A surprise I'll never forget!

My husband surprised me with a trip to New York City! I flipped my calendar to November and noticed Chris had marked off 4 days and it said Britt not available. That is all he would tell me. Then the night before he pulls out our carry on suitcases

and says pack for NYC. I could hardly believe it when we flew over Manhattan island and saw all the buildings, it just went on and on.

Then we got a shuttle to Grand Central Station which is beautiful inside and started walking to the WALDORF HOTEL. Then I started really freaking out, because there is no way we can afford the Waldorf, I kept asking if he won this trip and the little stinker wouldn't say a word.

Then as Chris is standing in line to check in, I see my brother-in-law Jon, walk across the lobby. I bolted out of my seat and ran to hug him then immediately asked where's Michelle?, just then she hugs me from behind. Who could not cry with that kind of a surprise. Jon had to come to New York for some seminar and him and Chris pulled off this wonderful surprise for their wives. How awesome are they!
This picture is of us on a huge billboard in Times Square! It was the American Eagle store board and all you had to do was go in and buy something, then they would take your picture and post it on their huge billboard outside.

Michelle and I in Central Park. It was so much fun to be able to spend that time with my husband, sister and bother-in-law. I loved it all. We saw the Statue of Liberty and Times Square, saw a show on Broadway (Mary Poppins!), Central Park, visited WTC, toured through some amazing old churches and ate some delicious food. Thank you Chris for doing this for me. I love you.

Halloween 2010

I never was able to pull all the kids together for a Halloween picture. Man O' Man it gets crazy around here trying to come up with so many costumes. Then on top of that the kids have "Book Character Day" at school. The children get to bring in their favorite book and dress up like the main character of the book and they conveniently do it the day of Halloween. Usually it's great except, this year my two oldest did not want to bring in or could even find a book on the Mario and Luigi Brothers, which was their Halloween costumes. So overall I had to come up with 7 costumes.
Here's my kidos in their cute costumes

CJ and Cade came up with the idea of doing a Frankenstein pumpkin. They are so much more imaginative than I am. We had a blast thinking of how to pull this off. I'm pretty proud of our finished pumpkin.

Crook's Visit

It was such a treat to have my sister Lori and her family come and visit all the way from Arizona!
We took them up to Amicalola Falls so they could see what Fall looks like, you don't get that in Arizona. The morning we were getting ready to go, Lori called out "wear your red shirts" thinking only her kids would listen. I didn't realize until we got there that my three oldest assumed they had to put on red shirts as well.

My favorite picture of Lori and I.

I love this picture of the kids, they are so cute.

My kids had a blast having their cousins come and stay. I was so sad to see them leave. Thank you Crook family for making the effort. We love you guys. Double Rainbow All the Way!

Maddie K has learned to smile for the camera

Our sweet and sour girl, brings us so much joy. I wish I could capture all the funny faces Maddie makes. She had the frowning and scowling down for a long time, but when she's in a good mood, she has us rolling with her funny faces and now she loves the camera. As you can see she is still quite the mess maker as well.

1. I can't believe I'm showing these pictures for all to see. I didn't even show the kitchen.
2. Seriously Kids... Really?... WHO IS YOUR MOTHER?... oh that's right. Me.
3. Does it have to look like this Every Monday Morning?
4. I can't tell you how many times I have thought... I should not be a mother of five. I'm drowning, I'm drowning.
5. And Chris wonders why I like to close myself up into a room and open a book. (He doesn't really say that, it just sounds good)
Somebody please tell me you have days like these.

There's a new mess maker in town.

Maddie's 4th of July outfit!

Cade's birthday/baptism

Here's pictures at his baptism and some of my favorite pictures of Cade.

We celebrated Cade's birthday in Florida with his grandma and grandpa and his great nana. We went and saw Toy Story 3 - cute movie!

I forgot my camera so I don't have any pictures of his birthday- argggghh

Then all of us drove back to Georgia and had his baptism. Poor Nana Pat fell the day before we left and she was still willing to come even though her hip and elbow were pretty sore. She's so amazing she still played the piano for us at the baptism.

Cade had his brother give the talk on baptism and his cousin Connor spoke on the Holy Ghost. They both did a really good job. It was very nice. We love you so much Cade.

