I guess there's a limit

I didn't realize there was a limit to the number of photos you can post at one time. I've been trying to upload 5 more pictures for the past 15 minutes but they never show up. Grrrrrr. :)

My apologies for how long it's taken. The pc has been up and running, I've just been too busy to sit down and post. (As a quick aside, I never knew till recently that you can post more than one pic at time!!!! I'm not very observant. :) You can imagine how NOT excited I was to sit down to post 20+ pictures!! Talk about tedious!!)

Anywho, here are the long awaited pictures! We had an awesome time with my family. The trip always seems longer on the way there. We're all just so excited to see everyone, I guess. :)

About 10:00 p.m. at a McD's along the turnpike. The kids were surprisingly chipper for as late as it was. We had Lola, our puppy, with us so we had to make frequent stops. :) That made it seem longer to Tom and I, but broke things up a bit for the kids. We didn't get there until about midnight. Then we stayed up talking and last minute wrapping until 4:30!!

Tom being silly with his little buddy. My sister Sophia is 4 and she has down syndrome. She's very finicky about who she lets in her personal space, but she just loves Tom - she hugs and kisses on him much more than she will with me! :) She is a wonderful blessing to our family!

Taylor enjoying the evening. She gets really lonely when we come home after being with her 11! aunts and uncles - many of whom are right around her age.

Phia with Papa. This is my mom's dad. Phia loves her Papa. :)

Chandler with Aunt Erika. Erik is the third oldest and one of my closest friends. She's 19 and a huge sweetheart. Love you, Erik.

Lola was a huge hit with all the relatives, but especially my great Aunt Rita. :) She used to have a toy poodle named Suzette. You can tell by watching her with Lola how much she misses her little dog. :(

Chandler opening his "choo choo twain set" - one of the many presents opened!

BIG bite of pie!
Left to right - my mom, Uncle Jack, his wife, Aunt Rita, Mimi (mom's mom) Papa (mom's dad), my dad, and the side of Aunt Holly's face. :) She's my mom's sister. We always have so much fun visiting around the table after dinner. It's one of my many favorite times of the holidays. :)

My cousins, Gessica and Shannon (Aunt Holly's daughters) and my sister just down from me, Vanessa. Ness is 21 and attends a small university nearby. She's majoring in the persecuted church.

A few more

Erika with our brother Noah. Noah's 15?? How old are you now? From the attention he gets from all the girls, he's a little hottie - which is such a weird concept for my to wrap my brain around!! Once in Walmart, a girl several years older than him came up from behind and kissed him right on the face!! She said he was just so hott she had to kiss him! My poor little brother turned bright red and just walked away. He's very shy around new people but he can hold his own around his four older sisters!! :) He's a very hard worker and according to our little sister, Hosanna, (she just turned 11 Wednesday) he's "very stable and wants to get married and have a family" as opposed to Jonah, 13, who she says "acts like a 2 year old and won't ever get married" !! Zan is our resident little philosopher. I couldn't believe she was just turning 11 - she seems like she's at least Jo's age. :) Or maybe as she says he's just immature! LOL. Sorry, didn't mean to ramble.

Papa and my little OU fan!




Cousins playing Cranium - clockwise from top - Hannah, she looks tired :), Gessica, Erika, Hosanna, Jonah, Ness, Shannon, and Noah.

Mimi with my other little OU fan. :)

Papa and Chandler are tired. :)

Well, that's it. I can't wait to go back and spend more time with my family. I miss them a lot. :)

Suffering from pc withdrawals!

My dear hubby has been working on reformatting the harddrive our desktop pc and I haven't had access to the net or my pictures in THREE days!! Right now I'm typing this from the laptop which doesn't have the pictures on it! I have a whole bunch from my parents and from my inlaws to post and some from the kids' birthday party too. I need my pictures!

We did Chandler's and Taylor's birthdays together Wednesday night. Our kids are lucky this year. We celebrated right around their actual birthday but we're also planning two other parties - one in Oklahoma with my family at Incredible Pizza for all the kids and Taylor is having one here with all her friends at the Mud Hut! I'm so excited about that because it's so perfect for her, she just loves crafts. All the kids get a ceramic something to paint and take home. And they have a keepsake cakeplate that all the guest sign. You bring your own cake and pizza. They're going to have a blast!

I've been sick all day and it really sucks. Tom came home from work and felt just as bad as I do. I had been able to rest a little on and off but he'd been working all day. Poor guy. :( I made us some red beans and rice for dinner. It wasn't the soup I wanted, but it was warm and filling. I haven't been to the store since we got back from Oklahoma so I didn't have many options. :) I'm not sure what we have, but my brother in law was sick Wednesday and couldn't come to the party and my mom is sick back home in Oklahoma, so it could be anything! I'm so sick of being sick!

I'll post more Christmas pictures as soon as I have access to them! :)

Reagh Christmas

Since we were leaving Friday for my parents, we did our Christmas Thursday night. It was really great - the kids were delighted with everything they got. I was dissapointed that we didn't have the kids' leyboard to give to them but Target was sold out. I let them know that it was coming and learning how to play the piano was all Taylor could talk about!

