Our little beauty queen!

Lola just got back from the doggie salon today. She likes to prance around the front yard a bit and show off. :) That last picture is with the flash and it makes her coat look more silver than it actually is. But isn't she beautiful? She's quite the little show dog. :)

Walking and hangin' with dad

Brayden looks like he's just falling but actually he's taking 4-6 steps each time now! He's doing so well. :)

Oh, my handsome guys. I am so in love with this man! Last night he told me he was so glad that I'd had the procedure taken care of. He held me close and told me he had been so frightened at the possibility of losing me. We were both in tears by the time he finished. :) He is so precious to me.

My wonderful, beautiful, happy family. I am blessed beyond words. Thank you, Jesus, for entrusting these precious gifts to me, even when it's so much more than I deserve. Help me to take care of them, love them and serve them with patience and a giving heart.

Azaleas in bloom

Full of hot air

I've always wanted to take a ride in one of these. There were 6 or 7 balloons that passed over the house Saturday afternoon. It was a beautiful day for a balloon ride! Chandler's down at the bottom in the second picture - he was fascinated with the fire. He kept saying they were all going burn and crash. I wish I would have known that was going on. I would have like to have seen them take off. Maybe next time.

Happy happy, joy joy

Thank you Lord, for good friends! The Forringers came over after church yesterday and it was such a blast! We cooked hamburgers on the grill (GORGEOUS day!) and had chocolate pie and cheesecake for dessert.. YUMMY! We spent all afternoon talking, laughing, playing cards and fooseball. The talking and laughing for great, but the games... ok, so I don't like to lose. :) Ted beat me at over the river (but in my defense it was my first time to play and I came in second!) Stephanie won most of the hands of speed... and they both beat me (and Tom) at fooseball. They suck. LOL... I'm kidding. It was tons of fun, winning or not.

After games we talked some more, then pulled out the left over burgers and stuff for dinner. We put in a movie and the two hour drama turned into a never ending saga! It was good, but it seemed like it went on forever with all the interruptions, breaking to eat (even more), etc. :)

It was so nice to hang out for a day with good friends. I felt like a big kid - I did not want the day to end. Though went they left around 10:30, I was so tired all I could think about was sleep! I'm an adult after all! lol

Steff got better pictures of the day - it's funny because for two picture snapping freaks, we got very few pictures! We didn't think about taking any during the best parts like cards, fooseball or eating outside.... oh well. Here are the ones she got.

Have a great day.... remember to break a leg for God today!

Today is a GREAT day!

Thank you God for such a wonderful, stress free day! I've implemented a new chore chart and schedule. I'm NOT a schedule person, but it's nice to have a general guide as to what should be done what day and a ballpark of when. :) It ensures everything gets done throughout the week and maintaining picked up house is so much easier if it's clean!!!! And vice versa for that matter. :) It's all just working so well!

The kids have chores and Taylor's been loving it. (they always have, just not assigned ones on a chart) She is such a big help to me as it is but she's always wanting to help even more. Trying to get it done faster in the past, I've always done all the housework myself. Taylor loves that everyday she has one big task and several small daily duties. It makes her feel important. She's always checking the chart and reminding me of what she needs to do next! Here she is unloading the dishwasher while I was making breakfast. :)



Chandler is doing well on his also - he made his whole bed this morning without being told and checked it off the list all by himself. Though for longer jobs he continually asks when it's time to be done and play. He's just like his Uncle Jo!! :) He liked the waffles this morning - they're Ice Age waffles. He was couldn't believe it when he asked for them and I said yes. ("Really mommy? We can take them home, really???") We buy eggo's anyways, why not get the fun ones. :)

And yet another picture of my little cheeseball :) I still haven't cut his hair. :-P I just can't do it!

Family picture

Stephanie took this picture of us Sunday for the church directory. It's a really good picture - only Chandler looks drugged. Oh well, he's the one who always looks perfect in every other family picture. It's his turn to look silly. :)

Movie day

Stephanie, Dana and their kids came over yesterday to watch Chicken Little. It was great fun and good incentive to straighten up my house! :)

Brayden and his little friend, Annabelle. He's trying to impress her with his athletic abilities. :) (he's holding a bat)

Taylor and Chandler with Stephanie's baby, Zachary. I asked Chandler if it'd be ok for us to have another baby. He said, "In your tummy?? Yay!" Then when I raised my eyebrows at Tom and we laughed, he looked at us and said, "Oh mommy, you were just kidding!" Smart boy. :)

Friday

We went for a picnic and long walk at the park before it rained. The bike trail off McWhorter park is great... the kids liked playing at the creek.


Chandler said every squirrel he saw was Scrat from Ice Age. That kid can't wait until Friday when Ice Age 2 comes out. Maybe I shouldn't encourage my kids' love of movies by telling them when it's coming out, never mind taking them on opening night. But I'm just a big kid myself. I love building their anticipation and planning a nice family night. It's as much fun for us as it is them. :)

Sniff sniff

I'm afraid it might be time to cut Brayden's hair. It's so pretty and curls up in the back... I just hate the thought of him looking so grown up. My baby is growing up and I can't stand it!!

