Deck the Halls....

We put up our tree tonight. It was fun watching the "magic" in our kids eyes. It's fun to see how excited kids get this time of year. It brings back lots of fun memories and it's fun to re-create those moments with your own kids. I knew it was time to wrap it up when Ashton started throwing the decorations into the tree cause he grew impatient trying to hang them! This is by far our smallest tree ever, but hey, it makes for easier decorating! The kids didn't seem to notice! ;)

Lily Decorating

Ashton Decorating

Ethan Decorating

Fuzzy, but cool pic

Our grand finale

The tree skirt I made and there has to be at least a cup of

my blood in that tree skirt from all the needle pricks! :)

J/K, that would be a lot of blood, but my fingers did suffer.

Thanksgiving in Kentucky

Well we're back and trying to get back to normal. The drive there was about 11 hours. It was long but the kids did really well. Thank goodness for the dvd player in the van. The last couple of days there Lily and Ashton got sick, so the ride home wasn't as pleasant but we arrived in one piece. I now caught whatever it was they had, and it's not fun, but "tis the season!" Here are several shots from the trip.



Darren driving.


Kiddo's chillin in the back


Dog sleeping


Lily with Grandpa in front yard


Boys playing in backyard with Grandpa


Lily on tire swing


Ashton and lily Exploring


The Feast


The Gang


Darren's sister Dawn and her hubby Curtis



Darren and his "little" brother Derek



Darren's sister Deirdre and her husband Clint and daughter Dakota


Our gang


Me and Lily


The boys out searching for "bears"


Lily and Daddy


At Conner's Baptism.


Grandparents with grand kids



The "men"



5 of the 7 siblings. Darren, Dawn, Deirdre, Debbie, and Derek

Over all it was a fun trip and worth the long drive. The only ones missing was Darren's brothers Dan and Doug.
Hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving! ;)

Over the River and Through the Woods.....

To Grandmother's house we go....... Tomorrow we'll be driving to Kentucky for Thanksgiving. It is about 700 miles away (our closest relative by the way) but we'll get there. Today has been a hectic day for me with trying to pack for 5 people, care for kids, pick up Ethan at school etc.... Well, during all the chaos I lost the keys to the van. So for the last 3 hours we've tore up our house inside and out trying to find the darn keys. (I even stooped so low as to dig through our trash! eeewwww!) We looked in the van through the windows with a flashlight, they weren't there. Finally after trying hard to go over in my mind what I did with them after getting Ethan from school, I remembered trying to get Lily out of her car seat (she always stalls) and I must have thrown them on Ashton's booster seat and not realized it, and then shut the door, thus locking them in the car. So, even though we couldn't see the keys through the window I called our insurance and luckily we have roadside assistance (which I guess your driveway also qualifies) and we got the locksmith out here tonight to open it up (with the tab on our insurance), thank goodness for insurance, and the keys had slid behind Ashton's seat. Any way. Any one who knows me knows that when I first got married I literally locked my keys in my car 10 times in a year. I have been so anal about not doing that any more and haven't since today. It's amazing how you'll do dumb things when you're tired and have a fried brain! Any who..... I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving! I'll be excited to come back and see all your posts from your Turkey Day. I had to put up my Christmas "blog decor" now, cause when I come back Thanksgiving will be over and I wanted to have it done now. Hopefully Darren's dad (an amazing photographer) will be able to get some good family shots of us so I can change the header picture. The one now is good, I just wanted a family pic there). Ciao Everyone! I'll be away from the precious internet till Saturday!

Movie

So we went to the movie last night. We didn't take as many pictures as we wanted. I guess we were too excited. I stole the last pic from Debi's blog. There were more of us there, but we forgot to take pictures.
Overall it was fun. The movie wasn't as good as my imagination made the book and characters out to be in my mind, but it was okay. I'll probably watch it again when it comes out and then maybe I'll like it better. I think if they do the 2nd and 3rd they will be better because a higher end budget film company will probably take them on seeing how much money they lost by not doing it in the first place. But the film company who did #1 did a good job considering they don't have as much money as other film companies. Any who, over all pretty good.

Walk Like An Egyptian!

Ethan had his 2nd grade "performance" the other night. He had to go wearing a big white t-shirt with shorts underneath. It is not warm here! He was FREEZING!!! I felt bad for him, but we bundled him up after. They came in doing the egyptian dance to the song walk like an egyptian, it was funny, then they did a series of songs and such. We didn't get really good pics cause we were far back and tried to zoom in. Any way, it was cute. Thought I'd share! Everyone have a good weekend! ;)

Twilight!!!!!

This time is FINALLY here!!!! It feels like we all waited forever for the movie to finally come out. I'm so excited to go see this movie tomorrow night! We're all going to Kate's tonight to make matching t-shirts to go! I have to say, I've never made a t-shirt to go anywhere, so this is definitely a first, but a fun first! If we all weren't tired pregnant mom's, I'm sure we'd be there tonight at the midnight showing! So excited!!!!!!

