Fun day with lifelong friends

A few Sundays ago, our friends, The Hutchisons, came to spend the day with us. Tasha and I have been friends since the 4th grade. (And today happens to be her birthday! Happy Birthday Tash!!) The four of us went to 2 proms together, were in each others weddings and we’ve made so many memories together over the years.

Our kids are stair-stepped, which has been fun for many, many  years.

As a matter of fact, I have a cute story about that.

They got married first and our wedding was 9 months after theirs. Tasha was 2 months pregnant at my wedding. Jason and I had planned to wait 5 years before beginning our family. When her daughter was born, I went to see her in the hospital. Something came over me like nothing before… I had been stricken with the baby fever. I went home and told Jason that I “needed one” too. Needless to say, Braden was born 9 months later… ahem…Apparently I can be quite persuasive where my husband is concerned! Ha!

We will actually have a child graduating high school every year for 4 straight years, skip a few years, and then my little girls will follow behind by a few years. Won’t that be fun?!

We had a wonderful day of hanging out, laughing, playing and EATING some yummy food. Jason H even helped my Jason put together a bed while he was here. Now that’s a friend!

I snapped these pics of the kids playing Rock Band.

There’s nothing like friends that you’ve been friends with for many years longer than you’ve NOT been friends with them.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

As is our family tradition, we put on our hats and decorated our home for Christmas the Friday after Thanksgiving. I cannot express how much I enjoy the month of looking at the twinkling lights and festive decor in my house. It’s my favorite month of the whole year!

Cool pic by Cool boy

Rhett took this pic with my phone one day when we were driving down the road. No editing on the computer, this is just exactly how he took it on the phone.

I thought it was pretty great! Love the composition.

He has an eye for coolness!

Photography Fun

The boys both recently submitted photographs for a contest at school.

Braden took photos (close ups) of his sister doing various art projects.

Here’s 2 of them.

Rhett wanted to take photos of his Daddy and his Brother playing in the yard.

After he was done with photos for his project, Rhett turned the camera on Gracie and I. We were just hanging out in the yard snuggling! As you can see, I was even in my jammies!

But I love these!

Then Gracie wanted to have a turn, so with the camera on the tripod, I let her go to town.

I told the boys to go on the other end of the yard and start running towards her and do whatever they wanted.

She put her finger on the trigger and snapped away.

Here’s our pick for what was the best one!

I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!

All 3 kids have a copy of it on display in their rooms :)

Coolest Kids!

I have to say, I have some Cool Kids!

I recently got a new phone and was pulling all of my pictures off of my old phone.

I snapped these while walking from the car to Braden’s soccer practice one September evening.

 

They always have to go prepared with snacks, drinks, chairs, toys, etc. Those practices night after night can become pretty boring for the siblings.

I thought they looked so cute with their sunglasses. A total necessity, btw. :)

And these were taken the night of another soccer practice. It was hot outside that evening so I wanted to sit in the car and read for a few minutes in the AC before we walked to the field to watch. (Braden was already on the field practicing.)

So Rhett and Gracie were entertaining themselves while I was chillin’ for a few minutes.

I looked back to check on them and this is what I saw:

Rhett had decorated Gracie’s entire face in stickers. And she also had them all over her arms and legs too!

When she was pulling all of them off of herself I heard, “Ouch. Ouch. Ow. Ouchie. Ouch” repeatedly!

Family Day at SDC

In the early Fall, my family all got together for a day of family fun at Silver Dollar City.

It was my parents and all of their children and grandchildren. What a fun day we had! Hopefully we can make it an annual tradition to all go together.

Here’s all of the grandkids.

I love this one! I can see why my parents are so proud of their grandbabies!

The whole clan

My sweet sister in law volunteered to ride some of the rides with my children. I just can’t do those twisty-round-and-round rides. Let’s just say it wouldn’t be pretty!

Here’s Rhett and Ela riding together. They were riding buddies all day.

I was trying to get a nice picture of my parents. My dad is a goof ball. The end :)

Here’s me and my “little” brother. Mom caught us on camera.

Me: “Hey, remember when we were little kids and we were so skinny. We’d grab a little flab of skin and pinch it and say we were fat?”

Him: “Yeah, dude, check this out. You gotta feel this roll!”

Me: “You call THAT a roll? Are you kidding. Grab mine- I’ll show you a belly roll!”

Him: “No, seriously! FEEL this!”

We were laughing so hard. I told him we’d better stop before I experienced incontinence.

Us with Daddy.

Me and my Mamma

Russ and Mom

I love this picture of my parents! They are so cute together. I’m thankful that they are still in love after all these years. They were high school sweethearts.

They really shouldn’t let us go out in public together… Here we are trying to make mom a traditional Christmas card portrait. ;)

Honestly… only two goobers a mother could love.

Finally, a good one! I love my little Bubba!

And I love this hunk of a man

My family. My love. My life.

Mamma and Daddy with Sissy. I know I’m her mother and all, but I just think she is beautiful…

Mamma and Daddy with Rhett. He’s gonna be a lady killer someday. Mark my words. Heaven help me… he is just too handsome.

My firstborn declined an individual shot with his parents. He is much too cool of a 10 year old for that. I told him he’d regret it one day when we were looking back at old photos. I’m writing this down so he can’t ever accuse me of leaving him out. It was your choice, son!!! Ha!

Here’s my brother’s beautiful family! Love you guys!

What a wonderful day we had!! Can’t wait for next time!

Kids School Parties

This post is a little behind… I already had it ready and never posted it… But since I have nothing ready to post and I’m exhausted, (and because it’s my blog and I can post what I want :) here you go… A 1 month old blog post.

Here’s some pictures of the boys’ school “Birthday bash” parties. Their school celebrates the birthday of the school’s namesake, which  happens to fall right around Halloween.

On this same day, Gracie’s school had an “Imagination Celebration”. It was also her last day of preschool.

Her sweet teacher got a cookie cake for the class to say good-bye to Gracie!

We love Ms. Heather! She was a wonderful teacher to Gracie!

It was a very busy and fun afternoon!!