Summary.....

For those who haven't seen these pics... I hope you enjoy.... For those who have already seen these pics.... hope you enjoy, again! I decided to limit it to a few pictures, instead of a million pics for each category, which i do have on my ever dwindiling hard disk space. Ok, so now we'll have a summary of the last two months.

Ashley turns 7! My, how time goes so fast. She picked out this cake. I made it for her, but we had to eat it the day I finished it. Of course no one complained about eating cake a little early. Ashley....God's Little Princess.

Next....was our Carpet removal/room repainting. We have laminate on the floors now, Finn is demonstrating, the proper way to lay the laminate. :) And we have two blue walls and two brown walls. The brown is *not sticking however. So. we'll have to repaint again...sigh.... We took off our trim too, it made for easier painting.

In February, we took a trip to the zoo. It was so very nice out that day. I am thinking Graco would love a copy of this picture.

February 14th..... Valentines pictures


Connor wanted a Football cake for his birthday. He helped frost the cake.

This seems to be the norm around here.... Smurfs to watch and bins to watch them in. My kids have strange habits!

Another cool thing we did was visit the Weinermobile. We missed it at our local store and went the next one. While we were there, a photographer took a picture of the kids that ended up in the local paper.

Friday we went to the park, it was in the high 60s.

Sunday, we woke up to Snow! What fun :) I had just packed away all of our winter stuff, becasue I figured we wouldn't get any more snow. Afterall, our daffodils are up already. What a surprise!

Mike and I celebrated our 10th anniversary. We had an early dinner at Applebees (in December, thanks Mom and Dad) and had Ice cream cake from DQ on our anniversary.

And this is my awesome Craigslist find! the cage, not the bird. here you can see our Chocolate truffle walls! and a little of the floor too. We really have been blessed :)

To upload pictures on here, I have to resize everything. Which can become old real fast. A lot of times, I'll just send out an email instead. If you aren't on my email list and would like to be included in picture sharing (no spam) send me an email.. Austillmkc@aol.com I'd love to hear from you.

Chuck E. Cheese

This was our outing to Chuck E. Cheese. Mike and Dave went to Nashville. So... the kids and I went to Chuck E. Cheese. We had planned a trip to the Childrens Museum but, the heating wasn't working properly in the Van, to drive all the way there, so the seven of us headed here instead.


We went through 7 drinks, 2 pizzas and 230 tokens.... And of couse we all walked away with those fabulous prizes they have.... you know the ones.... pirate patches, tatoos, sticky frogs (I have two stuck to my ceiling at this moment), dissapearing coin tricks... and the list goes on.


Most of the tokens I handed to Ethan, went to this awesome sports car! He even fed it tokens while it was going......I think we wasted a few... oops! Finn Thought it was great too.



First thing Christian did was play basketball. He wants to play basketball this year.




Ashley hopped on this monster truck first thing....how girly :)





Connor enjoyed the skeetball. He did pretty good.


Camden loves Spongebob!

8 for 2008

I am really happy with my photography these days.... I wanted to include 8 favs for 2008. As I looked through my hard drive....I realized that some of my favorites have already been backed up and removed. so... that leaves me with 6. Anyhow....I am not trying to pick favorite children. The pics I have chosen have many variables as to why they are my favorite...so no hate mail please :) Not that any of you would think of such...he he he.... Ok so here goes... In no particular order...

Inspired

I first saw this on Two peas (love that site), I first heard of this from Mark and Tabitha. I was under strict orders not to do anything until they had finished theirs. So... I am considering theirs done. I've had a lot of fun with these and, as you can tell I am not finished. I wanted to use each letter only once as to make this more challenging for me. I think my name will be the hardest. We had a warm day last week so I went out and snapped a bunch of pics. Hopefully we will have another warm day so I can finish these....

I used Camdens' tricycle for his pictures as he loves to ride it when we are outside.

Mikes' was fun. I used car parts for his.

Christians name had assorted yard items.

Home is where the heart is....

Some Christmas Cheer....

Who can't help but smile, when they see pictures like these??? My Parents made a really nice basket full of goodies for us. It had an adorable snowman theme. Inside the basket was a snowman wearing a scarf and Santa hat. I kept looking at this cute little snowman and suddenly it hit me.... these things would fit on Lilly. And of course they did.


Wearing the Scarf....


Who knew that Lilly would absolutly love to unwrap gifts? I had to make sure she was in her cage while the kids unwrapped their own gifts, as she wanted to help.

Lilly loves rubber duckies.

Merry Christmas

Waving good bye

Here are some of the kids waving good bye to Grandma and Grandpa as they head towards Michigan.

Aren't they cute?

Romantic Date.....

While staying at the hotel. My mom and dad Offered to watch the kids so we could go on our second date for the weekend :) Our first date was to Applebees on Saturday night. We had lime chicken.....mmmmm....

Our second date was to the Opryland Hotel. What a beautiful place. This is the view in front of the hotel.

All of these things were even prettier in person. It was nice to get out, just the two of us.
This was had a huge flag pole in the middle. the Poinsettias were three dimentional. Very pretty.

I was most surprised to see this Life size Nativity scene. Amazing detail. and the Christmas story was playing on speakers out there.

This hotel was so pretty on the inside. The tree behind us was made completly out of Poinsettia flowers.

What's more romantical than a horse drawn carrige ride to see all the lights! We paid extra to have a private carriage. It was really nice.

Christmas Gift....

For Christmas My parents took us to a motel. We chose to Stay in Nashville. It was a little farther away but we had a really good time.

And if you're wondering about the purple swimsuit.... You see..there just aren't arm floaties this time of year at Walmart. So we had to make due with this swimsuit from Jessica.

Another part of our gift was going out to eat at the Golden Corral. Here is a pic of Finn walking out of the resturant with my Dad. What a sweet picture.

Ethan was most impressed with his Shark (sharp) knife. he thought it was great that it was in his bundle of silverware. Silly kid. He cut up everything on his plate.

Here is a group picture. Does the orange sweatshirt make me look fat? I guess I should have wore black. It was nice to go out to eat. We really don't go out much so it was a treat. Thanks Mom and Dad!

A visit with my parents...

this is a normal scene at our house... Ethan loves Matchbox cars....

who doesn't love a good whoooooer?

We had a sweets attack while mom was visiting. We made Tabitha's yummy crunchy stuff and We also made Reindeer. If you haven't made these Reindeer, you should! You'll need one bag of pretzels. Twists...as pictured :) One bag of hershey kisses. and a bag of M & Ms.

next Heat your oven to 350 * . Place the pretzels on a cookie sheet with the hershey kiss sittin on top. Bake these for two minutes. As soon as they come out of the oven push an M&M into the hershey kiss. Let cool. then Enjoy!


Grandpa and Ethan playing Cars :)





Grandma and Camden.