N-O-P updates (Including PROM!)

It's been a busy and beautiful couple weeks - Spring seems to finally be here!  Mason is finishing up his track season (next week he has his last invitational), he will finish up the last 5 days of his high school years next week as well.  We've had soccer for Ella and Silas, Girl Scout events for Ella.  Justin and I...just a lot of work and trying to get the house in shape outside.  The inside is a train wreck!!

So back to my alpha-updates...

N is for:

Notes - I love finding the notes that the kids leave around.  Usually it's Ella but Silas has started leaving notes too.

One of my favorites is the one that E left on the bedroom door when I was super sick with salmonella:

Today - I found these.  Ella got allergy tested this week  This was her note this morning after trying to take her Allegra - poor kid.  I think I need to find a liquid version. She was writing the note below as the pill was making its way down...

And she is at a COSI sleepover tonight with her Girl Scout troop.  This is the note that I found on my bed on top of one of  her tee shirts.

 

Apparently she had me confused with her other mother...

O is for:

Ouch!

As I mentioned - Ella had some allergy testing done this week because she has been MISERABLE this spring (if you recall the itchy eyes).  I took her to the highly recommended Dr. Grace and she was all "WHOA...girl's got some crazy allergies going on!"

I know that the right side is the grasses, which were the biggest welt/hives and then trees (especially maple, sycamore, and oddly, Olive trees). Also ragweeds, cats (no need to get rid of Cleo though), gerbils (great excuse to never get one!) and but luckily no dustmites or molds.  She is an Aunt Margie allergy incarnate!!

P is for:

Prom

Mason and his lovely girl, Yasmine, went to Senior prom last weekend. They looked wonderful and had a great time.  The paparazzi stalked them!

Tim took this pic thinking we all looked like a bunch of Japanese tourists...

 We borrowed our old backyard for most of the pictures.  Love the flowering trees. 

 The lilac bush that we planted so many years ago.  It's so big and pretty now!

I really like this one below...a contentment and proudness to be together...

They looked SOOOO gorgeous. Makes me want to pull out all my old prom pictures :)

  

Camping (Part 2)

Back to our camping trip...we continue to talk about how much fun we had 2 weeks later.  We'd love to get another camping trip in this fall but with the soccer schedules, it will be hard to make happen!

We hiked on Saturday - went to Old Man's Cave.  It was beautiful but crowded.

I love this picture of Silas - big blue eyes and his toothless grin :)  And of course, another bug bite on his forehead!

 Managed to get a few pictures of the 3 together...that is very hard to do these days!

 

Silas was trapped between 2 rocks :)

 Ella and Silas in one of the caves

I love this picture of Silas but he looks like such a little man.  I asked him to smile and he gave me a pose too.

This was a strange little creature that buzzes around Tara and Steve's farm down in Logan.  We looked them up after getting home.  They are Hummingbird Bees which are actually a type of moth. Very neat to watch them fly around - their wings really make them look like little hummingbirds.

Mason needed a challenge while we were hanging at the campsite.  He climbed the big tree and then started trying to get one of the dead limbs down (the one jutting out on the right side of the tree he's in).

He ended up spending about 45 minutes with a rope (with a scrub brush tied to the end for weight) trying to lasso the branch and then pulling on it.  He did finally get it!

We took a little walk down by the river that ran beside the campgrounds.

The inside of the condo tent - Silas is burrowed down in the black sleeping bag.  Our 2nd night of sleeping was much more comfortable than the first night.  The air mattress lasted longer and it didn't get as chilly that night. 

After another yummy JP prepared breakfast, we started tearing down camp and packing up.  Amazing  how much stuff we had for just 2 nights! Seemed a lot harder to get it all back into the van!

Though we were all looking forward to getting home to a nice hot shower, we wanted to take the kids on another hike to Rockstall - the spot where we hike when we go on our couples' weekend.  It's beautiful and MUCH less crowded than Old Man's Cave.  In fact, we only saw one other person on this hike.  

Ella took this picture of me and Justin.  Yay!  I'm finally in a picture!  :)

 And a rare picture of me with all 3 kids!

Miss Boo taking a breather at we finish up the hike.

Here is a video of the kids swinging on the vine.

We had so much fun on this little camping adventure. It was great to get time with the kids, unplugged from the TV and Wii games. Can't wait to do it again!

