5's a crowd

Sunday after a long day at church (that should have been the first clue this was not a good idea) and with no pre-planning (the second clue) we decided to snap a few quick family pictures with a friend of mine. We needed one (we haven't had one taken for 3 years now -which shouldn't have been the third clue), and we had three other people who needed one for projects they were working on. So I figured, what better time! It wasn't until we were in the thick of it that I remembered why.... 5 is a crowd when it comes time to taking group pictures. Atleast these 5 are. We did end up with ONE that was okay, and a bunch that would have been good, except.. notice who's not there? Most of what we ended up with where the ones we would have to crop Her out because of the "funny" stuff she was pulling. I'm one for candid personality shots and all, but these were more than that. And to give her some break, the lighting really wasn't that great. O-well. We'll give it a try again some other day year!

One of my favs.

A hurricane and a day

Thank you to the hurricane, we finally got some rain here. And it was a good hard rain for most of the day. And the next day. Once it tamed down just a little, the kids decided to head out with their umbrellas. Oh the mess to clean up when it's time to come in! I forgot what Georgia clay does to clothes. I guess we have some new play clothes at our house!

I will say, it was a blast taking pictures of the girls (Bug was there, but for some reason, I focused on the girls this day)without them even paying attention to me. And I enjoyed showing them how to walk in the water barefoot, just like when I was a kid!

So you think you can... dance?

So Nutmeg really wanted me to take pictures of her in her "dance costume" and her "dance mat". Or in other words, Brittany Spears and yoga mat. Yoga she has seen, but NO she has not seen Brittany!
Or so I hope. And you should have seen the poses she pulled out. On second thought, maybe she has seen her somewhere.
Sigh. Atleast I have some good black mail pictures! The last two are keepers though!

I went inside to put Ase down for a nap, to come back out with BUG mowing the lawn! He did the entire yard himeself! The turns were a little hard for him, but he did it.

All of it!

Is he really that big? I guess the bigger question is: how long is he still going to think it's fun to mow the lawn? ;) Oh, and don't you love the earplugs?!

What happens if.....

You take a two year old, a cord, a keychain and an outlet? Give up?






The plug and the keychain actually were "welded" together and took some doing to get apart. We didn't have any power on our top floor for quite some time and she won't go NEAR the outlets now. She's never played with them before, but I guess when you have two older siblings you watch, you're bound to be taken by the curiosity at some point. Poor thing. It actually sounded like glass breaking through the entire house. Oh, the relief of knowing everything worked out okay... once she realized this same thing.

Kids.

First Day of school has come

and gone. It really started on Monday, but I'm a little slow recovering from the lack of sleep (aka, me getting up before 8 am!). I am most definitely am a night owl, and will need to rework my 1 am bedtime. Back to the kids... they love being in school and Ase loves having the house to just the two of us for atleast the 3 days Nutmeg goes. It's been quite a change here, but one I think we can all get used to! I tried to take some quick pictures of the kids before school. Bug cooperated until the sprinklers turned on, so we got ONE of him and, well, you know how the other one works. I think we just talked about her and pictures a few days ago. Well, lets just say this was the best of them all. She just wouldn't give me anything else. Ahhhh, love that girl. Really- I do.

Ham anyone?

Oh wait, that's my kid! I don't know what it is, but anytime I try to snap a quick photo of Nutty here, she decides she's either going to run, or pull a face. It's near impossible to get an acutal picture of her. There is no such thing as "candid". You have to beg and plead to get her to stick around, without the antics. I happened to be looking back through some photos and couldn't help but laugh at her. I guess those faces are good for something! I figured we could all use a smile!

half a dozen

This kid has given us probably the easiest six years any kid will give a parent. He still is the most mellow and agreeable kid you'll meet. His sisters both adore him, and he makes friends easy (as long as they initiate the contact). I really am proud of this kid. He has grown so much over the last year, and I'm sure he's only going to grow more over the next. I am so proud to say he is my kid. He's the one that makes you feel you must be doing something right as a parent! I do love this little man. He has now started playing tennis, which he loves, so hopefully we have found a sport he'll feel comfortable playing! He loves basketball, but I just don't think he's aggressive enough. Poor thing! The girls will love him a few years though!

