean!" when we were passing by.

We were also able to go to Wild Animal Kingdom, which was fabulous! Wow! Wow! Wow! Jesse and I had been really excited to go on the Safari ride because we had recently watched a Travel Channel special on Wild Animal Kingdom. It was beyond cool! But then again Disney does everything perfectly! They make it feel like you are going on a real African Safari. You load up in this big safari bus and the road is really bouncy and then.....you see giraffes, lions, zebras, crocodiles, elephants IT WAS AWESOME! The animals are in different areas, but the amazing thing is you don't see any barriers or fences and the landscape looks very much like Africa.

the croc's- look close there are lots of 'em

After the safari ride, you can walk through a zoo type of area and see Gorillas and some other really interesting animals that I have never heard of! This is a must see if you are ever in the Orlando area. Check out this cool video of a Hippo swimming circles in the walking zoo area.

While we were at Disney World Gracie developed a great affection for sunglasses. She wore these glasses all afternoon and on into evening! She even wore them through her nap.

Car troubles and long drive aside- this was a great trip!

Christmas

We had a very quiet Christmas this year. It was our first Christmas with just our little family, but it was fun to be at our new house. Gracie loved the Tree, our toy Nativity Scene and the "scary monster movie" aka the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Gracie wasn't all that interested in presents, but by Christmas morning she was having fun with all the wrapping paper and bows. Here very favorite gift was from Aunt Sarah. A beautiful Cinderella porcelain doll, and Gracie hasn't put it down since Christmas! She also loved her purple dress from Great Grandma Hovey and she begged me to put it in her as soon as she realized what it was! ( She is definitely a girly-girl and I LOVE it!)

Merry Christmas to all our friends and loved ones!
And a Happy New Year, too!

New Year's was celebrated the way I learned to celebrate it six years ago: FOOTBALL! (Six years because that is how long we have been married)

OK- so I love to watch Georgia games and a few bowl games, but Jesse really rung in the New Year by following through with his New Years resolution to watch football all day long. It was not a surprise that Georgia won, and I swearer, that was the longest, most boring, most painful football game I have seen. I think I took three different naps during the game. It finally ended after four excruciating hours. Next year IS Georgia's year!

We wish everyone the best for 2008 and hope you are all well! We love you all and hope to see many of you this year!

Freerice.com

Go here or be square..........

This is a really cool website where you take a vocab challenge. For every word you get right you get ten grains of rice donated to someone in need through the United Nations World Food Program. The money to donate the rice comes from the advertisers who pay to advertise on the site. It is fun to play and you are helping someone at the same time. What a cool idea, huh?

I love vocabulary quizzes! Try it out- it rocks!

I'll be so mad if

Journeyman gets canned!

If you haven't watched this show you are missing out BIG TIME! Take Quantum Leap mix in some more drama and add a smothering heap of good looking people and you get Journeyman! It is awesome! Go to NBC.com and watch the episodes you have missed. It will be a crying shame if this show to get canceled. People need to stop watching the other trash that is on and start watching the good stuff!

Happy Birthday Gracie!

The Cake


Gracie's almost 2 birthday party with my Grandparents in October

Last Friday Gracie turned two! I can't believe how fast she is growing. In some ways it seems as if she just joined our family and in other ways I can't even remember life without her. I am grateful to be her mom. She has been a joy to have as a daughter.

The Birthday Princess

We had a party for her on Saturday, and I think everyone else had more fun than she did. She was over-tired and just wanted to be held. But she did perk up when she opened a Care Bear from her friend Ivory. And then one from Mom and Dad and another one from Mimi and Papa. She is a Care Bear fanatic!

Gracie and her pal Gracie

Her favorite gift, a Care Bear that sings the ABC's!

Gracie loves to play the harmonica!

I finally got a video to upload! I am so excited! Our Internet provider just came and hooked us up with fiber optics so we just plug straight into the wall, no more modem! Our Internet is finally fast enough to upload videos. As you can see Gracie is surely a musical genius, did I mention she plays the recorder too?!(Just kidding!) She loves to make sounds with the harmonica or recorder or just her mouth and then she says "Mommy, did you hear that?" over and over again. She is pretty silly!

We went to Atlanta for the weekend to go to "White Christmas" at the Fox Theater. This is probably the earliest I have gone to a Christmas show. Well, I am a huge fan of the movie, but the musical just didn't hit it for me. I guess you can't beat Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye or Rosemarry Clooney (George Clooney's aunt) and Vera Ellen. If you haven't seen this one it is a great one to watch for the holiday season.

The weather here has finally cooled off and we finally had to turn on our heat at night last week. The highs are still in the seventy's so I seems really weird that Thanksgiving is right around the corner. I am pretty sure that Statesboro has never had a white Christmas!

