Double Down!!

Eric's squadron has a band they put together about a year ago or so called Double Down and Eric has talked about wanting to play guitar for a while. Well, this gave him the perfect excuse to really practice up! The band practiced a few times all together and I got the joy of listening to Eric practice constantly. They had their first show that included a new drummer and Eric this past Friday night. He had a blast and I had fun watching him. They have a few more shows coming up where hopefully he'll get to the point that he can look up from his guitar and not be concentrating so much though :) Now to come to terms with being married to not only a fighter pilot, but a rock star too! HAHA!

Nothing like a picture mid song with the guitarist ;)

Before the show..his guitar strap matches the band perfectly! Good on ya G-Man! :)

Eric and our neighbor

Half of the band. I'm not sure Eric ever looked up from his guitar he was too busy concentrating.

After his first show! :)

Kamp Kunf

After a long few weeks, we decided that over Memorial Day weekend we'd head to Atlanta to visit Aunt Sarah and Uncle Frank. It was so nice to just sit and relax without having to worry about the hustle and bustle of day to day life. Even though it was only for 2 nights, it was a great distraction and the kids love going to visit Frankie, Micah and Baby Ruthie :) The kids enjoyed playing Wii (of course), jumping on the trampoline, staying up late and just plain hanging out!

We spent a little while walking on the river, well, Mommy and Baby Ruthie stayed on the shore while everyone else as least dipped their feet in. Nichole and all the boys had fun.

The girls had a blast having company in the bath with them. Baby Ruthie is too cute!

Daddy had me a little worried about how low that trampoline was going. All the kiddos! They got along great and they all love getting to spend time together! Thank you Kunf gang for letting us come crash for a few days and escape reality :) We love you guys and hope it's not another few months before we see you again!

Making the best with what life deals us...

I once again have been reminded just how blessed I am over the past month. It has been a very trying month for us both as an immediate family and as an extended family. We were already working through some things when I got word of my cousin's passing and I was starting to wonder how much God really thought I could handle. I kept reminding myself of Jeremiah 29:11 and telling myself that God has a reason for us going through everything. I may not understand it now and over the past few days even though things have settled down, I still try find myself trying to figure it all out. I'm not sure I ever will, but I know that God is in control and I need to be at peace with that. I have a family that loves me and I have a family that I love. Distance is never an excuse and while family members or loved ones may let you down, that's no excuse not to continue loving them and wanting the best for them. There is always someone you can find with a heartache worse than yours. So as a favorite quote of mine says "Dance like no one is watching, love like you'll never be hurt, sing like no one is listening and live like it's Heaven on Earth".

G-Man with two of his favorite girls. Being uncle to quite a few girls, having 2 daughters and 2 granddaughters.. he's got a lot of favorite girls! :)

The "Hornsby Family" at breakfast one morning.

Those left behind... All the cousins on the Hornsby side, minus Dani :(

The older generations of cousins, again, minus Dani :(

May: Dance/Friends, Mom's Muffins, Mother's Day, end of preschool, etc

Ok, so I got ahead on work and have a few minutes to update a few things on here. May found us saying goodbye to friends (and a family member), enjoying Mom's Muffins at Nichole's school, ending Nichole's preschool days and many other things that will be blogged about separately. To start the month, we headed Mommy and Nichole had a mother/daughter day while we spent the afternoon with our best friends. Nichole and Kaity were in class together this past year and Kaity's Mommy and I were great friends, except on the crud table ;) We were sad to hear that Kaity's Daddy would be spending a year in Korea, thus taking Kaitlyn and her Mommy (ok and lil man Ryan too) away from us at the school year's end. Nichole had a blast watching Kaity's dance recital and lucky for me, never really said anything about dying to be up on stage herself! (whew!) I'm just a sports girl, not so much into the dance and cheerleading bit :) Anyway, we got to spend the afternoon watching, having slumber parties and got to celebrate Kaity's birthday (a little early) with her before she left town. We miss you Kaity Mac!

