Happy Birthday Matt!

Yesterday Matt turned the ripe old age of 35. I am not sure if Sunday is the best day for a birthday. He started his day at 8:00 going to his church meetings. He gets home by 11:00 to find me getting the girls ready for church. At 12:00 McKinley and I had to go to the church to practice a song with the youth that we were performing that day, so he had to get lunch for the kids. After church we were having his favorites; steak, french fries, and corn on the cobb, but once again McKinley and I had a meeting after church and Matt had to fix most of his own birthday dinner. So if he had a good birthday all the credit has to go to himself.

We love you Matt and hope to have many more birthdays to come to make up for this one.

After dinner we decided to go on a walk and see how the pumpkins are coming along. They have gotten so big that you can't even find the rows anymore, so now we are just watering, spraying and watching them grow.

This is the first pumpkin that I had taken a picture of in an earlier post, look how it has grown. One thing that we have learned is that we needed to stay on top of the weeds a little better in the beginning because now you can't even get to them to weed. Next year we will do better. We are not quit sure how to sell them yet, but I think that a pick your own pumpkin patch would be fun. We could price them by size and let people go pick there own. Give us your opinion on what you think.

Princesses in training

I have to admit that I feel a little bit guilty when it comes to Jade and Lilli. When McKinley was little I had her in dance, tumbling, tap, and more, but now that I have 4 kids it seems that it cost 4 times as much so I have not signed the girls for lots of extras. When I heard about this Princess Academy I was so excited that I could have a fun day with just the three of us.

With the help of a couple of princes we started our day off with a carriage ride. Lilli was excited for our day, she told me on the way over that she was so proud that I was bring her to the Princess Academy.

Next we went in for a visit with the Fairy Godmother. She gave each of the girls a glitter star stamp on there cheeks. Isn't she so cute!

Here the girls are learning how to walk like a princess. First you pull a string from the top of your head and stand up straight and tall.

After walking forward you twirl in a circle and then...

elbow elbow, wrist wrist. Three of the prettiest princesses I have ever seen.

I was so impressed with Ms. Payson, she was so cute with the girls. Each of the royalty performed their talents for us. The mayor talked about how special girls are and they served a yummy lunch.

The girls headed off to get a manicure.

Here they were crowned Princess Lilli and Princess Jade.

It was so funny watching Jade color with wet fingernails.

I thought that the lunch was so cute and it tasted great. I felt like it was well worth the 30.00 that it cost for myself and the girls to go. We all had a great time. It was so fun to have Anisley come with us also.

Back to School

McKinley was so excited to start Junior High.

Thanks to Austin she didn't even have to ride the bus.

I can't believe that Jade is at school all day now.

I think that I am going to really start sending Gavin with a baseball bat to scary the girls away (so handsome).

Unlike McKinley they were not able to escape riding the bus to school. I was telling Gavin to make sure to watch out for his little sister, but after Jade was bossing him around all morning I decided that she was going to be just fine on her own.

Happy Birthday Jade!

It was 6 years ago on a Sunday morning that Jade-bug blessed our family with her arrival. I could not see it but everyone said that she looked just like me. Jade has been a joy and a blessing in our lives.

Bird watching

This summer we have taken up hummingbird watching. Each night after the sun goes behind the mountain it seems that the hummingbirds all come out for a bedtime snack. There can be up to 12 hummingbirds feeding at one time. We used to watch from inside, but now we have some chairs out on the deck, we will sit outside and watch. I tell my kids that the hummingbirds are just like them. They will fight for there spot to eat, they sound like they are yelling at each other sometimes, and they are always hungry when it is bedtime.

What a beautiful world we live in.