Oh what a glorious day!

You may think that the title of this post is referring to the resurrection of our Lord and Savior... well you would be wrong (although that was certainly a glorious day as well). But I'm talking about winning because if I finish this entry sometime today and post it, I will have officially beaten Angie on getting the Easter pics up. I never thought this day would arrive. Oh sweet, sweet victory. Wow. I'm almost speechless at the idea. There are so many people who have helped me to get here and who I must thank.. My mom for always believing in me and faithfully pointing out all the times Angie updated her blog when I didn't... Aunt Jacque for doing the same thing on a regular basis... Angie for providing some stiff competition (not that it's a contest or anything but, ahem, I WIN!!)... you have all played a big part in this and I wouldn't be here blogging today without you.

Now that I've gloated, on to the whole reason for this post - Easter! We had a great Easter weekend. It was our first official holiday since we moved back and I have to admit, I have missed our large family gatherings with crazy uncles (I'm talking to you Uncle Dennis aka Uncle Wackabilly!) and lots of children running around. On Saturday we went out to Henscratch Farms - they had an Easter thingamabob going on complete with an Easter bunny (who was, quite frankly, a little frightening) and lots of chickens to feed. Here are some pics...

Blayne and the (scary) Easter Bunny

Sean made some new friends!
The King of the Roost
And here's Blayne eating the chicken's Cheerios... off the ground... oh come on, a little dirt never hurt anyone!!

Blayne and Sean on a tractor ride

Then on Easter Sunday we went to church (the 9am service thank you very much!) and then headed over to Mom and Dad's (aka MeeMaw and PopPop's) house for a family Easter party.

Awww, the happy Humphrey family! Aren't we just so cute?!?Blayne blowing bubbles (say that 5 times fast)
Ok for reals, this is practically a National Geographic picture. I should enter it in a contest! Look at that cute little frog!! I got his little eyes and his weird fingers... I should have been a photographer, not a scientist. =)
Jon and his kiddies (#2 and #3 anyways)
Aunt Becky reading a book to the always adorable Rylee Jane
The Great Easter Egg Hunt
Swimming in the pool with Madison

Whew, I'm done and posting it and this makes it official. I'm the first cousin to post Easter Pics!! Yay!! =)

Beach Pics!

So I totally crashed Erica's par-tay at the Island last week. To be clear, she did invite me for a three day, two night stay. But then I just couldn't leave and ended up staying the whole week. Blayne and I had a blast though - I just love that place!! We played on the beach (Blayne got in the water but I stayed far away - it was COLD!), took naps on the beach, went for walks, watched the sunset, went for golf cart rides... it was a great week! A vacation when I wasn't expecting it. So thank you Erica for letting me stay. And thanks Aunt Jacque for having such an awesome beach house and sharing it with me and Blayne!! Although I should probably tell you that according to Blayne, it's "Carrie's House." We went to visit her there a month or so ago, just for the day but I guess it stuck in his head that it's her house. So every time we left, he would say, "Bye Carrie's house! See you later!" And then when he'd had enough of the beach he would tell me he wanted to go back to Carrie's house. =) Anyhoo, here are some pics of our week.. the first couple of days Kerri and her kiddos and Gail and her kiddos were there too. The boys had a blast playing together! And us girls had a pretty good time too... Erica makes a mean margarita!! Then after they left, Caitlin and Jen came down and spent a couple of days. All in all, I had the best week - I got to know Erica better, got to spend some time with new friends, saw my awesome cuz Caitlin, drank margaritas, sat on the beach... But mostly I just chilled with my boy and enjoyed every second.


He totally fell asleep on me!! How cute is that?!?!?
Leaving the island... =(Although Blayne wasn't too sad because Emmett let him drive the boat!!

Fun Stuff

So Blayne and I have been having a blast since we moved down here! Here are a few of the things we've done...

We went to Henscratch Winery to feed the chickens and pick some strawberries. We ended up having to pick tomatoes and peppers instead cause the strawberries got messed up by the cold snap (and by cold snap I mean a few nights of 40ish degree weather) but that was fine cause I made some salsa with my fresh veggies which turned out to be really stinking good. =) But I digress... here are some pics!

Picking tomatoes... and then throwing them at the chickens. In his defense, I think he was trying to feed the chickens.Seriously, look at this guy!! His "hair" is ridiculous. All the other chickens probably make fun of him. Or her. That 'do is out of control.

We also went out to the Hammock one day with Kerri and Brody (Blayne calls him Bro-day with a HUGE southern accent!) and then went on the catwalk. It was the first time in a long time that I have actually seen any animals out there - have a look!

Blayne on the playgroundCrikey, he's a monster!! Easily 8 ft. Blayne likes this pic because the gator has a leaf on it's nose and that just cracks him up.
Kurckles too!! Well just the one turtle actually but there was another one swimming around in the water close by.
And this beast - we were leaving, driving down the main road and he just ran across the road right in front of the truck in front of me! And then stopped and just hung out in the bushes. Yeesh. I was glad to be surrounded by two tons of steel - imagine riding your bike past that thing! I thought about stopping to tell the rangers that there was a gator just off the road but then imagined the looks on their faces... "Oh reeeeeaaaaaaallly. An alligator huh? In the swamp?? Unheard of. We'll get right on that." so I just drove on home instead. =)

Finally!

