Tailgating is Exhausting!

Grandaddy and Roper took a break from tailgating for some zzzs on Saturday afternoon...

One More Thing...

...I meant to write about this in my earlier post. Have any of you heard of or read The China Study?



I haven't read the book (yet) but I've been told that it's been known to turn folks into vegetarians. My carnivorous husband is currently reading it. I once prepared a meatless dinner and Graem commented that it "looked like a good appetizer." In his mind its not a meal if it doesn't include meat! This should be interesting!

Catching Up

It's been a while since I've posted...I've had good intentions but time has gotten away from me! I don't expect that to change any between now and the end of the year! Ready or not, the BUSY holiday season is upon us! I really love it though -- it's the most wonderful time of the year!!

Roper had his surgeries...all three of them...about a week and a half ago. I can't believe I'm going to post a picture of me sans makeup...but give me a break, we had to be at the hospital at 5:45 am which means I was up at a ridiculous hour. Thankfully my mom stayed over the night before to look after Mason while we took Roper to the hospital.



He looked so cute in the hat & scrubs & slippers that the nurse had us dress him in...but they didn't last long...he is not a morning person (wonder where he gets it?) and he was stripped down to just the pants in no time.

The day of the surgery was pretty miserable for him. We had a hard time getting him to take the pain medicine the doctor prescribed for him, which was tylenol with codeine. He spit it out every time...so finally I switched to plain tylenol, thinking it would be better than nothing, and it made a huge difference! 24 hours post op he was back to normal...pretty much...although there is a long list of things he's not supposed to do for 2 weeks, so we're still trying to keep that under control, which is hard since he feels perfectly normal now.

He has about a 2" incision just below his hip from the hydrocele repair, but he only complains about it when he sees it. Out of sight, out of mind! During a diaper change or bath time, he will point to his "big ole boo boo" as he calls it, but he says it doesn't hurt anymore. But he's quick to remind us that the "mean ole doctor" cut him. In addition to the hydrocele repair and another procedure related to that, he also got tubes in his ears. We are so thankful that the doctors coordinated their schedules so that he could get everything done at once!

Mason made it to his third football game this season...



At the end of the game on Saturday, Mason announced that he wants to be a quarterback when he grows up, but he wants to play for the blue team! Sounds good to me -- my grandfather went to the Citadel so it holds a special place in my heart! And I agree with Mason that the blue and white uniforms look pretty good!

Another Mason "funny" that I have to share...he has really been "into" the Bible story lessons from Sunday School each week. He comes home talking about them and asking questions and then most nights he will ask that we read him whichever "story of the week" from our children's Bible. For a while he was stuck on the story of David & Goliath (which, by the way, is hilarious if you ask him to tell you the story). And thanks to David the Shepherd Boy, Mason now has a sling shot on his Christmas list!

The most recent story that he is fixated on is the story of "Joseph and his Very Colorful Coat." Over the weekend Mason told Graem that he thought it would be a good idea to sell Roper to slave traders, just like Joseph's brothers did to him! I was re-counting this to my friend Leslie, who's mother happens to be Mason's SS teacher, and Leslie responded that perhaps Mason should be reminded of how the story ends -- with Mason grovelling at Roper's/Joseph's feet for mercy! HA!

Fox's Farm

A few weeks ago we spent the morning at Fox's Farm with a group of friends. The boys just eat up this type of thing...hayride, animals, searching for pumpkins in a haystack, what more could you ask for??

Please excuse the quality of my pictures...sometimes the thought of toting my big camera around while keeping up with both boys is exhausting, so I have become increasingly dependent on my iPhone camera.





Here is Mason, our chicken-loving boy, being introduced to a Chinese Chicken.




This sweet little donkey got lots of love from the Clark boys.

Knoxville

It seems like forever ago, but weekend before last Graem and I headed up to Knoxville for the Carolina game. I won't bore you with all the details of the weekend...details would mean that I would spend most of this post complaining, and I know yall don't want to read that! Instead, here's a quick recap:

Knoxville is nice, especially if you like hills (they don't call it rocky top for nothing).

Neyland Stadium is the pits (this is where my complaining could get really out of hand...suffice it to say that I'm thankful that rocky top is not home sweet home to me!).

We won (yay!).

I ended up sick on Sunday, and I'm still not entirely sure if it was a reoccurence of really bad morning sickness, or we overdid it on Saturday, or I picked up a GI bug.