Nichole had gotten a shot one day to update her shots at the doctor and while I got the child (Em) who as long as I talked to her while they were doing her shots, Daddy got to go in with Nichole who is most definitely her mother's daughter and he had to promise lots of things, one being that Mommy would straighten her hair the next day. Thanks Daddy! Anyway, this was Mom's Muffins at Nichole's school where I learned that she likes it when Mommy wears dresses. I think she has that backwards and is really talking about herself since I honestly can't remember the last time Nichole wore shorts! It was just before Mom's Muffins that I found out I would be going home to FL to say goodbye to my little cousin Danielle, but more on that again in another blog.

Mother's Day 2009 before church.

Nichole's "end of the year party" for preschool was at Swan Lake. All these pictures were "pre duck attack". Swan Lake is evil if you ask me :) This is another one of Nichole's best friends named Scott. We're glad that even though they found out Scott's Daddy will also be going to Korea, we think they've decided to stay here and we are super excited about that. Nichole would be a mess losing 2 best friends in such a short time! And so would Mommy!

Nichole with a few of her classmates, Jordan and Hayden.

Playing on the playground at Swan Lake

Colee was always excited when she would get to school and see Mrs. Shannon, her teacher. This was the night of "graduation" and to this day, Nichole talks about wanting to go back and see Mrs. Shannon. We LOVED Mrs. Shannon. She was an AWESOME preschool teacher!

Sisterly love on Nichole's last day in her preschool

8 year anniversary!!

So I'll backdate this to 4 June. 8 years ago was one of the happiest days of my life. Thus began our journey together and here we are 8 years later with two beautiful baby girls and our 4 legged wedding present to each other :) It was a small and intimate ceremony with like 35 people to include the wedding party, but I wouldn't change a thing about the day, well except to have had Grandma Hornsby there in person! Thanks to all those who shared in the day with us and those who later celebrated with us at our receptions at home in FL. Thank you to those who have been there for us the past 8 years as well as life has brought us across many different states and brought us into parenthood. I can't wait to spend the next 72 years with my hubby! Ok, so maybe not 72 b/c we'd be REALLY old by then. Either way, I love my 'True Companion'.

One of my favorite all time pictures of my baby sister, Kylie from our wedding day. Isn't she just too cute?:) Reminds me of Nichole and Emily.

The priest, Father McGee who flew out to Colorado Springs from Florida to marry us and he later baptized Nichole. Unfortunately, he passed away while Eric was deployed the first time before he could baptize Emily:( We were so grateful for him coming out to marry us though. He has wise words for us, and our parents;)

Father/Daughter dance to "She Walks with Me" by Michael W Smith

My first pic with "my two dads" :) Love these men!

Update?

Ok, be prepared. Sit back, grab a cup of coffee or whatever it is you think you'll need to make it through my novel of an update. My guess is most of you, if there are more than like 4 that look at this, are either on Facebook and have seen all the recent pictures of my two precious angels (I only call them that b/c they are now sleeping soundly:)) or are family and therefore, you know what's going on in our lives. Or maybe you don't. But either way, I can only take so much time to recap the last few months and add so many pictures so I'll do my best. Be sure to see my post below this one though so you don't miss out on the most recent events.

I'm just going to skip over Epcot, b/c let's be real here, the two princesses we took could have cared less about Epcot once the Princess Breakfast was over.

There's your one picture from Epcot. Others should be on the link (at the top right side of the main page) you are supposed to click on to see the pictures galore, but I have no idea at this point if they really are. If someone finds they aren't and wants to point that out to me, more power to you.

Somewhere in there, we made a trip back home to see G-Man and Gigi, guess it was the beginning of February which is well before Disney. Hmm... I'm way behind. Anyway, G-Man decided to walk in a 5K for Sheridan House Ministries and we wanted to show our support, so while we would have liked to surprise him, we went ahead and let him know to add us to his list of supporters that we would be walking with him. It was a quick weekend but the girls were great and had a blast hanging out!




