5 years old!

Alyssa turned 5 on November 23rd, she had such a fun, simple birthday party with her friends. The kids all got to make their own pizza, then I sent them outside to play while I cleaned up the kitchen and baked the pizza. After a game of duck, duck, goose on the trampoline, the kids ate their pizza and some birthday cake. It was the cheapest, easiest and most fun party we have done for our kids! She had sooooo much fun playing with her friends!

fantastic pizzas!

Rockn' game of duck, duck, goose

Our big 5 year old girl blowing out her candles (Eric was in charge of "making" her cake)

Eric spied something unusual that night in the laundry room.

Our poor little birthday girl partied too hard on her birthday, she fell asleep in the laundry basket when she went to put her shoes away in the laundry room!

Alright, so maybe I am not really going to keep up on my blog as well as I had hoped! :) So, tonight I attended my first school board meeting. They are building a new high school that will open in time for the 2009-10 school year out here by our house. There are 4 options for boundries that will be voted on next month, 2 of these options do not include my neighborhood which means kids from my neighborhood would attend Florence High when they have a new school practically in their backyard- down right rediculous! Anyway, as I was explaining to my girls tonight why I was leaving and my purpose in attending this meeting I got thinking about how absolutly thankful I am to live in a free country where I can express my feeling and opinions and they are heard! (Actually, Sonda was heard and I am glad she let us throw her under the bus and was willing to speak and represent our group tonight because I was too nervous). I know, it's not 4th of July or Thanksgiving, I am just feeling quite thankful and a great sense of pride for my country tonight! I think it might also have something to do with the fact that my trip tonight started at Chevron with a 64oz. Diet Coke and ended at the good ole' Florence McDonald's with some chocolate chip cookies, not to mention the great women who attended with me and turned my mini van into a party van!

"Granny and Papa"

I found out that my cute little hillbilly grandma and grandpa Asburry in Georgia who I love more than life itself, have been looking at my blog. That gives me good reason to update my blog! Hope you enjoy the pictures of Grady. You need to have Christina show you how to make a comment! :) Grady now has 6 teeth, 4 on top and 2 on the bottom. He had a heck of a time teething but even when he is crying we still think he is soooo cute!

This is when our little Grady man started crawling, he is 7 months old in these pictures! Now he knows how to go up the stairs. We are still working on teaching him to go down the stairs without getting any new bruises!

SERIOUSLY?!

I'm on the PTO board at Cambree and Hailey's school. The past two years we have put on a fall festival that requires TONS of hours of hard work and preperation but is rewarding in the end. The week before the festival, I have a plan to accomplish everything that needs to be done. Everyone one has to cooperate with my plan for it to go smoothly, this year my kids (and my immune system) did not get this memo. Here is how this fantastic week went:
Alyssa and Braden came inside very proud to announce to me that they made a river in the backyard. They weren't kidding, and yes, that is my lawnmower that I did not put away sitting in water! Another PTO member came over with her daughter so she and I could work on stuff for the festival. Of course Alyssa and Braden took her daughter Georgia staight to the "river" to play in the mud! Since that day Georgia has been asking her mom to take her to the "water house"!
I started to loose my voice and didn't feel so hot but put that on the back burner because things for the festival were falling apart left and right. Thank goodness for Eric who was such a HUGE help last week! Saturday, Braden woke up with a fever, we druged him and somehow made it through the day. I don't know how, but we managed to pull off a successful fall festival that night! By Sunday that poor little Braden was really sick. I took him to an urgent care by our house and they sent us on to the ER. I had strep and pneumonia, poor little Braden had tonsillitis, a throat infection (not strep), and Mono of all things! After an I.V., some sprite and a popsicle, he was ready to come home!
A BIG THANKS to friends who have helped with my house and kids (you know who you are)!

Happy Birthday Hailey!

August 29th was Haileys 7th birthday. When she came downstairs the living room was decorated with hot pink streamers and "happy birthday" balloons! She chose to have french toast for breakfast. Eric takes the kids to breakfast for their birthdays but they decided to wait until Saturday to have their breakfast date. On Saturday she chose McDonalds for breakfast and I think she ordered one of everything on the breakfast menu! Nothing like getting spoiled on your birthday!
All Hailey asked for was a "my e pet" she was thrilled to get a pink poodle!

