A sitcky disaster turned into a bit of fun

Don't ever bring salt dough to primary for sharing time. It doesn't work. I made 3 huge batches of the recipe and even added tons of extra flour just to be safe, then spent a lot of time dividing it up into 65 little plastic baggies. The kids were supposed to make little oil lamps with them and pretend that they were one of the 10 virgins who were prepared for the coming of the Lord. Instead every kid in Junior primary was slimmed in a sticky mess and we had to take EVERYONE to the bathroom to wash up! Ha Ha! I just laughed about it and then learned from my foolish mistake, never again will I try that. But...... when we got home from church that day these 3 girls benefited from my disaster. They saw all the extra bags of sticky dough and asked if they could add flour for me. Of course! Have at it girls, it might as well be good for something! This sticky mess is much better enjoyed in the kitchen than the church, lesson learned.

Eliza

Ellie at the park today. I'm so going to be posting a lot now that I have good pictures to post.

Abbey

This is Abbey the ganster. She's into wearing hats sideways lately. Here she is at the park climbing all over everything. She loves to follow the boys, hmmm.

Ethan

I'm a little addicted to taking pictures now. Ethan's getting so big and grown up. Here he is at the park today with the Bells.

Fun times!

Miah

Miah's at such a photogenic time of life. I love how these pictures turned out of her. This is today at the park.

Cutie!

New Camera!

I'm so happy with my gift from Santa this year. It was definitely time for me join the DSLR club, no really there is on in my ward. Ha! So many people have these super nice cameras and I was feeling left out, or just plain tired of the terrible quality that I was getting with the point and click freebie that is dying. I say freebie because Dallas and I have always got free cameras from HP ever since he's worked there, but HP doesn't make cameras any more so this is officially the FIRST camera that we've ever had to buy. I'm loving the difference already, check it out.

Here's the girls with their Christmas eve jammas on, red eyes, washed out faces, I usually have adjust everything in Picasa before posting them here just to make them look decent.

Then here is my first attempt and greatness, just out of the box, no formal training or manual reading, WOW look at the difference! Now I can do close-ups with out the focus going all weird.


Again, here's the old camera, not too bad, but a little lacking wouldn't you say?
Then here's the new camera also capturing Abbey's new hair cut, so cute.
Ok, one more before and after. Here's Ethan and Abbey with Dallas by the fire on Christmas eve. Such blah colors, although you can see the beautiful wood floors that Dallas has been installing for us, more on that later.


Then here's Ellie outside on Christmas day. No edits or color adjustments, that's just the first try! Enough said right? We should have bought this long ago, I can tell this camera is going to document our lives so much better than the old. Thanks Santa!!

Christmas at the Lake house

I feel like we are the luckiest family in all of Round Rock to have friends like the Jacksons. We have no family within hundreds of miles of here so hollidays are sometimes a little bit lonely. I love my kids and love the the traditions and memories that we've figured out how to create on our own, but sometimes we just feel so far away. Lucky for us we know an angel who invites us to join her family and spend Christmas evening at their lake house. It's so perfect after a long (but fun)day of opening gifts and playing new games and managing the high level of excitement in the kids, but by 4:00 we're all a little bit restless. So we pack up and head out to the lake house. This single experience has made my last two Christmas' so much more rich and fulfilling, we feel like family at the lake house. Thank you to the Jackson's for a wonderful meal, fantastic company, and of course the best nativity production around!

 

 

Sea World... again

We didn't have passes to Sea World this year, but Dallas won some free tickets at a golf tournement that he went to so we got to go again! He has been working on installing our hard wood floor so he stayed home:( and I got the kids out of his way. How nice of me right? The first time we ever went to Sea World was at Christmas time so it was fun to be back again for the festivities. It wasn't crowded, the weather was perfect and we had so much fun!

Love this girl

The other day my neighbor brought over a swim suit and some boots for Ellie that her daughter had outgrown. Ellie was so excited that she had to wear them both instantly and at the same time. I just couldn't help but smile and the sight. Don't you love it?

Secret hide out

Some of you know that we are currently under construction at our house. Dallas has torn up all our flooring and has been slaving away at replacing the nasty carpet with some beautiful wood floors. It's a lot of work and he's been up past midnight many times in the last few weeks working on it, we're not sure when it'll be done.
Even though it stinks having all our Christmas decorations pushed aside and it feels like we're living outside with the cement floors underfoot, there has been one fun and exciting element to the process. The kids found a secret hideout! Dallas had to tear out the tile around the fireplace wall so he can replace it with tile to match the new stuff, but see what fun he uncovered. For a few days the kids had access to this secret room under the stair and behind the fireplace. It was a child's dream come true!

