This past weekend, we went to visit Latrice, Miracle, Gerry, and baby Angel. It was a quick trip but good. The boys got the baby bug again and are now bugging me for a baby sister. She is just about the most precious thing I’ve seen in a while. She just has the most amazing heir about her. We also went down to the Alligator Farm in Hot Springs to let Jayden see Alligators and Zion was demanding to see moneys. On the way, we stopped at ‘Brown’s Country Store and Buffett’. It was amazing. As we were going down the line filling our plates, Jayden looked at me and said “I have a feeling I’m going to eat good today, and there’s more to explore.” Drama King! All the way there Zion was chanting “mom, are we going to see alligators, I can’t wait to see MY alligators.” The minute we pulled up to the park and got out, Zion instantly wanted to be situated on my hip because he was afraid. It was just the funniest thing, he couldn’t wait to get there and now he wanted nothing to do with anything that moved! Jayden petted the small gators and was smitten by the arctic fox and mountain lion. As we were leaving Jayden told the attendant, we’ll be back in a couple months, see you then.

Today we were supposed to attend an NBA game in Oklahoma City, but Jayden’s basketball game didn’t start until 4:40p and the game in OKC started at 7p. Needless to say we weren’t going to make it so we decided to go to Branson for a few days since it was a long weekend with MLK Day Monday, Jan 18th. We rented a two bedroom cabin that was absolutely fabulous. Jayden and Zion loved it. It has a screened in back porch with a picnic table, a couple rocking chairs and a hot tub! Shortly after we arrived, we decided to run back out to get something to eat, the boys just wanted to order in. They didn’t want to leave. When we finished at the restaurant as we were checking out, the boys noticed a couple of toys they just had to have. Jayden selected a webkin dragon (which he named Flames), Zion picked a guitar (which he called his tar). As the sales clerk was bagging Zion’s guitar, she said “now this is a pretty big bag for such a little guy” Zion replied “yeah, I’m going to take my tar to my ‘other nice house’!” He actually got pretty attached to the place.

Today was the premier of the American Idol New Season Premier and Jayden and I watched it. He was so into it. There was a singer who blew the both of us away. We just happened to be recording it and at commercial we played his performance over and over again. Jayden was even trying to mimic the singer. I said to him “I can teach you how to sing that song like that.” He said, ok. So I started teaching him the runs and phrasing and he caught on really quickly. He sounded great. I’m so proud of him that he is taking an interest in something so tender as well as his technical ability to sing. Wow! I called Patrice because he wanted to sing for her and she was the typical proud aunt. Her exact words were, “Maybe I’m just being hormonal, but that’s just about the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard!” That’s by boy!

Today my nephews, William and Josiah, started going to Jayden’s school in Fayetteville (a transfer from Rogers Schools). I told Jayden last night that they would start attending his school and today when he was going in from recess, William ran up to him and said “hi”. Jayden said, “hi, now go back to your group so you don’t get lost.” When school was out, Jayden was a little late coming out to the car, so Manuel asked him if he had to stay over for some reason, he said, “no, I just decided to swing by William and Josiah’s classes to make sure they were ok and knew how they were getting home. I just wanted to check on them before I left.” Awwwww, sweet, grown, little boy. I he is really getting a kick out of bossing Josiah and William around since he’s the oldest and all. LOL.