And we are off

Seth, his sis, mom, dad, and all f the dogs just left for the long ride to Panama City! They should be getting there around 9 or 10pm tonight. Dustin is leaving with Cecilia on a flight out of Little Rock tomorrow, and I am driving to Memphis here in a few hours, spend the night and then meet up with him on the plane to Panama City. Several crazy different ways of all of us getting down there, but her at least we will all make it! I am flying out of Memphis cause it is a WHOLE lot cheaper! haha! ANyways, I wont be blogging for a while because I will be laying out and getting tan with my fam! So I wanted to give everyone the heads up, but Ill be back to blogging as soon as I get back. I should be back by the 3rd! See you when we get back and trust me I will have way too many pics to post!

One week until we get married

Yes, one week until I marry the love of my life and my true soul mate, Seth Paul Shelby. In exactly one week our lives will not so much change in many ways, but more so just be official simply by a ceremony that will in all ends tell us what we already know. How much we mean to each other and remind us of where we came from and where we can go together, and with our son.

I should be packing, but I am trying to take a break and just relax and soak in, all the material changes that will happen, but more so the deeper meaning of marriage. Seth and I have never been one to jump into things especially not marriage-even when people felt like they knew when the right time was-we both knew when the right time was for us. And now is that time. One week from today will share in the great ceremony of love and take time to appreciate the love that we have with a small group of family and friends.

I want to take a minute to document my feelings before we are off...seth, I love you with all of my heart, and have loved you since we first met. ALthough there have been times when we both needed to step back to see the bigger picture, it finally came to us and here we are! We have the most beautiful child we could have ever imagined and he loves us with all of his heart. You are such a loving person, who never judges others, has a happy heart, and who truely cares for your friends and family more so than I have ever seen. I love you and I can not wait to spend the "rest" of our lives together with our son. You fill a piece of my heart and bring a sort of calm to my soul and I simply love who you are inside and out.

Can not wait to share our vows surrounded by nature. I know there will be a sense of peace and celebration and that is exactly how we wanted this day to be. And so it should be! wahoo! I love you Seth Shelby. You make me so happy.

Happy Belated Mothers Day to me!

And to all you moms out there! What a special day to celebrate, and it truly only hits home when you become a mother. Its almost like Mothers day really is important and means something when you are celebrating it FOR your mother, but as an actual Mother it means way more. I am not sure how to explain it, but I just know like the actual being the mom part is better. Does that make any sense at all? ha!

Mothers Day this year actually took a second to Elem's 1st Birthday. Since his birthday party was on the 10th, and then Mother's Day was on the 11th, we didn't really plan too much for it. My parents ended up staying here, and we went to Seth's Aunt's for the family lunch as always. So it was a great time for family to get together to celebrate all the moms of the family! My mom and dad had to head out kinda kin a hurry, so I didnt even get a pic of me and my mom on Mothers Day. :( boo. But I will get tons at the beach next week, so no worries. But here are a few to document my 2nd mothers day with my baby boy.

So here is me, and Elem, Ali and Cecilia, and Seth's mom


And then a not so happy Elem for mommy wanting a family mothers day pic out by the tree. Guess you cant get everything you want huh? He just wasnt feelin it. Oh well!


Here is the happy boy doing what he does best-just running around, trippin and fallen and being goofy!


Cecilia being so peaceful and pretty while Elem runs amuck in the front yard



And this ladies and gentlemen is my reason for being a mom:




That little boy and my family means more to me than anything in this world and I am such a lucky mother. Mothers day is great and I cant wait to spend many more to come with the loves of my life. Thank you mom for everything you have done for me and everything you have taught me to become. I am truly blessed to have been put into your life and can only hope to be as good of a mom to Elem as you have been to me. Your sacrifices to make my life better are so appreciated and I will forever be grateful.

Peas-Mindy

Party of the Year

....well Elem's party of HIS year that is. And what a party it was! haha. At least we thought it was. So now that you have heard about all the preparation and seen all the hard work we put into everything, lets get down to the party itself!

To start off, like I said my mom and dad were there to get things ready before all the party goers got there and then Seth's dad came by to help out too. While he was playing outside with Elem, our little birthday boy stumbled upon his birthday present and was obsessed with it from that point on! As you can see we couldnt even get him out of it for a pre party pic with his mommy and daddy! I knew he would love this toy because we have one at my school, and I kid you not, he rides it every day morning and afternoon every second that he can! And it is cheap too-so good buy at Target! wahoo!