Gasp! Blink, blink, blink. No, your eyes are not deceiving you. Pick yourself up off the floor, I've updated my blog. I will not bore you with the trivial details about WHY I haven't blogged in forever (since Nov 13th to be exact) but rest assured I have better excuses than "I forgot" or "I didn't have time." Oh wait, no I don't..... =) Anyhoo, I was recently threatened (Hi Aunt Jac!) and plus I have to hear about Angie's awesome blog all the time (it is pretty awesome btw) so I decided it was about time. In my measly defense, I did try to get on here sometime during the month of December - I typed out a very witty post filled with love, laughter and lots of pics and then stupid Blogger messed up and deleted it before I could save it. So I was a little bitter about that. It was a great post too. Too bad I can't remember any of it.

A lot of things have happened since Nov 13th though - good and bad. But the best thing that has happened since then is that Sean got a job at Florida Hospital in SEBRING and we have moved and are living here now (as if all of you didn't know that)! He's working as a Radiographer on a PRN basis (the only downside - no benefits) but he's getting at least 40hrs/week. Which means that for right now (and hopefully for a while longer) I get to be a SAHM! That's a stay at home mom for those of you not up on the acronyms. I'm totally loving being able to stay home with Blayne and play all day every day. It still sorta feels like I'm on vacation though, I think because of the not working thing. Not that I'm not loving every minute, it's just weird. We did have to leave Michael, Amy and all the kids and that part stinks. We all miss them terribly! Even now, as I was looking at my old posts, there is a old video of Blayne and Hannah and Natalie playing the drums and the piano and Blayne is sitting in my lap and has watched those clips approximately 50 times in the last 10 minutes. And he just hopped up and said, "Mommy pants on, Car bye bye, MeeMee, HaRo, Dawee, Deethan, Ewy, Drums???" Which roughly translated means he wants to go see them right now. =) But aside from missing them and our good friends up in Atlanta, we are all loving life here in sunny Florida. We are living with my cousin Chet in his adorable house in Sun N' Lakes- and let me tell you how AWESOME it is to live in a house and not an apt! Here are a few pics I took of the outside and of Blayne's room so you can see what it looks like...

Front of house - love the palm trees!!
Our awesome backyard - complete with lounging chairs and a grill

The cool oak tree in the backyard

Blayne's awesome new Lightning McQueen bed (from the movie Cars)

And his new bookcase - his room looks out onto the backyard (obviously) and connects to our room which is on the right side of this pic

I have not taken any pics of our room or the rest of the house yet because I'm still trying to decorate that a little bit and get rid of all the boxes. So sometime in the next six months I'll be sure to update you again with those. =) So I think this is enough for now. Don't worry though, I promise I won't wait 4 months till the next post. But as a little teaser, I'll be putting up pics of some of the fun things that Blayne and I have done since we moved down here. So be on the lookout!

xoxo,
b

Halloween

Okay. OKAY!! I know, I haven't posted anything like weeks. Whatever. I've been working on something big. =) Tee hee. Anyhoo, here you go - updates! Yay! I'm going to do this one post at a time. So here are the Halloween pics - Blayne was Superman (aka MeeMan), Sean was Indiana Jones (obviously!) and I was a witch. No comments allowed about how I didn't have to try too hard for that one. We went over to Michael and Amy's house and walked around their neighborhood - they have a great place for trick or treating! Blayne was a little sketched out at first about walking up to other people's houses and he was not too sure about what he was supposed to say but he got the hang of it pretty quickly. His trick or treat was more like "iiiccck and eeeaatt!" but still very effective as we came home with enough candy to last all of us till 2009. Enjoy the pics!!

It's a well known fact that Superman is completely ineffective without his binky. =)

Superman, Wonder Woman and a Princess. Evil-doers beware!!

Princess Awwawwa (Aurora) aka Sleeping Beauty

MinerMan!!This was the best group shot I took. Geez, these kids would NOT stand still, all look at the camera and smile for the life of me!! =)
Blayne in the bounce house - he loves to jumpeee jumpeeee!!
Superman and a Super-Awesome-Fighting Ninja (aka Ethan)
Villains, Nazis and Aliens had better look out!!

