Will I?

Will I be going out while its still really really dark on Black Friday? Possibly, can't wait to see what the deals are. I did it last year for the first time and loved it!

Was it cold? Yes.
Had I only gotten 3 hours of sleep? Yes.
Was the parking horrible? Yes.
Was the line long to get into Target? Yes.
Was the ling long to check out? Yes, wrapped through the store. Probably in line for an hour to check out.
Were there people everywhere? Yes.

Would I do it again? YES!! :)

Our lil FSU cheerleader

Amber was a FSU cheerleader for Halloween! Ricky and I wore our FSU gear too! She really understood this year! Once we were done she just kept talking about how you just open the bag and they drop the candy in! :)

31

Another year has gone by and I'm now 31. Not much different from 30. On Saturday Ricky and I did a little celebrating. Basically we got a date for the whole day. Amber went with his mom for the day and had tons of fun with her. So we were lazy around the house and then went and saw the movie Courageous.

 I recommend it to you especially if you are a parent. Keep in mind that there are some cheesy jokes but it has a great message. It is also very emotional one minuet I was crying then I was fine and laughing then it brought you right back to crying. I was worn out at the end of the movie. Its a great movie for fathers to see as well! Since it is basically about father and how they need to step up to their role. We came home after that and just were lazy and watched some football and I even took a little nap. It was strange being home and it being so calm and quiet. Then we headed to a great restaurant here in Bartlett called, The Side Porch. It is a steak place and they are delicious!

My shows

The year I have a show just about every night to watch. Every night but Tuesday night. I have never had this many. I will share with all my guilty addictions:

Comes on Monday nights and Amber loves dancing to it! 

Comes on Wednesday and Ricky and I can so relate to some of the things in this show

 considering we just went through some of it not to long ago! 

Long time standing show, its not my favorite anymore but I still watch it. 

Comes on Thursdays. 

Just got interested in this show. Love it! I watched all the past seasons on Netflix (which I love)

 This show comes on Thursdays as well. 

Just got into this show this year. Have gotten caught up on all the past seasons as well and this 

year is the last season. It will start coming on Fridays Oct. 28th, can't wait. 

It's been awhile....

Wow! It has been awhile since I have blogged! I think it's because of the previous post on here....Pinterest! It has taken up all my free time! Instead of blogging I would rather be on Pinterest!

The summer has ended and fall is upon us. I'm ready for the cooler weather! MOMS has started and Grace Playce has started. So we keep busy with those during the week. We also completed the "play fort", as Ricky has named it, and we play on that just about every day. Saturdays are consumed once again with football and this year we are going to a FSU football game. (Ricky's dream!) It will be our first official just us (Amber, Ricky and I) family vacation. We of course visited Memphis when we lived in St. Joe but that really isn't a vacation. And we have been on other vacations but it has been with family. So we are looking forward to it just being us. It will be Amber's first time on the beach, well in Florida for that matter. And we will get to see the FSU campus and go to a game. I honestly am excited about it because I want to see Ricky's reaction when he finally gets to see it all :) He will be giddy as a little girl :)

Amber is now 2 and talking up a storm. She can say some of the funniest things. I got this next idea off of Pinterest. To write down all the funny things said or done but your family and put them in a jar. Then at the end of the year get them out and read them all. I have started writing some things that Amber has said that are funny!

I leave you with some fun pictures....

 Love this picture, and I got this idea off of Pinterest, yes I know I'm obsessed :)

Pinterest

If you haven't heard about pinterest you are missing out!! I had an idea awhile back and I think I even blogged about it on here. Where I had a notebook of ideas. And in the notebook I put different categories of things like Christmas, Kids, Thanksgiving, Decorating, etc. So when I found something I liked and wanted to remember it I put it in the notebook. Well this website is just like that except its all on your computer in one place. Its like you have bulletin boards of different categories and you can "pin" what you like on them. Then its all in one place and stored on your computer instead of having all these papers. You can also view your other friends bulletin boards and see what they like and "pin" some of their stuff too! So go check it out pinterest.com

Just had to share this, I love what it says, and I found it on pinterest:

As Of Late...

