It's beginning to look a lot like...

CHRISTMAS
I'll be honest I still have fall stuff sitting around my house but that  didn't keep us from having an awesome lot of fun doing Christmas things saturday. Hopefully we'll say goodbye to fall and have some Christmas things up by this evening.

Thankful for...

I'm thankful for these beautiful blessings and much, MUCH more.

A photo from our week

What a beautiful week it has been ! It boosts my spirits to walk out to lovely days like we have had this week. I'm savoring as much as I can cause I fear all to soon the cold will set in. Yesterday I hung comforters out to dry in the gorgeous afternoon sun and slight breeze. It wasn't long before they were so freshly dried.

Do you see what I see ?

That time again

It's the time of year for pumpkins and scarecrows and apples and pies and everything else that represents fall to us. I enjoy the coziness that comes with this time of year. Two weekends ago was our annual pumpkin patch trip. It was a lovely day for it !

Dressed to impress

Reading corner

Thought some of you may enjoy seeing this. I have spent a good many hours in this corner feeding and reading. I love it !

What are we doing ?

In case you are wondering what we are doing around this household here is our update.

Daddy is....
Working hard in his shop here at home while he's off from his other job for "baby leave "

Mommy is...
Feeding and changing and Feeding and changing and feeding and changing ( get the point ?)and trying to squeeze in some time to do laundry keep the house at least half clean and sleep.Also trying to pull everything together for Courtney's nursery. Hopefully we can get it set up before too much longer.

Emilee is...
Just starting school for the year, enjoying her new bicycle from Uncle Bruce, learning to do plastic canvas.( no photos because some of you will get to enjoy her projects later in the year:)

Austin is...
Starting kindergarten,getting tall and strong from all the exercise and sunshine this summer,enjoying his new bicycle, helping with small fix-it jobs around here.

Bryce is...
Watching daddy's work very closely,trying to find the most dangerous stunt he can do on his bicycle,such as ramping things,LOVING his little sister until she makes that [crying]noise that he is not fond of.

Courtney is...
Eating and eating and growing little by little. At last weeks 4 week check-up she had gained 1 lb. from her birth weight and 11/2 inches. She also slept really good for mommy last night which makes me feel blessed since my sleep is very critical for a pleasant household.

Allow me to introduce.....

Courtney Lynae 7-30-10

For those of you have may have not seen yet or even if you have who can resist another picture.Mommy can't !

More Summer Fun

Cool water on some very hot days thanks to the generous sharing of cousins !


Plenty of lawn mower time!








A nest of baby bunnies. Especially great to my four year old lover of all creatures.

Does it look like we are preparing for a special new addition to our family? This is my surplus that I have collected over the last few months due to some great coupon deals, clearance racks,my daughter that is excited when she gets a chance to bring things home and a VERY generous sister.Thanks Rach for the diapers and baby wash and then some more diapers and wipes. I am hoping by buying ahead that we will have to purchase very few full priced diapers. Now if I could just get a whoppin deal on a remodel job so that the nursery would be ready for a baby I would feel well prepared. :)

My pack-n-play mostly filled with diapers in multiple

Fair Time Fun

The kids get much enjoyment out of the fair each year so we ventured out last night for the yearly fair fun. I considered staying home with my feet propped up but it was a good thing I didn't since daddy is not quite as patient when it comes to family activities. He would rather enjoy the company of his phone which does not make for good animal viewing company.

This is our activities from Memorial Day weekend. First we rode and rode and rode and finally made it to Florida then we rode some more and went to Virginia then we rode and rode some more and came home. No,it wasn't really quite that bad but to a lady that is 30 weeks pregnant it almost seems that way. We actually did have fun but I actually was really tired of riding in a vehicle.All the "fun" pictures of the beach and Aunt Becky's you'll have to view on her blog since my camera wasn't on hand at that time.

This digital slideshow made with Smilebox

The rains came down and the floods came up

Just about every year we get the wonderful opportunity of having the lower part of our yard flooded.(yes you DO hear some sarcasm )I am a person who HATES water and therefore it about gives me fits every time. This year however Aaron was able to be home before the worst of the floods came up so I tried to get brave and document it. One of my children was quite concerned that I was going to post pictures of them without all their clothes on but we had already soaked sets of clothes during the rain and I really didn't want that many more wet and dirty clothes so excuse our heathenism and check out these pictures.

Gold City

We had the awesome chance to hear Gold City last week right here in our little town. We actually walked to the concert. Bryce slept through a lot of it but after the first few minutes of him enjoying the music wanted to know when we were going to "THE gold city". If you know Bryce it won't surprise you that he was a little embarrassed when I chuckled as I told him the name of the guys singing was "Gold City". I think he enjoyed the music just couldn't figure out where the gold city part came in.This video is not my own of course and obviously Bryce is not at the concert in the picture but I also took this of him last week and thought I would share with the story about him.

Austin was very proud of himself for putting together this firefighter costume. He got new rubber boots last night which spurred the idea of this get up.

Blessings

Aaron and I have tried to make it a habit in our married life to not have a car payment as well as a lot of other payments that a person can aquire, but as some of you know that has not always been the easiest choice for me when you try to ,for instance , take off to Greenwood for a day of shopping with family only to end up getting back to wherever it takes (home,Aarons work)to fix an issue with the vehicle that has decided not to cooperate for this trip.(I'm sure I didn't need to spend the money anyhow:)So after a couple of years of me being ready to upgrade but needing to sell what we had first to make it happen without a loan God blessed us last week with a buyer for our '96 suburban that we have had for six years and 180,000 miles. We've known for some time what we wanted our next vehicle to be so were planning to take our time in finding one in the right price range for us. Just within hours of us selling the suburban we got a phone call from Aarons uncle who knew what we were wanting but didn't even know we had sold yet,telling us about a deal he had found. On monday we went to check out a slightly damaged in the front '02 ford excursion and found that we could get it for a right enough price that even after fixing it we still have the deal we wanted. So here is our upgraded set of wheels after one week of my husbands magic on a few of the body parts on the front of it.It is loaded with a lot of options,such as a dvd player, that to us are new and fancy and I did not think we would be getting for our budget even as desperately as I hoped. When you ride as many as 50,000 miles in a vehicle in a year with three(soon to be four)children that is an awesome feature.



I also got a new computer this week with a lot of cool features that many of you have enjoyed for a long time so I am jazzed!

Old news

I know that valentines is WELL past by now but I was so proud of myself for actually having a camera AND taking pictures that I had to go ahead and post these pictures of our cool valentine "trip".We went a whole thirty minutes from home and enjoyed this cool motel that was supposedly discounted to Aaron and his co-workers. We did get the huge discount of $4 which was a huge frustration to Aaron but the place was cool enough that I didn't feel as ill about it.Th photo of us is absolutely charming I know but at least I did have my camera with me to get SOMETHING.

We have had a much awaited and exciting event in our house these last couple of weeks.After watching her peers of all ages lose there teeth and get there reward from the local tooth fairy Emilee has finally lost two teeth in the last two weeks.The pictures are not the most charming I know but how could I squelch her pride.She very calmly(which is out of character for her) stood and let her Daddy pull both of them.