Haileys birthday was on a Friday, that night we went to a family dance at her school. She had lots of fun at the dance and after it was over, grandpa and grandma Asburry came over for cake and ice cream! Saturday, we had a birthday party for her cousin Kallie, and finally on Sunday we had a big family party at our house. She ended the party weekend with Kallie and some of Erics brothers spending the night at our house so they could go dove hunting Monday morning!

Happy Birthday Hailey!

We Love You!!!

WARNING....

If you leave your kids at my house, I will not actually "watch" them!
Alyssa, Braden, Blaise, and Emily plastered themselves and my wall in the time it took me to take a quick phone call. O.K., so maybe there is no such thing as a quick phone call at my house, I should have known something was wrong because the kids were so quiet outside. It was not until Emily came into my house and stood on my CARPET that I found out what they were up to! With the words that followed when I saw her standing on the carpet, it's a good thing Sonda was the one on the phone!:) I thought it would be punishment to spray them down with the hose, however, with this rowdy crowd I should have known better, they thought it was the most fun they had all day!

It's about time!

While most people are posting their first day of school, I am just getting around to the 4th of July! Maybe by Halloween I will post the first day of school. We had a blast (as usual) with ALL of Erics family in Heber for the 4th. This year his cousins that live in Heber took on the HUGE job of getting shirts made for all of us. It was so much fun to have matching shirts and be recognized as part of the family. These are pictures of us waiting for the parade, the sun was soooo bright until after the parade, then the clouds moved in and the temp. dropped to the mid 60's! What a great day! Thank to the Baums, and Halls for putting up with us!

The sun was killing this poor girls eyes, the things she does to make mom happy! Lately Cambree looks so grown up, it's killn' me!

SUPER STAR!!!!

So lately Alyssa feels the need to pose for every picture, usually this is her choice....don't know why. I'm just glad it's her index finger that is alway sticking up!

Braden is like his mama....this is how he looks if he has to wake up before 9 a.m.!

Love this baby boy....he is always happy!

I'm Frikn' Freezn'......

Every 4th of July we go to Heber, AZ with all of Eric's family, we love spending the 4th in the cool country! This year it was literally cool every afternoon. Eric's Uncle Ed got this cool water slide for all of the cousins to play on, when I took this picture it was 62 degrees outside, in July, in Arizona!!! Amazing!!!! Poor Hailey was purple for the rest of the day but the kids had a blast with all of their cousins on the slide!

The Big One Got Away!

As usual I am running behind on the posts! The last weekend in June Eric went deep sea fishing in Mexico with his brother Jason and his friend Brian. Obviously he was a little successful! This is a 70 pound Grouper that he caught and let me tell you.... it is delicious!

Mid-Life Crisis?

So, I think this is part of my mid life crisis. It made me feel pretty good that being 30 and haveing birthed 5 kids I could still do a back flip on the trampoline! I know this will not last much longer so I had Eric capture a kodak moment so I can look back and say, "see what I used to be able to do?" However, after looking back at the pics, I realized it's not really a back flip but a back hand spring with no hands! Oh well, it still makes me feel like a kid!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABE

June 6th was Eric's birthday, he got to spend that day with his scouts at scout camp. They went golfing in Snowflake so it's not like he was roughing it too much on his big day. He returned home the next day and needless to say we were very happy to see him! The kids had all made him cards and his awesome wife found camouflage wrapping paper for his gifts. Another day older and wiser too, love ya babe!

Brotherly Love

Braden loves to hold Grady, usually Grady is good to go along with whatever the other kids do. He usually will let the kids pack him around, and he even won't cry when Braden wrestles him! However, sometimes enough is enough. We just love these little boys!

More bragging on my girls

So one night Eric was out of town and I was extremely busy holding down the fort by myself. I was making dinner and Hailey said she wanted cornbread with the chili I was making. I told her I did not have enough time to make it, she and Cambree said they would do it. I gave them the cookbook, they followed the recipe, and made cornbread from scratch all by themselves! My goal is life is this: I have 3 daughters, hopefully one will love cooking, one will love sewing, and one will love cleaning so that one day I will not have to do any of it! :)

YOU GO GIRLS

We are very proud of Hailey and Cambree. Both girls worked very hard in school this year! At the end of the year each teacher got to choose only 5 or 6 students to recieve awards for accomplishments made during the school year. Both of our girls were chosen to recieve awards. Now it's on to 2nd grade for Hailey and 4th grade for Cambree! WAY TO GO GIRLS!!!! By the way, love the typical big sister pose! :)
A big thanks to Great-Grandma Carpenter and Grandma Garner for attending the awards ceremony!