This is probably the closest we will ever get to a white Christmas. This is a cotton field next to our subdivision. It really looked beautiful! The sun hitting the cotton made it look bright white! The picture doesn't do it justice. A few days before they harvested the cotton, so now the field looks kind of sad. We also live near some pine tree farms. They cut down the trees and there was the most wonderful pine scent in the air. As you can see we live in a very rural area! The air is so fresh and you can see the stars at night and the sky is really blue on sunny days. We love our neighborhood!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Our Little Lady Bug!

Gracie had a fun time eating candy! She really loves suckers and calls them "Sucker balls" and asks for one just about every hour now.

On Tuesday Gracie got to dress up and go to a nursing home and sing Halloween and Primary songs! Then they handed out candy to the kids. She was very excited to eat the M&M's!

That night our good friends watched Gracie so Jesse and I could go celebrate his passing the Bar. We went to Savannah and went on a spooky ghost tour. Our tour guide was a paraormal investigator and had all sorts of crazy things to tell us. Supposedly Savannah is "America's Most Haunted Town" and I would believe it! I got the chills a few times....and we took some pictures so you'll have to tell me if you see any ghosts haunting the frames.......Oooooooooohhhhhhhhh!

BOO!

This is a mansion built during the Great Depression. THere is supposed to be the ghost of a little girl living here. The picture is a little blurry....but just maybe there is a ghost lurking in the top right corner..... (hee.....hee....)

This is a mansion built during the Civil War. There have been many different owners, but none of them have stayed very long. They all left under strange circumstances and it has been vacent for years and the owner won't rent or sell it.....

The tour was fun, but mostly it made me interrested in taking a tour about the arcitecture of Savannah. There are many beautiful historic homes and mansions that I would love to go in. Savannah is a beautiful city. The historic area near River Street reminds me of Europe mixed with the South. We love to have company and would be happy to show any of ya'll around Savannah!

P.S. Thanks for the super cute costume Carol!

It's Official.............

Congratulations Jesse!

Jesse passed the Bar!

Wooooohoooooo!

Three long years of Law School and Jesse is

officially an Attorney!

Congrats to Briant also!

A Very Fun October

This month has been a fantastic one! We started out October by going to the county Fair. It was small, but decent and the first night you get in free so the only money we spent was for Gracie to go on the purple Dinosaur ride. I don't know if she really liked it- but at least she was by her new best pal Ivory. Aren't they cute?!!

My Grandparents from Idaho Falls came to visit for ten days! Gracie had a blast getting to know them and she loved getting so much attention. It was fun to show them around Statesboro, but more fun to just visit! We visited Savannah and ate lots of good southern food! They are such great Grandparents and I am so lucky to have such a wonderful relationship with them. They are such great examples, and I would love to be like them someday. And- I would also love to have as much energy as they do! My grandma wouldn't rest until all of Jesse's dress shirts were washed and pressed, and my Gramps straightened our garage and put a shelving unit together. Now we can park a car in our garage! Thanks Gramps and Gram! We love you and miss you!

Also, this month one of my dreams came true! I finally got to participate in Habitat for Humanity. It was awesome! Jesse's firm put a team together to participate in Statesboro's first ever Habitat Buildathon. It was amazing to see all the volunteers, and watch how fast things were done. We helped prep the house for the siding and then helped put up the siding. And boy, I have a new appreciation for my house! It hard work!For a while I've had a fever, and the only prescription is more.......SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE! On Monday Sarah and I went to the 2007 So You Think You Can Dance Tour and it was AWESOME. We screamed our heads off like giddy twelve-year-olds and it was so much fun. We were a little disappointed that Lacy was not preforming due to a knee injury, but Shawna took her place in one of our favorite dances (the one that Mia choreographed with Cameron and Lacy to the song "Dancing"). They preformed many of our favorite dances - the Transformer, the Hummingbird, The Angel and Devil, The Matrix dance, Sabra and Dominic's Hip Hop.....It was so cool to see the dancers in person. They are even more amazing than you would think, and talented beyond belief. When it was over we were able to get Pasha, Lauren and Danny's autographs. I can't wait until next season- so good thing MTV has replayed the season two and we got it recorded with our DVR! Well- Happy Halloween to everyone! Our ward had it's Trunk-or-Treat on Wednesday. Gracie was a Lady Bug and I tried to be a dandelion, but as you can see my hair just wouldn't stand up! Jesse was dressed in head to toe Hawks gear. For those of you who don't know-Jesse is the BIGGEST Hawks fan, so hopefully this year they will do better. Pre-season has gone well for them so this might just be the year you guys have hoped for Jesse and Brian! My fingers are crossed!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Gracie's New Hobby

Gracie loves to make music and is suprised when sound comes out of the harmonica! It took her a while to get the hang of it, but she loves to play and then dance around the room. I can' believe she is almost two! It has been fun watching her grow and I am always amazed by the things she learns. She loves labeling things with adjectives (especially colors) and has started calling me "little mommy" and Jesse "big daddy". It cracks us up! If she dosn't know the name of an object she will just say the color like "I want blue" or "Read purple book" so it is pretty easy to figure out what she is asking for.

