New Camera!

I am so excited! I have been really dissapointed in the camera I have for a long time. It is just a point and shoot. The pictures are often blurry or dark, the red eye is horrible and I have had a lot of trouble with grainy pics. I started researching SLR camera's several weeks ago and finally found the one I thought would be best for what I want to do. It has been so much fun playing with it this afternoon. I am doubly excited because Sarah Palin is going to be here tomorrow morning and we are going to the rally!!!! They are letting us bring our camera's so watch out, here I come! We are going to be at the rally site at 4:30am in the morning. The doors open at 6:30am and she will be there at 8:30am. Our whole family is going so this should be an experience!! My kids are overjoyed that they get to go as well! They made a sign for our front yard last night since the Republican Headquarters here are out of everything! I think ours is much prettier! :) I'll include a few pics I took with my new toy! More to follow sometime tomorrow or the next day, when I get caught up on some sleep!

Lauren and Andrea sharing a secret.

My beautiful view from my kitchen window.

View two

Travis and his jump shot!

Our creativity at work!

Girlscouts

Andrea and Emily became official Girlscouts this past Thursday. Heidi was out of town taking the young people to Youth Challenge so I took the girls to their meeting. They had a really fun ceremony and each of them got to light a candle and then get their pin which is a gold daisy. There are three groups in our troop, the Juniors , the Brownies, and the Daises. Emily and Andrea are in the Daisy group. They have such a fun time, especially during craft time! They made scrapbook albums this week out of brown lunch sacks. They are going to keep the pictures from this first year in their scrapbooks. I also enjoy going because I have met a lot of new people and that is not something that is easy for me to do! It's good for me to move out of my "comfort zone" see whats going on outside the 4 walls in my house! :)

Emily and Andrea getting ready for the special ceremony to make them Daisies!

Emily lighting her candle

Andrea lighting her candle. She was a little unsure about this because fire is a big "no, no" at our

house!

Emily getting her pin.

Andrea gettting her pin.

Getting ready for craft time.

Two happy little daises!

Scrapbooking!

Our friends the Snodgrasses were with us this past weekend. The guys had a canoe trip planned for Monday so Connie and I decided this would be a great day to scrapbook!! Did we ever had a great time! The hardest part is getting all of the supplies drug out and situated. One of these days I hope to have a room that I can set up in and not have to worry about putting it all away! Alex cooperated and took a 4 hour nap which made this mom very happy. I got 4 pages done on Monday and 2 pages done yesterday. I know I didn't set any world records but I also have all of my papers sorted and organized as well as all of my tools. I hope to get my stickers and embellishments done today. This should make it a lot easier to pull out and do a page or two when I have a little spare time..:) What on earth is spare time anyway?!!

Our guys had a lot of fun on their canoe trip but I would say us girls had the better end of the deal!

We look pretty happy about what we are doing!

This is what happens when you try to bake and scrapbook at the same time! :(

This is what happens to poor little guys when mom is to busy to put you to bed! You just have to find a spot and put yourself to sleep!

Boys and Football!

Everytime I look outside my window and see the boys playing football, I cringe! I'm always telling them they are going to get hurt, it's a crazy sport...ect! They just won't listen and here is the results...


Travis' eye connected with Tyler's head and he got his first black eye.

This looks really painful and according to Travis it is pretty tender.

Now if it was me and I saw that this is what you get for doing something "fun". That would be the last time for me. For some odd reason I don't think its going to have any effect on the football games around here. In fact I overheard Luke telling Travis that he would give about anything to have a black eye!

Random Fun

It's Monday! I have about 100 other things I should be doing right now and blogging IS NOT included in that list!!! :) But since I have no energy or inspiration to do anything else I thought I would get caught up on my blog. This past weekend we had a fall party for our Sunday School kids. There were about 40 kids and 15 adults in attendance. The Boardman's were so kind and let us have it at their house. We had pizza, chips, pop, and cookies. The kids had a lot of fun just playing around outside and then we took hayrides. Some of our little kids had never been out in the country and had never been on a hayride. They had a grand time along with all the rest of us!

