April Recap-Part I

Gosh ... you were probably beginning to think that this was a blog only about American Idol. Sorry, we've been busy this month. I am going to try and do 2-3 posts recapping all the happenings this month. Bear with me.

This month, there have been birthdays and Easter and parties and lots of other fun stuff. I even managed to squeeze a little sewing in, but I will get that in a separate post. Oh yeah, David turned one and Claire turned three, so we threw 2 birthday parties too.

Church Easter Egg Hunt

Our Sunday School class has an annual egg hunt at a local park for all the kiddos. And let me tell you, it is a lot of kiddos. We definitely know how to procreate in our class.

Here are the kids all lined up ready to start hunting. (See Claire in the blue dress.)


David and I hung out and watched the egg hunt.


Another cute pic! Claire was happy to give David her eggs after she took the candy out of course!


This is Claire's best buddy at church and school and her two sisters (all in pink). Their youngest is in David's class at church.

My two men.

Hylton's First Birthday Party

After the egg hunt and a short nap, we headed out to another Easter-themed party to celebrated Hylton's first birthday. This is one of David's little "buddies", even though they've only seen each other like twice ever. I know they will be great friends in the future though.

They had a real, live Easter Bunny at this party.


Note my kids' reactions to the Easter Bunny. David was eating it up ... Claire, not so much. We have made a lot of progress from our hysterical screaming "no bother me" and shaking from our character experience at Disneyworld last September. We are now in the "hide behind Daddy's leg" stage.


A family photo. This pretty much sums up David's mood the entire afternoon. He was a handful at this party. This is pretty much his mood any time someone is trying to restrain him. See that cute little blue balloon flower on Claire's wrist? They also had a balloon artist at this party and he was good at his job!


Here is a shot of all the kiddos at the party ... and all quite decked out in their Easter-themed clothing.

I told you the balloon artist was good. He made this bunny; this picture was as close as I was going to get to a picture of my kids with the Easter bunny.

Yummy cake and cupcakes ... Claire is checking everything out.

Here is the birthday boy! Happy Birthday Hylton!

Off to the Theater

On Good Friday, we headed to the downtown public library to see a play of one of our favorite bedtime stories ... "Llama Llama Red Pajama". I do believe every child under the age of 5 in the middle Tennessee area was there. Good Friday + Spring Break + bad weather outside = crowds at the really good indoor activities. We got there at 11am for the 11:30 show and it was already full. The actors were great though and just kept doing the play over and over until everyone there saw it. We finally made it in around 12:15.

Claire in the library lobby. I loved the life-size poster of the book.

Waiting in line ... Claire looks a little distraught. David, not so much. Fortunately, I came armed with snacks and sippies since we were there through lunch!

Sitting in the theater (with our friend Delaney) waiting for the play to start.

David did great during the play, but not so great after the play was over and we had to stay an extra 10-15 minutes for some bad weather to pass over (i.e., tornado warning).

Another Easter Egg Hunt

This was the 4th annual Carrico Easter egg hunt. It is always a fun time. This is David and one of his little friends Madeline.

Here is a group photo of all 21 kiddos. Okay, I just counted 22, but the hostess said there were 21 there.

Hunting eggs ... one of Claire's favorite activities.

A surprisingly good family photo.

Birthday Cupcakes at School

I made these cute princess cupcakes to take to Claire's class at school for her birthday. I think they turned out pretty cute and cost me all of about $5 for 24 cupcakes thanks to a little lady name Betty Crocker!

These kiddos love them some chocolate cupcakes.

These 3 girls are going to be TROUBLE when they get older. Shoot, they are probably TROUBLE now.

Claire is crazy about her MDO teachers ... Miss Stacey

... and Miss Jayne

Anytime the birthday poster is up, we know what that means!

Claire and me.

American Idol, Top 7 (Take 2)

This week's theme: Disco.

Lil Rounds - “I’m Every Woman”: She looked good ... you wouldn't catch me dead in a black spandex body suit in public. Performance ... not so good. We are at the point in the competition where just being a good singer no longer cuts it. Lil just brings nothing original and unique to this competition.

Kris Allen - “She Works Hard For The Money”: Best performance of the night by a mile. Why has no one discovered this guy before? I can't wait for his album to come out. He is consistently one of the best performers week after week.

Danny Gokey - “September”: I like that this song had a little original spin on it by Danny, yet still sounded "Disco". Danny seemed to be having a fun time on stage and that made the performance fun to watch.

Allison Iraheta - “Hot Stuff”: Allison does what she does (with the punk rock thing) very well ... but week after week, I am getting a little bored with it. According to my hubby, it looks like she borrowed her outfit from Kiss. A good performance, but nothing special in the land of Allison.

Adam Lambert - “If I Can’t Have You”: I am liking Adam and the suit and slicked back hair. This was a good, controlled performance. I liked it. He seems to be a very humble person always giving shout outs to the band, arranger, etc.

On a side note, could Paula please GET A ROOM with herself and all her swooning over Adam. It made me feel just a little bit uncomfortable. The weird camera shots during and after his performance did not help the situation at all.

Matt Giraud - “Stayin’ Alive”: This performance was 100 times better than last week and should put Matt safely in the top five. With that being said, I didn't watch the show until later on the DVR and missed the voting window. Not my favorite performance I have seen from Matt, but definitely good.

