Thanksgiving 08 in Georgia

This is a little late, I know. But, here are some pictures from our trip to Georgia for Thanksgiving. We had a blast...but Parker REALLY had a blast! He is so spoiled everytime he goes there. I never heard him whine one time. Not sure if that is a good thing or bad thing. :) Anyways, our trip in a nutshell: The flight there was stressful at first, but the airline ended up bumping us up to first class...which was wonderful I might add. We constantly entertained Parker but he did good. Papa Parker and Papa Mills picked us up at the airport which is about 1 hour and a half from Irwinton. That was fun! We all took naps on the way there. We went straight to Maebobs...which was DELICIOUS! The next day we piled into Papas new camper(it is like a miniature house...it sleeps 8 people!!!) and headed an hour away to let the kids play at Monkey Joes. Monkey Joes has inflatables everywhere. Parker was in HEAVEN! Derek, had to go into all of the inflatables with him...but it was fun. We then headed to Cracker Barrell for lunch with the fam and then back home. Wed night we had Thanksgiving at Papa's house...and Thursday at Aunt Paula's house. Parker got some new toys and got to play with dogs. Plus, Mama Lynn and Papa K had turned a room into a playroom at their house. So, Parker had his very own playroom that he played with all the "girls" in. The "girls" are Derek's cousins. You can tell Parker doesn't play with girls very often since he calls them the "girls". Ha ha ha! Here are some pics!
BTW, in case you were wondering...flight on the way back was NOT so great. Parker had a breakdown right before he finally fell asleep. Good news...he fell asleep for about 1 hour and a half of the flight. Whew! Oh well...what are you going to do? We had one tired, spoiled little boy on our hands.


Parker and Aunt Lindsey

Happy Thanksgiving from The Mills!


Check out Parker's new friend


Papa K and Parker. Those of you who don't know...when Parker is sleepy this is how he is...finger in mouth. So sweet!


Monkey Joes



Checking out Britton's sucker. Oh, he wanted it so bad!!!

Here is what I am up against

Hello...today will be a typed post only and no pictures. Sorry!! You can skip if you want. Anyways...here is what I am up against right now: a BIG belly to bend over several times a day to put shoes on my son and me, to pick up toys and other several items on the floor, to scrub a bathtime, dust a coffee table, and to pick up a toddler. Some of those things are just not getting done because my belly is just too much of an obstacle to get past. I am hoping to get a pedicure before I have this baby so that I don't have to get over the obstacle of not breathing while trying to reach my toe nails. :)
I am also up against moving(to another home) with a big belly and toddler. First of all, for those of you who don't know God completely shut the door on the house we were going to buy. Derek and I took the correct steps in the process of purchasing the house but the whole way we prayed that if this was not right for us we wanted God to shut it down and He did! So, although we really thought we were supposed to buy a house we are currently looking for a rental house. I am ok with that. I wouldn't have been 2 months ago, but I really believe God is taking care of us. And, when it is all said and done, we will love where we live and have to little boys to love on all the time. :) We don't know yet where we will be living(which is SO hard for a 8 month pregnant lady). All we know is that we have to be out of here by Jan. 26th. Wow! That is soon not to mention VERY close to my due date.
On a different note...my child is hilarious right now. He is so cute with his bowl cut and perfectly straight, highlighted looking hair. He is a mixture of Derek and I. He is laid back and easy like Derek(besides his random toddler moments which have been happening more often lately)but he is chatty and a people person like me. He now picks up the wooden spoon and says "spanking". Ha...yeah..the Christmas tree caused the wooden spoon to reappear. :) You all know he sleeps in a big boy bed now. Well...he has been doing great with it. But what is so funny is that if he wakes up in the middle of the night(which is not all the time) OR early in the morning before it is time for him to officially get up he runs to the door fussing. When I go in there(which I need to stop doing) he chuckles and RUNS to the rocking chair for me to rock him. What is so funny is that I don't rock Parker to sleep and I don't rock him every day or every other day. So, I have NO idea what has made him get in this deal about wanting me to rock him. The only time I have ever rocked Parker is if he is up in the middle of the night because I am EXHAUSTED and that chair is unbelievably comforatble. Even Derek tried to get some sweet rocking time in with Parker last night before bed and Parker got down. I don't know...kids are so funny. I actually enjoy it for right now. I guess knowing that the rocking chair is about to be in Micah's room makes me enjoy every minute of it with Parker for now.
Alrighty, back to figuring out how the heck I am going to get everything done that needs to get done before we move. The good thing is, we own a moving company. If all else fails, my husband can completely pack us! :)

ROLL TIDE ROLL!!!