Happy Birthday Bug!

timber down

I am so excited. We are finally getting our backyard put together. Someplace for the kids to be able to go outside and play. Someplace that has a fence and grass. Up until now it's been nothing but a fire hazard and a bug incubator. We are finally clearing all that out. In the process we ended up taking out 6 trees. That was really sad, but we put in 10 more along the back. So in a few years, it won't be quite so vacant back there. The kids can't wait until they can actually walk on the new sod (pictures will come, don't you worry!), they actually call it "super grass". It's cute. Two weeks and they can have at it!!

You got me, again.

Okay, so I was tagged a LONG time ago, and have been trying to avoid eye contact ever since. So I'll just get this off my chest....

6 random things about me...
1~ Cannot stand feet. Ugh.
2~ Cannot share cereal. If Matt takes a bite of it, I'm done with the bowl. Silly really
3~ I REALLY want to learn to break dance. Badly.
4~ Cannot force myself to go to bed before 11 pm. I just can't.
5~ I don't like chocolate, or vanilla. I'm not trying to be difficult or anything!
6~ My nickname growing up was Jonsey. I actually thought it was my middle name through most of grade school.

There you go. So you read, you've got it on you now!

Two eyes, two ears, two hands and two feet

And now two years!

I can't believe my "baby" is already two. I know we all say this with every birthday for each of our kids. But for some reason the speed of time never ceases to amaze. Ase is such her own little person. She has got to get into something requiring a lot of bouncing around everywhere like a spaz, because she has enough of that plus some. It'll be fun to see what she ends up doing. Danceing, Cheer (if we stay in the south probably since that is HUGE here), Gymnastics, the Circus... who knows! And she is all girl. She loves dancing, stuffed dolls, making stuffed dolls dance, and anything pretty. She was trying so hard to be "pretty" in this picture she didn't even want to move. It cracked me up. So we have a very serious, but underneath that a very happy two year old.

I will say she is the quickest kid we've had yet. She pickes up on things SO fast. She already pumps herself on a swing for goodness sake. I am still trying to help the older two to get that down! And her favorite thing to do right now is tell knock-knock jokes. No kidding. And you think they're not funny when a 5 year old tells them. Try a two year old's. We've all got that courtesty laugh down around here!

So there's my Ase. She is the most fun, outgoing little kid I've known. But of course there's always the other side to that, but we won't go there! We didn't get a lot of good photos from the birthday "party" because there were too many kids trying to help(aka, brother and sister) and Ase not pausing for a second to breath.

O-well. A cake picture is good enough.

ZZ top

So here is the cake I made Ase for her birthday. She LOVES zebra's, so it was the natural choice. The hair was the part that was the most fun. Good thing we all love black licorice here!

But of course I had to add some "tradition" we'll call it to the cake. I didn't want to do anything too disturbing to the outside on this one....


so I didn't it on the inside. The kids thought it was pretty cool that when you cut it open it looked like blood. Nice. And we incourage this in our kids?!

disgruntled

I had the privilege of taking photos yesterday for family, and I'd dare say they turned out pretty good, despite the constant complaints! This boy did not want photos taken, no matter what. But even after it was done he said it wasn't that bad. Only 5 minutes and 27 frames. That's a lot quicker than trying to work with my kids!
The last is more the expression I saw in 97% of the other photos! Lets just say it shows.... personality!





It feels good to get some of those creative juices flowing again. Whew!

Late, but here

So I finally am posting again. I don't know what happened to me here, but I just didn't make it onto the computer. Yikes! I know these pictures are old, but I just loved them all the same. Ase loved the sparklers, but when the fireworks showed up, the last picture is how she spent the entire hour. Poor thing! As wild as she is, I didn't think they'd even bother her... but they did!

Until next year

twisted birthdays

So I decided to pull up a few of our bizarre cakes we've done over the last couple of years. We don't have too many yet, since we don't want to do too weird at their friend birthday parties. We have more than this, but thought this was a good sampling....


This is probably my favorite. Nutmeg really wanted a snowman birthday cake. She loved snowmen (and of course it's right when we moved to Georgia.. sorry about that girl!) so here is what Matt pulled together. Remember that Calvin and Hobbs with the snowmen? And just a note, poor Nutmeg was only TWO!!



Bug wanted a dinosaur cake. We had a really good one we were doing for the friend party, so didn't want to do too much for the family one. Again, Matt got to work. You can't really tell here, but the dinosaurs have shredded some of the bears to pieces while the others are running down the alley....