A few weeks ago Jesse's boss gave him some tickets to the Georgia game. It was a blast- and the first one I had been too! Georgia played Western Carolina, so it wasn't that exciting but we were close to the field. The stadium was awesome! It was fun to see everyone all dressed in red and black. Going to a football game in the south is a very big deal. People dress up for the game- and I don't mean a red t-shirt. Girls wear trendy red dresses and guys even dress up (red slacks are very popular). I don't think anyone there was wearing colors other than Red black and white (except for the small section of Western Carolina fans). Georgia won, of course!

I tried to post a video and some pic's but somehow my internet connection is not working right! :( I'll try later.

Our new Home! (and other updates)

HI everyone! This past Friday we bought our very first home! Moving day was crazy and it really was a blessing that everyting fit on the 24-foot truck (which I drove from Atlanta, through Athens, and down on to Statesboro). Man, I feel like a woman!

It's great to know that we will (hopefully) live here longer than anywhere else. So far the record is just about three years (Athens, GA), although we also lived in Tuscaloosa, AL, and Statesboro during that time. We love our house and it's been fun to think of all the great deccorrating things I can finally try out! It feels great to know that we are moving up the property ladder. This house is considerably nicer and roomier than any place we've lived. We now have a record-setting three bedroom, two bathroom home with a big living room and 10-foot ceilings.

It feels great to leave those renting days behind us! The windows let in so much natural light and we finally don't have to turn the volume way up on the tv when the A/C comes on! We are also the proud new owners of a sizable 1/2 acre yard which Jesse is excited to mow (just kiddin' Jesse)! We invite anyone to come visit and we can head for a day at the beach because we are only 2 hours from Hilton Head and St. Simon Island! (two very great beaches!) And we are only an hour from Savannah, which is an awesome place to visit.

Right now we are taking our time to move our stuff in because we have been too busy with other things like going to the beach...what a bummer huh?! It has also been hard to want to do anything other than read Harry Potter, which I wasn't able to start until we got to the beach. I thought I would be able to take over the book since Jesse was taking the Bar the following Tuesday and Wednesday after the book came out - but that didn't stop Jesse! He finished the book in two days! I think he didn't want to overhear any Potter gossip during the breaks while taking the Bar. It was great fun to go the the Book 7 release party at Barnes & Noble! We dressed Gracie up as our house Elf and apperated to the festivities...hee...hee! There were an unbelievable amount of people at the bookstore that night. It was awesome to see how one book can bring together so many different types of people. J.K. Rowling is a genius! Alas, I still haven't finished the book....

The Beach

The beach was a blast! We went to St. Simons Island off the coast of Georgia. Gracie came home talking all about sand and the ocean and water. She was afraid of the waves, but we finally got her to sit down in a tide pool. The first day we arrived at the beach a nest of sea turtle eggs had hatched. I could kick myself for not bringing the camera - it was amazing to see the tiny turtles, maybe 2 1/2 inches long, work their way to the ocean. It was unforgetable how hard these little turtles had to work just to move a foot, and the ocean was a good 30 yards from the nest. And to think that once they got to the water their fight for life had just begun. It was an amazing sight!

We hope that everyone who reads this is doing well! We miss you all and are hoping to get our house together so y'all can come visit!

Update! (Finally)

Wow! So much has happened since we last blogged....I guess I'll begin at the beginning, or should I say the end? After three years of law school the end actually came! Jesse graduated from the University of Georgia School of Law this past May. There couldn't have been a more perfect day for a graduation ceremony. The weather was beautiful...sunny with a light breeze- a perfect Georgia spring day! The ceremony was held out doors in the quad in front of the Law School under the shade of the old oak trees. All the grads looked regal in their robes and hoods and caps.

Most of Jesse's family was able to attend, even his Grand Dad (who is a die-hard Georgia Tech fan) set foot on Georgia's campus. The first speaker was the class of '07 president. His speech was full of quotes from Legally Blond and Anchor Man. And people who might not have seen the latter probably thought he was full of himself because he kept saying "I'm kind of a big deal". He ended his speech with "We did it!" with the high girlie voice and all. It was great to see all the people who accomplished this great task, and very special to see Jesse walk across the stage when they called his name...three years of hard work were finally over (almost).

So congratulations to my wonderful husband for working so hard! You are amazing to me. You rock and I love you!

Happy Easter

Gracie looked precious in her fancy dress!

But that didn't stop her from climbing and exploring!

The Easter Egg hunt was a blast too!

Gracie ate her first peep!