Miss Mary Claire

Gosh! Have I only been blogging about the boys lately?! Well, we do have another member of the family...a very sweet, beautiful Miss Mary Claire. She deserves this post as she has met many challenges recently and showed true strength of character(hehe) through it all! She is #3, what should I expect, right?

First of all, she finally mastered the art of walking! YAY! After 14-15 months, she finally made up her mind that maybe the legs could be used for something other than crawling around. I was beginning to think maybe I should be worried. Good thing she made up her mind to do it. Hmm...could this be a sign of things to come?

She seems to really like Miss Lori, her new nanny! I know she would rather have Mommy, (and I would rather have her, too) but I can at least have peace of mind that she is happy when I have to be away from her.

Mary Claire is getting a mouthful of teeth! Molars and pointy teeth and all kinds of little things sprouting out of those little gummies! I stuck my finger in her mouth the other day(after using GERM-X, of course! These days, my life seems to be surrounded by GOBS of GERM-X!! Amen?) and discovered the culprit to the numerous consecutive nights of crying in the middle of the night...painful TEETH hurting my baby girl! Needless to say, the last two nights have seen a dose of pain medicine before bedtime!

Lastly, Mary Claire has now reached an important milestone...she recently received her FIRST PRINCESS dress up outfit! (OK...Maybe it's not a true PRINCESS outfit...it's supposed to make her look like Tinkerbell so that she can match her Captain Hook and Peter Pan brothers.) BUT... she sure looks like a princess in it! :-)

Walking in her pretty dress!

The Other Jonah

This past week, we had our first project due for Jonah's new preschool class. It was an "All About Me" poster! Well, when older brother, John Owen, had the same assignment 2 years ago, "we" (yeah, 'cause we ALL KNOW WHO REALLY does the work) made a life-size, look-a-like poster of him. So, of course, Jonah wanted the SAME thing for himself! He was so much more cute about it than John Owen was! Jonah has the BEST imagination, and I just love the way his mind thinks about things. I have said it before and I'll say it again...he keeps me smiling and laughing!

Well, as "we" were constructing this look-a-like poster of Jonah, he was talking to me...saying things like, "Hey Momma, I got a good idea...why don't we make one of these for you and Daddy and Mary Claire and then we can hang them all together on the wall in the playroom with John Owen's?" It was a great idea! (But I was also thinking...yeah, I'll be working on THAT for the next few weeks, I'm sure!) He then made me smile as he started referring to his poster as "the other Jonah".

When "we" finished it and it was time for bed, he carried it to his room and laid it down on the floor next to his bed and informed me that "the other Jonah" wanted to sleep beside him. I thought it was so cute! We talked about how "the other Jonah" would be going to school with him the next day and that he would need to make sure he took care of "the other Jonah" on the bus so that he wouldn't break any arms, legs or fingers off. Jonah assured me he would take care and that "the other Jonah" would sit RIGHT beside him on the bus. The next morning he brought "the other Jonah" in for breakfast and placed him in a chair at the table. :-) He was so funny with his poster! I want to always remember how cute Jonah was with this project and how imaginative he is. Here's Jonah with "the other Jonah" before they BOTH boarded the bus!

He had a sad look on his face later that afternoon when he told me that the teacher kept "the other Jonah" at school. I reassured him that "the other Jonah" would be o.k. at school. The teacher just wanted "the other Jonah" to get to see everybody at school for a while, then she would send him home to us for good...And when he comes home, he will take his rightful place next to "the other John Owen" on the playroom wall! Now... "we" will have to get busy on "the other Hensleys" so the family will be complete...for Jonah's and "the other Jonah's" sake.

Hey, look at it this way...I can get a jumpstart on Mary Claire's "All About Me" project! :-)

Summer's End?

For some, Labor Day marks the end (or the beginning of the end) of summer. Pools start to close until next season, some people put away their white clothing and shoes, fall decorations begin to appear in stores and on the doors of houses, etc. Nevertheless, I can promise you that the Hensley family will be hitting the pool until our lips start to turn purple from the cooling temps of the water at Mimi's! In doing so, maybe we can stretch the summer out just a little longer!

We had a great Labor Day weekend...fun-filled and jam-packed with as much as we could possibly do in a weekend and one day off from work and school. Friday, we kicked the weekend off with my birthday! For 32 years now, I have enjoyed having a birthday on or around Labor Day. It's pretty nice to get to celebrate around a holiday weekend. (It's like the whole weekend and the extra day off turns into a weekend birthday celebration!)

***An amusing fact about my family is that my brother and I both celebrate our birthdays on or around two different holidays. Labor Day for me, (I was 56 mins. shy of making my debut on Labor Day back in 1977) and my TURKEY of a brother (sorry, I couldn't resist that one) came into the world on Thanksgiving Day in 1980!***

As part of the weekend celebration, I got to enjoy a date night with my wonderful husband on Friday, then a Saturday spent in Jackson visiting my grandparents along with my aunt and uncle who were visiting from North Carolina, and a special birthday dinner at my mom's on Saturday night. Mrs. Baugues made me the BEST carrot cake for my birthday...I think I made myself sick eating too much of it! A wonderful cake!

On Sunday, I did something I don't usually do or haven't done in quite a while...I went with my husband and good friends to tailgate before attending the U of M vs. Ole Miss football game! It was a great time with great food! I thought nothing of the number of fried onion rings I put down 'cause it was my birthday weekend. :-) Who's counting anyway, right? They were some GOOD onion rings, for sure! I was completely exhausted when we got home Sunday night!

On Monday morning, I cleaned up around the house, laid out our clothes for the week, made a Wal-Mart "run" and then picked up pizza for lunch and proceeded to picnic around the pool before taking a great Labor Day nap with my 3 beautiful children!

The exciting part about Monday came when we decided to end the day with some soccer practice outside. Soccer season is just around the corner and we had our first team practice planned for Tuesday. We pulled out our soccer gear and headed out to the side yard. Our plans for a little soccer practice were quickly interrupted by the screams and tears coming from Jonah as he was stung on the cheek by a wasp while retrieving the soccer ball by the fence! I grabbed Jonah, and we all ran to the garage in fear that the wasps might swarm. Jan came out when he heard the screams and proceeded to try to knock the nest down, but the flyswatter broke with his first swing and the wasps stung him, too. Jan was then determined to kill every wasp in his sight, so he told the boys we were going on a "WASP HUNT"!

Now picture this...all of us jump into the van, rush to Home Depot, buy 6 cans of Wasp & Hornet Killer, drive back to the house all the while talking about how "we're gonna get those wasps!" And we did! Jan succeeded in finding and destroying 7 ACTIVE wasp nests on the fence beside our house and in the backyard. That's over 200 wasps that went down at the Hensley House! This is a picture of the first 3 nests we hunted down!

We enjoyed our Labor Day weekend & we hope your weekend was great, too!