Merry Christmas

Little Dancer

This is somewhat of an old video (August 13th) that I am just now getting around to posting.

Narnia Park

I don't remember what this park is really called, but it's one of the best parks we've ever been to. These pictures are from the first time we were there - it was just me and the kids one day. There are lots of interesting pieces of equipment that I've never seen anywhere else.

One of the favorites was the roller slide.

They also had a lot of musically themed pieces - turtle drums and a really big xylophone for example.

Ben driving the fire truck.

Izzie on a random lion. I'm pretty sure this one was not Aslan.

Stay tuned for some more pictures from this park when we were there with Grandma Ann and Grandpa Steve during Thanksgiving. We discovered things on that visit that we hadn't even noticed the first time.

Pigtails!

After the last post with Izzie in her pigtails I decided it was time to try again. It has probably been two months, because I think those last pictures were from October.

This is her "smile" for me! What a stinker... but so cute. And that's a mirror she's holding in front of her - what fun are pigtails if you don't even get to know what they look like?

Rainboots

Fun with some new rainboots.. yes, we're ALL wearing some.
Izzie in frogs, Grandma Ann in purple, Ben in firefighter boots and me in stripes.

We had to take a walk to try them out.

The obligatory walking on (and jumping off of)our neighbor's wall.

Izzie was sporting a new hairdo that day. She doesn't have much patience for it though, so any pigtails I manage to get in are pretty short-lived.

We did have a couple of mishaps on the way.Like this...


And this...

But that was all part of the fun.

Grandpa and Izzie

Grandpa disassembled the crib for us while he was here right after Colin had his accident. Izzie now sleeps on a little palette on the floor and has been doing pretty well with it. (In this picture she's getting a snuggle with Grandpa on Ben's bed before her nap.) For a while Izzie was coming into our room several times a night crying and I would have to take her back to bed. I thought it was because she had a cold - and part of it probably was - but I finally figured out that she was also tossing and turning and would conk her head on the wall. So, I moved her further away and added an extra pillow between her and the wall. The last two nights she hasn't woken up crying or come into our room once. This is a big relief - I was starting to get a little depressed that the kids are now 4 and 2 and we were still getting woken up 3 and 4 times a night by them.

Ben and Izzie's Birthday Party

We'd planned to have a party with some people from church the Saturday after Ben's birthday. As it turned out with the accident, Colin was released from the hospital Friday evening and of course we hadn't had time to get anything ready. Ben had been looking forward to this so we wanted to go ahead, but we also wanted to keep things simple. We picked up some pizza and I already had some cupcakes from Ben's snack day. I made up another batch and we picked up some mini M&Ms (thanks, Grandpa!) to add to the sprinkles and peppermint balls we happened to have on hand. We just ate the pizza and then took the kids out to the porch to decorate their cupcakes and sing happy birthday.Quick Izzie, look at that!

Izzie was a little bewildered by the singing and candles, and had no idea what we wanted her to do with them.

But Ben took care of that...

Ben loved the cupcakes and the decorations. Izzie put a few M&Ms on hers but decided there was a more efficient way of doing things and eliminated the cupcake as middle man. I don't think she even took one bite of cupcake, but she ate a LOT of peppermint balls.

Just checking to see if these are good.

The masterpiece!

Still Catching Up..

I'm determined to catch up before the new year, so brace yourselves for a flurry of posts!

Here are the kids being silly in the car while waiting for Dad to finish work.

Elf Yourself

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Pumpkins!

These two pumpkins came out of our garden. There was another one that we ate, and one that mysteriously "disappeared."

Ben was very proud of his pumpkin - I forget which one was his, but I think it was the fatter, shorter one. The other one is Izzie's, of course. At one point we were measuring Ben's pumpkin and it was gaining 1 to 2 inches in circumference every day.

This picture would lead you to believe that the taller pumpkin was Ben's, but I'm pretty sure they switched.

Hooray for pumpkins!

And a little pumpkin racing to end the day.

Eastman Race

Colin is usually the one racing, but we (he?) decided it was time for the rest of us to do something while he watched. So we entered Izzie and Ben in a kid's race, and I entered a 5k. (Don't ask me how the 5k went because after we'd driven half-way there we realized I didn't have my race number so I didn't run.) And in my defense, I did have the kids dressed, changed and fed, had snacks for them, books for the car, diapers and wipes in the diaper bag, wallet, keys, phone and was dressed in my race clothes. With the important exception of my number, of course. And as it turns out, I actually remembered what my race number was, but we didn't know if there would be any way to prove it. So instead we went to a yard sale, ate breakfast at McDonald's and the kids bounced in a bouncy castle that we came across. Actually, Izzie didn't want to go in without me and no other children were in it or waiting to get in so I bounced too. Colin will attest that we bounced for a long time, but probably not as long as it would have taken me to run 5k! Luckily, Ben and Izzie's race the night before went off without a hitch.

Here's Ben getting his number pinned on. He was doing a lot of thumb-biting that day.

Here's Izzie getting her number pinned on. And look - I'm in a picture!

And another one too!

??? Your guess is as good as mine! Actually I think they were warming up - Ben decided to invent his own stretches when he couldn't quite follow the ones everyone else was doing.

Daddy getting Izzie all set. I was worried Izzie was going to end up on her face because these shoes were slightly too large for her and she didn't have a lot of practice moving around in them. She stayed on her feet though, and to be honest, it probably wouldn't have fazed her if she had fallen down.

Ben, getting into his zone.





Izzie copying Ben.

Izzie practicing before the race.

Daddy giving her some encouragement.

Izzie was so excited she ran straight into my arms on the sideline laughing and cheering and thought she was done! I had to run with her to finish the race. She came in last, but was very happy about it and proud of herself, as were we!

Technically Izzie was one day short of the 2 year old age group but we figured that didn't matter either. Look how proud she is of her ribbon.

I asked them to show me their ribbons and this is what they did! The ribbons say, "I ran 75 yards at the Eastman Youth Runs. We definitely plan to do it again next year.

The Oklahomans come to Tennessee

Well I've been putting off updating the blog because I don't have time... but the truth of the matter is I do have time if I stop narrating so much,fiddling with the wording, editing the pictures to look better etc. Stop trying to do it perfectly and just do it! So here they are, pictures from when Colin's parents and aunt, uncle, cousin came to visit us in the summer - 4th of July weekend.

Here's Izzie feeding a goat at a farm we went to. It sounded great but was a little disappointing. The highlights were a bouncy castle and the sandbox.

Ben, sleeping on Izzie, sleeping on Daddy.

The guys all got a bee in their bonnets to shave their heads. Here's Wingo trusting Colin with the clippers.

Wade giving Ben a hug.

There are other pictures but oddly enough I can't seem to locate them on the computer at the moment. So this concludes part 1.

Dress-Up

Yes, our little miss loves to put on any clothes, shoes or accessories she can get her sticky little hands on.

Here she is with my sunglasses.

And Katie's shoes. We were all surprised at how well she was able to walk in them. Apparently Morley liked the shoes too, because he stole one later that evening and tried to eat it.

She even takes Daddy's flip flops.

Ben's Blog

Ben has decided he would like to blog, so we added a link for him at the right!

Pure Joy!