Isn't this adorable???

I left Baby B and Barkley in the den alone while I went to change for Baby B's swimming lesson. Baby B had put all of his toys in a pile by the baby gate, and when I peaked around the corner to check on them, I saw Barkley gazing up at me helplessly amongst the stuffed animals...I HONESTLY did not stage this. Can you find Barkley????

Now we can all relax!!!!

Now that our nerve-racking nights of watching our Carolina baseball team play Clemson are over and we won the National Championship, we can all relax... including Barkley.

Barkley can stretch his legs out and rest comfortably and Baby B can enjoy putting his puzzle together that Auntie J and Uncle R gave him for his birthday... Isn't he getting good at it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCC_RAAbqkw

One more puzzle video... This is a puzzle from Cici and SS. The trick is that you can use a magnetic fishing pole to remove each puzzle piece. It didn't take him long to figure it out...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03mC866Q6SA

Happy Wednesday Pamela's Girls!

Love,

~Mommy M

A Weekend at Santee

Like Sanfran S and Auntie J, this has been a whirlwind of a week. Between teaching 15 three, four and five year olds at Vacation Bible School, to taking Baby B to swimming lessons every night, it was a good, but exhausting week. Because it was such a hectic week, I appreciated even more the fact that Cici and SS were willing to keep Baby B for us yesterday and last night, so Daddy L and I could enjoy spending time with good friends on the lake at Santee.

Daddy L has been working on sprucing up his boat for a few months, so it was a lot of fun to get to take it out. We stayed at a friends house on the water. It is a very neat, unique cabin style house with a beautiful long dock. His mom had it all decorated for July 4th, so I took a photo for ideas since Cici always has such cute decorations to celebrate Independence Day.

We road on the water for about an hour and a half, until we got to the locks. That is where the water level changes on the way to Charleston, so you have to tie your boats to each other and your locked in while the water drops down. It sounds kind of scary, but its actually a lot of fun meeting new poeple around you while listening to music. We then ate at a DELICIOUS seafood restaurant on the other side of the locks where I enjoyed popcorn shrimp, hushpuppies and french fries... yummy!
Then, of course, to top it all off, I got to watch the Gamecocks beat our rival team in baseball last night, so that we can now go on to play in the World Series... how exciting. We had such a great weekend!Thank you to Cici for keeping Baby B so we could have such a wonderful time with friends! I hope all of my Pamela's girls also enjoyed a fun, relaxing weekend.
Love,
~Mommy M

Adelle4Paris

It looks like the Pamela’s Girls have all had a crazy busy week! Me included!

I worked on the house all week for incoming company; cleaned, washed, shopped – all to find that their plans had changed. I will see these sweet folks in August, but was sad to miss this visit. However – my house is clean so maybe some creative endeavors can jump into play over Saturday and Sunday…. At least that is my hope.

Thinking about creative projects combined with remembering that this time 3 years ago I was preparing for my Paris trip prompted me to recently start a separate blog that is just for some writing that I have done in the past and will do. It is easier to work on this kind of thing now that Auntie J has her own laptop at long last! Uncle R is extremely satisfied with his new laptop and I feel very fortunate to have my own “pre-loved” mac! With it, I have had more fun playing with the layout on this new blog.

Of course, Pamela’s Girls is going to always be First Priority (:-D, but... the new blog is called – Adelle4Paris – http://adelle4paris.blogspot.com. It may always be a blog that only I look at, but it has given me a lot of enjoyment so far in just setting up.

Hope my Pamela’s Girls have a wonderful weekend!
Auntie J

Happy NPW Week!

This week is a very big for my work, it's NPW. But not only that, I was given a deadline to have a new website launch and a launching of a new campaign which requires its own website look, design, organization and building many pages. For a moment I was scared I wasn't going to make the deadline given because my position is not just web and graphic design, but I'm the Office Manager, the Accountant, the Bookkeeper, the recipient of all the many random info@'s, and the list goes on. With the help of 2 interns, I was able to pass on some of my many duties and focus mainly on the website (kind of) for 2 solid weeks. I don't think it's the best website ever, not even close. But I think it's ok considering that I never knew a thing about web design until now and that web design isn't my sole job. I thought that the Pamela's girls would like to see the before and after. Feel free to browse around the old and the new site to see the differences. Most of the content such as the phrases, etc. I made up as well.
Here's a link to the homepage of the old website:
oldwebsite

Here's the link to the homepage of the new website that I designed and built.
newwebsite

I hope you like it!
Love to all the Pamela's Girls!
P.S. I can't wait to see you guys in almost a month!!