Then everyone started getting there and the house filled up fast! Here are Shawn and baby Tatum, mommy and daddy to
be -Steph and Aaron, and Brady's mom Erin!


Brady, Erin, SHawn and Tatum-Elem's first friends! haha


There was lots of belly talk and rubs for Steph:


Cecilia was a little distracted by all the balloons on the ceiling for a while there.


Now, time to get this party goin-and Elem Zane is still in his riding toy. Papa trying to talk him into getting out to come and play with his friends! He finally got out-at least for a little while I think!


The classic cake pics are to follow! :) I must say I am proud of several things regarding the cake. Number 1. that Ali and I made the thing, and it turned out fabulous! I totally want to make more, and then Number 2. That it was Elem's first official cake/sweets. I mean as far as I know, until this week he had not had hardly any sweets at all, which was my motherly goal. I just hate it how much kids eat junk and I really wanted him to be healthy and happy and sweet free for the first year of like. So for what it is worth I think we did well!


AFter all that talk of no sweets, he of course LOVED the cake and dove right in!


We actually had to peel that fondant off (which you can get at your local Walmart in the wedding and party area- :)Brittney) so that he could get to the icing, cause it is not the best tasting stuff in the world. I think you can flavor it but we didnt have anything to flavor it with so whatever!


Cecilia...I have already told you, I have never got any cake of my very own, now please back away and go get a cupcake.


Actually before the cake we opened presents and then went straight to the cake to keep the party movin, but after cake, we headed outside to play with the toys! Elem got so much stuff, our house is completely overloaded. Literally, I have no idea what to do with all these toys-balls mainly!!!! But the big hit of the party was from Logun, Jessica, and Uncle Chad and Aunt Leslie! Introducing the water table. Best toy ever!

Here is all the kiddies gathered round to enjoy some cool water on their little ole faces!


Cecilia working hard to get her water in the bucket.


And Elem working hard to just get to that water and splish splash!


With Memaw in the backyard-




Wow what a day and although it was fun, I am glad it is done! We had so much fun and are so thankful to everyone for coming over! We are so blessed to have such a wonderful son and that he has had the most happy and healthy first year of life. We can not imagine our life without him. He is so smart, so sweet, and so loving. I am almost tearing up just writing that last sentence because it is so true and he literally makes my heart melt every time I look at him. Even if he is saying "Minnie" back to me. haha! We love you Elem Zane Shelby and you had a great first year!

Birthday Central

I thought I would simply dedicate a blog to Elems Birthday Decorations! Haha! I know it may be a bit much, but I am so proud of all the work we did to get ready for his 1st big day and I always want him to be able to see what it looked like! SO basically a lot of pictures for memory purposes. I must say, it was one heck of a birthday and I will be posting on the actual event next! It was so much fun and so worth all the hard work. I am most proud of the cake, it took the longest, so if nothing else, take note of that little puppy!

Ali came over the night before and we staid up until 1 am baking cupcakes and working on the bestest 1st birthday cake ever. I thought that there would be about 40 people there so I literally made like 30 cupcakes. And to think, I wonder why we had 20 left over! Oh well, it was fun! For Elems cake, We baked two small cakes and put them on top of each other, iced them up and then colored and rolled out fondant to put on top. And then made little fondant circles to decorate. It was so cute! I loved it. Here it is.


Like I said, we ended up spending soo much time working on the cake on Friday night, we had to do the majority of the decorating the morning of the party! Thank goodness my mom and dad were there, or I never would have been able to pull it off. Seth got up and mowed the yard, while mom my went and got the balloons for me and did all of the food preparations.I spent the entire morning working on the wall decor! I guess I am what you might call-a picture taking freak! I just cant ever get enough of them, so I figured what better day to display tons and tons of pictures of Elem all around the house. I taped and cut and pasted till there were about 50 bazillion pics of the birthday boy all over the house. Here I am taping like a mad woman trying to get it al done with only 2 hours to go.



If you have a kid, you know how hard doing anything on the floor with a 1 year old walking around can be. He wanted to touch everything and help out mommy with whatever he could. He did good-he taped a few pieces for me.


While I was doing the pictures my mom got the food together and the cupcakes out and everything. Here is the spread.