Rocky Point

Theres nothing like shopping in Mexico!

BFF's ;)

Handsome Boy!


Staying busy in the sand

Ryan, Cambree, and Sydney-Snorkeling fools!

The BOYZ chillin' in the shade on the beach

Our family LOVES to go to Rocky Point!!! It dawned on me our last trip that we never have taken a family picture on the beach. This year we attempted it! Thanks to Jessica Ball for taking pictures and her assistant Nathan who worked like crazy to try and get everyone to look at the camera at the same time (what a concept)! In the kids defense the sun was right in our eyes. Some of our favorite things about Rocky Point:

1. Chicken Hut, need I say more?!!!!

2. Snorkeling, Eric is teaching Cambree and Hailey to snorkel and they love it!

3. the sand is the babysitter

4. catching little sea creatures in the tide pools

5. Hangn' out with friends and family, doing a whole lot of nothing

6. Venders on the beach- this year we discovered Mangos on a stick!

7. Just relaxing with my little family! :)

Chug! Chug! Chug!

Alright, so this is the result of spending an evening with the Garner family! We had some friends (the Smiths, the Albrechtsens, and the Roches) over the other night, these fine Hoochies are all in the RS presidency. Since we did more socializing than anything else at our last meeting I thought it would be a good idea to get the socializing out of the way before our next meeting. The night ended with Becky (the big bad president) chugging the Dr. Pepper! Good times, good times. I'll probably be released after this post!;)

SWEET BABIES!

My sister-in-law came out to make bread with me last week. Her baby Ava is 3 weeks older than Grady. I love that my kids are finally getting cousins their same age, it was so fun to watch the babies on the blanket together. Pretty much they just poked each other in the eye but it was still dang cute! By the way, even though Ava is older and weighed more at birth, Grady has passed her up in weight already! What a little chunk!

Not to be left out, Alyssa had to get in on the action and pose with the babies! Cute girl!

Our 10th wedding anniversary was March 6th, it was very romantic...Eric had round table, I had a Presidency meeting and then a PTO meeting. Actually, the PTO meeting was at Big Daddy's so I brought home some onion rings and fried zucchini and we sat on the couch that night watching t.v. and eating fried food....it was awesome! It's nice that we don't feel like we have to stress about fancy gifts or dinner, after 10 years our favorite thing to do is just chill! Anyway, Eric did give me a zoo pass which I thought was way cool, so on St. Patricks day we took the kids to the zoo. It was the first time we have gone as a family and we had a blast! Above is the cool sting ray exhibit they have, the shadow by our hands in one of the sting rays.

ERIC'S PRIDE AND JOY

Eric is a little more studly to me since he got his elk back from the taxidermist. When I saw how massive his elk is and then remembered he took it archery I was thinkn' he is quite the man! His elk is so big, he and Audie had to take a screen off the window of the 2nd story of the house and bring it through the window because it would not fit up the hallway where the stairs are. I'm thinking it's a pretty good security system for me, if someone tries to come up the stairs at night they are going to get the crap scared out of them!

This is what happens when I baby-sit your kids! The girls disappeared into the bathroom for quite a while, when I finally decided to get off my butt and see what they were doing I found them covered in beautiful make-up. Charly had brought a purse full of make-up over and it made for great entertainment all night!

GIRLS DAY OUT!

So I missed going to see Penelope with Laura but I thought it was such a good idea, so I took my girls to see it. It was a blast to go to the movies with just my girls (and Grady) Eric's mom also came! I thought the movie had a good message for girls, we had a nice little chat in the car on the way home about how Penelope had to learn to love herself no matter what she looked like!

Farmboy

Braden loves to be on the farm!!! As soon as we stop the car, he jumps out and runs to the barn to help grandpa. He and Blaise love looking at grandpas cows. The beautiful trailer in the background is where we started out....good times! Eric's dad just bought the tractor in the back, Braden got to ride it the other day and thought he was hot snot!