Next, Aunt Leah Peah made a trip back to visit us and watch the girls for a much needed Mommy/Daddy get away! The girls always love it when Aunt Leah visits even though they generally know that means Mommy won't be home. Eric had already been TDY, so I decided to join him and got to see some good friends of ours while we were there. Too bad their baby spit up all over me. Doesn't she know I'm not a baby person?! HA, right. Thanks Gwen! I'll never forget being spit up on in Benihana:) You get two pictures of us from Vegas, b/c of course, what's a group of pictures without Eric sticking out his tongue?? I love this man! :) (And quite honestly, I love how my arms look buff, so why not show 2 pictures of it right? Just wish they were still that buff. In time.)


Apparently nothing fun happened in March, b/c I don't seem to have any pictures from that month worthy of making it on here. (Phew!) April, however, now that's a different story and I'm sure those aren't on that pictures galore, but one day, again, if someone mentions it to me and they haven't already seen them on Facebook, I'll get them on there. April brought a girls weekend for Mommy was super excited about. I was going with about 10 other gals from both here in town and other AF friends that came back to run the Cooper River Bridge Run.
It was a 10K and oh my word, was I ever scared. I had never run more than a 5K and I certainly wasn't training for it, but hey, it was really just to get a weekend away with some of my best friends! I ended up surprising myself and feeling pretty accomplished due to running it in 1:11:44! For not training for something like this, I was proud of myself and I can't wait to do it again next year. It was so cool to be running over the bridge even though I was running "by myself" with 30,000 of my closest friends as G-Man likes to always call them. Anyway, the girl time was awesome and I had a blast hanging with some great gals, even sitting on the floor in the produce section of Food Lion with our receipt for the bananas we purchased to eat before the race. And by the way, Amy's not here. Haha.


After running the race of my life, to date, we headed home for some much needed "leave" for Eric. He hadn't been home to FL since we moved to SC which was surprising considering we had said how great this assignment would be and we mentioned how we could even make trips home for long weekends. Ha, how wrong we were! Not with the schedule here! Anyway, we started the trip stopping by to see Daddy's side of the family and enjoyed hanging out with everyone. The girls had a blast dying Easter eggs for the first time ever, yea I'm a lame mom b/c I still wasn't' the one who initiated that event! :) Anywho, here is the good ol family picture from before Easter mass. I'm blessed to have girls that usually don't mind posing for the camera and a husband who plays the game for me :)
The girls also had fun playing around in the pool and Daddy was super excited to get them their first snorkel and mask set each. It now transfers from their pool at home to the bathtub each night.

After spending some time with Daddy's side of the family, we headed a little more south to see Mommy's side of the family and spend a few days with them. We of course got to see all the wildlife that runs around G-Man and Gigi's house yet again to include the millions of baby frogs. Talk about gross! Nichole didn't think so since she wanted to catch as many of them as she could and put them in her "Dollar Store" bug carrier thing. Gag me. In the pic below, all those things that look like little stones, yea, those would be baby frogs. Ugh, just thinking about it gets me all creeped out. Yuck. Moving along...

Daddy then took the girls and headed back to visit with Giga, Nana and Nana Alice some more while I stayed back and hung out with my family some more. We had my little cousin Lindsey's sweet 16 birthday party to attend and while it would have been fun to have Eric and the girls there, we needed the air conditioning in the car to be fixed more.

Kel, it's really too bad your eyes were closed for this one, but hey, that's you, the hot mess:)
Two of my favorite younger sibs! Well, one is my sib, the other is the birthday girl and my little cousin:)

Lindsey apparently wanted nothing more than a kitten for her birthday and Kelly made it happen! What a great big sister! Love you all!

This all brings us to the past few weeks. We've been back from vacation and life is busy as usual. We got a new car... er, mini van, so we have joined the mini van club that all my cool friends are in and don't tell Eric I said this, but he secretly likes it. I won't say "loves" it, b/c that'd just be a little over the top, but he likes how roomy it is. And no, we're not having more kids, but the extra room is sure still nice especially since I tend to find myself with at least one or two extra kids on a daily basis. It's all good.