Thanks Daddy for this adventure!

Warning: the following images might not be suitable for little children

.....but they are probably some of my favorite pictures of all time....

Miah lost her 1st tooth!!!

And couldn't be happier about being bloody! Seriously, how gross is that and she's just all smiles!! Ha ha!

She's been waiting for this day for a long time, I think she's the last one in her 1st grade class to loose a tooth. She's even been singing, "All I want for Christmas is to loose my tooth"!!! Yea Miah!!

The magic of Christmas has begun

I know I don't have the nicest camera, if I'm good I think Santa might bring me a new one for Christmas, but for some reason I like the way that my cheap snapshot camera takes these no-flash pictures of the Christmas tree. This year I decided to let the kids do the whole tree while I sat back and tried to capture the looks on their faces. There something so magical about bringing out all the boxes from the attic, letting the kids unpack all the treasures with Christmas music in the background and then letting them create a masterpiece in the form of a decorated tree! I did rearrange a lot of the ornaments after they went to bed, but come on, who doesn't do that?

Every year since Dallas and I have been married we've been accumulating Christmas decorations each year a little at a time. Eleven years latter, we finally got a nice nativity scene. My wonderful husband brought this home for me yesterday. Isn't it beautiful?

We hope you all are feeling the magic of Christmas too.

Happy Thaknsgiving!

The tables are set....

Dish up and eat people!

We had such a great Thanksgiving this year. We had our good friends the Hamiltons and the Missionaries over and man oh man the food was good!

Later in the evening the Brandon's came over and surprised us with some gingerbread houses to make! The kids had so much fun putting them together and only ate some of the candy:)

We have so much to be thankful for this year. God is good and we are blessed.

A fun day at Inks Lake

Last Saturday we went hiking with the Laws and the Dials at Inks Lake to celebrate our good friend Rod's birthday. It had rained the day before and even some in the morning but that didn't keep us away! It was actually perfect hiking weather and we all had such a great time!

Money talks

This morning I told Abbey if she scored a goal in her game I'd pay her $5. She's only ever scored one goal before and I missed it. She had been playing goalie for 3 quarters and I was bored of watching her just stand there (her team was dominating). She fianally agreed to play forward for the last quarter and she played awesome! With just minutes left in the game she totally scored a goal and earned her $5!! Such a proud Mama moment.

Then an hour later I told Miah the same thing, that I'd pay her $5 if she scored a goal. I'm Miah's coach so I especially get into her games and she hadn't scored a goal yet this season. She's a great dribbler but 1st grade soccer is still just mob ball so it's tough for her break away from the swarms of girls. But again, with just minutes left in the game our team was up by one and Miah breaks away and scores!!! Why didn't I think of bribery sooner?

Not to leave Ethan out I have to explain that he is playing Volleyball this season and he's the only boy on a team full of girls (brave kid). His team is really good and they usually win but I can't really pay him for every point he makes or I'd go broke. Well, the kids also got report cards this week. We don't always pay them for their grades, but Ethan totally got straight A's this quarter so I'm forking out $5 for him too!

Ellie doesn't really care about money yet, but she does care about candy. Does anyone have any ideas on how I can wean her off the candy reward that she gets every time she goes potty? She's going to have cavities for sure!

a new post below

I accidentally posted Miah's ear piercing below the Halloween post and I can't fix it, so if you're interested then scroll down.

Another perfect Texas Halloween

We're 3 for 3 here in Texas for perfect weather on Halloween and I love it! Here and the kids all dressed up and ready to go. Ethan's a Jedi, Abbey is Cindy Loo-Hoo, Miah is Hannah Montana and Ellie is a Princess of course.

Trick-or-Treat!

I thought our pumpkins turned out great this year. I spent all afternoon helping the kids do theirs and Dallas spent all afternoon doing his. Can you guess which is which?

Here's another good look at Dallas', it was really cool. He's the pumpkin master.

Hope you all had a great Halloween!

holes in the ears

This is a big day in a girls life. I had to painfully wait until I was 16 to do this so I have sympathy for my girls when they beg me. We originally said age 8 was when we'd take the plunge, but when Abbey got it done 1 week before her 8th birthday that rule went out the door. "Mom Abbey was 7 when she got her ears pierced and now I'm 7 so I can get mine pierced!" Ok fine, you're right, they're going to be so cute lets do it for your birthday!