~ We went on our camping trip and it was a lot of fun! Amber really enjoyed it which made Ricky and I very happy!! We did hiking or tubing everyday and I think I lost some inches in my waist because we were so active every day! Wish I could go to the Smokies everyday!

One of Ricky's favorite hikes in the Smokies is Chimney Tops. A very good work out, 

you climb to the top of a mountain! Took us 4 hours round trip! 

 The whole family that went. We had a blast! 

~Amber is starting to use her little potty. I haven't deemed us "potty training" yet. However she is really interested in it and wants to sit on it before bath time. So why would I tell her no! She has peed in it twice now and it plays music when that happens. 

~Amber also no longer has a crib. She has a convertible crib so we took one side down and put up a little rail. She LOVES it! She still "cries" for me in the mornings and waits till I get her. I'm not pushing on her getting out by herself just yet. :) If she wants she can but it's not a big deal if she doesn't. 

~We will be celebrating her 2nd birthday soon! Just family this year nothing huge. I can't believe she is 2! I know I have said it many time before but time really does fly! 

~Amber also likes to wear the arm floaties in the pool now because she realized she can "swim" on her own. :)

~I can't wait for MOMS to start back up at church and get back involved with that. 

~ So this post was mainly about Amber  as of late.... :)

RVing it

This year Ricky's family had a brilliant idea for Starlight Spectacular at Bellevue. It always is so hot and they have a RV so they thought why not bring the RV and when we are hot we can cool off in there. They called the head of security and got it cleared that we could do that. It was awesome! I'm surprised no one else has thought of it. We are spoiled now and want to do it this way in the years to come. We cooked out and all brought food and kept it all in the RV then we didn't have to deal with flies and it kept the food cool. We had a bathroom right there and was much nicer than a port a potty! And thankfully we had it during the fireworks because Amber was not a fan of them. We were able to sit inside and still see the fireworks.

Poor thing. This was inside the RV while the fireworks went off. She even covered her eyes but eventually warmed up to it a little towards the end. Reminds me of me when I was little,

I hated fireworks! 

Not all fun and games...

Sometimes being a mom is just plain hard! It's hard to raise a child the right way!! It has been one of those days with Amber today. She woke up on the wrong side of the crib and to top it off we went to a little girls birthday party today and Amber had to get a spanking while we were there!!! She took a toy and purposely hit me with it. So off to a bedroom we went to have a spanking and a talk. Before all of that, she was being very clingy and wanting me to do everything with her instead of all the little kids she had there to play with. You could tell that she is an only child and I am her "playmate." It just makes it worse when you are in a social setting and you are trying to encourage/correct/discipline your child with other eyes watching you. Can you tell we are fixing to enter the 2 year mark with her? :)

On a lighter note I bought this the other day and Amber LOVED it! I had a coupon so I decided to try it since Amber has become a picky eater lately. I thought this would be a great way to get her veggies in. I brought it with me to the pool and so for a snack this is what I gave her. All organic Ella's Kitchen food pouch:

It was neat to her because all you do it twist the top off and then she can squeeze it out into her mouth. I tasted some it was actually sweet tasting but all organic nothing added to it. I'm not going to replace this with trying to get her to eat regular veggies when we eat them but its a nice little treat to give her and she doesn't know that its good for her :) By the way, this really helped to clean her out :) So also if she is constipated I will be buying some of them!! :) TMI???? :) 

Looking forward to

The summer is upon us. We have the temperatures to prove it. My car said 101 the other day and its just the beginning of June! This summer I am looking forward to a few things. 

Visiting this place a lot! Jerry's Snowcones! 

Going camping in the Smoky Mountains at a great campsite called Elkmont. 

This is the river that is at the site and we love tubing down it.

 Hopefully being able to have fresh cut hydrangeas but mine haven't bloomed yet.

 I just planted them this year so we might have to wait till next year.

And lots and lots of swimming!! Amber LOVES it! 

Ricky bought us STOMP tickets and I'm really excited to see them! 

Awkward

So we are all still here on earth and Harold Camping was wrong. This past Saturday I think I thought about it once as an after thought considering I knew that this guy is off his rocker. He has quickly "redeemed" (if you want to call it that) himself by stating that he miscalculated and it will really be Oct. 21, 2011. I would just like him to tell me what the above bible verse means? What is sad is that he claims to be a Christian so this just gives Christians a bad wrap and yet another reason for us to be made fun of.