My finished product. If you cant see it too good, I did put ribbon on each picture page to try and make it cuter. haha! ANd the other pages were photos on scrapbook paper.




No party is complete without a personalized banner-


And then outside we had all his little toys, like the sandbox, toddler table, and new kangaroo climber that my mom got his for bis bday! Seth brought a big tent from work and we just streamered it up! I think I got a little too streamer happy, cause I was like streamering everything! But it was fun! Outside looked really cute and very partyish! And outside is Elems favorite place to be so why not? :) It was supposed to tornado that afternoon-which it eventually did, but thank goodness it held off until after the party.


And I think that was about it! Oh well I decorated the door, but I totally forgot to take a picture of it! But as you can imagine it was covered in streamers and a picture of ELem of course! And last but not least we just had tons of balloons on the ceiling to top it off for the birthday feel! Although it was a lot of work and we were totally exhausted from it, it was such a great party. And most importantly Elem had a lot of fun! I will be blogging on the actual party with birthday pics next! But for now, I need to watch the rest of this Celtics game. hehe-it IS playoff season people.

Happy 1st Birthday Elem Zane

What a difference a year makes! One year ago on May 8th at 6:10am, our beautiful little boy Elem Zane Shelby made his way into this world. And it is so amazing to think that he is 1 year old now! He has grown so much mentally, physically, socially, and emotionally, it is simply amazing. I never knew in my wildest dreams how much I could love one little human being-until he was born, and I know Seth feels the same way! Needless to say, over the past year our family has gone through soo many changes, and is still continuing to do so. Since his birth we have witnessed first smiles, coos, crawls, walks, teeth, words, actions and so much more! I love watching Elem grow and never knowing what he is going to learn next. He is a constant happiness to our entire family and I can only imagine the things he will learn over the next year! Here is a snapshot of his life in the last year!

1 month


2 months


3 months


4 months


5 months


6 months


7 months


8 months


9 months


10 months


11 months


12 months

Eat This, Not That

Wow! Today Seth was showing me something that he found online-that I literally can not believe!!! Apparently on the Yahoo front page there was some article on this site called Eat This, Not That. Here is the link:

Eat This, Not That

Basically the article just tells you the top 20 worst fast food options you can get when you go out to eat. It tells you the name of the food, the name of the restaurant, how many calories, how many fat grams, carbohydrates, and then a slightly healthier alternative you can eat instead. For example, the page I linked above goes directly to the WORST KIDS MEAL you can get. Da.da.da.da:

Worst Kids' Meal
Macaroni Grill Double Macaroni 'n' Cheese
1,210 calories
62 g fat
3,450 mg sodium

It's like feeding your kid 1 1/2 boxes of Kraft mac 'n' cheese.

Yes, you read that correctly, 62 fat grams! I mean Can you imagine your kid eating that much fat at once?? No wonder kids get so sick when they come home after eating out. They are eating more fat than a grown man should be eating at one sitting!

Luckily, I am super picky so I am happy to say that I cant bring myself to eat half of the stuff on the list, but I sure do eat a few things on there. And I will NO longer be getting an awesome blossom from anywhere! It really makes you think how much groseness you can put in your body in like less than an hour! I just can not believe it!

I know people think I have been a real stickler on what we feed Elem-we dont give him any sweets, or much greasy food at all-pretty much just noodles, grilled chicken, turkey, bread, and potatoes. But its things like this very article that have made me that way! We want to give Elem the healthiest start possible, and not fill his little body with calories and fat that he doesnt even need, and with foods he has no idea he would ever love! Like cake and what not. I know it is a little overbearing, and yes we will allow him to have candy and sweets-someday-I think. haha! But I will be watching very closely what we put in his mouth as well as our own! Read all 20 categories on the left side of the page once you click on the link. You will be amazed at what exactly you might be consuming!

Elem and his little wagon

This past week Elem has started this new sound that is sooo funny to me! Its like when you blow bubbles with your lips and make that sound kinda like you are driving a car. At least its what kids do when they pretend to be driving a car. Anybody know what I am talking about? Well it is too funny and Elem has got it down pat! Once he figured out how to do it he has not stopped. The other night after his bath I caught him pulling his little wagon around and making that sound. It was too cute so I got it on tape. Growing up to be a big boy! And he just talks and talks and talks and works so hard! I just love this little video. Its about 2 minutes so it might be a little long, but hey I think he is the cutest thing in the world so I can never get enough of him! ha!