Gotta love the white stuff.....if your a kid

They say we got 8 inches of snow here in town. The smallest amount I could find in my yard was 11 inches. It was almost 15 inches up by my house. WOW!

The last thing I wanted to do all weekend was go outside. It meant I would have to get dressed, and bear the cold. I remember being a kid and I couldn't wait to go outside after it snowed. I remember my parents did NOT share my enthusiam. It's funny everything that was so magical as a kid, sucks as an adult. Well....not everything.

I have to say though, I do love watching my kids have fun. They were bummed that the snow wouldn't pack enough to build a snowman. Cameron just decided to eat everything instead.

Noah just laid in it and was buried. Like sand.

This was a drift hanging over the edge of our house. It was really cool!And, you may be asking...."Where is Addy?" Didn't she enjoy the snow too? The answer to that would be "No." This was Addy all weekend.

Addy happily taking her breathing treatment.....

This is Addy NOT happy at all about taking her breathing treatment. I can't blame her. They are very inconvient. She keep telling me that she "needed snow." By the time she gets over this, the snow will probably be gone.

Well, its Monday! Addy has been awake since 3:30am. We are making a trip to the doc, and hoping for a long nap! Have a great week!

My Big Fat Smokey White Christmas

Oh, there are many other adjectives I could have used in my title.

Let me explain.....

As many of you know we had a winter storm barrel down on us Christmas Eve. I'm thinking earlier that morning "Oh, I can't wait to start a fire!" (Looking back....I wished I had waited). I went and got everything ready, and started lighting it. It took a few minutes and I realized that smoke was coming back in our house. After a few more minutes, our room was getting smokey. I jiggled the flue to make sure it was open, which it was! By then I'm freaking out. Steve comes to see whats going on. He walks outside to see what could be the problem. He comes in and tells me that the 50-60mph winds are literally pushing the smoke right back into our house. It was a disaster! It took us 2 hours trying to get the fire out and air our our bedroom. Everything was all smokey. At one point we had a cloud of smoke in our room. I wanted to cry!

After we got that taken care of, my brother's family came over. Stacy and I really wanted to start some new family traditions this year. Addy wasn't feeling very good, but we didn't want that to stop everything. The kids made reindeer food! Totally fun.

You take a can of oatmeal, and many different kinds of sprinkles. We let the kids take turns dumping sprinkles in.Then you shake it up really good.Then your kids can sprinkle it on the snow before they go to bed for Santa's reindeer! We were in the middle of a blizzard when we put ours out. So my kids were urged to just dump and run!

Then we read our Christmas story. This year it was "A Charlie Brown Christmas".

And lastly, the kids made a birthday cake for Jesus! It was beautiful!

When it was all said and done everybody went home. Travel was impossible after that. Addy became very sick that night. She and I didn't sleep hardly at all. Stacy called me Christmas morning to tell me that half of her house had some stomach bug and had been throwing up all night. So, it's definitely been memorable one for us. I hope everybody else stayed safe....and is in good health!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas

This is Josie. She is an aspiring model. She is too cute for words!

I didn't make Christmas cards this year. I have neglected my blog for almost 6 months. Some are starting to wonder about me. I wonder myself....

Here I am now. I want to tell all my friends and family "Merry Christmas!" May God bless us all this season and keep us in his ever abiding love. I know he truly loves me and my family.

Hope to see you soon!

Out with the old... In with the new!

We are going to be tackling some mini makeovers around our house over the next month or so. We started with our utility room this weekend. We wanted to get rid of the disguisting tile that didn't even cover the whole floor. I'm very grateful for my sister, who came over and helped me beat the old tile off the floor with a ball pinged hammer for 7 hours on Friday. Now that I'm dealing with RA, projects like this are exceptionally harder for me. After Steve and Garrett got home from work they finished it off for us. We broke 2 hammers in this process!

SO UGLY!

I'm so proud of Steve and I! We have never laid a floor before, and we did a good job!

Now it's finished, and it's so pretty! I leave the door open to the laundry room just so I can look at it :)

Music To Grow By presents Kindermusik! - Our Time

Music To Grow By presents Kindermusik! - Our Time

I've had a few people wanting to know about the music class Addy will be taking this fall, so here's some information about it. She's officially signed up! I'm so excited! Maybe one day she'll be a Broadway singer. She's already perfecting her dramatic performances around here!