Saturday night before Derek, Parker, and I headed to GA for Thanksgiving on Monday my parents came into town bearing these wonderful gifts. Alabama t-shirts for all the boys. How fitting considering Alabama beat the mess out of Auburn the next weekend. Ha ha! Anyways, Ashley got confused and put her boys in their t-shirts on Friday instead of Sat. So, not all of them are wearing the t-shirts from my parents. And I think that Lawson's doesn't fit yet. But, they are sporting the shirts or the colors.
I might have gotten a little too excited about the shirt, since on Monday I decided to put it on Parker to fly to GA in. Well...my goodness...you would have thought I put him in a devil shirt or something!!! Everyone commented on it. I don't think they would have said one word if he had a GA shirt on. :) BTW, to show support for his dad's team...he does have a Georgia football shirt that he wears often.

Here is Mama Don and Papa with all their boys. BTW, I am due in Feb. with Micah...so there will be 8 in the mix next year. BUT, HOPEFULLY, there will be 8 boys and 1 little girl, because Kimberly is pregnant!!! She is due this summer. Either way 8 boys and 1 girl...or 9 boys...it will be perfect!!!


(L-R) Gray, Parker, Jax, Sam, Blake, Lawson, and Tyler
How cute are these boys? Tyler looks so much like a teenager...it makes me sad. But, he is so handsome, isn't he??

His very own...big boy bed!

Parker is officially sleeping(naps and nightime) in his big boy bed!! Derek and I are so proud of him! I can't say it was easy...but I think that compared to what some parent's deal with...it was easy. If you know me, you know that I contemplate things for a long time. I think and think and think about a plan WAY before putting it into action. I have been thinking about how we should go about this for a while now. Some of you might think that Parker is too young(19 months old) to transition to a big boy bed right now. And I have taken that into consideration...but I have also taken into consideration that another crib will cost LOTS of money and we are not up for that if we don't have to be. So, Saturday night we decided to try it out. We put a baby gate on his door and put him in his bed. And after a little while of getting down and roaming the room he climbed into his bed and went to sleep. If Parker was 24 months+ we would get onto him for getting down and playing. BUT he is not...and we think he is too young to get onto him for something he can't quite understand yet.
Naps were a little harder but yesterday he slept for an hour and a half during naptime!! Yay! It is getting better and better. He is falling back into his normal schedule and is way happier during the day now that he is getting more sleep at night. I feel so much better knowing that with the move and all Parker has already transitioned. It is one less thing I have to worry about. It is definitely better than training him while I am nine months preggo!!! Yay for Parker...yay for God's help...yay for consistency(as hard as it may be...it ALWAYS works!).



Here is his bed and new bedding. I also have striped sheets in the same colors. He now has bed rails up so he won't fall off...AND we lowered the mattress. He looks so tiny in this big bed!!!

Not so perfect weather...for me at least.

So, no pictures here, but just had to tell you that right now I am wearing a spaghetti strap maternity shirt and shorts!!! And last night a cold front came through Austin...so it is chilly(50s) outside. BUT I am SO HOT! Oh my word!!!! Austin's weather is warm majority of the time...and I think that next year I will love it, but right now I am ready for it to get cold because even when it is 70 degrees it feels like 90 to me. I did not have this problem when I was preggo with Parker. But, my goodness...it is miserable! Not so perfect weather right now for me...but for everyone else PERFECT! :)

He's a mess!

He's a mess...that is all I have to say. :)

We have a basket at the top of the stairs with all of our shoes in it. Well...Parker has decided that it is so fun to throw all the shoes and other various items down the stairs...as you can see.

Here I am taking the picture from the bottom of the stairs. Every time I threw a shoe or various item up the stairs...guess who threw it back down? Oh, and laughed. Yay! That would be my buddy Parker! So, Derek came home to lots of shoes on the stairs and has quite a few times since then.

I bought Parker some crayons just to see if he would like them. He liked them for a little while. But, Parker likes to carry things around with him and will get attached to one item. I could not have a crayon being the item of the day...so he was not happy when I took them away. We will get them out again soon though.

REALLY lovin him some PB and J that day. (Excuse the bib that is too small for him)

This is Parker majority of the time in his highchair. I know, I know, it is not safe. But, this highchair was Derek's grandfather's highchair and I LOVE it! BUT, it has no strap. I bought a strap and it worked for a little while...not anymore though. Parker can get out of it. We might be putting Parker in his other highchair for a little while. But, you will see this wooden highchair when Micah is ready for it. I love, love, love it!