Swimming in Kleenex

These days a kleenex has been attached to my nose!

I think I need this at my house so I will never run out:

I have been taking Nyquil at night and then Walgreens brand of Allergy Sinus-D during the day. The good stuff, you know the kind you have to show your license to get!! However, for some reason with me that after I take Nyquil more than one or two nights it starts to make me stay awake instead of doing the opposite. So I'm going to switch and take some benedryl tonight and see if that helps. 

I also have been doing the Netti Pot which helps get that nasty stuff out! 

Just wondering what things do you take to get over a bad sinus, allergy infection? Am I missing out on some really good medicine??

PB&J or Beans and Rice....

We will have to be eating breakfast, lunch and dinner at home until next paycheck BECAUSE Ricky got us tickets to the Grizzlies Game this Friday!! Wooo Hooo! Granted we would probably have a better view at home than where our seats are, but it's all about the atmosphere! I'm excited and its a bonus as in a date night for us. We just had to pay a small arm for the tickets but we got them.

All heart grit and grind! Let's go Grizzlies!!!

Sucess!

And another camper has been born! We are so excited to announce that Amber LOVES to camp. We went camping this past weekend to Enid Lake with Ricky's family. They have a camper and we have a tent. There were a few concerns going into this of how things would work but that's why we just went for a weekend to have as a test run before we headed to the Smokies. Which we will be doing later in the summer! I'm so excited about that!! We haven't been camping in the Smokies in about 5 years!! I've have missed it!

Anyway, back to Enid. We didn't know how the sleeping would go at night. The first night we were there was rough because Amber didn't want to sleep since it was all new and exciting. We brought the pack n play but she immediately started crying when we put her in it and she saw us laying beside her. (She has never been a fan of the pack n play) Well if we were indoors somewhere I would have let her cry a little longer but when you are camping in a tent and it's 9:30 at night you don't let a baby keep crying if you can at all help it. So we took her out and laid her down with us. Well she didn't fall asleep until 11!! She kept whispering to us and being all wiggly. It was just exciting for her. Also we had a hole in our air mattress so we all couldn't get comfortable because as the air went down we had to change positions. On top of that Seminole was pacing back and forth and wouldn't settle down to sleep. We took him out twice thinking it was because he needed to go to the bathroom. Finally around 3:30 in the morning, yes Ricky and I were still awake, I said why don't we just let the air out of the mattress. At this point our feet were above our heads! :) Amber thankfully was fast asleep! We let the air out and we all finally went to sleep but "miss I love camping" woke up at 6:30 when the sun came up. So Ricky and I got a grand total of 3 hours of sleep that night. We managed Sat. and didn't really get that tired. We realized in the morning that Seminole hadn't had any water since we had arrived camping and he was just really thirsty and that's why he was pacing. By Sat. Amber took a 2 hr. nap alone in the tent and then she was asleep in my arms around the camp fire by 8:30. Praise Jesus. We also borrowed some mattress from family friends that were camping with us as well. We all sleep great Sat. night!

When we pulled into our driving Sun. evening and Amber saw where we were she immediately started crying! We couldn't figure out what was wrong. I even put her in the bath (which she LOVES bath time) and she cried all through bath time. So we concluded that she loved camping and was sad to be home :)

The Hunt

Amber went to her first Easter egg hunt today at Freeman Bartlett Park. We have had such a nice warm week but today it was FReEZinG!! On our way there my car said 48 degrees! And just two days ago I had Amber in shorts!

Amber was in the age group of 0-3 year olds. So of course the eggs weren't really hidden they just threw them all over the ground. I was explaining to her what we were going to do and she was actually like she was ready to go them, I even had to hold her back a little. Then when they said we could go I had to practically push her out there. It was cute, she didn't realize that she could actually keep the eggs. She eventually got the hang of it but by that time most of the eggs were all picked up. So this time next year hopefully she will really know what to do :)

Favorites right now...

I thought I would share some of my favorite things currently with you.....

I am currently addicted to the tv show called Army Wives. I had never seen it before and I saw it on netflix and decided to watch an episode and I was instantly hooked.