Sunday Bloody Sunday by Bush

Sunday Bloody Sunday by Bush
Video sent by toonbug

Some inventive soul took the time to find times that Dubya used the words to U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday. Now if they could just find all the words to "Oops, I Did It Again"

Not People...

I do love the beautiful sky! I don't love a 104 degrees, but I do love the beautiful sky.

Saturday evening was an excellent opportunity to get some gorgeous shots of the sunset. This is one of my favorites.This next one is a shot of the fountain on Main Street right before dark. This makes me wish I had a tripod!

I love the colors! I've also got a few from Main Street.

The signs on the pole kind of remind me of my life. Walk, don't turn around, hurry up....

Keep smiling everyone!

For the Soul

Music and art has so many facets, I love it when people can pull them together to create awesome! Check it out! http://soytuaire.labuat.com/ Wait about 10 seconds and the writing will disappear and you'll see the "play" button. ( Hint: If you move the mouse around, it'll move to it)

4th of July = Flaming Mustangs

This is what happens when boys get to play with fire! Bad boys!

(This was supervised...and this was started by Uncle Sean. Bad Uncle Sean!!!!)

2 Weddings and a Trial

I have survived the last two weeks! I have to admit...I had my doubts. You know, I'm always home. So, when I was called to serve, I thought "no big deal" this time. They won't pick me, and they'll send me on my merry way. Wrong! Six days and 2 million dollars later, and now I'm done. I did however enjoy the experience, and I meet some very nice people along the way. I will say however... if I see one more doughnut...I might hurl!

When I wasn't spending my time downtown during the week, I had both weekends booked with weddings with other photographers. WOW! They were a lot of fun. Both brides were beautiful. I wish I had a slideshow on here for them. I haven't figured that one out yet. So, here's some random pics of some of my favorites.

Here's #2

As you can see... I haven't gotten very far with the second wedding:)

Happy Monday!

First week of summer - BOO!

I'm not looking for sympathy... we just have had bad luck in the health department around here. Cameron started feeling bad when Leigh and Way where here Sunday, and it just snowballed through the kids during the week. I took Cam to the doc on Tuesday. 24 hours later, we were sitting in the same room with Noah. It was a little bit of DeJaVu even for the Doc. When it came to be Addy's turn, they didn't even make me bring her in, just called it in to the pharmacy. Thank God for small blessings!

This is my medicine tracking system. My kitchen cabinets are littered with post it notes. Since Noah can't take penicillin, everybody is on different antibiotics at different times everyday. It's pretty ridiculous!

Next week will be better. I just bought my swimsuit so the kids and I can go enjoy the pool! We're just getting all the crap for the summer out of the way early! Bring on the GOODNESS!

Addy's Birthday cont.

We finally had a chance to slow down, mainly thanks to a head cold, and look at Addy's birthday pictures. You know, for a crappy week, she really had a great birthday! Her Papa would have been happy for that.

One of my favorite things about looking through her pictures was Steve's expression in the background. You can see how much he adores his baby girl. I love it! Every girl wants a Daddy like that.Somebody please tell me where she gets all the facial expressions from!We had a group of friends come over Monday to party with us. I was completely unorganized, but surely the kids didn't notice!

It took Cameron and Noah 2 1/2 hours to fill the water balloons, and not even five minutes for all of them to be unloaded on partygoers! Not Addy though...she's a princess, and she doesn't get wet!

Everybody had some really cool face paint going on, but I think 1st place went to Corbett! His was awesome! Addy did her own. Addy's "theme" for the party was Garden Girl so we had all the kids plant seeds that they could grow in their own gardens. Lowe's has some neat bio-degradable seeding cups that you plant your seeds, then plant the whole cup in the ground. They are a little messy, but worth it.

Then the princess graced us with her gracefulness ;)

I'm just playing~

I do have to say though that I'm a little sad that we've reached the part of life where babies are over! I do look forward to seeing what remarkable people my children will become. Each day gets a little easier raising them too! But, something about never having anymore babies is still kinda sad. I'll just have to be patient for our siblings to give us some more nieces and nephews!