A game of cat and mouse

Now we know where this saying comes from...



...and why we have a cat!!!

Bottle up

I just wish that I could bottle up days like this!

Or my sweet little babies...I just love the innocence that they still have! I don't want them to grow up!

Or the smell and taste of homemade pizza...YUM, YUM, YUM!

WHAT WOULD YOU BOTTLE UP????

and the winner is...

Thank you to those of you who voted! Guess who gets bragging rights for another year!! Yep that would be me...the master carver! I'll try not to rub it in too much!


Here are my sweet peas on a rainy Halloween! They did awesome going up to doors and saying in unison "Trick or Treat". My big guy Luka was invited over to a friends house for the night, so he missed all the fun we had and I have no pictures of him. I think that I missed him more. It was weird not sharing these memories with him. I think we agreed today that he wouldn't miss out again on this time with family.

We went to some friends house after we trick or treated in our neighborhood. Adults were supposed to dress up too, so this is what we came up with. I stayed up late tye-dying the shirts and sewed all afternoon on our pants. Not too bad for last minute!

The kids and I made a huge yummy mess making and decorating cookies.


J.J. loved the sprinkles!
Tinkerbell and Peter Pan before their school party. He was not at all happy about dressing up this day!



















Just had to include this picture. She loved dressing up and playing the part. After we watched the movie she would say "oh and something I forgot...dust...yep, just a little bit of Pixie dust". Such a Q-T-Pie!

Pumpkin please...vote

Well here we are...another year has gone by, and we are having our 2nd annual pumpkin carving competition. Your vote is needed. Last year was a success, and I don't want to brag or anything, but I am the one with the bragging rights! We would love to have more people vote...come on it's fun...I'm not at all competitive...at least to those of you who don't know me! The kids actually had a lot to do with these designs this year. They went upstairs after dinner, and drew up designs for us to follow. They decided whose team they wanted to be on, and it was split evenly. Click here to look at last years jacks. You have until midnight October 31st to vote. Just click on the comments and leave your vote there...don't be scared!






















Pumpkin A...............................................................................................................Pumpkin B

Patton museum

While we were in Kentucky we went drove up to Fort Knox and went to the General Patton museum. J.J. wanted to see the tanks, and boy did we see tanks. Tanks from every war thy were used in.

I bet you didn't know how strong this little boy was??!!


Here are the sweet girls hanging out. They love each other so much!


We almost got everyone to look and smile!


Thanks again mom and dad for a great trip!

Kentucky continued

So after we left Dinosaur World as if that wasn't enough, we went to Mammoth Cave National Park. It was only 5 miles away, and we wanted to take in everything while we were there. Any guesses as to what this picture is??? I won't bore you with a bunch of them, but this is inside one of the caves. This room is called the rotunda. It is enormous and the ceiling was perfectly round (hence the name). Mammoth Cave it the largest in the world with over 300 miles of cave systems. The second largest has only over 100 miles! We only went on a 2 mile tour.



Can you tell it was a long day. This picture was actually taken before they walked the 2 mile tour during what should have been nap time. They did great. Pipi fell asleep in the cave while Daddy Jim was carrying her. I then got the hand off for a while. I had to wake her up at one point because we were going down stairs, and the ceiling was so low there was no way to duck with her. For a short while in the cave we had to crouch way down to make it through. It was so low that Pipi could drag her hand along the ceiling! Then we had to walk through Fat Mans Misery...can you guess what that was?


I love this picture just because of the way J.J. is holding onto Daddy Jim's leg. He had a great time with him and they became buddies.


The boys counted when we were leaving the national forest and said they say 28 deer! They didn't seem too afraid of us either. I pulled right and stopped next to this one and it never moved!

Extinct???

...I don't think so!!!

On Friday I packed the kids up, and we drove a million miles to Kentucky...it really seemed like they moved the state...okay it was just 7 1/2 very long hours. The kids had several days off for fall break, so we decided at the last minute to meet my parents in Kentucky to go to Dinosaur World. They had my sisters kids for the weekend, and I knew the kids would have a blast. My niece and nephew were so surprised when they woke up the next morning...they had no idea we were coming.

These boys love being together!

Pipi and Lou could not get enough of each other either. They are so sweet together holding hands and hugging.




Here they are doing a dinosaur dig. I think they found a big one!

What a tasty lunch...run, run, run!

These life size creatures are every where. There were many we had never heard of.


Here is the crew on the photoasaurus. This dino is much bigger than life size. It sits out by the interstate to attract tourists. They are sitting on the very end of his tail.

Whatever you do...don't look back...

Oops too late...those sweet cheeks were just to hard to resist!

Daddy Jim loves his boys, but he has a thing for his girls!

Thanks Daddy Jim and Granna for a wonderful trip! We love you!

Caught

This weekend I saw this animal trap at my friends yard sale, and knew I had to have it. The boys are always trying to catch something. They dig holes, tie strings, set out food you name it they have tried it. I was excited to bring this home to them. They actually spotted it in the back of the car before I had a chance to tell them about it. Don't you know they were out of the car in a flash and raiding the refrigerator for lettuce. After the first night...nothing...so we added an apple with peanut butter to it...then came the ants. Yesterday when they got home from school L.C. was looking out back, and noticed that the trap door was down. I have told them not to open it with out me there. Can't you just see a big skunk coming out of there madder than hell!


We lifted the door and this is what we had trapped...





...yep our cat! I think she had been in there since at least the night before. Of course it rained all night and most of the next day. She was so funny looking and smelled horrible to put it mildly. That is when I experienced something I have never done before...giving a cat a bath!! I have to admit I was a bit afraid that she might claw my eyes out because we all know cats don't like water, but it had to be done. She had used the bathroom all in the box and was covered in it. I'm telling you it was terrible. She was also shivering, so I thought that would warm her up a bit. She did great, and I don't have any claw marks! Oh the adventures of having boys!

Mud boogers

How exactly do you get to looking like this...

or this...

or this...

There is only one way!

All this rain is good for something!!!

Just to make you smile

Self portrait of him "wearing a striped shirt".

How could you not smile after looking at these sweet drawings done by this sweet boy. He is in to drawing faces, and usually has to include eyebrows!

All my time

This is what has taken ALL MY TIME for at least the last 3 weeks. Last weekend was my fall/winter kids consignment sale. We had the most consignors ever with just over 100 showing up to consign. As you can tell the place was packed! It was a good sale, but I don't think we had as many shoppers as the spring sale. I am just now beginning to catch up on sleep. I stayed up until past 3am for 2 nights and then until 5am last Sat. trying to get the place cleaned up! Hopefully the checks will go out on Monday and we can close out this sale...and then it will be time to start planning the spring one!!!

No more white

Well today was officially the last day to wear white for the year. We follow those fashion rules around here even though Jeff thinks it is silly. Last year I took a picture of the kids the day before Labor day, so I thought I would do the same this year. I tell you what you would have thought I was torturing them. Jeff finally came out and did his silly faces and they were all smiles. Check out my babies from last year and see how they have changed! Happy Labor Day! I will be laboring away working on consignment sale things. There are only 3 days until set up begins-YIKES!

Harvest

We were finally able to harvest the first thing from our garden that we planted this summer. I know it doesn't look to impressive, but at least these survived. Nothing else that we planted is producing, and most of it died. It might have helped if we had been home more this summer to tend to it, or if we had kept it watered regularly, or fertilized it with manure or something like that. I do think I finally figured out what the problem is...squash bugs! I read about them on line yesterday. We have pumpkin plants all over that start out great, produce a small fruit and then die, so I went online yesterday to find out why. It seems like I would have done that sooner. Anyway we picked this one little tomato yesterday, and I used it to make a guacamole dip! I think we will have a couple more ripen soon. Oh well, I guess I can say that I grew all organic vegetables!

My tri

Just wanted to brag on myself for this post...it's my blog anyway, so I can do that right! I really just thought it would be neat to have it documented on here for me to keep up with. A couple of weekends ago I went to Huntsville to compete in a sprint triathlon. My sweet sister gave up her spot because the race was full by the time I went to register. She said that it was part of my birthday present. How many people do you know want to physically exhaust themselves as a birthday present-sounds crazy now that I think of it.

The race was great! I felt so good the whole time. My run was the fastest I had done in a while so I was excited. The swim started off kind of slow and I got kicked and elbowed several times. Luckily the bike trail is easy and relatively flat. I did this race 2 years ago for the first time and came in second in my age group. Well 2 years later I still came in 2nd. My overall time had improved and my overall position was better as well. I finished 106 out of close to 500 people and 18 out of 172 women. I was super excited, and now I am shooting to finish under #100 next year...anyone want to join me! Okay that's all the bragging I'm going to do for now!

They mark all over your body before the race starts 260 was my race # can you guess the other??? That's right my age! Everyone walks around with their age proudly inked in permanent marker on their calves. It is a real motivator at times, and embarrassing at other times. I do love to see how old people are because I am not that good at telling. I must think that I look younger than I do because I would see someone that I thought was about my age, and they would only be 30 or so! I guess I am getting old and I need to face it!















Here are some of my biggest fans - my sister Jamie that gave me this as by present, my mom who helped wrangle the little ones, and the my precious Pip and Squeak! Oh, and I found these rotten teeth kids calling my name on the way out!!!

School Days

These guys started school 8/07. L.C. is now a 3rd grader and No-Bo is already in Kindergarten.
They both had a great first few days of school...and I was nervous!!


These two little peeps also started "school". They are going 2 days a week to a pre-school at a church. I wasn't going to send them this year, but I am glad that I did...they love it!!! What about this confidence with a little attitude they are showing here.

Edisto

We had a chance to go to Edisto for one last whoo-rahh before school started. One of my college roommates called and said that nobody had rented out their house for the week, and she wanted to know if we would like to go. There was no hesitation on my part!!! Jeff had football camp that week, so the kids and I packed up and took off. If you have never been to Edisto you are missing out. It is such a neat non-commercialized beach. There are no chain restaurants, high rises, or crowds. It was so much fun and the kids had such a great time. There were 6 little boys and then Pipi. I had so many great pictures that I had a hard time deciding which ones to use, so there are a lot of pictures below!

That's some serious crabbing! We caught about 10 crabs that we kept, and just as many hermit crabs.

L.C. got started catching the crabs by just using the net. This part of Edisto is on a private beach, so there are so many seashells, sharks teeth and other fossils. The waterway behind L.C in this picture leads out to the ocean. When the tide is going out you can ride in the water like a lazy river and then the tide changes and it pulls you back.


Check out this Stone crab. Its claw was the biggest that I had ever seen. Notice in the picture below the size in relation to L.C.'s hand!


One of my torture picture sessions. They did pretty good (with a little bribery at least).


We watched the sunset almost every night after dinner. Here it was at a friends house who lives on the marsh. She has a super long dock that leads out to the water.

Jumping has never been so much fun.

Another sunset! Look at poor Pipi standing away from all those boys. We will have to recruit some little girls for the next trip.

One day the older boys and I walked way down the beach. On the return walk back we got hot and decided to get into the water. No-Bo was the first to find one of these sand dollars. It was so cool because we were sitting in the water just pulling them out of the sand with little effort. I think we found about 12.
See I did go to the beach too...there are hardly ever any pictures of me because I am always behind the camera. (Another sunset)

Fort Morgan

I know it has been a while since my last post. I can tell you it is not for lack of material to write about. We have been so, so busy. I am trying to catch up from this summer because we have so much to tell about that I am sure you don't want to miss. These pictures were taken at Fort Morgan, AL. While we were visiting Katherine we decided to take the ferry across the bay to the fort. We decided just to walk onto the ferry instead of driving our car since the fort wasn't too far from the bay on the other side.





The Fort is a really cool place. The kids really enjoyed it mainly because there were all kind of cool places to run and hide and get lost. It was neat to see a bit of history. There were so many great places to take pictures, if only the kids had cooperated more!



This picture was at the end of our day and would have been really cute if I could have gotten them all to look out and look happy!













Check out these stairs! They practically went straight down. I'm glad we don't have those at our house.



















Notice the Gulf in the background.














































A tunnel into the court yard.














This was a super long wall on the beach/gulf side of the fort. We walked all the way down it!
















Here's a funny story - At the end of the day we looked at our watches and saw that we had only 10 minutes to make it back to the ferry or we would have to wait 45 more minutes for the next one. It was about 1/2 mile away from where we were, so we all took off running. L.C. was pretty far ahead of us (not surprising). We ran about 1/2 of the way and Pipi stopped and said that she could not go anymore that her legs were too tired. At that same time a UPS truck drove up and asked if we wanted a ride! It was awesome timing and we all jumped aboard with the packages in the back. We got there right as they were loading everyone! Thank you Mr. UPS man you saved the day!

More from Dauphin Island

I know, I know, more pictures from our trip. We just took so many that I have to share. There will be another round coming just to let you know, but hey this blog is about us, so I can post whatever I want! I can't believe that there are only two more weeks until school starts! We have two more trips planned before then!

Mom AKA Granna was able to come down to Dauphin Island and spend some time with us. We went to the beach all day and played in the water. These kids sure do love her being around...not that she spoils them!




BEFORE















AFTER















Yum, Yum! Jeff (JT) cooked us yet another feast this night. We also had some more of the fresh fish. His sweet parents joined us as well.

photog trix

On our way to Dauphin Island, I finally got to read part of the manual for my camera that I have had for a while now. I tried a couple of things that turned out kind of neat if not anything else. Of course I need more practice, but these pictures are straight out of the camera. The first three pictures are black and white except of course the color I choose to highlight. The red sky picture is color swap.

It's all in how you work the tongue!