My weird gene pool

A comment from my cousin Angie (hi Ang!) got me thinking last week about about our strange family. I mean strange in a good way though! Many of my childhood memories have to do with my cousins and the games we would play together. When I was a kid, most of my summers and after school days were spent with my cousins under the watchful eyes of my Aunt Jacque. I don't know what she did to her sisters as a child to earn the right to watch all of us on a regular basis but it must've been something horrible!! =) Anyhoo, there were 7 of us that pretty much grew up together: me and my older bro, Michael, and my cousins Ryan, Angie, Maria, Chet and Carrie. The boys were all roughly the same ages (except for poor youngest, picked on cousin Chet) and the girls were too. We were all at least within a couple years of each other. So mostly us girls stayed together playing in our "house" under the tree because everyone knows that boys are gross and loud and disgusting and the boys would all be building a tree fort or shooting bb guns at birds or some other nonsense. Anyhoo, what I started remembering were the games that we used to play as children. This is where the weird gene pool stuff came up - I mean how on earth did we think of these things?!?! One that springs to mind is something that Carrie and I used to do. Let me give you a few details about the nature of our relationship first though. Carrie and I were 5 months apart - I was (obviously) the oldest and most mature of the two. Nearly every day, from the ages of 4-10 (roughly) we would get in a fight. Not just a good old-fashioned name calling exchange (although those sorts of things were prevalent) but an actual fist fight. Or more accurately, a slapping fight. A good example is this: one day we were outside playing on the swing set in Aunt Jacque's backyard. I was maybe 5 or 6. Carrie was doing tricks on the monkey bars (we were perfecting a REALLY impressive routine that ended with a back flip off of a moving swing) and I was swinging. Apparently I was swinging too hard though because I was shaking the whole swing set. Carrie was quite unhappy about this and after screaming at me to stop for a few minutes (which of course only made me swing harder) she actually got off the monkey bars and came over and slapped me across the face. Naturally I smacked her back. I must've gotten her pretty good because she then went running inside to tell on me. So I smugly sat there, glorying in my supremacy and fully enjoying the swing set all to myself until it occurred to me that if Carrie was inside crying and I was still outside swinging with a grin on my face I was gonna be the ONLY one that got into trouble. So I began to cry as loudly as I possibly could and went running inside to tell on Carrie for hitting ME first. As soon as I got in the backdoor, Carrie immediately ceased her crying and began to yell, "She wasn't crying! I didn't hurt her! She's only faking so she won't get into trouble!" and on and on. I sobbingly explained that she did, in fact, hurt me, it just took me a minute or two to feel it. So we BOTH got punished. And then we were best friends again after about 5 minutes. This is pretty much how things went for about 5+ years of our lives. We were 10 before we spent a day together without hitting each other. Or threatening not to be each others cousins anymore. =) So anyways, we would play this game called "Leeches." Here's the gist... Aunt Jacque's house was on Little Lake Jackson so we would take out ONE inner tube and swim out as far as we possibly could (practically to the middle of the lake!) and then one of us would yell "Queen Leech!" or "Leeches!" or something like that and then we would both attempt to get all of our bodies out of the water and onto the ONE inner tube without falling off or impaling ourselves on the metal pump that stuck out so as not to be eaten by the leeches. I should probably mention that there were no leeches in the lake. At least no real ones anyways. This was all in our heads and we would stay out there for what seemed like hours trying to avoid the leeches. Weird, huh? Then there was another game that we all played together. It was kind of like Hide 'N Seek but not really. We called it Seek 'n Hide. A subtle, but distinct, difference. I think the main thing that set it apart was that the Hiders would go and try to find the most awesome hiding spot ever and then the Seeker would come and look for them BUT once you were in a hiding spot you didn't leave until you got found. So there was no racing for "base" unless the Seeker spotted you and you wanted to try and outrun them. The goal was to obviously to have the best hiding spot. Some notable spots were: the dryer (Angie hid in there. Once.) which turned out not to be too effective because Aunt Jacque walked by and shut her in it and then she started screaming at the top of her lungs and we all knew exactly where she was, the top of a cabinet in the main bathroom which required you to squinch yourself into about 6 inches of space, getting in the mirrored closet in Aunt Jacque's room, or climbing into a toy chest or under a bed. But by far the pinnacle of our weirdness came in the form of a game that we called "Follow the Yellow Brick Road." We would all shut ourselves in the middle room, and pile all the pillows in the house into a big pile in the middle of the floor and then turn out the lights, and stuff blankets and towels into the cracks of the door so that absolutely NO light got into the room. Then we would break into two groups on either side of the room and each group would hold hands as we would starting singing, "Oooohhhhhh, weeeee'rrreeeeee off to see the Wizard! The wonderful Wizard of Oz!!!!" at the top of our lungs while running as fast as we could toward the middle of the room. This always ended in a violent collision (well, duh) in which someone inevitably would get injured (cough, Carrie, cough). So we would tend our wounds, pile all the pillows back up and do it all over again!! And while, yes, it was a LOT of fun, it was also very, very strange. And don't even get me started on the madness that occurred down at the Lease. I'm surprised we all made it to adulthood with all of our limbs.

So now many of us kids that used to play together have kids and I'm just sitting here thinking that they certainly have some strange genes coming to them! They are probably gonna make up some crazy games or do weird things on a regular basis but at least we'll know where they get it!! From that crazy Heston side of the family. =)