Just incase you're wondering if it's a ghost or not...

PSF and an orange and blue Halloween

Halloween is not one of my favorite holidays. Don't get me wrong. I'm all about the candy. (Like I would ever turn down chocolate!) And scary movies. Yeah, I like those. Seeing little kids run around in cute costumes is pretty fun too. Ok, I guess I do like Halloween. I'm not a big pumpkin carver though. And since I'm not the craftiest person, my kids are usually dressed in a hand-me-down costume or something that was really, really easy to make.

Last Halloween, however, was one of my more creative ones. I figured this would be my one shot at coordinating all three of them. (I was right, Melody and Jack were pretty clear about their costume preferences this year.)

Ok, maybe Jack and Melody's costumes aren't the most original, but I get originality points for Charlie's costume for sure.




Can you tell what my little 5 week old baby is?

Here's the quarterback and head cheerleader

Go Tigers!

This is one of my favorite shots. I didn't even take it...I was holding her hand. That sucker was the first piece of candy she got and she tore right into it. It was all she cared about all night. And yes, when she was done with it, she was one sticky (but sweet!) mess.

As for this year?

Check back here tomorrow night...but for now, just a little tease...

Hosted by Cecily and Carissa

WW - the fight

My sweet little bruiser of a baby got into a playground brawl.

He went at it with some gravel.

The gravel won.

You've got questions? I've got answers. Part 1

Welcome to part one of Ask Me Anything.

Since I'm totally OCD I've organized the questions I've received into categories. This part is all about my kids...

Erin asked
Are there any more kids in the Future? No! Three is enough, thankyouverymuch.

Whats your favorite personality trait about each of your children? Jack is a lot like me, and even though my mom's going to roll her eyes when she read this (and probably my husband too) I kind of like his bossiness!

Melody is so snuggly. She loves to hug everyone. Me, Alex, her friends, and even people at the airport! I like that.

Charlie's personality is still developing too much for me to pick a favorite trait.

Mimi asked:
What is your bedtime routine with the kids? Our routine is pretty simple. I try and have the kids bathed before Alex comes home from work. We pretty much let them each pick a book and then prayers and a few songs and then lights out. For a while our bedtime routine was getting long and drawn out. By the end of the day, I'm wiped so I try and keep it simple.

Where is your favorite place to vacation as a family? Hands down, the beach.

Summer wants to know:
What is your best memory (so far) with each child? :) This is a great question. But, honestly, I have too many good ones to pick. Now that I'm not nursing any more and all my children sleep through the night, I can say that I liked getting up with them at 2 a.m. and nursing them. They were so snuggly and quiet then and afterward they would just lay their heads on my shoulder and go back to sleep. I especially liked this for the boys...it was one of the rare moments they were actually still and would snuggle me! Those were always sweet moments.

Kelli asked:
I want to know what your day is like. How do you manage it all? I'm pretty routine. OK, I'm very routine. I'm a planner and like to stick to my plans. But honestly, our day is pretty simple. I take Jack to school in the mornings. Melody also has preschool two mornings a week. On those days Charlie and I play at home or run errands. Other days, we play with friends and sometimes have activities like Music Class. Pretty much every day, Melody and Charlie nap from about 12:30 or 1ish until 3:00 when we leave to pick up Jack. (I know, I know, please don't throw things!) After school, if the weather's nice we play at the park or just hang out. Wow. Now that I'm writing this I realize my life is incredibly boring. Sheesh. Now I feel like a dork.

Amy wants to know:
While you were pregnant with each of your adorable little ones, did you know whether boy/girl? (without help of ultasounds)...
Did you find out or leave any as a surprise? We found out each time. With Jack, I felt pretty certain he was a boy, but I knew for sure (before my U/S) that Melody was a girl and Charlie was a boy. I like to think I have very strong intuition! *giggle*.

When I was pregnant with Charlie, however, my dad (who's right 99.9% of the time) was convinced I was having a girl. I knew I was having a boy. So, we made a bet. The big rivalry in our family is the Auburn vs UGA game every November. The bet was, if Charlie was a girl, we had to wear UGA gear all game day. If Charlie was a boy, my mom and dad had to don Auburn gear. Thankgoodness this was the ONE time my dad was actually wrong. An for the record, he wimped out and didn't keep up his end of the bet even though he'll claim to have worn orange underwear or something!