Father's Day

Chris got a special treat for Father's Day. Not by me- mine was a flop.
We got a call the day before Father's Day from a lady in our ward. She was assigned to speak in Church and was wondering if she could come over and ask our kids some questions.
She (Kathryn) pulled the kids one by one and asked them a few questions about their dad and thanked us and left. We were a little curious to see what we would hear the next day, but hadn't thought about it for to long.
Sunday came. (way to early in the morning, we have to leave the house at 8am)
It was Kathryn's turn to speak and she started off with saying how she had interviewed some families in the ward, see if you can guess which family it is.
Then she preceded to tell us the questions she asked the kids and their response. It was the sweetest thing and immediately brought tears to Chris' eyes when he recognized the responses of his children.
After sacrament she gave us a typed up paper of their responses to keep. Here's some of them
CJ - 10
What's great about your dad?: He's a hard-working dad. He just got back from Arkansas for a week and he worked that hard for us and when he's not working he's always with us.

Does your dad have any special privileges?: At the dinner table, there's this chair that's the biggest and you can see everything. That's his. And he serves everyone.

How is your dad different from other dads?: He's fun to be with and he makes sure everyone gets a turn and has fun.

Cade - 7
Is your dad your hero?: Yes, he lets me play my fave. videos games and wrestles with me. He's gonna baptize me!

How does your dad set a good example for your baptism?: He let me choose the program.

What do enjoy doing with your dad?: Wrestling, great big hugs, getting on his back and He remembers turns.

Does your dad get any special priviledges?: He gets free time

Macey - 5

What's great about your dad?: I just love him

How does your dad set a good example for you?: He works for us, we really like that. He gives us great big hugs.

What do you enjoy doing with your dad?: He plays with me, he watches movies with me.

How is your dad different from other dads?: He's so silly. He's funny. He makes me laugh.

Busy Busy

It's been awhile since I have had the chance to sit down and "blog".
I've been busy with planning and going to girls camp. Which was awesome. I loved it as a girl and still do.
I had a couple weeks break and then I spent a week getting the house decluttered before my parents came to visit. It's good, gets me motivated to do stuff I would probably never get around to. I spent a day cleaning and organizing the garage while Chris was out of town a week with work. I put up a cupboard with the help of a friend and a lot of chucking stuff.
Then poor Chris came home from Arkansas got to rest a day and then spent Father's Day driving down to Florida to catch up with my parents and visit my Grandma. The kids and I love the pool and going to the beach.
We spent a week down there and then all of us including my parents and my Grandma drove up here to Georgia so we could baptize Cade. I'll post more about that later with pictures.
Funny story: My mother bought the movie "Ever After" for Macey. If you can't remember that is the Cinderella movie with Drew Barry Moore [total chick flick] Macey insisted on watching it and Chris and my Dad were nice enough to let her put the movie in. I walked in later after the movie was about half way through to find that Macey had lost interest and left. While Chris and my dad were intently watching the movie. It was hilarious. Chris, I'm sure would disagree and say that they were NOT intently watching. It was funny to see them sitting there with no one else in the room watching a chick flick. My mom checked on them later and said they sat there and watched the whole thing.

Bitty Black Eye

Maddie has a bit of a black eye. CJ was jumping with her on the trampoline when one of his jumps bumped her up and she landed on the bar. It popped out like a little egg on the side of her eye, but she was a trooper and didn't cry for too long.

Cade can say the funniest things, but not trying to. It's also the way he says it that cracks us up. You just have to be there, but this is an example.
CJ was teasing Cade, holding up a toy he just made with misc. junk. CJ was holding it like he was going to throw it down and break it. Cade's reply in a stern voice: If you break it, I'll try my best to break your bone!"

love ya Cade

The kids were outside riding their Jeep around and they decided to give Maddie a ride. She loved it! She was having so much fun and just taking it all in with her cute scrunchy smile.

My kids are growing up. :(

I revamped these cute pair of flip flops with ribbons and stuff. (I totally stole this idea) They came out so cute! Macey wanted to do her flip flops too! When we were finished I excitedly told her that I had extra ribbon and I could make a pair for me so we would match. Her reply was uummm NO. I asked her why not. She said I want to be different.

Then that night Chris had taken the kids to the dollar store while I had the Beehives over for a movie night and Chris tells me CJ's choice of toy was not a toy but cologne.

What in the world is going on?

And they're out!

