March Madness

March has been a fun month so far, except for both Tennessee teams losing in the first round of the tournament. On Tuesday night, I hosted my beautiful friends for dinner group. It was great to be together! Here are some picture of other March happenings.
Jackson had a practice egg hunt at our house last Sunday. With several egg hunts coming, I thought he needed to be reminded of how it works. He loved it and had a blast finding all the eggs!

Drew found an egg, too! He thought all the eggs were balls so he had to have one.

Jackson got a pirate tattoo from his Wednesday night teachers at church and had to put it on when we got home. He refused to sleep in his shirt, because it might mess up his tattoo. He was thrilled to show it to his friends and teachers at preschool the next day!

Jackson also had his first spring soccer practice last week. For practice, he insisted on wearing his soccer jersey from the fall. This year his team is Sky Blue and he wants to be number 10. He did really good at practice and was very happy to score a goal.

Jackson is thrilled that Carter is on his team. I snagged these pictures from Mandy's blog. Jackson thinks his "team will win lots of games because me and Carter are tough."

My new favorite song...

If you know the Parkers, you know we love Chick-fil-A. You can find us there every Wednesday night before church and probably one other time during the week. It is been about a week and a half since I have eaten there (the boys ate there while I was in Gatlinburg). I may have serious withdrawals issues if we do not go eat there soon! After seeing this on YouTube, I think we may have to go for lunch today. This could be the Parker family theme song...

Blessed Beyond Measure

Blessed beyond Measure was the name of the cabin that the girls went to this weekend. It definitely describes the way I feel about my friendship with these four amazing women. Even though I still feel like we are girls living in Elam together or our apartment, we thirty-somethings are women now (I guess!). We have been planning our weekend getaway to Gatlinburg for awhile and were super excited to have lots of time together. It never ceases to amaze me how 3 or 4 hours at dinner with these girls can seem like 15 minutes. There is never a lack of conservation, fun, and laughter. There may even be tears, which is always okay with the group. We left Nashville on Friday afternoon and headed to Gatlinburg.
Here we are...ready for our drive. Our chauffeur for the weekend was Amy. She and her van deserve a huge shout out for getting us up and down the mountain each day. Our cabin was definitely in the Smoky Mountains.

Jennifer, Melissa, and Mandy

After checking into our cabin on Friday night, we headed to Gatlinburg for dinner at the Park Grill.

On Saturday we did some shopping at the outlet malls. It was nice to be able to try on clothes and get HONEST opinions from my friends. Several of us loved the same things, so we may be matching next time we get together. After some shopping, we headed to the Apple Barn Farmhouse Restaurant for some comfort food. YUMMY! It was delicious:) After a couple more shopping stops, we headed back to the cabin. That night we surprised Jennifer with cake and candles (her birthday was Sunday). We spent some time in the hot tub on Saturday night, which was relaxing.

On our way home on Sunday, we stopped at the Old Mill Restaurant in Pigeon Forge for lunch...more yummy comfort food. We then hit the road to Nashville and encountered some heavy traffic. We all enjoyed being together and having fun! The next trip is with all the kids (or most of them) in the summer to Holiday World. That should be very interesting!!

Spring Fever

We have Spring Fever at our house. It started last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday with trips to 3 different playgrounds to enjoy the warmer temperatures. We have been cooped up inside for way too long! We all needed some fresh air and a chance to run and play outside (or crawling for Drew...will this child ever walk?!?). Then on Saturday, the other fevers started. Drew had a fever so we started Tylenol to help him. He still was not feeling good yesterday, so we headed to see our doc. She determined he has an ear infection (his first) and some type of respiratory infection. So Drew had to take a breathing treatment at the doc's office which made him very unhappy. When the doc came back, Jackson promptly reported to her that Drew did not sit still while I was giving him the breathing treatment. Jackson also started coughing on Sunday night, and she took a look at him and he was fine. Then last night he got a fever, however it is gone this morning. Hopefully, some antibiotics and breathing treatments will put Drew on the road to recovery. Since Sunday, we have had to endure the another kind of spring fever.

Here are some pictures from Crockett Park on Saturday.

Read Across America

Many of you are probably aware that this is Read Across America week. It is a huge push in the school systems to encourage a love for reading. I will admit that in my high school days I was the student who tried to read Cliffs Notes and not the actual book on our reading list. It was all happy go lucky with that until I made a 40 on a literature test. At that moment, I knew I had to actually read To Kill A Mockingbird. This was definitely out of fear that Ms. Fowler would tell my mom my score on the test before I had time to bring up my 6 weeks average (mom and dad-I hope you knew about this before now...if not, SORRY). However, I actually loved the book. Then we read The Scarlett Letter, which is another book I love. Then my reading definitely slacked in college other than the occasional John Grisham book. After college, my job required a great deal of travel and alone time on the road in some not so fun destinations. I discovered a love of reading. It started with the Harry Potter series, which is an incredible story. I really felt for Harry and all of his friends. Since then, I have read a lot of books. I would love to read more, but my children do need attention, meals, and baths. This week Beth Moore's blog asked their readers to pick their all time favorite book and tell why. How can someone who enjoys reading pick just one book?!? Since I could not narrow it down, I chose several books.

Here are some of my favorite books.

• All 7 Harry Potter books (I cannot wait to read this again with Jackson when he is older.)
• the Twilight series (I have already voiced my obsession for these on this blog...you never know Andy might be my secret vampire)
• Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers (This book depicts God's love for us in an amazing story.)
• The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard (This was the text of a graduate course I took called Master Teacher. It made me view my life in a new light.)
• The Atonement Child by Francine Rivers (An amazing story of a college girl's discovery of God's love and redemption.)
• Season of Life by Jeffrey Marx (A wonderful book about football and how it relates to life...Andy also loved this book, great for all the men in your life or moms of boys)

Those are some of the books that I love and think would be great for anyone to read. Now after Beth Moore's post and 1500 comments, I have several books on hold at the library. Let me know what are some books that you love so I can add them to my reading list.