Kat, who wins for most questions, asked (among many other questions):
-Who was the most difficult labor? I had three C-sections, one unplanned and two planned. So Jack was my only and most difficult labor. But believe me, my labor with Jack was the equivalent to three labors and deliveries. I won't tell the whole long drawn out story, but to give you and idea, I went into labor on my due date, June 2. Jack was born, after much labor and pushing, at 8:42 pm on Friday June 4!
*Update* Truly, I had a lot of complications and problems during my labor and attempted delivery of Jack. For a while there things were very scary and had God's hand not been guiding us all the way, there may have been a very different outcome. I am very grateful for all the people who were praying for me during that time and most of all for the wonderful blessing God gave me that day: a sweet, healthy baby named Jack.

-Any funny labor stories? While I was certainly not laughing at the time I can kind of laugh about it now. Well, not really. But you might.

The day before my due date with Jack, I had a doctor's appointment. The midwife who checked me completely crushed my spirits by telling me that I had no action going going on down there, that there was no way I would be going into labor anytime soon and she scheduled me for induction the following Monday. I went home and cried about it all day and promptly went into labor the next day.

While I was about 36+ hours into labor, checked into the hospital and had already had several hours of pitocin bringing me moderately close to 10 centimeters, guess who was the midwife on call? Needless to say, after my appointment on Tuesday and the hormones and emotion surging through my body, that poor woman didn't have a prayer. I won't go into detail, but she quickly left the room!

Rachel wants to know?
I want to know how you decided on names for your kiddos.
I love answering this question!!

All of my kids have family names. When I was pregnant with Jack, I knew I wanted him to be named after my dad: Marc. Alex felt very strongly that if he was named after my dad, then his dad's name should be in there too. So, after much, much, much debate, we agreed on the name John Marc and decided to call him Jack for short.

Since Jack had such a strong family name, I wanted my other children to also have family names. So, when we our second child, and first (and only) girl came along we chose the name Melody after my mom's sister who passed away in early childhood. I wanted her middle name to be Rose, after Sleeping Beauty, (the most romantic movie of all time) but Alex wouldn't let me name our child after a Disney Princess. Ok, I really wanted the middle name Aurora but Alex totally went off the deep end when I suggested that! Since we each got to pick one name for Jack, it seemed fitting that we do the same for Melody, so Alex picked her middle name, Elizabeth, after his aunt.

Charlie was the hardest name to choose. We had it narrowed down to three names and were getting close to my due date and still hadn't chosen his name. (Yes, I like to have their names picked out wayyyy before they're born. I know I'm weird like that. It's a bonding thing for me.) Our options were Charles, after my paternal grandfather, Eli, after my maternal great-grandfather, and Mabry, which is Alex's middle name. Given our "you pick one, I pick one" agreement, Alex picked Mabry for the middle name. This left me with the option of either Charles or Eli for a first name. Finally, I decided that I loved both names and the men associated with them too much to pick so we decided on Charles Eli Mabry Powell!

What's funny about all this is that when I was growing up and even in my marriage before kids came along, I never thought I would be a big family name person. But when it actually came time to name my children, family names were really the only ones we ever considered. With the exception of Rose, which I'm still bummed I didn't get to use! I love the idea that all my children are named after special people and their names have significance and meaning to us in that way.

Ok, if you are still reading, you rock! I know this was long.

Stay tuned for Part 2 which will be all about me and my husband! And hopefully a little shorter too!

our weekend in review

It was a fun fall weekend over here at the Powell household.

Captain and P3 drove over on Friday afternoon for a visit and spent the night. Saturday morning, we all went to cheer Jack's tball team on to another victory tie.
Then we went out so P3, aka P-parazzi, could take some pictures of the kids.
(These are the pictures I took. P3's will be about a gazillion times better than mine.)

Jack and Melody played Snack Shop and sold goldfish

to Charlie.

Captain did crazy things with the baby which Charlie loved.

We actually managed to get P3 in front on the lenses for a change.

Alex and I enjoyed a night out with friends Saturday.

And on Sunday we saw our friends Webb and Lindsey's baby, Grayson, baptized at church.

We ended the weekend picnicking with friends at the park.

Today, in between loads of laundry, I am preparing Part 1 of my Ask Me Anything post. It should be ready tonight or tomorrow. I know you'll be clicking refresh in your reader, eagerly awaiting it to pop up.

PSF and a little pep talk

Anyone who follows football knows that Auburn has royally sucked played less than stellar games the past two weeks.