I got a Starbucks gift card from a friend! (Thanks Annie) It's loaded with 50 bucks! She got 3 free ones from her Uncle and decided to share the wealth. I have been enjoy my Caramel Frapps. from there!

 I have been drinking coke and its like I totally forgot about Cherry Coke and the other day I was at the store and saw it so my fridge is stocked with Cherry Coke now! Yum!

The people in Hobby Lobby must think I have nothing better to do than to hang out there! I have been a TON lately!

I had a Scentsy party and got lots of stuff and I'm so enjoying my scents!

Ok I'm sure I'm not the only one that Blog stalks :) There are several blogs that I love to look at and the people have no clue who I am! 

Secrets

I have some secrets to share with you. Sorry they aren't juicy ones!

I have been in a Bible Study since around Sept. I think and it has been a lot of fun. The study is about mentoring this generation through simple homemaking tips and spiritual insight. I have learned a lot and thought I would share some things with you.

Homemade Laundry Detergent
1 bar of ivory soap
1 box of borax
1 box of washing soda/baking soda/oxiclean

Grate the bar of soap up and mix the borax and washing soda all together until well blended. For a light load use 1/2 T. powder and for a heaving load use 1 T powder.

This makes a huge amount and then you don't use that much of the powder for each load so it lasts you a long time. It only costs about 10 dollars to buy all the ingredients. If you think about how much you spend on detergent now which I think I spend around 10 or more and you might only get 50 loads if that out of it. Well you will easily get twice if not more out of this recipe. Also if you have sensitive skin or a family member does this is really good. I am almost done with my detergent and can't wait to go buy all of this and start making my own!

We took a night to talk about cleaning and different cleaning products. I amazingly knew a lot of the things that were said especially when it came to cleaning with vinegar and baking soda. It's a natural way of cleaning and cheaper too. Just google the different ways of cleaning with those products and you will be amazed what all it can do.

Something I didn't know existed and I went out and bought one and I think it works great. I don't like cleaning blinds, well who does anyway?!? But there is a nifty tool that can help you with that and it goes much faster. So here it is and I own one now!

I haven't tried this yet but to get rid of rings in the toilet or just to get them clean is to use denture cleaner. And just buy the cheapest brand of it. 

If I think of other secrets I have I will share more later!! 

L-town!

This past weekend we visited some of our best friends that live in Louisville, KY, Ashley, Brandon and Aven! We had a lot of fun! We are blessed to have had them in our lives for so long. We have watched each other grow up and now we get to watch our girls grow up! Time flies!  Our girls are only about 3 weeks apart in age so it was a lot of fun to play with them, and for them to play with each other. They were great together. Aside from the few times of having to teach them to share and the mini, and I mean tiny, tiny, tiny melt downs after done the sharing, everything was good! We did notice or shall I say Ashley and I noticed that it seemed that Amber and Aven decided to trade off cranky times. One minute or hours Amber would be cranky and then she would be in a great mood and Aven would be cranky. But all in all the girls were great!! I'm glad we did it! Hopefully they are glad that we visited :) Amber even got a new toy out of it. She loved the one toy that Aven had. Ashley and I went to the Once Upon a Child there and they happened to have that same toy. I bought it and didn't show it to Amber until we got home from the trip. When I pulled it out she had her mouth wide open! It was like she was thinking, "oh my, mom stole that from Aven!"

Here is the toy that she has been playing with a lot since we got back:

Makeup Praying

Are you curious about the title? As I was putting on my makeup this morning it hit me to blog about this. No, not about putting my makeup on but what I do while putting my makeup on. I have every so often prayed while putting my makeup on. Think about it, it doesn't take rocket science to put it on. We do it just about every day without even thinking. What a waste of time! (sort of :) ) If you are like me, my mind wanders as I put it on, thinking of a million different things. If someone comes to mind I just start praying about them right then. So it hit me today, what if I make a point to pray every time I'm putting my make up on! So I have done the math. Now I'm not the greatest at math so I hope I calculated correctly. Correct me if I'm wrong but: There are 365 days in a year. Lets just say that you put it on every day. Now lets just say it takes you 10 min. to do it. Some people might not take as long, some might take longer but I'm just getting a good even figure. So you multiply 365 by 10 min. which equals 3650 min. that you use to put on makeup divide that by 60 secs. and that gives you 60.8 hours that you spend a year putting make up on. Right?! Hope I did the math right. Even if its not right you get the point. We spend A LOT of time putting makeup on. And God doesn't care when you talk to him, just talk to him! Even if you have a toddler running in and out interrupting God doesn't mind.