Yes, tax returns are very fun

Isn't this great?? 42 inches of high definition plasma, baby. :)

It's very roughly installed at this point -- in fact the whole fireplace will be different once we're all done enclosing the conduit. The either side of the brick wall will be drywalled, surrounding both windows. (in case you haven't seen our house, the brick goes around both windows, forming a rather imposing wall of solid brick. :) ) Around the tv and insert, floor to ceiling will be flat stone - making the fireplace much less imposing. The tv will basically be flush with the stone at that point. The stone will extend all along the base and the top of the sitting area, too. (that is very cluttered right now, hehe) There will also be a new fireplace insert.

I hope that wasn't horribly confusing. It's hard for even me to get Tom's vision about some things. :) I'm so happy that he's willing to take on huge tasks like this though. It takes awhile, but the end result is so satisfiying. It's going to be super nice when it's all done.... heck, it's super nice now. :) Can't wait for football season!!

Silly baby

This is what I found when I went in get Brayden up from his nap. The diaper is one thing.. he didn't have any bottoms on, but how in the world did he wiggle out of his t-shirt at this age?? Ah, my little Hudini. :)... I knew I should have put pants on him!

Standing up and falling down :)

Stopping for lunch

We had a lot of errands to run and groceries to buy so we stopped for lunch at our favorite place. I love the food and how clean it is .... the kids just like eating out. :) We usually go late to miss the lunch rush. The kids had the whole place to themselves yesterday and they loved it.



This pink eye thing is taking forever to go though our family!! Taylor has it now and Chandler still has traces of it. Taylor was very self concious about going out to run errands yesterday. She didn't want people to think she was weird. Poor girl.

Taylor's my budding little photographer. She took the pic of Brayden and me. Loving photography myself - artistic as well as snapshots of my kids :) - I can't wait to see her develop this gift. She has a little digital camera but the quality is super low and she likes the display we have so she can see exactly what she just took. I don't blame her. :)



We had a good time at Chickfila. Brayden was getting after it in the play room. He'd climb up the steps and with a little help from Taylor get up the slide and slide all the way down by himself! Of course my batteries died before I could get a picture of it! :)


I love that picture of the boys - htey're getting to be such good friends! It's fun to watch.

My little boy is getting so big!

Playing outside with the kids

Ballet fun... er, fiasco

What a adventure. lol First of all, let me day that I successfully found the tea party location (Tyler Junior College Student Center) and navigated Tyler to get to the mall, Chili's and Walmart without incident on Saturday. I assumed the ballet was at the TJC campus also. I was wrong. We parked and walked all over the campus looking for the Caldwell Auditorium. Hot, sweaty and frustrated, I called Tom at home to see if he could google this thing and find out where the heck it was.

"You're at the wrong campus, Caldwell Auditorium is at the UT Tyler campus" he said.

So across town we went - remember, I know nothing of Tyler - but with the address Tom gave me it was easy enough to find. Walking up to the the building that he said it would be in, we were already suspicious about the lack of cars there. The lady at the door told us that she didn't know anything about a ballet, but the Caldwell auditorium was downtown!!

(Still not sure why Tom thought that it was at UT Tyler)

Anyway, fastforward another frustrated phone call and driving back across town, we got there during the first intermission and got to see two of the three acts. The girls were fine with that and I was just happy to find to find the darn thing. :)

What was great about this was that though I was unsure of the location of ballet, I never was actually lost. I'd printed out a small map for Saturday and of course I forgot it Sunday, but having the image already in my head I had a good sense of where I needed to go once I got a street name associated with it. I owe that to my dad who gave me his UPS-man inborn sense of direction. It comes in handy sometimes. Thanks, Dad. :)

Girl's day out

This morning I took Taylor and Bronwyn to Tyler for a special girl's day out. The Ballet School of Tyler was putting on Coppelia, the story of a doll who comes to life. Both the girls love ballet so I thought it would be a fun thing to do for them.

First we had morning tea with the cast from the ballet troupe. That was so much fun. I wasn't sure it'd be worth it, but they girls had a blast talking to the dancers and having their pictures taken and getting autographs. Since the ballet didn't start till much later this evening, we went shopping at the mall and then had a late lunch at Chili's. We had planned on Chuck E. Cheese, but the wait was over an hour and we were all way to hungry to wait!! (never mind the fact that the chaos of that place made me nauseous.. quite literally since I had a migraine at that point) Unfortunately, that migraine made me so sick we had head home early. We ate about 2:30 - there just no way I could stay out late... the show didn't even start until 7. :-P

I told the girls that we'd go back tomorrow since our tickets are also good for the second performance that's at 2. They're really looking forward to it and really excited they get to hang out TWO days in a row. They haven't gotten to see each other in almost two months because of sickness, trips and such. The were having so much fun talking and shopping. We stopped at walmart on the way out of Tyler (had to get some migraine medicine!) and they got to have a mini shopping spree in the toy dept. Both of them bought birthday present for their little brothers, Chandler and Tucker. They also got diaries and makeup for themselves. Girl stuff is so much fun. :)

Fresh from the bath

Brayden isn't shy like Taylor, so I can post as many naked pics as I want. lol

Ok, so I took a lot of pictures today. I have to make up for lost time. :)