All Things Christmas

We had a wonderful, though insanely fast, Christmas - the entire month of December just flew by so quickly. I know they say that time goes faster the older you get, but this is getting a bit crazy!    

The week before Christmas, in-between Christmas shopping, cookie baking, holiday parties, etc, I was able to get baby Barrett over for a few pictures.  I had seen a neat idea on Pinterest so I had Ella be my stand-in model so I could try to get the lights right.  

I made the mistake of touching B with my cold hands and that set him off on some crying.  Oops.  He did give some smiles to his mama though even if he was a little cranky at me!

We thought we'd put him in a stocking, but his stocking was too small to put him in, so I found my stocking from the hospital and put him in there.  He didn't seem to mind too much.

He's such a cutie pie - it's fun to have a baby in the family again, especially one that I don't have to get up and feed at all hours of the night ;)

It was neat when we decorated the mantle this year - Silas had brought home his Gingerbread man from school and now we have Mason's kindergarten snowman,  Ella's kindergarten Gingerbread girl and Silas' kindergarten Gingerbread boy. A complete collection  :)

On Christmas Eve we had a nice, non-stressful evening.  Abby and Carson's mom, Jennifer, had taken Ella and Silas to the zoo lights the day before, so Justin and I were able to get EVERY present wrapped, and didn't have to do it at midnight on Christmas Eve. It was wonderful!

Instead, we got to decorate Christmas cookies that Aunt Amanda and the kids had made.  Some of the cookies got a little blobby as they baked, they puffed out quite a bit.  That gave the cookie decorators the idea to get creative with them - kinda like "what's that cloud look like?" only with icing.

Silas had made some reindeer food with a new recipe at school.  So before bed, he and Ella went out and sprinkled it on the lawn. 

After the kids were in bed, Justin and I had our eggnog by the light of the tree.  One of my favorite parts of Christmas :)  We had a wonderful tree this year - from Lowe's again.  The shape was perfect, the size was perfect for the space and it barely lost any needles at all.  I wish we could box this one up and use it again every year!

The last look as I was going up the steps to bed...looking at this picture reminds me of my Christmases as a kid, probably because of the vintage look of the picture. Just the tree lit and everything all quite...I love that.

Christmas morning the kids slept in until 8am.  I was pretty impressed!  Especially with Silas because he had been all excited and was bouncing off the walls at bedtime.

Yes, Mason is a grump-butt!

Ella and Silas both got iPod Touches from Santa (now maybe they'll leave my phone alone!!)

Mason got a PlayStation 3 gaming system.

Silas was SOO excited about all the Legos that he got.  He spent HOURS at the table putting them together.

We spent the afternoon with the family at mom's and dad's and managed to get a picture of the kids all together.  Fun stuff!!

 

All three were very happy with their gifts and have played non-stop with the stuff that they've gotten. Mason even smiled a time or two :)  It was a great Christmas.  I hate that I do this, but it was on my mind that we are getting closer and closer to not having all the kids living at home for Christmas. Mason is a Junior now and in just a few years, it's hard to say where he'll be going off to.  I love that we have this time together NOW...maybe something that I need to work on for 2012 - to stop getting ahead of myself!!

2011 Pumpkin Show

It's almost mid-November and I'm still reliving October and trying to catch up blogging about it.
One of the highlighs of October is when we get to go to the Circleville Pumpkin Show.  Honestly, it's like the Frankin County Fair with 1000 pumpkins, fair food, freaky people and scary carnies but we still had fun. 

We went on Friday afternoon - the kids didn't have school (Oct. 21) and got off to a later start than we had planned...as usual.  We hit a huge traffic jam on the way there on 23 because a big truck carry corn or grain of some sort overturned on the highway so they were sweeping it up on the side of the road.  That put a damper on the beginning of the day.

It's nearly impossible these days to get all 3 kids in the same general vicinity, let alone to look at the camera and SMILE.

We spent a lot of time looking at all the HUGE prize winning pumpkins and eating everything in sight.  We had pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin cheese cake, french fries and my favorite...homemade pumpkin ice cream that was being churned right on the spot.  I craved it for weeks!!

During the long wait while stuck in traffic on the way there I had the chance (since we were
 at a dead stop) to snap a few pictures of a farm and barn.  Some of my favorite pictures of the day so I guess it was worth the wait!