The past few weeks...

I thought that I would be better about blogging if I had a cute blog makeover... it didn't happen! Its been a couple of weeks since my last post and we have been pretty busy! James is in the Air Force Reserves, so he has to go to Little Rock one weekend a month for reserve duty. Two weekends ago we joined him. It was my first time being back on an Air Force base in 2 years, and I loved it! While James worked, Xander and I had a lot of fun learning our way around base. Little Rock AFB is huge! Since it was so hot out we didn't get to enjoy all of the amenities offered, but we did go to the pool. We spent most of our time shopping at the BX (kind of like a department store) and the Commissary (the grocery store). The commissary was awesome because it was the first "real" grocery store I have shopped at in a while. Those of us from NWA know that good ole Walmart is about the only place we can buy groceries and it is definetely not like the "normal" grocery stores I grew up with in GA. The commissary was HUGE and I found so many things I have not been able to buy at Walmart! I am definitely looking forward to going again once it gets a little cooler out. I am also very excited that Xander will grow up going to the base and he will get to experience military life (even if its only for a weekend a month), and I know he is going to love watching the airplanes take off when he is older! I wish I would have taken more pictures, but for some reason I only got my camera out one time!

 Last weekend was also very busy! Friday night our church had Friday Night Out (which they have two times a month) so we dropped Xander off and headed to a surpise party for one of our friends from church. We had a great time!

After the surprise party James and I went to see the final Harry Potter movie. I love Harry Potter! I started reading the books when they first came out almost 14 years ago!! The next day we had a sitter from the neighborhood come over after we put Xander to bed (he goes down about 7:30) and we went to the movies again! This time we saw Captain America. It was awesome!! We love going to the movies! Before we had Xander we literally went to the movies every weekend, now we only go if there is a really good movie playing. James loved comic books growing up, and I have enjoyed learning about all the characters he loved as a kid through the movies these past few years. I think Captain America is one of my favorites!  This weekend I am taking it easy. My Mom is coming to visit for a few days and she will be here tomorrow night! Hope you all have a great weekend!

The Ladies Man

This past Saturday we took Xander to get his very first haircut! We took him to James barber Nick, at a place called Trendsetter Barbershop. :) He did really well for his first hair cut! It took about 20 minutes and he didn't cry or move at all. I think the lollipop helped a lot! Nick and a couple of the other guys there kept calling Xander (Leon Phelps) and I had no clue what they were talking about, I just laughed along with them. I asked James later and he told me to Google it. This is Leon Phelps:

At the ripe age of 16 months Xander has been dubbed the ladies man. I. Am. In. Trouble. That's all I have to say about that.

Xander's First Birthday!

It's been four months since Xander's first birthday party in March. I started planning his party in Janurary, so I had a good three months to get everything together. After agonizing over themes for weeks I finally decided on a Dr. Suess theme. Xander LOVES to look at books and loves for us to read to him so I knew I wanted something with books. I loved Dr. Seuss growing up and I found really cute ideas from different websites for a Dr. Seuss theme. I made almost all of the decorations and the cupcakes. Everything turned out really cute and we had a great time celebrating his birthday! Here are a few pictures from the big day!

The blink of an eye!

I seriously feel like I was just in the hospital giving birth and in the blink of an eye I am the mother of a 16 month old!

And Baby Makes Three!!!

I found out I was pregnant when James was in Arkansas for his first round of interviews with Tyson Foods. It is actually a pretty funny story. I was cleaning up the house, packing a few things, and I found an OLD pregnancy test. We were not planning to have kids for three or four more years, so I was going to throw the test away. I decided to take the test for fun knowing that it would be negative. I took the test and forgot about it for a few hours. I went back into the bathroom later that night and glanced down and it said PREGNANT!!! I was in shock. I had NO pregnancy signs or symptoms. I figured it had to be a mistake. I started chugging water and headed out to the pharmacy to get another test. I took two more tests and they were both positive!! James was on a plane during all this so he had NO clue. It was a complete shock to both of us, and we still didn't believe it until I took the blood test the next day. We had the next few years of our lives planned out and that night it all changed!! 8 months later on March 4th 2010 our handsome little man was born 11 days early. My water broke at 3:00am and I had to have an emergency c-section because he was breech. James Alexander (Xander) was born at 5:55am and he was 7lbs 12oz and 21 inches long.

That's where the Duggars live!!

     As I mentioned in the previous post, James' four year commitment to the Air Force was almost up, and he started looking for a job. He ended up getting two good offers. One at Tyson Foods in Springdale, AR and the other was a sales job in Nashville, TN. The first thing I said when James told me about his offer from Tyson was "OMG, that's where the Duggars live!" Yes, I know I am lame. I do not know why that was exciting to me, but it was, and James still makes fun of me for it :). 19 kids and counting has been one of my favorite shows for years. I started watching it when it was 16 kids and moving in!!

     Unfortunately, living in the same town as the Duggars was not a good enough reason to move to Arkansas, so we had a tough decision to make. We were ecstatic about the offer in Nashville. It was only 4 hours from our family in Atlanta and James would have had his dream sales job. This should have been an easy decision right? Wrong!! After almost 5 years of marriage I have finally realized that nothing we do is ever easy. Tennessee was the obvious choice...awesome job, fun city, closer to family, but it just didn't feel right.

     We flew out to Fayetteville before we made our decision. After living in 2 big cities we were a bit skeptical about North West Arkansas, and were still leaning towards Nashville at that point. After our visit we both agreed it "felt" right, but were still not convinced. Once we got back to Los Angeles, we HAD to make a decision. Should we take the better paying job in a big city near family, or the job in marketing that was 13 hours from the closest relative. The job in Nashville would have been nice, but like I said it didnt "feel" right. We felt like we could do our way (Nashville) or God's way (Arkansas). This was hard. We had been doing "our way" since we got married. We decided to trust God and we chose to move to Arkansas!! After almost 2 years of living in Arkansas, we know we made the right decision, AND we live right down the street from Josh and Anna Duggar :).