The Kids

Here are the pictures of the kids from our family photo shoot. This one I find interesting and maybe a little funny. I don't know why the girls weren't smiling, but the boys are and it makes the picture kind of tell a story of how the brothers torment the sisters or something. Hmmm...

Here is manly Micah:

Cute Caleb:

Pretty Jewelia:

And sweet Macey:

Family Pictures

So, for my birthday I forced my family to go take some new family pictures. We haven't had a picture taken as a family since about 2 years ago when Macey was 10 months old. I figured it was time for a new one.

My friend Sonja took our pictures for us at Wheeler Farm. Here is what turned out:

First my favorite:

This one was cute but a little distant and I felt a bit too hidden by Macey:

This one was cute, but I think I look fat:

The famous tree picture:

And one by the secret bridge:

As you can see, Macey had this little pink bear that she would not let go of, so it gets to be in most of the pictures.

I think they turned out cute. I'm excited to get them printed out and distributed to everyone. So, family people---let me know which one you like the best and I will get you a copy!

There were some cute pictures of the kids, but I will wait to share those in another post.

Happy BIrthday to Me---I'm Old

Yep, this last week was my birthday. Now I am officially old and I cannot tell anyone my age until I turn 50 and maybe then I'll be proud of it. Maybe, but I doubt it.

Well, my birthday was pretty much uneventful. Troy was nice and took the day off of work so he could "take care of everything" for me. But of course, I stress too much and so I spent most of the day checking on him to see if he was actually remembering to do everything like getting kids to school and such.

We did do the traditional birthday pizza and crazy bread dinner at Wheeler Farm. It seems as if it has become an annual event.

No major presents this year. Our dishwasher died and got fell on top of (Macey!) and so we had no choice but to buy a new one. So yay----installation of our new dishwasher on my birthday! How exciting is that?

I was pretty lucky. I got some cards from everyone and some money and some flowers from my dad and Troy's mom, and still had some leftovers from Troy from a week ago when Troy was trying to be extra nice because I was mad at him....

I did get a deal to find these 2 storage towers from a friend of mine. She was getting rid of them so I bought them for $15 for the pair. So I feel that was sort of a birthday deal. They don't quite match the wood of the tv stand, but hey---now all our movies don't have to be in a cardboard box in the storage closet. Maybe I'll stain them or paint them or something.

Really the whole day was in waiting to get family pictures taken. My family absolutely hates getting family pictures taken, and so I figured if I was going to get it done that I could do it on my birthday because then they couldn't say no or complain.

That is why we were at Wheeler Farm. A friend of mine offered to be our photographer to take pictures. Now her camera is much better than my sucky one, but here is what we looked like as far as our coordinating outfits.

I think we were pretty cute. (And, no, this is not one of the fancy pictures. This was from my lousy camera with a self timer sitting on a picnic table. I will reveal the real pictures in one of my next posts, so stay tuned.)

Anyway. Happy Birthday to me. I guess my birthday was best after the family pictures and dishwasher installation when I could finally relax and we went to Dairy Queen so I could have a Strawberry Cheesecake Blizzard. My favorite! No cake for me, just one strawberry cheesecake blizzard! The best!! Of course by this time it was like 7:30 at night and so the whole day was basically over. I suppose I will have to find another day where I actually get to do stuff for myself, but really, I don't think Moms ever get a day to themselves, now do they?

No More Baby Beds

Well, there are no more baby beds at our house.

We were going to wait until Macey turned 3 in a couple of months, but we decided to finally build the rest of the girls' bunk bed. It would give the girls more space in their room to play. So last night we put away Macey's little toddler bed and moved her into her new big girl bed.

She has a bit of a climb to get up into it, but she seems to manage OK. Jewelia absolutely loves being in the top bunk now. She loves it that Macey can't get to her dolls and make them naked anymore, and she also likes that she can reach all her stuffed animals in the net.

We found a cute matching bedspread that is the same as the one she had before only purple. So the girls have cute matching quilts, sheets, and pillows. How fun!

The biggest thanks goes out to Troy who humored me by building the top of the bunk bed all night long. And it was not easy. We found out many different times that we put this on backward or this on the wrong side or used the wrong screws for the wrong parts. Rather than taking it all apart and starting over, we figured out how to drill new holes and shave down some insides to make screws fit. Good job, Troy! What a manly man you are!