He looked like a baby doll this day! He was so stinkin cute for church I had to take a picture. No one dresses their kids like this here. Oh well...I don't care!

Laughing hard!

Our New House

Drum roll please...Derek and I just got a house! Can I please tell you that a month ago I was hopeless on buying a home. But, after God changed mine and Derek's heart and gave us peace about buying we began our search all over again. This time, we were in complete agreement that we just didn't feel peace about renting but we felt a crazy amount of peace to buy. Although we had NO idea how that would happen on many spectrums we just couldn't shake the feeling God was giving us in our hearts. My real estate agent takes me to a house that I requested to go see and I just didn't love it...or even like enough to buy. Maybe to rent...but not to buy. She then takes me to a few more in the neighborhood that were quite a bit out of our price range. I told her ahead of time that I didn't know if I wanted to see them because I knew I would love them(of course they were like $20,000-$40,000 over our price range). So, long story short, one of the houses she showed us happened to be a foreclosure!!! I got so excited knowing that foreclosure's you could make a much lower offer and get them. But, we had to be patient. Thank goodness we were because by the time God opened the door for us to make an offer they dropped the price by $20,000!!!! God is so faithful! He really is!! This house has four bedrooms, 2 and 1/2 baths. It is a two story. It has a fenced in backyard(PTL!!!) and a 2 car garage. I cannot wait to get in there and paint and make it my own. It is clean and has been freshly painted one color. It has a big, open kitchen with an island and bay window for my kitchen table. And a dining room. It is PERFECT!!! Especially for our family. We are closing Dec. 15th so we will be in before Christmas. Yay! Although I will be almost 9 months pregnant and feeling the need to paint this house and have it perfect I don't care. I am just so thankful to God that He got us this house. So, here is the picture of the front and when we paint and move in I will post pictures of the inside. Derek cannot wait to get the mortgage part over with because it is a pain. But it will be here before you know it!

Peanut Butter Banana MUSTARD Sandwich...MMMM...GOOD!

Well...today I have a story. No pictures. Today for lunch I gave Parker a PB Banana Sandwich AND cheetos. Parker LOVES cheetos and they are treat around here. I don't buy them often. Well, I sat down with my sandwich and cheetos to eat lunch next to him. He kept eyeing my plate(which happens often around here). I finally figured out that he wanted some of the mustard that I had on the side of my plate. I was dipping my cheetos in it. Some of y'all might think that is gross, but I love it. So, Daring me, squirted a little bit of mustard on his plate. A little dab here and there turned into dipping his SANDWICH in the mustard. I kept telling him "yucky", and he would say "yucky" and then eat it. Ha ha! He didn't care! Mustard was everywhere but he loved every bit of it.
Parker talks like crazy! He also has decided to pitch fits all the time when he doesn't get his way. Yay...that is NO fun at all! Derek and I have decided that he gets in trouble if he pitches these fits because he can't go on thinking it is ok. Some people think it is better to ignore...I ignore AFTER he gets a spanking for it. It isn't easy! But he gets the picture. He surprises me with phrases that he says. For instance, yesterday I yelled back to our friend Paige "call us" and Parker said "call us". He plays with everything that is not a toy and is now tall enough to climb on anything. Ugh!! I am SO ready to move because then things won't seem all in one place. Plus, we really need a backyard to open up the back door and let him go play! He loves outside and is doing really well with minding me outside. Don't get me wrong...I keep my eye on him outside. He has cut four teeth recently and I am just waiting on the eye teeth up top and bottom to cut through. You can see them...they just haven't made there way in yet.
Ok this is LONG! No more updating. Derek and I just got new cell phones. Both of them have internet access which actually keeps both of us from being on the internet as often. One reason why I haven't updated in a while. The other could be because I wait and wait and wait until I have fifty pictures and then update! Ha! We are going to GA in two weeks for Thanksgiving. I am sure I will have some pictures after that. Peace! (Parker says peace...when we tell someone bye)

Baby Micah

So, yesterday I went for my 24 week sonogram. Technically, I was 24 weeks and 5 days. :) It is a very detailed sonogram where they look at EVERYTHING. His chambers of his heart, his brain, his bladder, etc. I even saw his tongue moving!! I don't remember this with Parker. He looked so sweet! His cheeks looked plump and he looked like he had full lips(Parker had full lips). They said he was perfect! I was a little concerned that he might be big because of some symptoms I have been having. Some things I am experiencing now I didn't experience until later in my pregnancy with Parker. Anyways, he is not big. He is in the 55 percentile which is exactly where he should be with weight. He weighed a little over 1 lb. So, thats about it. Parker is cutting a lot of teeth right now. He is gums look horrible and he is soooo sad lately. I feel so bad for him...but I am ready for him to get through this. Poor little guy! Here are some pics of Micah.