Happy Father’s Day To The Pamela’s Girls Daddies!

We are all thankful and happy to have Daddy L in our lives and it is sweet to see what a wonderful father he is to Baby B!

Proverbs 4:1-9
A Father's Instruction
Hear, O sons, the instruction of a father,
And give attention that you may gain understanding,

For I give you sound teaching;
Do not abandon my instruction.

When I was a son to my father,
Tender and the only son in the sight of my mother,

Then he taught me and said to me,

"Let your heart hold fast my words;
Keep my commandments and live;

Acquire wisdom! Acquire understanding!

Do not forget nor turn away from the words of my mouth. "

Do not forsake her, and she will guard you;
Love her, and she will watch over you.

The beginning of wisdom is: Acquire wisdom;

And with all your acquiring, get understanding.

Prize her, and she will exalt you;

She will honor you if you embrace her.

She will place on your head a garland of grace;

She will present you with a crown of beauty."

When Uncle R and I were in SC last July, it was a joy to see the pleasure that Baby B gives to SS and what a loving grandfather he is… But then I have always been impressed by the tender love that SS holds for his two daughters and the Godly way that he continues to walk his life in front of them. Uncle R had some big shoes to fill when I married him, because I had a very high example of what a loving husband should be after having SS for a brother-in-law.

Acts 22:14

"And he said, ' The God of our fathers has appointed you to know His will and to see the Righteous One and to hear an utterance from His mouth.

I also want to remember the father that CiCi and I shared. He is not with us now, but I think that he dearly loved his two daughters and we held a special place in his heart. I have such good memories of the car trips when he carried me and all of my piles of belongings up to college far away in Tennessee and the long talks that we would have as we drove along. Then later when he would come to Nashville for visits, he and I would haunt every bookstore that we could find and I would usually discover that he had left a lovingly inscribed book for me when he left town.

Psalm 103:13
Just as a father has compassion on his children, So the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him.

Love to the Pamela’s Girls and also the Pamela’s Girls Daddies!!!

We are thankful for our Daddies!!!

Auntie J

An Intriguing Mystery

This week I was fortunate to be able to spend 5 days at Hilton Head with SS while he was attending a SC Petroleum Marketers conference. He is on the Board - Vice President this year, President starting in January 2011 - so he had a lot of meetings to attend in the mornings, while I got to take it easy reading and spending time on the beach walking or laying by the pool. It was HEAVEN!

From Sunday to 9:30 Monday night there was a silent auction set up, with items donated by SCPMA members. There were all kinds of things, but from the start SS was interested in a an item that had a print of Ben Hogan and Arnold Palmer with a patch from the Masters and a little plaque that read "Ben Hogan - Arnold Palmer Waiting to tee off on the 2nd hole - 1966 Masters."

I told him it was too bad that it wasn't 1967 or 1968 or Daddy and I might have been in the background. I tried to discourage him from trying to get it, saying that we were downsizing and we don't need any more "things." But he really wanted to get it. So he hung around it until 9:30 and then put his bid down, and won it. We couldn't pick it up until Tuesday. In the meantime I pulled up a picture of our Pamela's Girls blog and showed him the picture of Daddy and me before leaving home in 1968, and that he was wearing a hat like some of the men in the background of the picture. After getting the picture Tuesday and taking it back to the room, SS said "Carol, what do you think about this?" Knowing that Daddy always followed in Arnie's Army, there is a man in the background, his face partially covered by binoculars, looking amazingly like Daddy - wearing the same-looking outfit as the 1968 picture!

What do you Pamela's Girls think?

With love and wonder, CiCi

Baby B's Day at the Beach

Since Cici and SS have given me beach fever and since Baby B's Uncle R came to town, we decided to take a day trip to the beach yesterday. It is so nice only being an hour or so away now. We ate a nice lunch at a seafood restaurant in Garden City and then played on the beach by the pier for about an hour. Baby B had such a good time. Last time we went to the beach in April, I chased Baby B as he ran all over the place. He ran straight toward the water and walked up to strangers and wouldn't hold my hand. I guess he's really matured in 2 months, because yesterday he played in the sand right where we were sitting and never ran off. He also only walked to the water when we were holding hands. I was SO proud! It was so cute! He acted so much more like a little boy. He is really growing up... As Auntie J says, "Waaaaa!!!!!" I thought the last picture was the cutest... A sandy Baby B foot in the car on the way home:)

Happy week Pamela's Girls!

Love,

~Mommy M

OFFICE IMPROVEMENTS…

At long last I have some good filing cabinets in my office! This may not sound very interesting, but it has REALLY helped and I am starting to get lots more organized. I love having the confidence and satisfaction that it will be easier to find the information that I need in my day to day work.