So the next time you do this:

Do a little of this:

Snow

I truly believe we brought the snow with us when we moved back to Memphis. Memphis has never seen this much snow during winter before! Granted its still not close to what we had in St. Joe. Which they have been hit even worse this winter, I couldn't imagine being in that with my toddler. Especially since my precious little girl doesn't really care for the snow as of now. I took her out in it when Memphis got the first big snow to come through and well she didn't want to wear her gloves and right when I put her down in it she fell and she did not like that at all!! So it took us more time to get all bundle up then it did out in the snow. Good thing she is still in diapers because I told her as I was bundling her up that if she was potty trained this would be the time that you would say I have to go potty. :)

The other night after another big storm came through we were stuck at my parents house and they have an innertube. We bundled her up and put her in it and my dad drug her around the back yard. She didn't smile but she wasn't crying either, she just sat there. So we didn't do it for long and then we came in. My dad stayed out there doing something so Amber started to cry and we thought it was because Grandpa was out there and she wanted to be with him. Well, today I went over to my moms and Amber ran to the back door and the innertube was still out there. She started squealing and we didn't know why until we looked, the innertube!! Apparently, she DID have a good time in it :)

However to say all that, the snow really CAN stay away and the Gipson family will be just fine!!! 

The Notebook

No, I'm not talking about the movie, "The Notebook". I'm talking about a notebook that I put together. It is a notebook of ideas. I have had the idea of this notebook for awhile and finally got around to putting it together. What made me think of doing this kind of notebook was having different ideas, games, learning tools, information that I would like to use or need later down the road but not at the moment. Haven't you always heard of a good idea that someone has had and think, I need to remember that for when...but then you never do! Drives me crazy! Well I have been sent in the mail by Pampers information on Potty Training even a free pull up came with. I also had a friend share some Bible verses that her toddler was learning and it went along with the ABC's. I have also gathered craft ideas and Thanksgiving info and Christmas info. However, Amber is not ready to memorize bible verses, let alone potty train. So where was I got to put all that info and also remember to use it when I wanted it?! Then it hit me to make a notebook with dividers of different topics and I could put it in there. The Idea Notebook was born. So I have a potty training section, ABC Bible Verses section, Craft section, Thanksgiving section and a Christmas section for now but I can always add to it. I didn't have any normal tabs and dividers and I really didn't want to spend the money on buying some. So I just used some manila folders and cut them in half and used the half that has the tab on it already. I have a label machine so I just made labels for a neater look. I am glad I made this and hopefully now I can remember to go to the idea notebook and use it!!

I can't wait...

...for warmer weather to be here for good. I bought these adorable flip flops for Amber tonight at Target. They are circo brand, which I love everything from them!

Amber looks so cute in them!

Before and After

A lot of new changes coming to our house this year hopefully. Some of those changes will be on all the sliding closet doors in all 3 bedroom by changing them to bifold doors. Getting the middle bedroom to look more decent and like an office instead of a huge closet that it is right now! Staining the concrete on our covered patio and changing the hideous florescent light out there to a ceiling fan. That's left on the list but we knocked out a pretty big project that was on the list this past weekend. It was repainting both bathrooms and taking the shower doors down in both bathrooms. We can not stand shower doors. They are hard to clean and just bulky. Our bathroom was painted a blue color but a light blue and it just reminded me of a hospital and the feeling was just a cold feeling. Amber's bathroom just had stark white walls and blue tile. Well we don't want to spend a whole lot of money so we kept her blue tiles and painted the walls a brown and went with a blue and brown theme.

So here are the before pictures of our bathroom:

Here are the afters of our bathroom:

I forgot to take a picture of the before for Amber's bathroom so just imagine the walls white:

This picture is during the process:

Here is an after: