Caleb and I do a “date night” once a week…. so this was in Oct ‘10 goin’ out on a date!

Now this was our “big” Family trip of the year for 2010. We went to Disney World for 5 days and took our sitter with us…. gotta do that with 4 kiddos!! We love her!!!

See….here she is. We’re basically her “second family!”

Just a fun family pic of our last day!

I actually took several hundred pics of our Disney trip, but there were WAY too many to post.

Nov ‘10…. our 12th Anniversary. We celebrated at III Forks. Love that place!!!!

And this was the first year we had a REAL Christmas tree. Loved that too! Yeah, so not going back to artificial ones- you have to store them all year. Nope, not any more!

…..OK and this blog post will be “TO BE CONTINUED”……. these take awhile! hahaha

I have lots of friends who are avid scrapbookers, and they are amazing!!! But, I just never can find the time to actually sit down and scrapbook- especially after dragging out all the scrapbooking junk…I mean stuff! So, blogging is my version of “scrapbooking” my family’s every day doings!

Looking back I left off with our summer vacation, so it looks like I have some catching up to do…so here goes!

Let’s start in July…..

Noah’s Cub Scout Troop went to Medieval Times.

And they do this at home all the time….using a variety of swords and other weaponry.

This is just a silly pic of Caleb wearing my boxing gloves….lovely pink color- don’t ya think?!? This past year I started working out and picked up on boxing. Love it….very fun. I’ve discovered how much I enjoy hitting though! :)  And I might add….I’ve lost 46 pounds and 27 inches and 4 sizes so far….not too bad!!

We went swimming ALOT this summer….ALOT!!!! Got to love this pic of Abigail in her “boat” (as she called it) wearing only a diaper and fuzzy crocs!. HA!!

I had to include this pic because of the story….. Caleb was hanging some boards to put hooks in to hang our bazillion sizes of bikes on. He was on the last board and drilled right above the electrical box, hoping to hit a stud. Well, my “stud” hit something else….like the wad of important electrical wires that run the whole house’s electricity! He got a big jolt and had me run in to see if we had power. Well, it ended up only being our bedroom and bathroom. So, we got to get ready by flashlight for the weekend- because this of course happened on a Fri night! But it got fixed on Mon and didn’t even cost an arm and a leg!

And this is just my sweet little pumpkins face that didn’t look so thrilled to have me take her pic.

OK….so this was a glimpse of July….now to move on to August!

Our first night we stayed at my dad’s in Tulsa. We had to drop off “Tinkerbell” (our dog) for her own vacation at Papa’s!

The second night we made it right outside St. Louis. Here is a cave we toured. It was a 90 min., 1 mile tour….during Abigail’s nap time- made it interesting. It was very fun, though, and the kids LOVED it!!! It was pretty amazing inside, and the pics don’t even do it justice, but here they are anyways!

This was the entrance to the vistor’s center of the cave. See, Abigail was NOT cooperating for a “group” shot.

I took this pic in the pitch dark, so I couldn’t see exactly what I was pointing at….but I did pretty good at getting them all in the pic.

Just cool cave pics.

This was at dinner that night before checking into the hotel. Emily is showing us her “gem” necklace she got at the cave.

Daddy is so fun and cool…..giving rides on the luggage cart at the hotel.

The kids LOVED seeing the St. Louis arch….and some very cool bridges going through St. Louis.

We made it to Indiana!!!! YAY!!! Our first night at my Grandma’s house we took them to a fun park to let them run off all their energy.

Abigail likes to hand me the camera and say “Cheeeese.” So, here she’s saying “Cheeeeese!”

OK….funny story about the cow. All of Caleb’s and my married life we somehow miss turns, get turned around (AKA- lost), or whatever, but it always leads to some kind of adventure. So….we’re on our way to the Indiana State Dune Park (that was ONLY 15 min. away), but we went south instead of north. Had we really thought about it, it wouldn’t had made any sense to go south, since Lake Michigan was north….but that’s just us I guess. So, 1 1/2 hours later we end up at the exit where we started and had to get the kids lunch. So, we went to Culver’s and they had cows out front. The kids wanted to pet them, so here they are petting cows. And just think….they NEVER would have pet the cows if we hadn’t gone the wrong way!

And we did make it to the Sand Dunes at Lake Michigan. It was the kids 1st time at a beach.

Here’s all of our toes in the sand. Don’t ya just love it!!?

Lake Michigan…it was a perfect day!

This picture melts me….Abigail reached up to hold her daddy’s hand.

Me with 2 of my girls!

Caleb and I haven’t been to the beach FOREVER!!! Coming from CA, we went A LOT!!! Caleb (Mr. Romantic) even proposed to me at “our” beach in CA.

Caleb went out in the water and Abigail CRIED!!! Caleb is waving to her and she’s sobbing right here.

My fam…..someone had to stay dry to take the pics.

Playin’ in the sand.

I love tootsie pics. (Can you guess which foot is whose?)

Abigail doesn’t like to be dirty. So, here she is showing me her sandy hands and saying “Wipe. Wipe.”

The kids could have dug in the sand all day…they loved it.

Abigail got sand in her mouth and was NOT likin’ it!!! Poor thing….

Noah was crackin’ me up. He couldn’t figure out why his hole kept filling up with water. Hmmm….could it be that you dug it at the shore where the tide comes in at?!?!

Us…enjoying the day watching our kids play in the sand.

We had them “wash off” in the water, but we sure brought A LOT of sand back with us.

One of the sand dunes- the kids had so much fun running up and down…up and down…up and down.

Before…..

Inside the entry way. Just for fun, Roy painted the kids’ names on the walls. (Although, he did spell Abigail’s name wrong on the left, so he redid it on the right.)

In the Family Room.

Looking up the stairs.

Partly done.

I had to take this, so we remembered how to put back the pics.

Grandpa put Noah to work helping to paint.

And After…….

The bay window in my kitchen.

Kitchen- with the old picture that used to hang in my grandparents house….love it!

The “Wine Tasting” accent wall in the Family Room.

Going up the stairs.

And we got our pics put back in place.

Here is Tara and Emily.

Dad and Noah.

Kaitlyn being silly.

Tara and Kaitlyn.

I’m not sure what Noah is doing, but I thought it was a coo shot.

Caleb and Noah after he received his Bear patch.

The next weekend, my sister and her family came to visit. We love having family come visit us- it’s fun!! We left all the kids together (thank goodness for the older ones!) and us adults got to go out by ourselves!!!

This was Caleb’s lasagna!!! OK, actually, this restaurant serves family style and we split it. It was HUGE!!!

Brent and Julie with “the” lasagna.

The cousins had so much fun playing together. Here is Emily and Lauren.

Kailtyn, Rebekah, and Kyrsten.

Kaitlyn and Rebekah…matching.

Emily and Kyrsten…jammie time.

Noah and Lauren.

Aunt Julie and Abigail.  That white thing Abigail is leaning on is “her” stool. It’s a step stool that she is VERY possessive off. She likes to be at the counter just like everyone else. If you touch it or put your foot on it, she’ll let you know!!!!!

Sisters.

As I look back on past posts, I left off with Noah’s bat project. (very very cool I might add!!!) Since then…..hmmmm…. where do I start?? Well, here is some of our Feb.

Emily had her 100th day of Kindergarten. Guess how many star  stickers she put on her 100 day glasses??

The kids all went to the dentist for a cleaning- that takes a while!!! So, while it was Noah’s turn, the girls had fun in the waiting room. Here Emily is just showing me her “clean” smile.

Ohhhh….how I love my girls!!!!! They are just too much fun….as you will see in this video!

This here is Valentine’s Day. When you have 4 kids and no family that lives close by, you go out on a “family date”. So, that’s what we did. We went to Texas Roadhouse. Now that week, the kids had taken turns have the stomach bug (AKA…. throwing up everywhere) Well, I had been stuck at home with puke, saltines, and sprite and I WAS GOING OUT!!!! Katilyn was not feeling well, and actually threw up before we left. So, she just brought a bowl with her and off we went. Now I would not have advertised that to the resturant at the time, but I can tell ya’ll that now!!!   BTW- she ended up fine while we were there and we had a great V-day.

We went and fed the ducks…..brrrrrr…it was cold.

at our neighborhood pond.

Kailtyn with the ducks she fed.

Caleb and Abigail at the pond.

Abigail eating the typical favorite meal of a toddler- black beans and quinoa.

Abigail wearing Daddy’s clown hair. It somehow looks cuter on her!

Emily being a ninja???? or something???

Caleb…just being handsome.

Kaitlyn and Kit

Abigail was enjoying her milk too!!!

Sisters are sweet.

OK….then we picked up Noah and Emily at school. We passed our time waiting in the carpool line by taking silly pictures.

Then we had her special b-day dinner and it was presents time. She had been waiting ALL DAY for this!

The birthday girl…..who is 5!!!!

I had to get a pic of this. First of all, Emily made her the birthday “crown”, and there is a reason she got a Lego’s Star Wars ship. Noah has a bazillion legos, and Emily got the Lego Summer Palace for Christmas. Kaitlyn was the only one without her own Legos and she really wanted some. And she specifically asked for a “ship” that Daddy could help build and she could fly with him.  So, she got her ship!

Kaitllyn talking to Grammy on the phone.

Cake time.

I’m glad she pulled her hair back away from the candles.

The next night we had a little party for Kailtyn. She had a pajama, pizza party.

More cake.

We set the air mattress up so the girls could watch the movie on it.

It was funny….the girls were all laying on the bed and Abigail plopped herself right out in front, so she could see.

Noah’s Pinewood Derby was last Saturday. It was a fun day. This year was a “last minute” car. Now the shape was cut and ready at Christmas time, but then it sat in a box. Caleb and Noah started painting it Fri. night and finished right before they had to register the car for the race. Noah didn’t win a trophy this year (his first 2 years he did), but we will say that his car was NOT the slowest.

“Drying” his care with a hair dryer to speed up the drying. It was too cold in the garage for anything to dry.

They were trying to get a Pack picture of all the boys and their cars. It took a few minutes to place all the boys up there….so here is Noah flying his rocket car while waiting for the picture.

And they finally got the Pack picture.

The girls lookin’ so cute at the race.

Abigail playing on the table.

Caleb and Abigail.

Noah and his rocket Pinewood Derby car.

Noah is learning Latin in school. He’s enjoying it very much. He has a big cumulative test over all the words he’s learned so far, so Caleb programmed this game for him to study. How cool is that?!  So, if you want to see how much Latin you know, click here.