Finally

I've been wanting to get some pictures of the family and just haven't had the time to do it. I really wanted to take some when the leaves were at their peak but that really didn't seem to happen here this year. I don't know if it was because we got so much rain or what but I was a little disappointed in their showing this year. That's neither here nor there. We went to mom and dad's last weekend for mom's 60th birthday and the weather Sunday was absolutely gorgeous! There weren't anymore trees that had colorful leaves on them but I thought the landscape itself was a beautiful backdrop. I was pretty certain that out of 35 acres I would be able to find SOMEWHERE to take some good pictures. Obviously we couldn't get everyone to smile at the same time. Who does? I'm just happy we got all of us in the same picture. My dad just got a tractor last week and he wanted a picture of us sitting on it.:)

Halloween

Halloween has come and gone and what kind of mother would I be if I didn't put some pics of my kids in their costumes on my blog??!! I told Jared around the beginning of September, when I started seeing costumes at the stores, that I wanted to get the kids costumes early this year so we wouldn't have to just settle for what was left in the stores the week of. Where are we the Tuesday night before Halloween? In the seasonal aisle at Walmart looking for costumes. Since Chase isn't old enough to understand that he gets to choose what he wants to dress up as, his costume was decided for him. We had a clown costume from when Aunt Callie was little(probably 4 or 5) that fit him nicely. Avery wanted to be Barbie so I thought I could appease her by suggesting that we put make-up on her and she could wear some clothes she already had. We did buy her a long, blond wig and some fake fingernails. She was thrilled. Hunter was the choosy one. He wanted to be a ninja but 4 days before Halloween, you usually don't get the costume you want. After much deliberation he decided to be an "army guy". I just assumed he would want the camo face paint to go with it but no. He doesn't like paint on his face. So, his costume was kind of lame but he was happy and he got candy so all was well. (Except that I had to take Avery to the after hours childrens clinic on Saturday morning. She had strep throat.) After a HUGE penicillin shot in the leg, she was good. We already have next year's costumes too! After church on Sunday, we ate at Jason's Deli and went to the Halloween Express store in the same parking lot and got next year's costumes for 1/2 off! Woo Hoo!

Lately

Nothing extremely exciting has happened at our house lately. We're just plugging along. I'm working two days a week now so there's that. Otherwise, it's fall and we're enjoying the last few weeks of beautiful weather outside. We spent most of our weekend outside last weekend. Jared was doing some repairs on the house where he had taken down the gutters. I REALLY wish I had that on video. His method for removing our house gutters was so Griswold-esque. He used a rope and tied one end to the hitch on my car and the other around the gutter. You can imagine what happened next. He inched slowly forward on the driveway to pull the gutter off. It actually worked quite nicely. If he would have told me what he was doing before he got into the car, I would have raced inside for the camera.

Anyway, we enjoyed a gorgeous weekend outside. I snapped some photos.

H's Gig

Two weeks ago, Hunter and his fellow 2nd graders had a school program. The name of the program was "It's Saturday". I can't post the whole program because it was 45 minutes long. However, I am posting a small clip of the program, in which Hunter had a solo part! Before you get to the good stuff, let me give you a little run-down on the point of the show. All the songs are about things kids like to do on Saturdays: sleeping, laying around watching tv, playing football, playing outside or doing nothing. There is one little girl in the show whose mother is making her take piano lessons on Saturdays. She is sooo upset about this and she's complaining about all her previous piano teachers and how they're all the same. She has a new piano teacher now and he's just arriving at her house for her first lesson.

I think Hunter might do well as an actor. I also think Hunter's daddy thoroughly enjoyed helping him rehearse.;)

Enjoy!

Jump on Over

To see some cute pics of Chase and his birthday party, go to Callie's blog. For those of you that don't know who Callie is, she's my sister-in-law and one of her hobbies is taking photos. She's pretty good at it, I must say. I took some pics at Chase's party but hers are better so go to mostlysweet.blogspot.com to see them.

Happy Birthday to Chase!

Today is Chase's 2nd birthday. He was born at 8:01 a.m. and weighed 8 lbs and 1 oz. I'll have to admit, I really didn't think he was very cute when I first saw him. I was a little disappointed. However, after the swelling went down and he had a bath, he was the cutest, snuggliest thing ever! My baby isn't really a baby anymore. It's kind of sad, maybe a little, but I'm kind of ready to move on past the baby stage now. At least, that's our plan. We'll see if our plan turns out to be the same as "the master plan".

Here are a few pics of the birthday boy.

Camp

Last weekend we went to Camp Tahkodah with our church youth group for a retreat. My parents house is only 15 minutes from camp so we spent the nights at their house and during the day, we went to camp to play and hang out with everyone. I love Camp Tahkodah. I went to summer camp there for several years(shout out to third session!) and have many wonderful memories from then. Jared's church in Memphis, Brownsville Rd. church of Christ, used to rent the camp out for a week during the summer too. So, we both grew up going to Camp Tahkodah in the summers and never knew it! AND Jared and I just realized that that's where both of our parents fell in love. Awww... Anyway, our kids LOVE going out there. We didn't really see much of Hunter while we were there unless it was meal time and then he showed up. Saturday it rained off and on so there were lots of puddles and lots of mud, which is exactly what camp is about, right? I threw caution to the wind that day and let the kids play in the rain and in puddles.(They all three have coughs now) Sunday was a no puddles day. We only stayed until after lunch so we asked them to stay out of mud and water. They did really well. No one was wet when we went home.

We really enjoyed our weekend at Camp. It was great to relive memories, enjoy the beautiful scenery AND to top it all off, to sing and worship God in a different setting. I love the examples my kids saw in the teenagers as well. They can grow up knowing that even when they're "too cool" teenagers, they can still love God.

(I really hate the picture of me and the sign because I look fat but it's the only one we got of the sign so it's the one that made the cut.)