I love getting cards

I saw this idea somewhere and thought it was a really cute idea. My very own Christmas Card Tree. You just kind of have to wait awhile to get enough cards. I would also like to say that, for anyone who is reading this, I still like to get Christmas letters. It's slowly becoming a thing of the past and I miss hearing about you all. Even though I don't do one myself. Don't follow me - I've got 5 kids. ( I use this excuse a lot )

I also took a picture of our beautiful clock. This was Chris' gift from his Sister and Brother-in-law. He is very talented and is always trying and teaching himself new things, like how to make big beautiful clocks. It stands 4' tall. The picture doesn't do it justice and Chris and I absolutely love it.

This better be the last time.

These chairs used to be Chris' mothers and I recovered them and got to enjoy them a little over a year when my little boy decided to take a permanent marker to both of them. So here's a Before and After and another After. There better not be anymore afters.

Chris and CJ got up early Thanksgiving Day and went and played at the ward turkey bowl. Sounds like they had a good time. A friend caught a couple of pictures of them. The first one is of Chris intercepting the ball away from his OWN SON. Chris said he didn't know it was meant for CJ. sure sure whatever helps you sleep at night. ha ha

Latest read

This was a cute fun book, I enjoyed it. I think I liked it even more just because of the color of the book. If anyone has any suggestions to a good book, I would love to hear from you.

Leaves Leaves go away, come back another day

The boys were grounded from the T.V. today for playing in the morning instead of getting ready for school. (They won't like it that I said that, ha) So I decided we better tackle the front yard and rake up all the leaves. We all made an estimate at how many bags it would take. CJ was the closest with six. I said 5, Cade said 3, Macey and Mason said 4. EIGHT bags later and three bags from 3 weeks before. Yeah the kids fell asleep early that night. They were troopers and stuck with it and did a good job and poor Maddie has a belly full of leaves. She sat in the grass and tried to put anything and everything in her mouth. She loved being outside and crawling around.

Happy Birthday Macey!!!

Macey turned 5 on the 4th. I can't believe how big my kids are getting. We moved to Georgia when she was only 9 months old. Now look at her, sniff sniff. We had a gentleman at church pull Chris and I aside and said he was watching us during sacrament and knew that we had our hands full, but wanted to tell us to enjoy every moment of it because before you know it they are grown up and gone. He began to get really choked up and went on to say now he has great grandchildren and still can't believe it. My little girl is now my big helper. Every day without fail or even a prod, she will get Maddie from all her naps. She pulls down the side crib, picks up Maddie K out of the crib and carries her down the stairs. Sounds scary I know, but she absolutely loves doing it, in fact she gets very upset if somebody else tries to. She loves to make her daddy laugh. She LOVES gum. If anyone has gum she sniffs it out and has no fear asking if she can have some. She loves purses and has plenty of them, but if you look inside, it will be filled with cars, guns and action figures. Can you tell she has older brothers? And of course she loves her little sister Maddie and is her second mom.

She can be quite the ham. Love you Macey.

Homemade apple pie!

The last couple times Chris went to the grocery store for me, he would come home with a big bag of Granny smith apples. He likes them but the kids don't really; to sour. I had to think of something to do with all these apples. I decided I would try and make a real homemade apple pie. I made one once when I was a little girl at my friend Keely's house, with the help of her mom of course. If you know me you know how I love sugar, so to make it even sweeter, I did a crumb top of a little flour and lots of sugar.

Turns out that it didn't appeal to the kids and Chris doesn't really care for sweets so CJ had one little piece and I ate the rest of it all by myself. I had it for breakfast, lunch and after dinner one day. Ha how's that for eating healthy.

Pictures of Maddie K

I wanted to get some pictures of her in this dress before she grew out of it. Doesn't she look so cute. I just love her so much, she brings an instant smile to my face.

Character Day

Can you tell who they are? We had fun deciding what they would be for "character day". They have to choose a character from a book and go to school with their book and dressed as that person.

We had him walking around saying "Four score and seven years ago our fore fathers" Gosh he is so darn cute.

CJ came up with his idea all on his own- I was impressed! For Halloween CJ wants to be a Zombie Albert Einstein.