And the final thing to update on... whew, I'm tired, are you? Nichole no longer has training wheels. Yea, it took us a while, she is our less daring child, whereas Emily, she got herself a "big girl bike" and wanted the training wheels off before she even got on the thing! Fear not, we are having her ride around with the training wheels for a bit, quite possibly b/c we're lazy, but my guess is by the end of the summer, neither one will have them.

Ok, well that brings us to my most recent post below this. I will be traveling home on Monday for my little cousin's funeral. Please pray for our family through this time that even though we don't know the reason behind it, God has plans.

See you in July or August;) School starts in August, maybe that will be my next post :)

RIP Dani

I realize I am way behind on posts and I have no excuse other than my life is completely fast paced and I live hour by hour lately. So, one day, you'll eventually see the pics from our last day at Disney and then maybe even an update or two since then, considering that was almost 3 months ago! My, how time does fly.

On a sadder note, my younger cousin Danielle passed away this past week. It's been tough on the family and I will travel home for a quick trip to be at the service and be with family, but will sadly have to leave Eric and the girls behind due to some things going on here in SC. This is the Dani I love and remember. These few pics were taken when we were in New Hampshire at Alton Bay when Nichole was about 8 months old back in July of 2004. Unfortunately, our lives have taken us in different directions the past few years, but that doesn't mean I won't miss her. I love you Dani and will see you again one day. Say hello to Grandma Hornsby for me!

This is the Danielle I will miss.

RIP Dani

Nov 12, 1983-May 8, 2009

It's a Hard Knock Life, so they think

So apparently the girls think they lead a tough life in our house. If only they knew how many other kids had lists of chores, bathroom toilets to scrub, baseboards to clean, etc :) Ignore that they don't really know the words to the song. It's still humorous.

I promise I'll post the last day from Epcot, Mommy and Daddy's time in Vegas and other recent happenings soon.

Disney Memories

Ok, so here are just a few things I want to make sure we remember from this trip and then I'll go and backdate/backtrack on the rest of our trip. Just as I thought though, I can't remember them all, so I'll have to add as I remember them.

Emily upon returning: "Mommy, why did we have to come back home?" "Well, Daddy has to go to work, Colee has to go to school and Aspen would miss us". "Why won't some hotels just let us bring Aspen with us, then we could have stayed".

Nichole after asking if she could go inside Cinderella's castle and Daddy told her she couldn't go upstairs in it. "Mommy, why does Tinkerbell live in the attic of the castle? I want to go visit her".

Nichole: "My favorite part of the trip was seeing the princesses, even Mulan".

Emily's infamous line: "I'm tired of walking. Daddy, I want a neck ride".


Also, be sure to check out all those extra pictures. There are a TON on there I didn't add to the posts here. I just tried to get the highlight pictures!

Princesses galore!

Friday afternoon, we took the girls over to the Bibbidi Boddidi Boutique in Cinderella's castle where they do your hair and makeup depending on what option you choose. We just did the hair and make up and brought the girls their own princess dresses. Upon arrival, they give you a brochure on what type of hairstyles they offer. My only hope is that Emily's choice is not a prediction of what's to come in the teen years:) We could have some crazy times ahead of us:) The girls sat with G-Man and picked out their hairstyles.

Nichole showing off her face jewelry.

Not sure what got into Emily and wanting that hair style! It was rockin' that's for sure! However, she didn't want to put it back on the next morning. She did ask about it once we were home though!

Nichole and one of her biggest fans...

Checking herself out in the mirror

Emily looks like some Indian war chief or something :)

The girls and G-Man!

Emily and her favorite spot of the week... on Daddy's shoulders!

Once we had hair and makeup done, it was time to go meet all the princesses. Sleeping Beauty was first.

Cinderella was next.

Belle was a favorite.

The girls kept trying to understand how Ariel was on land when she has a mermaid tail.

The girls enjoyed getting to have their hair done and meet all the princesses. It was certainly a day to remember!