Monday, January 28, 2013

Poor Jonas Boy

Our baby had a rough go of it last week. On Tuesday I took him to the doctor. He had an ear infection and they wanted to test for RSV. Because his treatment would be the same regardless of test results, I opted out of more torture for him. He ended up with an antibiotic, a steroid and breathing treatments. Then just when I thought he was improving a bit he had an accident on the stairs!
He only fell down two steps but he landed on a HotWheels track which did a little damage! I'm still not sure if he fell, was pushed or jumped. It will forever be a mystery. Thankfully it was only a minor fall and before I knew it he was busy getting into things and playing!




Thursday, January 24, 2013

Yay Malachi!

Today was the awards assembly for the 2nd grading period. Malachi received awards for getting all A's and for perfect attendance. We are very proud of him and very thankful for his wonderful teachers!

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Buying Trip

A couple weeks ago I left my normal life of being a wife, mom, babysitter, cake decorator,etc. and drove to Atlanta on a buying trip for the Lloyd Co. Our decorator, Melody, went with me since she is the creative brains behind everything that looks amazing at the store. We spent a day and a half at AmericasMart shopping for merchandise to fill the store, primarily for fall and Christmas of this year. It's hard to explain exactly what it's like so I tried to take a few pictures, but they definitely don't do it justice and I never thought about it at the right time to get the best shots. Oh well, it's a start!

The entire market is made up of four buildings, each with up to 20 floors. They are organized by type of merchandise so we stayed in the same general area most of the time. Most of our vendors were located on floors 16-20 of buildings one and two. Even though that sounds like everything's close we still managed to do quite a bit of walking! This is a view from when I got off the escalator on one of our floors. I always describe it as being similar to a mall and each of the different stores is a different vendor.
The difficult thing is that there are many different stores with similar or identical merchandise so we have to shop smart and compare prices, minimums, quantities, etc. It gets very confusing very quickly! These pictures are of some of the items we bought. Sullivan's is one of our favorite vendors. They are very nice people who have been selling to us since Grandma Jane started the gift shop at the store. They always ask about Mrs. Lloyd and genuinely miss seeing her in the showroom. The theme we chose for our main Christmas tree is inspired by the picture below. It's hard to tell much in the picture, but we will be decorating with mercury glass ornaments, ivory, silver and gold. Based on the items we bought I think it will be very pretty!
This is another showroom that we shop in often. We had to have appointments with all of our sales reps and even then sometimes had to wait for them to assist us. There were lots of buyers out there so hopefully that means good things for the economy!

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Halfway Through January!

I can't believe January is halfway gone! We've been busy around here with school back in swing, work, babysitting, playing and trying to stay well. I haven't taken very many pictures and not much notable has happened, but I figured an update was in order so you knew we weren't buried in snow or anything like that!
 
First off, we celebrated New Year's at home with 23 friends. It was a fun night of food, laughs, games and watching the ball drop. A special thanks to GranMols and Papaw for letting the kids celebrate at their house! Our friend Jon dubbed himself the "life of the party" and I happened to catch the perfect picture to show that:
A few days later the Aggies won their bowl game. Our boys were excited and had to sport their maroon the next day!
Erik's days off aren't as relaxing as they used to be since we usually have extra kiddos around. And of course they all want his attention!
I made a trip to Atlanta last week with Melody, our decorator at the store. We spent a couple days shopping at AmericasMart for merchandise to decorate and sell next Christmas. Scott and Cindy were wonderful hosts to us and we enjoyed relaxing with them after long days of driving and shopping!


Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Christmas in Jekyll

We had a wonderful holiday in Jekyll Island, GA with Erik's family. I still haven't figured out how to make all my pictures available on the iPad, so these are the few I found of our trip. The others may make it to the blog eventually, or they may get lost in the shuffle of everything else. Oh well!

The boys were very excited about presents this year and thankfully Santa found us in Georgia!

It was so much fun visiting with all the family, but it had been over a year since we've seen Isaac (the person responsible for introducing me and Erik ten and a half years ago!) and Maggie. Jonas finally got to meet them and all three boys loved playing with them.
As I was packing the car to leave on Friday I noticed how pretty the sky was and decided to walk down to the beach to watch the sunrise. So glad I did! It was gorgeous and I appreciated some quiet time before enduring 12 hours on the road with three kids.