Anoop Desai - “Dim All The Lights”: The first part of the song was great and really showed off Anoop's vocal skilz, but when the tempo picked up, it was all down hill. The tempo never really seemed to pick up enough and Anoop was really pitchy from that point forward. I am afraid this may be the end of the road for Anoop.

Talent wise, Anoop and Lil deserve to go home this week. They are good, but in this group, they don't bring anything really special to the table. As Simon would say, they are "forgettable". Kris was my favorite by far. See what other people thought here.

A practice run for the big O-N-E!

David's first birthday is tomorrow. I can't believe my baby is going to be ONE! This year has really flown by ... more so than it did with Claire's first year.

Tonight, we had a leftover Easter cupcake, so we thought we would give the birthday cupcake eating a practice run. Let's just say that David didn't really need any practice. He has this cake-eating thing down pat.

Do you like those two BIG scratches under his eye? That happened yesterday. Apparently, he has decided to run everywhere even though he is still not real steady on his feet with the whole walking thing. Our nanny said he fell "a lot" yesterday. We have the facial scars to prove it. This will look great in his birthday party pictures on Saturday.

Claire begged me to take her picture too, so I told her to make a silly face. This would actually be a really good smile if her eyes were open.

More birthday pics to come later this week. We love the April babies in our house!

Big Church

Claire made her first appearance in "big church" on Easter Sunday. We went to the 7am service and thought it would be a good time to see how she did. You know, why not throw a 3-year-old into the mix of visitors, early morning service and other Easter service craziness.

She did amazing and she was so sweet. She loved the choir music and praise songs and sang right along ... loud and proud ... despite the fact that she didn't know the songs. We sat in the back so we could make a quick exit if necessary. Will and I took turns holding her so she could see. Will started tearing up a little when he was holding her and she was just singing with all her heart. Then, she raised her hand in praise (she saw someone in front of us do it) and that just opened up the flood gates for both of us (Will and me). Later on, while Will was still holding her and we were standing up singing, she reached over and hugged me around the neck pulling Will and I both to her. After the service, the man sitting behind us said "she is so cute" and "I liked the double hug". Well, we did too!

We made it through the sermon without incident thanks to a note pad and bag of crayons. I think we will wait a couple more years before this is a regular occurrence, because I did not get much out of the service trying to keep her occupied. But, it is nice to know she could handle it if necessary. It was definitely nice to have almost all of our immediate family close during the Easter service. What a special reminder of God's many blessings.

American Idol, Top 7

Tonight's theme: songs of the cinema. Surprisingly, there was no Whitney and no Celine, but a lotta Bryan Adams. Not real sure what guest judge Quentin Tarantino can offer in the way of musical instruction, but he seemed to be a big fan of the show. None of the actual performances seemed to reflect any of the tips he gave the contestants, so they must have been thinking the same thing that I was.

Alison Iraheta - “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing”: Warning: you might be blinded by her REALLY RED HAIR. Looks like she had her color done this week. The judges LOVED this performance and I just really didn't think it was all that great. It was good, but not my personal favorite and far from her best performance.

Anoop Desai - “Everything I Do I Do For You”: Great vocals and great performance. It was pure and simple and sounded better than the original version. (Sorry Bryan Adams, I will still listen to your Greatest Hits album religiously, but this song is a bit overplayed in my book.)

Adam Lambert - “Born To Be Wild”: Since I missed Adam's performance last week, I couldn't really compare, but apparently the judges (i.e., Simon) thought last week's performance was better. In the words of my husband (and I got permission to quote him), "What the hell was that?" This performance was a little over the top for my liking.

Matt Giraud - “Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman”: Matt, oh Matt, why do you send us on the roller coaster week after week? I agree with Boomama's comments on this performance 100%.

Danny Gokey - “Endless Love”: Good performance overall. A slow, start, but a strong ending ... Gokey-style.

Kris Allen - “Falling Slowly”: I have not heard of this movie or this song, which in tonight's genre, might have worked to Kris' advantage. Probably my favorite performance of the night.

Lil Rounds - “The Rose”: In theory, this was a good song choice and good arrangement for her with the funky gospel feel, but she did not execute. I think she may in trouble this week.

In summary, Kris and Anoop were my fave performances of the night. I predict the bottom three to be Lil, Matt and Allison. What did you think??

Happy Birthday Claire!!

Three years ago, this sweet baby girl entered our lives and we will forever be changed. Look at how much she has grown over the past ...

ONE (2007)

TWO (2008)

THREE (2009) years.

We aren't having her birthday party until this coming up weekend, but we had a little family celebration after lunch today and Claire couldn't have been more excited.

Especially since she got this ... a new scooter!

Claire's RiRi and DiDi and other family in Alabama called to sing "Happy Birthday" to her.

Here is a cute pic of her closing her eyes while Will brought her gift in. I thought it was too cute.

Claire is such a sweet little girl. Although she is my spitting image, she definitely inherited her daddy's personality ... she is so outspoken, energetic and truly excited about life. I made her birthday cupcakes yesterday afternoon and when I showed them to her she hugged me and said I was "the best mommy ever". That just warms my heart. I am so thankful that God has entrusted us with her to raise during her time here on earth ... I couldn't be given a more special gift on HER birthday.

I love you Claire-bear. Happy Birthday!