Randomness for December

Posted on March 26, 2014 by Abbie

Yeah, I don’t know what he was doing.

A gorgeous sunset out our front door. Have I mentioned I love living “out in the country.*”

Ceili Rain and perhaps her future beau at a local park. I love that I have a best friend who has kids who love my kids and they love them. There’s a lot of love going around.

*I am aware that we live in a suberb with neighbors and we’re five minutes from Wal-Mart. But, we are not in our city proper and we can see beautiful sunsets like the one above. We rarely noticed them before we moved.

A Bunch of Characters Invasion

Posted on March 25, 2014 by Abbie

We were thrilled when Uncle B &B asked to come for a visit. Weeks of preparation made for a fun and relaxing visit. That and fifteen smaller hands pitching in. We were a flurry of activity and even ventured out to play putt putt and see a bit of our area.

The dishwashers.

Zoe working on a recipe with cousin J.

Story time.

Craft time.

Happy 8th Birthday, Liam!

Posted on March 24, 2014 by Abbie

Liam had a built in birthday party with his cousins visiting! Fifteen kids, four adults and lots of laughs and smiles.

That’s one excited birthday boy and brother.

Liam finding out he was going to be taking martial arts classes.

He requested a cheetah chocolate cake with caramel frosting. We opted for a cheetah den and lots of plastic cheetahs on it. He liked it even though there were lots of cave ins.

Happy 11th Birthday Zoe!

Posted on March 21, 2014 by Abbie

Here comes some sad news. My cellphone went for a swim. And didn’t come out alive. On it were pictures from December. You know the ones…the ones I took with my phone because I didn’t have my camera. Fortunately, all other months pictures had been gotten off…just not the ones from December. If my phone is able to be repaired (if you know me, you’ll know that Mark got insurance on my phone…smart man), and the pictures were not damaged, then I will make sure to post those. If not, trust me…we had a lot of fun on these next few posts.

Zoe’s birthday in December was a ton of fun. We celebrated with family on her actual day and then traveled that weekend to visit family and then celebrated with friends on that Monday. She wanted to go bowling. We live quite near a military fort and they have a bowling alley open to the public. On Mondays, they offer cheap bowling and cheap food. So, we rallied her friends and played a couple of games of bowling and ate cake. It was both fun and yummy. And we all got a kick out of the little ones trying to carry a big ol’ ball to roll.

Opening presents…That’s one excited young lady.

She got her first ever charm bracelet and was thrilled. Especially since she couldn’t really think of what she wanted for her birthday.

Scouring pinterest, Zoe came up with this for her cake. It’s a chocolate cake with mint chocolate chip buttercream icing. Was it yummy? Oh my goodness it was. The cake was my standard chocolate cake but the icing was so fluffy and good. And I don’t like mint chocolate chip anything.

Merry Christmas from our Crew!

Posted on March 20, 2014 by Abbie

Yeah, I know it’s the middle of March. At least I got it up, huh? Here’s our kids in their Christmas pj finest.

The hat. It was a dollar store find. Malachi wore it throughout the store. When he lost interest, we hid it and saved it for a sibling shop gift. He loved it…again!

We got the boys’ their big gift together. They had all asked for the same Lego set for Christmas. Obviously, legos are not cheap so we decided to combine it. These are some thrilled boys.

Zoe was thrilled. Absolutely thrilled to receive a kindle. It’s a basic one and was a sweet, generous gift from a friend, but Zoe could care less. We quickly found all of Louisa May Alcott’s books for free and she quickly devoured them.

Be still my heart. These two fight like sisters but love just like sisters.

Merry Christmas Family!

Posted on March 19, 2014 by Abbie

Per our family Christmas tradition, we traveled to visit with Ge & Granddaddy and were also able to squeeze in some visiting time with Granddaddy’s sister and their family. That made for a few kids. But it was so fun to see them all playing and having a good time.

Our Ge & Granddaddy celebration:

I have no idea what cousin E was doing but he had four out of the five boys’ attention.

My “seester,” Aunt Yaya, made this sign for me. Isn’t she talented?! I was so thrilled. Especially since we were gifted a nativity set for the yard last year and this year Mark made a stable and manger for it. We will have quite the decked out yard next year.

Zoe and Ace were thrilled at some one’s present. I love this look of delight on their faces.

A very happy Ge with the “world’s ugliest dog.” That poor dog was 7 pounds when they rescued him. He’s still very tiny but thinks he’s a big dog.

Our future doctor with her doctor kit. FYI, she barely knows who Doc McStuffins is but loves the pink and purple medical bag. I have a feeling when she graduates medical school (or nursing school), I’ll be scouring the world for one just like that.

Tree Farm

Posted on March 18, 2014 by Abbie

This year we started a new tradition at a different tree farm. The year before, we had gone to our local tree farm and were not impressed with the selection. I am not sure that they even sold fresh cut trees this year.

So, we traveled a good distance away to another farm. And wow were we impressed. Acres and acres of all sorts of Christmas trees to choose from. We didn’t want to spend a ton and, fortunately, that made it easy. Our tree cost less than the one we got last year and was about twice it’s size. We’ve never had one that large and we thought we were getting one on the smaller size.

Forgive the blurry pictures. They had a hay ride that dropped us off in different locations and picked us up (and cut the tree for us).

Malachi loved the hayride. And, as you can see, it was such a nice day that we were still in t-shirts!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted on February 4, 2014 by Abbie

This past Thanksgiving was spent at Papa & Grandmere’s house. We were able to visit Granddaddy & Ge but for some reason didn’t get those pictures save one…

Malachi helped clean up.

There were a couple of masked marauders.

Papa’s nose had to be caught.

Sweet smiles (with a photobomb).

Books were read…surprised, anyone?!

Bryant constructing and building at Ge & Granddaddy’s. I think we were busy eating and watching “the” game.

October Randomness

Posted on December 23, 2013 by Abbie

Tree climbing is always fun.

Bucket head Kids.

Josiah finished his first grade spelling so I took him out to celebrate.

Homemade caramel apples. YUMMY!

Ready for take-off.

Back in the Day

Posted on December 18, 2013 by Abbie

We almost missed our annual trip to a Colonial days festival this year. Morning sickness and cruising had it’s way with us, I’m afraid. But, alas, we did remember and headed over on the last day just in time to enjoy a bit of the good ol’ days.

I forgot my camera so the only pictures I got were of these silly kids…anyone know who they belong to? Oh wait.