Here she is gearing up for the pain...

Oh that face! She realized it was hurting a little more than I had told her it would:(

She did it!! No tears just some really watery eyes and a deep breathe! Way to go Miah!!

Now if I can just help her remember to clean them 4 times a day (I'll be lucky if we get it done twice!)

Birthday season is officially over

Miah turned 7 today. I feel like I've had Birthdays on the brain since early August, maybe because I have 4 kids all with birthdays between August 26th and November 1st. I don't know why I couldn't have had a few Spring babies. Luckily we don't do big parties for every kid each year, but this was Miah's year to go big. We had 12 little friends in our house on Friday night for a MAKE-OVER PARTY!! I know you're bummed you missed it. We did hair, nails and make-up all night long (Thanks Kristy for helping! You saved me:). The girls had a blast and I did too. Ethan was so glad that a friend inited him over to do some non-girly stuff--carving pumpkins with Micah was much cooler for him-thanks Alisa!

The best thing about this slide show is that Miah took 50% of these pictures. I handed her the camera and said, "go take some pictures of your friends". I think she did a pretty good job.




Time flies a little too fast lately. It just seems like yesterday that she was this small. Happy Birthday my little sweet Miah!

Fall fun

We finally made it out to the Elgin Pumpkin Patch this year. It was a beautiful Texas day and no one was sick so we had to go:). The kids had fun going on hay rides, painting pumpkins and getting faces painted. We also had a fun ward Fall Festival this last weekend but none of my pictures turned out so stay tuned for pictures of the kids in their costumes. Happy Fall y'all!

Crazy Hair Day

This was the first Crazy Hair day that Ethan was confident enough to be Crazy. 5th graders definately rule the school today.

Ellie's playgroup party

We had so much fun with Ellie's playgroup friends today. We went on a treasure hunt for cupcakes and then decorated them. The girls and Ezra wanted to dress up so we made it a dance party too.



p.s. Ellie's doing great with potty training! Horray for chocolate bribes! I tried to put a Pull-up on her yesterday for a babysitter and she wouldn't let me! She said, "I said no more diapers mom." Yea Ellie!

Happy Birthday Ellie!

My baby is 3! How can that be? She's been so excited for this Birthday and has been telling everyone she sees that "it's my birthday!" When you ask her what she got she'll tell you "cupcakes." This is actually true because as you can see in the pictures below she got a set of plastic cupcakes that you can decorate with markers. I knew this present would be a hit because of how long she had played with it in the toy store the other day (Kaleidoscope toys- love that store). And I was right, they've provided hours of fun already. And it came with the cutest little oven mitt that she puts on to stick the pan in the oven. Love it!!

Turning 3 is a big deal at our house because of 2 things. First, we say good bye to binkie. She's used her binkie for sleeping only ever since she was 2, (and for everything before that) but 3 year olds don't use binkies so we had to send them off to heaven this morning. Here she is with the binkies tied to the Snow White balloon.............
Getting ready to let go outside...............

She did it!! This was the cutest moment ever. She just stood there and waved and shouted "bye bye binkies!!" We watched until we couldn't see them any more and she wasn't even sad!

I loved it when she said, "my binkies flied over the roof mom!"

The second big thing that happens when you turn 3 at our house is that you also say good bye to diapers. Wish me luck, tomorrow is potty training day!

Casting out the swines

Quarantined.

Literally

We don't want anyone else to get the nastiness.

For the last week we've been battling the H1N1 flu and I think we're finally almost through it.

Ellie is the last to get it and her little body doesn't like the fever:(

Sleep baby girl and get better soon!

Still got it?

For the past year I've been fooling myself. Fooling myself to believe that I can still play like I was 17.....not! That said, I have not enjoyed a hobby this much since I was that young and now I can't stop!! This is our very beginner Indoor soccer team that I put together this Fall and we aren't that good, but man I love playing with these girls. Last fall I started playing 3v3 which is on a smaller field and that was fun, but here we are graduated to the full 6v6 field and ooo--eee, sometimes it really kicks my butt. I look forward to Tuesday nights so much and then I always hurt so bad on Wednesday mornings....ouch my hip hurts, but I don't care! I am getting old, I know that, but I can't help but think that playing is somehow keeping me young (ha ha). All I know is that I still get so much satisfaction from drilling the ball so hard right into the net right past the goalie, it relieves a ton of stress, you should try it some time.

Go team! Thanks for bringing it all season long!