You will have to click on this to see it good. The top left picture is a picture of his foot...and I think his bottom. Ha! The one to the right of that one is him looking right at you. You can see his eyes. And his arm is over his head.
The two on the bottom are profile pics. Isn't he so handsome already?!

LOTs of Pictures!

Ok, so if you don't have some time...you might want to come back to my blog. Because I posted a TON of pictures. Sorry for the overload...I just had so much to post. We have been busy with seeing so many good friends in the last couple of weeks that I have not been able to post. So...here is what has been going on lately. Good luck getting through all of it. Ha!

This is a new outfit I got for Parker from Gymboree. I actually was able to get 4 outfits for him from Gymboree for half off. It was great deal and I am so excited! I love this outfit on him.

Last night we had dinner at Wade and Kimberly's house. We didn't bring PJs for Parker but we bathed him there. It was chilly outside so we put Parker in my sweatshirt to wear on the walk home. ha! He was frustrated when he got here because he got stuck. ha ha

The Davis Wedding

Like I said before, we just got back from a wedding in Atlanta, GA. This is the first time we have left Parker over night. I know some of you think that is crazy, but we are not big travelers. So, there has never been a reason to leave him overnight until now. I just kept telling myself that he was much happier here with Aunt Ashley, Uncle Jeremy, and his cousins. And I truely think he was. Our weekend was not kid friendly at all. I have lots of pictures below...so this will be short. We stayed up WAY too late both nights...but had a blast! Got lots of friend time in and it was wonderful. I will have to say though, on the way back to B'ham I told Derek that although I had so much fun, I would not trade where I am now for anything. Not even for college days. Those days were so fun and we have great friends from those times. But we love where we are now. We love, love, love having a little boy and cannot wait to have another one. God is so wonderful and has blessed us so much!

Two of Derek's best friends and roomates in college. Jake, Derek, and Jonny.

Me and Derek at the reception.

Jonny and Chiara. Matt and Allyson. Adam and Shawn. Chris Camp. Turp and Monica.

All of Chi and the new bride.

Chi singing.

Sarah and Jake

Derek and Chris(the groom)

Jeremiah Strong. My best friend whom I have known since I was 4, little boy. So CUTE!

Lisa and Adam. Lisa is sad because Adam is not her husband. John was nowhere to be found. :(

Lindsey and Jonas...soon to be married!

Shawn and Adam.

Ashley and Cole Strong.

Erica and Shawn.

Sweet home Alabama

This past weekend Derek and I flew to Birmingham, then headed to Atlanta, GA for a wedding. Derek was in one of our good friend's, Chris Davis, wedding. We flew into Birmingham at 9:00pm and still managed to hit up one of our favorite resturaunts. THEN we spent the next morning with my parents and had lunch at another one of our favorite places to eat in B'ham. We went to Atlanta that day(next post will be those pictures). We came back early Sunday morning and headed straight to Church of the Highlands and saw lots of our good friends there. We were also able to visit with our good friends, Jessica and Jordan Huffstetler, right before we flew back to Austin. They just had their first baby girl, Evelyn, in August and I couldn't wait to meet her. She is PRECIOUS and so beautiful! These are pictures from being in B'ham.

Sweet Smile

Derek had her smiling SO big! Jessica even busted out the video camera because she was smiling so big.

Hilarious! I love that face and her sweet little bloomers.

Jessica, Jordan, and Evelyn. Good looking family!

Derek and Evelyn

Jessica, Me, and Evelyn. In case you were wondering...I look exhausted because I was exhausted. :)

Oh! I LOVE this picture...not because of me, because my mom looks AMAZING...doesn't she?! I love her hair! It came back curly and I think she should keep it short. She looks so great, it makes me so jealous!! Ha ha!

Lovin is in the Air

Parker is so sweet these days. He will just love on Derek and I all the time.

Kisses for Mama

Kisses for Daddy(gotta love the open mouth kisses!!)

This is how Derek feeds him breakfast, lunch, or dinner when I am not in charge. On the floor with a towel. I am so not surprised!!

Sweet Boy!