We play LSU this week. We do not like LSU. They are corndogs.

Good or bad, we are loyal fans through and through! Let's hear it for Auburn and hope that we can bring it this Saturday!!!

Warrrrrr Eagle!



Hosted by Cecily and Kelli

I want to tell you

A while ago, Rachel over at Once Upon a Miracle did a fun question and answer post.

Since our lives have consisted of eat, school, play, eat, sleep, repeat lately, leaving me with minimal blog material, I thought it might be fun to do one over here.

Do you want to know how I met my husband? Or maybe where I get my fabulous fashion sense? How about my theories on raising children? Health care? What's my favorite band?

So, leave me a comment asking whatever you want and I'll answer. And hopefully tell the truth! :P

And bonus points if you know where I got the title of this post from!

True Story Tuesday and The Class Clown

While walking through the mall the other day, this older gentlemen notices my two adorable children as we pass by.

He looks at Charlie and says, in a baby-ish voice, "Well, aren't you a cute little baby?"

Melody looks at him and mimics replies, "Well, aren't you a cute little man!"

Thankfully the man busted out laughing and said, "I think she just made fun of my baby talk."

Melody of course laughed hysterically as well.

Class clown? Most definitely.

Head over to Rachel and Mr. Daddy's place for some more true stories.

friends, pumpkins, and better parenting

As we had a lot of fun stuff going on this weekend, I decided to do an update.

Parent conferences were taking place at Jack's school on Friday so he had the day off. (I know you're wondering...he got a stellar review and received all Es and Ss on his report card!) After my parent/teacher conference Friday morning we were happy to get to spend the afternoon with our friends the Snellings. Yes, we took our customary picture, however, all the ones I got were so bad that I couldn't even bring myself to post them. It was difficult to get a good shot of six excited children (ok, baby John was pretty chill) but I actually think I had some weird setting on my camera that made all my pictures turn out like crap badly.

On Friday night and Saturday morning I was fortunate to hear Dr. Tedd Tripp, author of Shepherding A Child's Heart speak. I had heard good things about this book and learned so much at the seminar. I wish I had read the book 5 years ago! There are two verses that are basically the foundation of Dr. Tripp's parenting philosophy; Proverbs 4:23 and Ephesians 6:1-3. His philosophy is that parents should focus on the reasons behind the child's behavior, not just the behavior. God has given us authority, as parents, over our children and it's our job to claim that authority and use it to teach our children to submit to God's authority. I have started reading the book and encourage you all to do so as well.

We went on our annual excursion to pick out the pefect pumpkin on Saturday as well. It was really cold. You might not be able to tell how cold it is since we are just wearing measly sweaters and light jackets. Obviously I was ill prepared for how cold it actually was and did not dress my children properly. I'm bummed too because I had gotten this really cute hat for Melody and it would have been the perfect day for her to wear it.

Charlie and I


quite a change from last year!

This year all he wanted to do was run away.

until we caught him

and forced him to take a picture against his will.

Then it was on to the important stuff. Seeing who was stronger, of course!

And let's not forget about finding the perfect pumpkin. Melody thought this was it. "It's so cuuute!" she proclaimed.

And of course we took a little time out to be silly

before we ran off again!

Hope y'all had a great weekend too!

PSF and if my kids had blog names

After I started blogging, I noticed that a lot of bloggers have secret code names for their children. I actually call my children by their real names because I don't care about stalkers the thought of anonymity never entered my mind.

However, if my children did have code names on here they would be:

Captain Blabbermouth

Jack talks constantly, regardless if anyone is listening. He will talk about anything,however, usually he's instructing (aka bossing) someone. If he is silent for more than 3.5 seconds, I'm pretty sure he'll spontaneously combust.

Yes, I know it looks at though he's just standing there. In reality, he talking about how he hit the ball and ran the bases.

And here he's giving me a detailed description of the picture he's coloring. And by detailed, I mean something along the lines of, "See this little bird I'm coloring here. I'm coloring it brown. Just like the birds in our yard. We should put out some more bird seed. What happened to all our bird seed? The bird I'm coloring is sitting on a tree. See? I'm drawing the tree here. Do you see it Mom?..."
Hopefully you get the point.

And now, "Mom, please stop taking my picture so I can keep talking."

The Bag Lady

If she has a bag, she will fill it. With anything she can find. Toys, trash, my stuff, your stuff. She's not picky. I'm scared she'll be the old lady you see walking down the sidewalk pushing an old Walmart shopping cart.