They are two REALLY TALL 5-drawer black cabinets there beyond my little Eiffel tower lamp. They are pretty huge in my small office, but my cuticles are happy that they are not being scraped as I try to stuff newly-given label copy into a file drawer that is already bulging. One of my primary roles in my job is giving out label copy to record labels and producer’s assistants who are verifying songwriter names and percents and how the copyright line should read. I keep a record of each of these requests and the information that I return to them and I can tell you that the reams of paper add up!

My office has other French mementos besides my Eiffel tower lamp.

When I was in Paris a few summers ago, I bought a page from an old French architectural encyclopedia that was being sold in a street market – the Marché aux Puces de la Porte de Vanves on Avenue Georges Lafenestre & Avenue Marc Sangnier in Paris. It wasn’t a huge flea market, but had an amazing collection of furniture, trinkets, paintings, fabric, glassware, time pieces, jewelry, military objects, photography, music, and curios. This print says that the building is an Atelier de Peintre… and artist’s studio!

I also have one of my favorite Sarah Freeman paintings hanging with 2 of mine. Sarah’s is the large one with the Tuscan tree. Sarah is a wonderful artist and has sold her work to many entertainment industry folks – Kelly Clarkson included. You can see more of Sarah’s paintings at http://www.sarahfreeman.net/home.html

And then – of course – I love checking the calendar each day when I can see a sweet Baby B’s face!

It’s a simple, comfortable office that I am blessed to come to each day! And now it’s organized!!! YAY!

Love to the Pamela’s Girls,
Auntie J

Baby B's New Pool

Cici got Baby B a fun summer toy- an alligator swimming pool for our backyards that has a sprinkler that shoots out. It was hard for me to take photos once he was in the pool because I had to get in with him, but I thought these water-hose pictures were really cute.

Baby B went to the doctor yesterday and I think we're finally getting his little bug under control. He also has some more big molars coming in on the bottom... no bottom front teeth yet, but I guess the molars are better for chewing anyway:)

Love to my Pamela's Girls!

~Mommy M

Mommy M's "Remembrance"

Auntie J inspired me to write a poem about our grandparent's house. Thank you for the inspiration Auntie J!

Love,

~Mommy M

REMEMBRANCE
VIVIAN & PAPA’S HOUSE
SATCHEL FORD ROAD

As you walk into the covered carport-
chairs where the “grown-ups” sit,
overlooking a wooded, mystical backyard,
where the girls play make-believe for hours,
beneath tall pines and holly trees.
Running across the wooden bridge,
under an archway covered in vines with yellow flowers.
Swinging on swings that Papa built in between two trees.
Sneaking around a metal shed storing buckets of worms for Papa’s fishing trips,
beside the tractor that took many trips around the lawn.
And then there’s the picnic table
on which summer meals are served on red plastic plates.

Walking into the kitchen-
wood paneling and a round table, filled with memories of
Ego waffles dripping in syrup with butter oozing out of every square,
melted Velveeta cheese on Doritos,
turkey and ham sandwiches with swiss cheese on rye bread,
corned beef and cabbage on fresh hamburger buns with Layes potato chips,
Oreo and Chips Ahoy cookies dipped in coffee ice-cream,
Cokes in glass bottles,
endless games of Uno and Connect Four,
and late-night trips to Piggly Wiggly.

The sound of a Grandfather clock in the den
Atop a book shelf that lines the back wall,
filled with books that tell of family history,
framed photos,
red cardinal figurines
and Southern Bell memorabilia.
An antique, wall-mounted AT&T telephone
makes for many fun pretend conversations.
And the faint smell of Vivian’s fingernail polish and remover fill the air.

As you enter the formal living room,
walking on the plush, mint-green carpet,
dancing ladies curtsy beside ornate sconces,
shimmering crystal, delicate china teacups, sterling silver and lace adorn
furniture Papa spent hours refinishing or making by hand.

At Christmas, the smell of pine,
red birds against the snow,
lights twinkling amongst beautiful crystal,
colorful ribbon candy inside sparkling dishes,
and china perfectly arranged on the dining room table beside tall, red candles.

Past the reflective, stained-glass door,

my bedroom –
family portraits in wooden frames,
crisp, white sheets,
big, fluffy pillows,
and Vivian lying beside me waiting for me to fall asleep at night.

Vivian’s room-
a pink, velvet chair,
her beautiful jewelry and all of her cosmetics.
Papa’s room-
a desk with paperwork neatly stacked,

small safes and gun cases,
and his portrait of heaven against the wall.
And on the dresser,
their most cherished possession- the bible.
Worn leather, page after page filled with hand-written markings and notes,
from numerous sermons and bible studies.