We decided to do a transformers cake for Matt's birthday. Gross was the only way to go for this one!



And just so you know that we can do a cake if we really try... here is the real dinosaur cake for Bug's party. It looks like a lizard really, but it was still impressive. Now if only the head would have stayed up by itself. Maybe I really should have followed the directions!

That time of year

Here we start again on the summer birthdays. 4 of us are withing just over a month of each other, and that's not including extended family. It's crazy, and we all get sick of birthday cake... but it's fun! Poor Nutmeg feels a little excluded though, hers isn't until November.

We started it off with Matt's birhthday. Yea!!! He doesn't think so, but the rest of us did! His family has the weirdest tradition. Birthday cakes aren't normal at their house. They are demented, or twisted in some way. It's almost disturbing! I remember the first birthday I saw at their house, when Matt and I were still dating. Their dad had taken a barbie, decapitating it and placing the head in the mouth of a shark. The arms coming out the sides of the shark, and the feet coming out the bottom end. I now know what would result if a barbie and a shark ever met up....

So here was Matt's cake this year. The "chlorophyll" was a little greener than expected, but it worked just fine. I may not look so good, and you really have a hard time eating a brown unexpected lump from the depths of it.... but it tasted good!!

Happy Birthday babe. We love you!

And that makes 8

This weekend was awesome. It was one of my best friends birthdays, so me and another best friend watched her kids overnight and all the next day. What more could a mom want that some quiet time? As part of her birthday present we took a picutre of all the kids together. Yes, we are insane for the two of us (my frined being pregnant) to drag 8 kids to Kiddie Kandids. It worked though, and they turned out really cute! The weekend was exhausting even though the kids were great, the house was a zoo, and everything was loud....

but I loved it all!

Friday night we were all just hanging out. My friend and her husband came back to claim their kids, and m other friends husband happened to have a layover here, so he joined us too. The kids were running around the house like mad, the adults were in the famiy room talking and playing Guitar Hero (Which was also loud so we could hear over the kids!) and I was just finishing up some dishes from dinner. Right then it struck me how perfect the night was. I love having people over. Especially these people. And here we all were, just hanging out. I even loved all the noise. That's how a house should be. Filled with noise. The kind of noise that shows you are having a good time. And that's what it was. I didn't want it to end!

Sad, but I think this will be the last time for a long time we'll all be in the same house together. :(

From A to Z

A: Attached or Single: Very Attached
B: Best Friends: Becki, Brooklyn, Nicole, Alyssa, Molly and Jo
C: Cake or Pie: Pie all the way! Lemon meringue, key lime, apple....
D: Day: Thursday. The anticipation of the weekend to come, without the disappointment of the weekend being over.
I "should" be doing something a little more productive than this!
E: Essential Item: toothbrush and chapstick
F: Favorite Color: orange, then pink, then red
G: Gummie bears or worms: Worms, brings back childhood memories!
H: Hometown: Is way too small but filled with memories, good and bad.
I: Indulgences: Reading. Sitting on the computer. Getting dressed up to go out
J: January or July: July!! I love the sun, and it's my birthday month!
K: Kids: 3. I boy and two girls. Poor guy.
L: Life is incomplete without: Matt, the church, my family and friends. And a camera.
M: Marriage Date: August 16th
N: Number of Siblings: 4, all younger. I sister and 3 brothers.
O: Oranges or Apples: Apples. Oranges taste better, but I HATE peeling them!
P: Phobias or fears: Cockroaches. I hate even typing out the name!
Q: Quote: "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. " -Picasso
R: Reason to Smile: Give me a good reason not too.
S: Season: Fall. I just love the smell, the colors, and the excitment of the upcoming season.
T: Tag: Jo, since she hasn't done it yet!
U: Unknown Fact about me: I once begged my parents to give me a middle name so I could be like the other kids. It didn't work!
V: Very Favorite Store: Any home decor store.
W: Worse Habit: eating out of habbit. That and staying up until 1 am.
X: X-rays or Unltrasounds: Ultrasounds. They've been for good things (like babies, or good news) where there's usually a bad reason that gets you an x-ray
Y: Your Favorite Food: Steak, Artichokes, fruit, homemade warm buttered bread
Z: Zodiac Sign: Cancer

Pitter-patter

Matt's Fathers Day gift (framed for him of course!)



Happy Fathers Day babe. I love you!