This is a plastic, zippered bag that contains her My Little Ponies. She has also crammed it full of foam blocks, some books, a stuffed animal, the wrapper from her fruit snacks, a blanket, and some balls. She had to sit on it to get it to shut.

Here we have her shoving a bunch of crap treasures in a drawer.

Here she is collecting things in the watering cans out on the deck. We have leaves, golf balls, and miscellaneous bubble paraphernalia.

Showing me her loot.

Ah, a hoarder. Truly every mother's dream.

The Wrecking Ball

If Charlie was a superhero, his super power would be the power to destroy. His mission is total destruction and complete annihilation of all in his path.

What's more fun than pulling out every. single. thing. out. of. the. cabinets.? That would be watching Mommy put it all away and pulling it out again!

He's stealthy glancing around to see if anyone is watching him. This is one of his more underhanded modes of destruction.

Quick, over to the lights on the deck...

Rip the cover off and grab the teeny tiny light bulb that would be so easy to choke on.

Whoops! Busted! And this is the point when he tosses the cover and bulb off the deck. Yep, fun games, fun times.

WW - What's more fun than sitting in your new chair?

Standing on it, of course!

True Story Tuesday and then there were nine

Some of you may not know that I have two younger brothers.

Andrew is the youngest. He's the dude on the right and is currently a senior at Georgia Southern studying geology and Spanish.

Ben, on the left, graduated from Wake Forest Law in 2008, and currently lives in Denver, Colorado.

They both unanimously agree that I am the world's coolest sister.

2006, on the road to Assisi in Perugia, Italy

While I have many, many funny true stories about both brothers, at Lauren's request, I'm blogging about Ben today.

Ben and I in November 2006 after he ran the Richmond Marathon.

As I'm sure you have gathered from the pictures, my brothers are cool, hip dudes. They like to go out and party. Especially Ben. In college and law school, he did his fair share and we all know that when you party you run the risk of immature, intoxicated people harming you.

A few years ago, at a party, someone stepped on Ben's toe. Have you ever had your toe stepped on? I have not, but I did see my brother's after it happened and it was gross. His toenail was all back. Disgusting. Anyway, later on he told me that his toenail fell off!

About a year or so later, I noticed that his toenail was black again. Yeah, I know, we talk about feet at lot. It's because neither of my brothers wear shoes unless it's necessary and they are always putting their feet in my line of sight or worse, on me. When I asked what was going on with his grody toe he said that someone stepped on it again. Seriously, what are the chances?! And bye-bye Mr. Toenail.

Mr. Toenail grew back mostly intact, but not the same. Each time it grew back, it grew back smaller and apparently had other issues that irritated Ben. Fast forward to this summer and Ben, who is an avid skier, (which is why he moved out to Colorado; it's not because he was trying to get away from the rest of the family!) trying on a ski boot. Apparently the toenail hurt so bad that he couldn't even stand to wear the boot. This prompted Ben into some serious action. He contacted an orthopedic surgeon (Why not a podiatrist? I have no idea.) who looked at his toe and said that scar tissue under the nail was causing the pain. So, last week, Ben went under the knife and endured toe surgery! Don't worry, he's recovering nicely and it looks at though this ski season won't be a total wash as he should be back out on the slopes within a month or so.

However, the surgeon had to remove his toenail in order to remove the scar tissue! Yes, I did feel kind of bad when he told me that and I laughed so hard that I almost cried.

Go check out some more true stories over at Rachel and Mr. Daddy's place.

now and then

Earlier this week I posted about our trip to the North Georgia State Fair last weekend.

It was our second year going and my kids wanted to ride many of the same rides they rode last year. (Shocker, I know, since they are so unpredictable! *sarcasm*)

It's amazing to look at how much they changed in just a short year.

Jack was 4 and had just begun Pre-K.





Now he's 5, in kindergarten, and thinks he knows it all!

Melody was 19 months old and just beginning to sprout a little fluff on her head.
(No, I don't know how in the world I was able to fit in that car. And yes, I was really scared that I was going to be stuck there until after I gave birth.)

And here's my big girl now. She's grown up already in so many ways!

And speaking of changes taking place so quickly...

Charlie goes to visit my parents for 5 days and comes back practically running!

This is what he was like when he left and this is the video I took Tuesday after I picked him up. (*Update* He's pretty much become a full-fledged walker in the past three days!)