~ Favorite Things Tag ~

Favorite actors/actresses: Reese Witherspoon, Josh Lucas! Patrick Dempsey Favorite books: Mary Higgins Clark Favorite clothing items: Jeans, Fitted T Favorite colors: Black, Seafoam Green, Pink Favorite foods: Pizza - Diet Pepsi Favorite hobbies: Scrapbooking, blogging, (reading bloggs..lol), baking, sewing Favorite hymns: Families Can Be Together Forever Favorite movies: Just Like Heaven, Sweet Home Alabama Favorite musicians/groups/songs: Kenny Chesney, Sugarland, Sara Evans, Carrie Underwood Favorite place: our home Favorite restaurants: Really good mexican place in Hickory.. Dont know the name, Olive Garden or Bajio ( :( we dont have one here) Favorite vacation spots: Florida Beaches! I tag them all! Isabelle, Margaret, Angela and Heather!! LOL

abandoned babies...

So tonight, I was trying to catch a refreshing breath after a few hours of.. mad babies. I went in to my room to get an outfit for Andrew and of course I got sidetracked. The babies started to yell, and cry for me to come back. I heard them hollering.. yes I did.. and I didnt come back quite yet. After a few minutes like maybe 6, It got quiet... after a few more minutes I peeked my head over to see if they were ok and this is what I see...


They were holding hands... They found comfort in each other. How adorable!

It has been such a busy week. On Monday, we started off going to the 7:30 AM morning swim practice. How impressive that we could get all of us dressed, into the car and take the 25 minute drive to swim practice and be there ON TIME first thing on a Monday morning! I was very proud of us. We had swim meets on Tuesday and Thursday nights. I am not sure if our team won either of them yet, but all six of the Grandkids did really well in each of their races. Jade swam her first 100 IM and was SO excited as she won the heat (Which means of the 5 or so swimmers racing that particular event, she was the first to finish). To explain what an IM is for those who do not know.. The 100 IM is a 25 each of butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle (in that order). The swimmers swim the length of the pool 4 times non stop. The bad news is that she was disqualified for some reason.. but that is ok, she did it and felt so good about herself! The little boys both have teeth starting to show through and both have been a little needy this week. I have been getting out more and more with just me and the kids. I took my first trip to Walmart yesterday alone with the two boys. Whew. It went pretty easy, but it is tiring. It is like a walking carnival attraction. Everyone wants to see them, ask their names, weights, age, etc. Yesterday Adam came home with a ton of blackberries. Adams Mom was coming our way to drop by a delicious BBQ Pork Roast that they made for us. While she was here she showed me how to make freezer jam. I really enjoyed making it. I love to pretend I am all Homemaker-ish. LOL!

Cute Cake!

Angela came by the swim meet after she got off work last night and suprised the kids by bringing them a chocolate cake she decorated just for them! Everyone loved it! So, funny story.. it was sitting on the ground between our canopy pole and me (1 foot).. and some crazy old guy stepped on it when he tried to go between me and the pole.. LOL. Angela and I were kinda suprised.. It was pretty funny...

HapPy TuesDay!

The home nurse dropped in late last week and looked at the boys. They are both doing really well. Aiden is now 15.5 pounds, and Andrew is 14 pounds. Aiden is a total little chunky monkey. For a while, I couldnt figure out why he plumped up so quickly, till I realized I was letting him have Andrews bottles that he wouldn't take/finish... oops! Andrew has a higher calorie formula to help him gain weight.. Yeah, that high calorie stuff sure works great on Aiden. LOL!

All 4 kids are in great health this week. Ian is attending an Art camp. He was looking forward to learning how to make all sorts of things. Jade is also doing many fun activities, such as "vacation bible school" at the babtist church... which is just fun little church activities that kids go to to make crafts, and learn. Last Saturday she went boating with the neighbors family. She really enjoyed that. They said she just loved jumping into the lake. She is so brave... Yesterday I took her over to a friends house and they sent me home with 3 bags of fresh of the tree peaches and plums... that was awesome! My first intentions were to make jelly or freeze some, but have gone with the second choice of spreading the wealth.. LOL.. much less work involved. *On a special side note to all my sweet family... Blog already - include pictures... please!'

Our little garden is producing just a little bit each and every week. I take the boys out to see it every morning and night. We have tons of tomatoes they just haven't turned red yet.

Our First Swim Meet

Here is Ian swimming the backstroke (2nd lane).

**You may want to turn the volume down..or off.. :0)

and Jadey swimming freestyle.

Happy Fathers Day!

Here is a pic of the kids giving Dad their gifts. They could hardly wait for him to get home from work so they could give them to him. They kept asking me, when will dad be home.. like every half hour. LOL

GOT WATER?

