Allie's words

These are the words Allie is saying as of now. Many of them are brand-new, including her phrase today: Look at Me! (always a girl, right?)

This is more of a list for myself, but thought some of you would enjoy hearing her words as well! She is also saying: (with her pronunication first, then the actual word!)

Mama (at least 1 million times a day!)
Daddy (a close second at 900 thousand times)
Landon (she loves her brother and looks for him when he is missing from the room!)
dog
ditty (kitty)
beh (a dual word: bear, which is her favorite DVD; also "bread")
I want out! (of her high chair, bed, carseat, etc.)
NOOOOOO!!!
bebe (baby, maybe this should actually be in first place!)
babble (another dual word: means Bible and apple)
want MILK!
Mimi
Pop
Anni (our friend Anna)
Ian
donkey (random, right?)
book
Pooh (another favorite DVD)
I stuck!
MINE!
Night Night
poon (spoon)
cookie
Nanny (candy, another favorite phrase)
oose (juice)
nana (banana)

I know there are more, so I will update as I think of (read: hear her say them!)
Have a great day.

Meatless Mondays

In order to help out a family in our area, Ben (husband/pastor) challenged our church to give up one dinner a few weeks ago, and eat only rice for that meal. It was a two-fold challenge: to eat a meal that much of the rest of the world considers normal, as well as to save money to donate to this family.
Now for those of you who know me, I enjoy cooking. A lot. (yes, I'm weird) And I love to eat even more. So just making and eating rice? Hmmm..
But this night was amazing. Really, truly humbling. As my husband said on his blog, we ate pretty early and were both starving (well, not really) less than an hour later. And, we both had two bowls of rice. Many people in this world only get one, if that.
So we decided as a family to designate Mondays as "Meatless Mondays." I will cook a simple meal, without meat of course, for our family when possible on Mondays. We would really like to be able to give more to the poor, both in our city and around the world, and this is one small way we can do this. God has a tremendous heart for the poor, and we are praying to have the same.
Here are some of the benefits that we have thought can come about by giving up meat only once a week:
* The main reason, which is to save money to give away
* To be able to identify with others who eat very simply
* To teach our children that Americans live in excess, and we can do with less
* To be a little healthier: giving up meat once a week can only be good for us
* To have more time with my family that evening, with much less cooking preparation and clean up time.

I would love to hear of more ideas of how you are giving back this holiday season.

Allie...

went tee-tee on the potty today!
Yay yay! For those of you who don't appreciate a good potty story, you may as well just browse somewhere else! :)

She was running around saying, "Potty! Potty!" She has done this before and I sit her up there and.... nothing.

But today, she did it! Landon and I made such a hoopla about it that she probably freaked out and thought she did something wrong. I mean Landon was seriously screaming, in the high pitched way that Landon screams, "Allie went tee tee on the potty! Allie went tee tee on the potty!"

Then, what was really funny, was I asked Landon if he wanted to call Daddy and tell him. He said, "Yeah!" I asked what he was going to tell him. He said, "That I want to go to Lindsey and Alan's house!" (my sis and her hubby) Oh, well. I called and broke the news myself.

Sorry, Sam's Club. You may soon be losing $35 a month from the Hays family on diapers.

Ben and Landon's Deer

Ben and Landon went hunting this past weekend- a Hays family tradition- with his dad and brother.
His brother Steven shot a deer in the morning hunt:



Then, Ben and Landon got one in the evening hunt:



(That's Pepaw, Ben's dad, in the photo above. Landon just adores him! As a matter of fact, so do I!)

It was a great weekend of "male bonding" for the men and Allie and I had a girls' weekend with Steven's wife Phyllis and their daughters Lauren and Cayla.
For $30 (the cost of a hunting license), we have our meat for the year! Yay Ben and Landon!