Over time, this ranch-style, brick home has changed,
just as those have who grew up playing and laughing there,
but the memories will live forever.

Baby B is Feeling Better

Thankfully Baby B is now eating again and starting to get his personality and energy back. Hopefully we can take it easy this weekend, and he'll be 100% by Monday. We are planning on trying the breakfast buffet at the Country Club tomorrow. Maybe Baby B will also feel up to going back to the pool. Daddy L wants us to check out a house in the Country Club that is going up for auction in the morning. I told Daddy L that the only way we could go is if he PROMISES not to yell out a bid, since we haven't sold our Forest Acres house yet. The couple that looked at our house yesterday was really nice. They still have more houses to look at, but they said they would be in touch with us. Hopefully we won't have another house on our hands by this time tomorrow:)

Happy Friday Pamela's Girls!

Love,

~Mommy M

Fragrance & Remembrance - Mommas' House

In a book that I am currently reading, Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani, the book’s narrator relates that while many people love to remember how their grandmother’s house smelled when they were a child, she loved to remember the smell of the bookmobile that came down her street.

I enjoyed that thought and when Uncle R and I talked about it, we both commented on how the smells of our grandmother’s houses said so much about who they were – welcoming, giving, hospitable, possessing an excellence in cooking, and the feminine flowery smells of sweet dispositions.

That made me start thinking about how Mommas’ house smelled… all of the wonderful flavors of scent there. In my mind I walked through each room thinking about what was there and how it looked and the smells that accompanied that room.

And the result – one of my crazy poems…


FRAGRANCE & REMEMBRANCE
- MOMMAS’ HOUSE

As you walk in –
the smell of Ponds cold cream
tickles your nose
as a warm, welcoming kiss -
velvet soft -
brushes your cheek
and you are embraced.

Mouth-watering lunch is cooking…
Is it fried chicken
or meatloaf?
Biscuits hot with butter melting…
and peach cobbler
lattice-work sugar tiles atop…

Then – as you draw closer
and enter the small, cozy dining room
you find the familiar small pine table
with leaves out,
set with clean & shiny,
deep red, forest green & cream
Franciscan Apple dishes
and frosted iced tea glasses
set on a light cotton tablecloth
with its edging lifting slightly
in the passing breeze
from an oscillating fan
and decorated with
flashing patterns in
primary hues.

The nose identifies
more distinct
and delicious additions -
simmering green beans with potatoes
sharply fragrant cucumbers
basking in slightly sweetened vinegar
& iced tea steeping -
thick, sweet and amber
with springs of mint
from beside the back steps.

In the wintertime
when the lights are dim,
a kerosene stove
pulls you near
for quiet green lamplight,
strong, scalding coffee
and sweet potato pie
with cinnamon scents.
The world grows small
& manageable
and you breathe in deeply.

Mommas’ bedroom –
again the soft hint of Ponds,
gently flowered perfume,
pressed cotton,
cedar from the chest below the window,
moth balls deep in the closet
sending out a faint
suggestion of winter coats & scarves.
A lyrical mélange of flower fragrances,
cut grass
the cooling of hot summer leaves
sings from outside
in the backyard -
beyond the open window
on a summer night -
beside the draping willow
along the dusty, rose curtained garage
at the end of the grass.

In Mommas’ small tiled bathroom -
washing hands
in expectation of
a perfect lunch
the comforting smell
of Dove soap, minty toothpaste
and dusting powder -
and the coolness
of its cleanness.

Smell has a precious memory
where love & sanctuaries of safety
are concerned.

It has the power to transport.
To mesmerize.
To comfort
or fill the eye
with tears.

But it remembers with a well-deep passion
in league with the heart.

Love to the Pamela’s Girls,

Auntie J

Teething/Sick Baby B

Baby B has been teething,, or sick since Monday. He's had a high fever and only felt like watching TV and sleeping, which we all know is not OUR busy little Baby B. There is nothing more sad for a Pamela's girl than to see a lethargic Baby B, who is non-expressive and not hungry. I am hoping he is getting better. I got him to eat a few cheerios for breakfast (but he would only eat them off of the floor) and some pieces of cheese and toast for lunch, which is more than I've seen him eat in 2 days. Hopefully by tomorrow or Friday, he will be back to his normal "never-sit-still" self. If he is up to it, we will be going to Columbia tomorrow to show our house in Forest Acres, so be praying for a buyer for us soon!

Love to my Pamela's Girls!

Mommy M