Market Day

Cade's first Market Day! One of the wonderful things about being a 2nd grader at Vaughan Elementary is to participate in Market Day. Each child has to come up with a product, or service to sell. Then decide how much to charge and make, if it's a product or buy supplies and have a sign or display as well. They all gather together in the cafeteria and COMMENCE to buy and sell with their tickets they have earned. They even make little open/close signs, so they can leave their booth and do some shopping.
Our first thought was to make the rattlesnake egg trick, but that was a bomb. Dad thought of making Fruit Loop Treats. Sugar and bright colors to attract your attention. Sounds good to me, sounded good to Cade. Cade did an awesome job making the treats! I walked him through the first batch and he made the second all on his own, while I sat on the couch feeding the baby. It made me a little nervous watching him standing on a chair at the stove which is gas, so yeah blue flame coming out around the pot and my son leaning over looking into the pan. For my own sake I had to keep saying "watch your shirt" and "don't get to close", but he did it perfectly without any mishaps. Good Job Cade! Good Luck tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Chris! You are loved.

Chris' birthday was last Thursday. We went out with his sister and her husband and another couple. The plan was to do a movie and dinner. We got the movie in, which was pretty good and a real nice treat for Chris and I. We couldn't remember the last time we had gone to a movie for ourselves. Then we called to check on the baby and found that she had been crying almost the entire time, so we rushed over to the babysitters house and picked up Maddie. (Thank you Ali, I owe you big time)

Some of the things I love about my husband:

- he often brings home chocolate just for me!

- he makes the kids and I laugh

- he reminds me of my appointments, because he knows that's a weakness of mine.

- he makes us delicious Sunday morning breakfasts

- he loves to feel the spirit and go to all his church meetings, whereas I need a nudge from him sometimes.

- he loves cologne, and smells so yummy

and now my kids are bugging me so I have to go, but those are just a few random things I love about him.

Go HOYAS!!!

We usually do a Friday Family Fun Night, but on this occasion we decided to do a "boys night" and "girls night". Chris took the boys to a Harrison Hoyas football game. Mason's shirt came down to his ankles, but that's okay, because he's so dang cute. What I wouldn't give to have a picture of Chris walking around with his three boys, in Curby football jersey's at a football game. Love it.

Can you guess what us girls did. It involves popcorn and m&m's and sitting on the couch.

Ding Ding Ding. Your right we watched a girl movie! We had ice cream too!

Yummy Pizza

Chris and I took the kids to this little restaurant called "A pie in the sky", known for their huge pizzas. This is our 30" pizza and I think there was two sizes larger than this. It was cute watching the kids as they brought it out. Bummer we didn't get Chris in the picture with us.

Service Project

This is regarding the flooding we had here in Georgia. There was a service project set up on Saturday Sept. 26th to help those that had their homes flooded. I think the main goal was to be passing out cleaning kits. As the day went on though, it was realized, it was a little premature and that many people still needed help gutting out their homes. This is where I think it gets neat. It was a approved late Saturday night that more needed to be done, therefore setting up a service project throughout the stakes of north Georgia for the following day on Sunday. They were hoping to get around 25 men from each ward and in turn having a turn out of around 400 men. Around 9pm Saturday night we got a calling post asking, if possible the brethren to come and help the victims of the flood. The service project was scheduled to be from 8am-4pm. When Chris arrived he recieved a shirt and then they were assigned in groups and they went from house to house gutting them and pulling down all the wet drywall. The turn out was amazing they estimated about a thousand men there helping. This first picture is to show the car on the left was completely covered in water and the people in the backround were bowing earlier, expressing their gratitude for the help.

This is one of the homes Chris helped gut.

Chris had a coworker that came down from north Georgia to help. He was assigned an area that still had couple inches of standing water in some homes. He said he was sore from all the dry heaving. He had to help clean out rotting refridgerators and mud and sludge. Chris said it really was an amazing experience and he loved being a part of it. I wish I could have been out there with him. He tried to get a good picture of all the trash and furniture lining the streets pulled from the homes.

Poor Mason

This is a reoccurring event lately. I go upstairs to put Maddie down for her nap. Sometimes I stop and tell them where I'm going and that I'll be right back and sometimes I just try and sneak away real quick. But no matter what I do, Mason (also being very tired) goes to the bottom of the stairs and just cries for me to come downstairs. This is how I found him the last couple of times. Cade used to always fall asleep in the wierdest places as well.

Yummy

I was in the middle of making dinner when Maddie K started fussing so I put her in the bumbo seat right next to me and gave her a licorice. Oh my goodness. She devoured that thing. It kept her very busy and happy. she was just smacking away, sucking on it and making all sorts of funny noises.

Oh yeah, yum, yum, hmmm, yum, smack. I could hardly get her to look at me because she was so busy enjoying her licorice. And yes I know I am a terrible mom I gave my 7 month old a licorice. Funny what you start to slack on, I never would have done that with my first. At least not this early.