Recent Pictures

Posts like this are mainly for family/grandparents, but you can endure all these pics too if you want. I had to first include this one of Ashton. He loves to play his dad's computer, you can see he's wearing the humongous headphones, and holding the joystick preparing for his "flight".


The rest of these were taken yesterday before church. We don't go till 1pm, so we have all kinds of time to waste and they were playing outside, so we grabbed the camera and took some shots before church. Here is handsome Ashton


Cute Lily


Mom and Lily


My favorite picture


Dad and Lily


Oh so cute


3 munchkins


Kiddos


Dad and Ashton


Dad and Ethan


My 3 Handsomes. (if that's a word) ha ha.


Goofy Ethan


Ashton and mom laughing. Not very flattering of mom, but owell! :)

Boo!

Any one who knows Darren knows he LOVES to scare people, this includes our children. Every time Ethan comes out of the bathroom, Darren is there to scare him. He gets so sick of his dad doing that, but it's still really funny! I told Darren he needed to get it on video. So enjoy this quick scare! :) I really should find a way to scare Darren and get him back for all the many times! The first few seconds of the clip are dark, just keep watching. Oh, and enjoy our blue toilet! ;)

4th Folder 4th Picture

Tagged by Cara!

Here are the rules...Go to all your pictures (stored on your computer) and in the 4th folder, post your 4th picture and tag 4 friends.

I tag Briana, Jen, Ramanda, & Aubrey! (and whoever else would like to play!)

This is a picture taken a few months ago at a place here called Mount Trashmore. Funny name huh? It's actually this humongous old trash pile now covered in dirt and grass. Weird huh? I thought so too when we first moved here, but it's a really cool place to go, they have walking trails, playgrounds, it's really pretty and the kids enjoy going there! And no it doesn't stink! :)

So there you have it, my 4th picture from my 4th file! :)

Deep breath, release.....

Where to start.... Life has been stressful lately. Only those really close to me know of the extent. I guess I'm ready to share some of it. Basically in a nut shell I was tested this pregnancy for being a cystic fibrosis gene carrier (it's a new test, thus being the reason I haven't been tested before). I was a positive carrier. So, next they wanted to test my hubby. And guess what??? He's a positive carrier too! yippee! So we find out that we've basically been lucky or blessed or whatever you want to call it that our already 3 kids haven't gotten the disease. With each pregnancy there is a 25% chance the baby will get it. Long story short, and after many dr. apts and tests, I'm just ready to be done worrying about it all. The only way to find out "for sure" right now would be to do an amniocentesis. It was scheduled for Wednesday, but after much thought, prayer and advise from my brother Jerry the doc, I've chosen to wait till birth to find out. Knowing now will not change anything, they can't fix it if it does have it. It's not a curable disease any way.
Enough about that. Also, in my mind this baby was a girl. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. I have enough boys, I only have one daughter. I've given away all my baby boy stuff, and I have tons of cute baby girl stuff that Lily barely touched. I've loved having a daughter and doing hair (now that she finally grew some), I've enjoyed pink after seeing blue for oh so long, well guess what we see between baby 4's legs? Yup "boy parts". To be honest, I was really sad. It makes me feel bad for the baby that I'm sad it's not a girl. I will love the baby and I will get over it and I'll know in the end that I couldn't of had any other baby, blah blah blah, but for right now, I want to morn. Lily and I are it as far as females go, I know what it's like growing up with all brothers, yes it's fun, but it also isn't at times. All you have is your mom to play with. and the poor baby will be really far about from his brothers, thus being played with and dressed up by his sister. Ahhh, I'll get over the disappointment, I'm just bummed for the moment.
Here are some pics from the ultrasound. The classic bottom looking up shot of the "boy parts" and then the face, which by the way looks ticked off. He's probably mad at his mother for not wanting a boy. I promise I'll learn to love you boy! I promise, just not for another few hours! :) And here's Ethan's 2nd grade pics. He's such a handsome little devil. I love him so much, love them all so much, and I'm eternally grateful they have been healthy despite the recent "findings" of their retarded mutant gene holding parents!


I don't know what else that could be between the baby's legs, it certainly doesn't give room for guessing. I guess I could hope that the baby GIRL is holding her hand down there, but I'm thinking not so.


Here's the hilarious face shot, doesn't the baby look ticked off? The dr. laughed and said, it was just the position and time the shot was taken.

Here's my oldest son Ethan. Cutie pie!

HELP!!!!!

Darren and I were asked to give a fireside to the youth on Wednesday the 19th. Have any of you ever given a fireside as a couple? I'm freaking out nervous! This to me is way more nerve racking than giving a talk in church or anything. It's on Gratitude and Family. Please Please Please, any tips pointers or ideas would help soooooo much! Please help if you have any suggestions or ideas! Thanks so much!