Beautiful Week

It looks as though this is going to be the first beautiful week of the year and how fitting that it is Easter week. It just gives us another reason to be ever so thankful.
Yesterday really proved to me that God will even go above and beyond answering our prayers. I still can't get over my friend's hearing yesterday and how well it turned out. God is definitely good!

Today, as well as yesterday, LL and I headed to the park with boyfriend and LL's future mother in law. It was BEAUTIFUL and honestly, I think that we could have stayed out for hours! They had a BLAST!
This evening, we ran several errands to pick up some last minute Easter gifts. I think that the Easter bunny is going a little overboard with LL's basket this year due to the fact that it is just so much fun to shop for her this year!! However, the Easter bunny knows that she is not quite ready for candy yet (and her mom isn't quite ready for her to have it), so her basket will be candy free (a few more years without knowing what all of that stuff is on the grocery checkout aisle would be GREAT!)

5 More Years!!

Thank all SO much for the thoughts, prayers, and letters that you sent on behalf of my dear friend. We attended the parole hearing this morning and her offender received 5 more years (which is the max sentence that you can receive in this state for a parole hearing).
Woohoo!!
I am so glad that she will able to put her mind at ease for the next few years. Hopefully by the time that the next hearing rolls around, the law will have changed to have sex offenders complete their entire sentences.
Again, thanks for all that you all have done. We appreciate it more than you know!

Tough Day

Tomorrow (Tuesday) will be a very tough day for a very dear friend of mine and I hope that you will all keep her in your thoughts and prayers.
18 years ago she was kidnapped, brutally raped and beaten by a total stranger who basically left her for dead. Tomorrow she will have to go before the Pardons and Parole Board in order to plead to keep this man, this monster, behind bars.
Several of her friends, including myself, will be making the drive down in order to support her.
Please pray for her as she is having to relive the most horrible moments of her life. Please pray that the Board will keep this criminal behind bars. He was sentenced a total of 75 years and I hope that he will see much more of his sentence than a mere 18.
Furthermore, please pray that this man will not steal the joy from her life and that God will continue to give her the strength to live her life as one of the most amazing women that I know who changes the lives of others with her positive energy and attitude daily.

Worn OUT!

Whew!! I think that it is safe to say that I won't be going out of town for a while. Traveling over the past 2 weeks w/ LL has worn me out! Gone are the days in which she would just sleep the whole time. We are lucky if she sleeps 2 hours max now! The rest of the time, we are listening to the DVD player in the back, having pacis, toys, etc. thrown at us, and hearing squeals, screams, etc!
I am worn out and so is she! We had a fun weekend and we both scored a new pair of shoes each!

Today, we headed home early so that I could get all of my donations together to drop off for the Junior League's annual "garage sale". Having LL on my hip while dropping stuff off was quite the challenge! This is an exciting time for the League, however it will pretty much consume 2 of my weekends in April. The other two will be filled with Easter and wedding festivities (a friend of ours from college), who will actually be getting married in May.
I am really looking forward to taking LL to her first TWO Easter egg hunts on Saturday. I can't wait to watch her in action. Her Mimi gave her lots of practice this weekend with hiding plastic eggs and then going to "hunt" them.
I hope that everyone has a wonderful week--it looks like we will FINALLY be having a full week of SPRING weather--WOOHOO!!

Good Times

We made it down and did lots of last minute preparing for the shower last night. We finished up things today and then headed to the shower this afternoon. Everything was wonderful. The food was yummy, my banners were super cute, the games were loads of fun, and my cousin got a lot of cute things and essentials.
We will head back in the morning and have a busy Sunday ahead of us.
This week will be rather busy but all is good because we are allowed to wear jeans at school this week--woohoo!!

Miss Crafty

After work today, I decided to make a "It's a Boy!" banner for my cousin's shower this weekend. I was SUPER nervous that things wouldn't go as I had envisioned them, but I think that it is going to turn out being just precious!!
However, the event didn't go COMPLETELY without flaws! First, the machine that I was using to cut out shapes and letters ATE a few pieces of my nice paper...therefore, I had to make ANOTHER trip to Hobby Lobby in the tornado weather this evening to get more. Which leaves me no choice but to run back to our resource center after school to finish cutting everything out tomorrow...luckily there is not much left to do!
Hopefully, I will remember to post some pictures once I am able to complete it.
We will head south tomorrow...I just hope and pray that LL will behave at this family event!

I Don't Want to Grow Up..

I ran into Toys R Us today to run through their baby section (that is like an awesome mini Babies R Us in one back corner of the store), only to find SO many temptations in aisles in between the front door and the baby section.
Of COURSE, I would decide to head there when they are having a MAJOR sale on almost EVERYTHING!!
Everywhere I looked, I saw "Buy One, Get One Free/Half-Off/etc"!
I could not BELIEVE how many deals that they had going on! Little Tikes BOGOs, V-Tech BOGOs, $5 off of this, $10 off of that!
Why must they torture me when it is the end of the month and I am trying to save the few pennies that I have left in my account to set aside for Disney?! And we all know that my child is super deprived and has no toys.

However, I walked out of there with nothing..such willpower.. If any of you are looking for some PRECIOUS infant/toddler toys for GREAT deals, you should head there this week!!
Also, if you go to this website, you can get some extra money off!!

http://print.coupons.com/couponweb/Offers.aspx?pid=15162&zid=st48&nid=20

We bought LL the little Walk N Ride for her birthday, and right now they have it on sale for $14.99--and if you use the coupon, you can get it for $9.99---who wouldn't want that multi-purpose toy for that cheap?! It is pure entertainment in the Loyo home for at least a whole 30 seconds some days!! That is a lot of time spent on one toy for this little non-stop tornado!