Taking a hayride.

This is the first group that went out.

Getting ready to eat...

Alex enjoying his first pizza crust!

This incredible fruit boquet was sent to us from a family in our church last week for Pastor Appreciation! Thanks David and Maree!! We had a lot of fun enjoying all of the delicous fruit!

Alex has learned about the flash on the camera now! He knows when he sees the red light flashing that it is going to be really bright so he closes his eyes! Lauren snapped this picture and we both got so tickled at the funny look on his face!

Andrea and Travis getting ready to leave for Andrea's chemo appointment last week. Andrea loves it when one of the other kids get to go with her to St Louis. We try to give them all a turn every once in awhile.

Alex goes EVERYWHERE now! I found him under the piano bench the other day!

Well that has been our week (a small part of it!). This week looks to be pretty boring compared to last week so I am really hoping to get to work on all of my projects I have going in the boys rooms. We did get mattresses up in the boys room upstairs ( that is another story in itself! ). Now I need to finish up with painting and decorating! So I better run and quit putting off all I need to do! Have a great week!

Toya and Patti's Wedding

Toya and Patti got married on the 19th of September. Their wedding colors were brown and hot pink. ( the hot pink looks like red in the pics. ) Their wedding turned out beautiful! The kids all had so much fun being in the wedding!!! It was a first time for Luke, Andrea, and Alex. They all love their Aunt Patti and think Uncle Toya is great!! In fact Toya and Patti took them camping last weekend!!! I'll post pics of that soon!

The wedding party on the bridge at Cape County Park

Mike, Jeff, William, Toya,Patti,Bethany,Roxie,andLauren

Alissa,Andrea,Tyler,Jillayne,Toya,Travis and Branden

Patti and Dad.... mom made her dress, if you look close, there are little satin buttons sewn from the very top to the bottem of the train~ It was so pretty!! (my mom says this is her last dress to make! Sorry Lauren!)

Branden and Travis...the bell ringers

Andrea and Alissa... the flower girls. They got to the end of the aisle and still had quite a few petals left. Andrea doesn'nt stop in the middle of a project!! She stood at the end of the aisle and tossed petals until every single one was gone!

Tyler and Jillayne were the junior groomsmen and bridesmaid. They also pulled the aisle runner down and pulled the wagon with Skye ( Toya's cousin ) and Alex in it. They were both so good and looked so cute!

Tyler and Jillayne.

Luke was a candle lighter and an usher. Here he is with Nana.

Luke and Mammaw.

Alex and Skye after the wedding.

Toya and Patti with all of the kids.

The entire wedding party.

Alex is 8 months!

I can't hardly believe my baby boy is already 8 months old!! He is the happiest little guy and smiles all of the time! He has two new teeth and is very mobile! We are doing a room switch this week at our house so we could finally get him out of our bedroom. We moved Travis and Tyler upstairs to our guest quarters above the garage and put Alex in with Luke. Our hope is to someday be able to finish part of our basement and put all of the boys down there. For right now this will work. I didn't want Luke upstairs because I have to get up in the night and check his sugar. I will do a post on the new painting and decoration and painting....when I get it done!!! Luke and Alex are going with a sports theme, mainly football and basetball. Tyler and Travis wanted vintage motercycles. I am having fun trying to find stuff. If you have any great ideas let me know!

Alex was so excited when we sat him down in his "big boy" bed!!

Look at that happy smile.



Alex doesn't crawl on his hands and knees but he goes EVERYWHERE doing what we call the "army crawl"!

Pictures at the Park

I am so behind on my blogging so I will start from where I left off and try to work my way to the present!! Before Patti and Toya's wedding they wanted to get some pictures together. So Lauren, Andrea, Alex and I loaded up and met them at the park. I only got a couple of Toya and Patti on my camera but got some great ones of the kids. Now I wish the other boys would have been along but we will have to go again sometime! (Sorry about the underlining! I don't know how to turn it off!)

Andrea...she loves having her picture taken!

Lauren and Patti

Alex....he has never set in the grass before~

Andrea.... I love this picture!

Best Buddies!

Toya and Patti