Chris and I have been wanting to take out two trees in our front yard for a couple years and finally got it done....with some help. Yeah! The roots were coming up all over the front yard even busted our lawn mower. Yay and no more leaves, they dropped a ton of leaves in Autumn. We had the whole family out there working and loading up wood. A friend in our church chopped them down for us. I didn't know or really think it through that he would have to climb the tree. Man that made me nervous. He is such a good guy and sure did appreciate his help. Here's some pics, sorry they're not in order.

He got even higher in that tree, past those bottom three branches and he wasn't tied on to anything. He was up there sawing with one had and the other holding onto the tree. Scary huh?

Cade's Market Day was a success! He sold out! It's so fun as a parent to see your child come home so happy and proud of himself.

Funny story about Macey:

There was a knock at the door and Macey answered it. It was one of CJ's friends down the street asking for CJ to play with him. CJ however was playing with another child in the neighborhood already and so Macey began to tell him that he was already playing and then she started to stutter and fumble and just finished real quick with who CJ was playing with. After the little boy left she shut the door and sung out aaaaawwkwaaaard and giggled. (She felt bad for telling the boy that CJ was with his other friend.) It caught me so off guard I bust out laughing. Chris and I had a good laugh when I told him.

Signing Macey up for Kindergarten today!!!! I am so excited for her... she is going to LOVE IT. I'm worried about what I am going to do about Mason. I have literally had to drag him back into the car at the school's drop off drive thru. He tried to jump out real quick and follow the boys. He tried to do the same with Chris as well. He screamed at the top of his lungs the whole way home saying he wanted to go to school and that he is big enough.

I am now in Young Womens over the Beehives. I am scared but excited to have the beehives.
As an activity we had a lady in our ward who teaches at the YMCA, come do a Zumba class. That was a blast. I would love to do that again. I seriously need to work on the booty shaking part. Just imagine a robot trying to shake his backside. Thankfully there were others in the same boat with me. ha ha I have lots of good memories doing Jane Fonda workouts with my sisters growing up. It's so much fun doing that stuff in a group!
Chris is becoming Mr. Mom. He has had to watch the kids a lot lately... a lot. I can't help but to enjoy it just a little as I listen to him vent about frustrations I have had for a very long time. I'm always the mean bad mom that throws everything away. I came home from a long Saturday activity to a beautiful clean house but a fed up husband that was ready to chuck every toy we have in the house.

Cade has his "Market Day" today. Last time was a flop so I really hope today goes well. He is selling "Worms on a STICK" Gummy worms and Gummy Bears. Cade and CJ came up with it!

This weekend I made homemade strawberry jam. Chris had to "test" the product to see if it was good. He was looking for butter in the fridge and it reminded me about a time I heard someone saying they had made butter in primary while she gave her sharing time. She got little baby food jars for each child and put in a little whipping cream in each one. She had the children shake their jars while she continued with her sharing time. I think the subject was on/or around Pioneer Day. By the end of lesson each child had a little ball of butter in their jar and then they got to use their butter on a small roll or something. I was telling Chris about this and he couldn't believe it was that easy. He thought there had to be more to it than that. I had the RARE pleasure of doing my "I was RIGHT, happy dance", when Chris looked it up on the internet. Then I just happened to remember I had some leftover whipping cream in the fridge! We all took turns shaking the jar as we walked around the house and sure enough about 15 mins later, we had a ball of butter! The kids had fun putting homemade butter and jam on their toast, it was YUUUUMMY!

I can't believe how big my sweet little girl it getting. She's growing up so fast. I just love her to pieces. She has a very fiesty personality coming out. Oh no

catch up time

I finally got pictures downloaded off of Chris' phone. The next couple of entries are pictures we had taken over the past few months. This was sometime in Feb. We had a good time making our first "real" snowman. I think we've attempted it before but there was never enough snow. This is the most snow we've seen since we moved out here 4 years ago. (Michelle do you recognize my colorful pj pants?)

We took the kids to Steak n' Shake! (Where we got a lot of stares walking in with our brood) The kids looked so cute with their hats on. I just want to pinch Mason's cheeks every time I see his picture.

The kidos received these Christmas pillowcases from the Crook family. The kids had a blast in them. They did sack races across the family room. I heard Megan did a lot of the sewing. Megan I am impressed, you did a good job. We love them. Thanks so much. (Maddie K looks so cute sitting in the pillowcase with Mason.)