Taylor was so excited with the cooking set and apron with her name on it. We're having family over tormorrow night for their birthday(s) dinner. She's been planning out the menu and can't wait to go to the store for everything we need. :)


Brayden's not sure what to think about all this present stuff. :) B ut he warmed up to it and loved his "bally thing"



I love that picture because of the expression on Brayden's face in the fackground. Just point a camera at that boy and he lights up like a Christmas tree. :)


Chandler's big thing at the moment (it varies by season) is Toy Story. So I got him a cowboy set to be like Woody and a big Buzz Lightyear. He liked the hat and gun, but I don't think he made the connection. :) After he opened Buzz, every present he opened after that he thought it would be a big Woody! I was a little sad I hadn't gotten him one, but he soon forgot all about it. Phew. :)

Other fun pictures -

Birthdays are so fun!

Yesterday was my nephew, Daven's, birthday party. We ate at Paradise Pizza. It was pretty cool. There was an arcade, billard tables, and air hockey! Plus, the best part was all the pizza we wanted! :) Chandler had a blast hitting the cue ball around the table. Brayden had to endure turkey vegetable dinner when all of us were enjoying pizza - poor guy. :)

Please meet our newest family member, Lola!

Right before we left for the Christmas party at church last Sunday, the breeder we had been in contact with about our puppy called to say she'd be in town and could we pick her up?! It was short notice, but we did it - Tom got her and brought her to the church, where she rode in the stroller during the whole party! :) The kids were super excited. It's their first dog and they've been wanting one for sooooo long. They named her Lola after the cutest little cartoon on tv, Charlie and Lola (it's their favorite and their best. ;)) Chandler maintained very matter-of-factly that "Her name is Scissors" (the dog's name in Charlie and Lola) but Taylor was very put off by the fact that Scissors is a boy dog. We finally compromised and her name became Lola Scissors Reagh.

Here are some pictures in no particular order. Notice that already, she's a daddy's girl - she perches on Tom's back when he's laying on the floor at the computer (he's been working on it, so it's in the floor). Brayden is very laid back about the whole puppy thing. He prefers to pretend that she's not ever here. :) The last picture was supposed to be our family picture to go out in our Christmas cards, but unbeknownst to us the resolution wasn't set high enough making them useless as prints. :P So, none of you all get a family picture this year - though I think the birth of this blog more than makes up for one family picture! :)

Christmas talent show and fancy dessert party!

Every year it just gets better! Taylor and I got to be a part of the talent show part this year and it was so much fun. Our worship team did this cool song with lots of parts and the kids did a nativity scene for it. Taylor was Mary. :) This was before we started singing, but it's the shot with the most people in it.

Taylor's Sunday School sang "How Great Our Joy" - they did a great job!

The Christmas Cowboys!

I can't remember what song these girls were signing because I was so intent on getting a good picture of it. LOL - but it was very beautiful. I've always loved musical signing.

We never figured out where Chandler got this hat! He was having a blast with all the food!

Taylor with her neighbor friend whose family came to the program. The Johnsons have seven children - they're such a blessing to us.

Skating party!

Last week we had our CHEC skating party at Skateplex. What fun! I even got to skate! Haha! I strapped on my roller blades and off I went with Brayden in his stroller! He kept craning his neck to look back at me like he was saying, what on earth is going on??? But he just loved it. He got upset when we stopped. :)


This is while we were actually moving - I was hoping to get some sort of blur of wooden floor in the background so you could tell we were moving, but the shutter speed was set too high, and I couldn't exactly adjust it while skating and guiding a stroller! I was lucky to just get a shot while doing all that. :)

Snacking on pizza with her best friend, Bronwyn. :)

Finished tree

I liked the shot without the flash - it's so pretty - but you can't see the decorations very well so I'm posting both. See ya!

Tree decorating party

After we brought the tree home we started our family Christmas tree decorations party! We made cookies, puppy chow and cocoa, put on our favorite Christmas music and started making our decorations. This year we strung gumdrops and cranberries! The kids loved it. We all had a great time. The smell of the pine just made it even better. I'm so happy to have a real tree!!

Pulling off the tree net. Isn't it beautiful?!


Usually I make homemade sugar cookies to decorate with icing, but I decided to go the easier route this time and just got the preshaped holiday dough. The kids got to make them "all by themselves" and it wasn't messy!!


Stringing the cranberries and gumdrops. This was really fun. We didn't end up using the gumdrops garland.. it was taking so long we only got a little bit done and was really messy. Plus Chandler kept eating the gumdrops! :) The cranberry garland turned out great though!

Munching on the goodies!

The order of things is: dad puts up the lights, mom puts up the ribbon, cranberry garland and beads, then the kids put up the ornaments. :) Works out great!

We woke Brayden from his late nap to help hang ornaments, but he wasn't in the party mood! Poor guy. :)

We were so tired after all that! Tom and I both fell asleep cuddling on the couch and didn't wake up until 6:00 this morning!! Ugh. I such a sore neck now! :) We're still tired but we're working on cleaning up the mess from last night and then we're going outside to put up the lights on the house! So much fun!

I'll post a picture of the finished tree later on. We're going today to get out angel for the top. I found a gorgeous one at Sears. She's crimson and gold and fits wonderfully with the tree decorations.

Have a great day!

New Christmas tradition!

We went to Danville Farms to get our tree last night! This is our new family tradition. It was so much fun! The kids had a blast running all over looking at the trees, trying to find the PERFECT tree!

And they did! It was way in the back and just the best tree ever! At 81/2 feet. it's a good thing we have a vaulted ceiling, otherwise it wouldn't have fit! :)


Chandler was so interested in the cutting process. :)


Hauling the tree back to the barn on a hayride!