The leaves on the drive up and drive back were beautiful.



Tailgating on the water looks like fun!


We tailgated most of the day with our friend Blake, who works for Colonial Life in Nashville. This picture of Graem and Blake cracks me up...


All in all, it was a nice little getaway and I know the boys were glad we took a trip, because they had a blast with my parents at the farm. We try to do one away game each year and I'm glad we went to Tennessee this year, but its not at the top of my list for future trips! The ironic thing is that Vanderbilt, also in Tennessee, might just be my favorite road trip for a game!

Our Third Sweet Baby Boy

I feel like everyone in the world was holding their breath on Wednesday to find out the gender of baby Clark #3! And thanks to text messaging and Facebook, and now my blog, now the whole world knows!



Yes, we are having a third boy. Last night Graem and I joined the Smyths to see "Rain," the musical tribute to the Beatles, and all day today I've been singing "one and one and one is three...come together..."

I have to admit that this pregnancy is so different from the first two that I really thought it must be a girl...of course this is only the third time that I've been wrong in predicting the gender of my children...so much for a mother's intuition! But I learned a long time ago that God knows best and I know He is giving us this baby boy for a reason. I know God has big plans for this little fella's life and it is an honor for me to get to be his Mama. And there is definitely something special about three boys...there aren't many Mamas that can say they had three boys ages four and under!

Now that I've had a couple of days for the news to sink in, I thought I would share some random thoughts I've had and/or suggestions from others about raising 3 boys.
1. The southern gentleman is an endangered species; I'm glad to do my part to increase the population.
2. Since I'm only capable of producing heirs, I must have been meant for royalty.
3. We need to increase the coverage of our homeowner's insurance.
4. I plan to pick the wives of all 3 of my sons.
5. Graem thinks a third boy justifies the need his wish to buy a camper.
6. Boys love their mamas best.
7. It's a good thing I like to cook.
8. We will always have female pets in our home.
9. I believe that boys can be well-mannered, kind, considerate, and respectful and still be "all boy."
10. My boys are fortunate that they'll have brothers as playmates and friends for life.

It's November!

November 2nd, to be perfectly accurate...which means my big ultrasound is today! (11/2/11 at 2 -- yall know I like numbers!) I'm so excited!! I'm praying for a good appointment, with news of a healthy baby who has his or her legs spread wide open! :-)

I have some catching up to do with pictures from all of our Halloween festivities. Well, not all of our Halloween festivities. I'm ashamed to admit that I don't have any pictures of our trick-or-treating experience. Roper ended up with pink eye on Halloween so he was quarantined at the house.

Most of you know that I grew up on a farm, so on Halloween we always went to the fall festival at our church and then went trick-or-treating in my grandparents' neighborhood. Most days of the year I do not love having neighbors on all four sides of me...I miss the privacy of living in the country...but Halloween is one exception. I love our neighborhood on Halloween! We get lots of trick-or-treaters...I feel like all the children from Lexington County that don't live in proper trick-or-treating neighborhoods end up in our neighborhood and I love it!

So even though I don't have pictures from the actual night of Halloween, I do have some of our little firemen, aka Sam and Elvis. (You might recall that Mason went through a prolonged phase of referring to himself as Fireman Sam, and he referred to Roper as Elvis...Fireman Sam is still around, but thankfully the obsession has tapered somewhat).

My plan was to dress Mason as a fireman and Roper as a dalmation, but Roper insisted that he be a fireman too. Here the boys are before the Browns pumpkin carving party...



On the way to the party I needed to run in the grocery store to pick up some chips to go with the dip I made...and lo and behold there was a fire truck in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot! The firemen were so nice and let the boys climb all over the truck.



Here are our pumpkins...Graem's emoticon pumpkin came in second place in the contest. I was pretty proud of my bat too, but I heard at least one trick-or-treater refer to it as a moose...



Our next Halloween outing was to Boo at the Zoo with the Smyth family. It was Jr. Gamecock Club night so we got to visit with Cocky and the cheerleaders. Roper loves Cocky...from afar...he refused to get in the picture.



The Smyths...










A hot dog dinner was included with the Jr. Gamecock Club thing, and they also had a d.j. The children were cracking us up with their dance moves!



Ro-ro loves baby Frances...


A sweaty fireman and a goat...


All 5 of the children...