Rebekah's 2nd Birthday!

I can't believe it's been two years! -and Oh, my goodness, another two year old, am I up for this? She's something else! Whew! But we're sure glad to have her. What a character!!

Dress up's from Grandma. She always knows how to please little girls!

So lucky to have two big sisters that know exactly what to do and are always there to help!!

Okay, at this point she'd had enough of my photography, but man she's cute!

Ready to go!!

We were trying to save the cake for when Daddy came home, and after dinner (just got a little one since we have 3 birthday's in one week and can get cake overkill - the Tinkerbell cake was so perfect anyway) - but, and probably with help from her sweet-toothed big brother that always seems to get his fingers into the treats before he's supposed to, the cake was found and very much gotten into.

I was upset at first, but then it was too cute, and it was her cake anyway.

The best picture we could get. There was some left! Happy 2nd birthday Rebekah! Love you!!

Melissa's actual birthday

Here's some pics from Melissa's actual birthday. She had a fun party the week before and then was lucky enough to have her dearest friend and her family over for dinner on her birthday. -Because sadly they moved a few hours north of here soon after. Thankfully its only a few hours so the girls can get together occasionally. Isn't she lovely?

If I knew how to crop photos I would've cropped Rebekah out of this one - she's looking a little hill-billy in her diaper with her crazy hair - it was early, and I can't remember now why her jammies are missing. At least this proves that our house is now warm in the winter - now that it's mostly finished and nicely insulated. I guess I shouldn't say that - the kids probably ran around in next to nothing when they could back then too. They don't seem to feel the temperature much.

Here's Melissa and Ani enjoying some ice cram after dinner.

So cute together.

Rebekah, looking like a princess all dressed up and on the counter enjoying her treats. Messy!!

Here's the whole gang - or most of 'em anyway. Thanks Akin's - it was fun!! Happy 9th birthday Melissa!

Oh, yeah! I should note, Melissa's Football National Champion T-shirt - War Eagle!! We're proud of our Auburn Tigers! That was a nice birthday present for both Melissa and Eric!!

Major snow

No, we're not having major snow in June - I'm just playing catch up and for some reason when I looked at my photos and saw these I thought they were worthy to remember. Maybe for those of you in hotter climates this will help cool you off just looking at them :o) I just wanted to measure this, because this is what I had to shovel all the way from my door to my vehicle, and then I actually had to shovel around my vehicle, which is a huge suburban - but the snow was so deep and so heavy it wouldn't move until helped. Even though it was freezing I worked up a pretty good sweat shoving this mess!

This snow was on top of an already large mound of packed snow!

Can you see those huge clumps of snow? That's what just slid off our roof - with a big WHAMP! I ran outside to see what it was - look at those things! I bet our roof was relieved to get rid of that weight!!

Again more roof snow falloff. After a while I got sick of shovelling this - actually it was too packed and I couldn't shovel it and so I just went out and stomped on it good to make sure no one would fall through -and made a path over it.

Can you see how thick that is? - and that's just since the last mess fell off!

It's a good thing I love the snow!!

Cool Snowman!

It's always fun to make a good snowman. This one had his facial features and hair made out of twigs we found in the snow. Since he had a long nose we named him Pinoccio. I wish his "hair" showed up better in the pictures. It was awesome!

It was a good Winter!

Melissa's First Sleepover

Sleepovers are few and far between at our house - and not allowed until they are 9 yrs old - so when Melissa turned 9 this past January she of course wanted to have a sleepover. It was quite a girls night. They started with makeovers. A few years ago Melanie had a sleepover party and they did "blind makeovers" (see picture below).

That was a big hit and they've done many of those since, so Melissa wanted to do the same at hers - but one of Melissa's friends has a very talented hairdresser mother and she offered her services when she heard about the makeovers. I brought it up with Melissa and she was excited. So this time they got pretty makeovers.

So that was a real treat and then they had pizza and headed upstairs to soak in the jacuzzi and watch a movie.

Next was jammies, presents and playing Dance Revolution on the Wii.

Quite a girls night. The next morning Dad pulled them on the sled behind the snowmobile. Who says summer birthday's are more fun?

Things to Remember

December 2010:
Melissa: "Mom, if we cut slits in our sides could we breath under water?"

Rebekah: Barbie = "Darbie"

"Dooonnnnaaa, where aaaarrrrre you??" (Donna is her Grams-she picked this up one day copying Pops and then repeated it all through Christmas. It was so cute - we tried to get it recorded on Grams' phone so she could make it her ring tone, but of course any time we'd try to get her to do it she wouldn't)

James: "I'm not really an away from home person. I get hungry and can't eat in the car."

David: After seeing Toy Story 3 carried his Little People farmers into the car with him and called them "my cowboys."

January 2011:
Rebekah: Flip-flops = "Lop-lops"

February 2011:
David: In the morning = "To-morning", kind of like tomorrow.

I woke up this morning just before the 6:30 alarm to the sound of someone coming down the hall trickling as they came. I jump up to find out who wasn't getting to the toilet in time and find it was Rebekah. She leans against the wall and says "I go potty Mommy." Apparently she'd lost or removed her diaper at some point in the night (thankfully I later found the bed dry - yea for her not wetting the bed! -just the hallway). But that's not the end of the story . . . before we can even get her diaper back on David comes down the hall and says "I'm wet Mom, I peed the bed" (Ugh! -for the third night in a row!!) Happy Monday morning to me!! What's this week going to be like?

Eric is the best!! Among other things . . . . tonight I left him just after dinner with the three little ones and a dinner mess while I took the big girls and their friends to the mall. Came home to kids asleep and kitchen sparkling! Love him!!

Christmas 2010

Yes, we did celebrate Christmas this year - and I guess it was a real doozy since its taken me this long to get it together and post something about it.



We were lucky to have Eric's parents and brother and sister, my parents, my younger brother Russell and his family, my younger sister Angie and her family all with us this year. We terribly missed my older brother Matt and his family - looking forward to seeing you all in May!



I hope our children are grateful. I don't think there are too many kids that get both sets of grandparents plus that many aunts and uncles and cousins all together with them on Christmas morning!! That makes a beautiful Christmas!!



We had a great time - thank you everyone that contributed (and put up with us, hahaha)

We had one tragedy amid all our fun. We all got bundled up and went sledding and Grandma Diane jumped right in and was having a ball with all the kids and grandkids while Grandpa Rex caught it all on film. Well this was to be the end of Grandma's sledding career (or so the Dr. in the ER told us, later that night). Here's her on the way down . . .

-And here's us later in the ER. She dislocated and broke her ankle in 3 places. Surgery was needed, but because of swelling the surgery couldn't be done for a few days. They put a cast on and sent her home to Texas to have the surgery there. One good thing came of it . . .we got her to sit down for more than 5 minutes! Rebekah enjoyed that - she got some snuggle time!Below is a post surgery X-ray. Now we have a heavy metal grandma (haha) Good luck with your continued recovery grandma!

Okay and here's just a little "cheese" from Rebekah.