Well its been some time since i posted, Trish has been diligent in keeping our lives up to date and passing along the blog fever as i have notice most of her family is now writing. I remember when i was young a blog was called a journal and my parents made us write in one every Sunday after FHE. The only difference is we didn't share with the world.


I am now through with hell month at work. Its not really called that, but it felt like it the first few weeks. I don't think i have ever worked that much in my life. Working 62 hours a week didn't leave much time for anything else. I would be gone by 6:45 am and return home at 7pm. By that time the boys were ready for bed and Trish was exhausted from keeping up with them all day by herself. So now i start a more normal work week of just 40 hours. I think it was their intentions to see how dedicated you were and probably to get you addicted to the nice paycheck every week. I find myself thinking of working an extra day now......WHAT! To me money dosent compare with time with your family. If your wondering what we do where i work .......we make bottled water...yip eee. Some of its natural spring water some of its purified filtered water. To me its just high quality H2O. Now i am sounding like Bobby Bochee in "WaterBoy" What i do is take care of the machinery there. It a pretty interesting process seeing it from start to finish. One interesting thing we are doing and which i a had a hand in is producing a biodegradable bottle. If you didn't know most all plastics are made from crude oil. Same stuff gasoline is produced from. We have been working to process a bottle made from corn, yes corn. Its a very finicky material and i helped with tweaking the blow molding machine to handle this finicky material. what is a blow molding machine you might ask . Well its a machine that takes a bottle preform and heats it then it goes into the mold where it is stretched and blown into the shape of a bottle. It make three bottles in .32 secs which translate to about 740 bottles a minute. From what i know there are not any of these "corn" bottles on the market yet. This is suppose to add whole other line and expansion at our facility. Anyway that's about it for me i have 3 whole days off to look forward and i don't know what i am going to do with myself. I will probably rest and take the kids to Steel Creek water slide and start on my tan.

Random bottled water facts:

• If you drink bottled water right of the production line it will give you the runs
• Purified water is the same stuff from your tap, it only been filtered again.
• If you work at a water bottling plant you gets lots of free water. And lots of half drank bottles in your fridge at home.
• A gallon of bottle water cost as much as a gallon of gas.

7 Months Old

I can't believe these boys are 7 months old already! Boy how time has flown. It just seems like yesterday we were making all those daily trips to the hospital. They both doing wonderfully. Aiden has gotten over his sickness.. which btw, seems to have just been a cough virus. Adam and I both got the aweful virus and now it seems that Andrew is working on getting it. :0)

The nutritionist stopped in yesterday to weigh and measure the boys. Aiden is 13 Lbs. 12 Oz. and is 24.4 inches long and Andrew is 13 Lbs. 1 Oz and 24 inches long. She tells me they are both about the 25-50percentile for adjusted age (4 months).

Last weekend was a busy weekend. On Friday night, their was a mock meet for the swim team. Jade and Ian both attended as well as their 4 cousins. Almost the whole Gilliam family was there. It is great to see so much family support for the kids. Then on Saturday Grammy and Poppy had a family BBQ at their house. It was pretty cool 9 of the 12 children and their families were there. Katie and Michael were here from Arizona, Jennie and Takeshi from Indiana and Robbie and Cecelia from Raleigh. It was SO great to see everyone! I am including a little picture of the boys with their cousin Emma. She was born just about 4 months after the boys, and is 3 months old. They are all about the same size...

Todays Visitor

Todays visitor: A Turtle! He stopped in to enjoy the tomato that was left out for him. As soon as he was finished, I watched and he jumped over the divider board, and went down the hill. I wonder how he got up here in the first place...

Anger Issues??

Whenever he gets upset he goes to town on his face... this is how I found Aiden after his nap the other day.

Swim Team Has Started

Andrew Aiden

Jade
Caleb Josh & Ian
Chloe Rahlee

Swim team started last week. Coach Adam missed the whole first week of practice because he is still working 7 to 7. He made a deal with his boss to come in on Sat. if he will let him leave early on Tue., Wed. and Thur. so he could attend some of the practices. Thank You to Aunt Aimee for filling in for him and taking Jade. He felt so much more at ease knowing that she was there to coach some of the kids. This year there was 105 children sign up. I think Adam told me when he first coached 5 years ago there was maybe 30 sign ups. (WOW!!) Proud Grammy Carol has 6 grandkids on the team this year! Anyways, the kids seem to be enjoying themselves, and Jade is VERY excited because she now is brave enough to jump off the diving board. :)

On a random side note, that boy standing next to Rahlee and Chloe was born premature at 24 weeks 1 LB, 14 OZ. He was walking by his first birthday. He is 10 years old.