Molly's 3rd Birthday!

Halloween 2009

Is she a little HAM or WHAT??!! :) She LOVED her cat-eyed glasses. Had to pry them off of her last night!

Introducing...Dooley!

Molly's new baby....Dooley. We all are loving him. He is so sweet. Molly isn't use to having a dog in the house and she sure isn't use to being around a puppy. He LOVES her feet. I guess those little piggies are just the right size for him! She really likes him best when he is asleep! :)

He's sleeping here....but he has been keeping us up every night!!!!! Molly was a better baby than he is!

Lake Cumberland

This is our last family vacation of the summer. :( We spent it on Lake Cumberland, Kentucky. It was wonderful. We stayed on some friends' houseboat. Could have stayed longer, but Molly did not like sleeping there for some reason.

Molly, Daddy and Josie on the jet ski.

The boys loved jumping off of the top of the boat. YIKES! Made mama nervous, but they had a blast.

Hamp's 11th birthday!!!!!!!!!

Fourth of July Fun!

Molly and me on the boat heading out for a day of fun on the lake!

Daddy Skiing....The third anniversary of his broken ankle!

UPDATE!

We are alive! It's been FOREVER since I posted last. Life has been crazy! I went from a stay-at-home mom to a crazy career mama! In January I was given the opportunity to teach again. So, I did! I was already selling a little real estate here and there. Then started teaching dancing at the local dance studio. AND taught first grade! Whew! But it is finally summer and things have slowed down. I will keep my real estate license, but will not be focusing on that as much. I told the dance studio that I could no longer teach. :( I really enjoyed it, but it was entirely too much added to my plate. So, now I will just be mama and wife and teacher. OH and.....A reading coach position became available at my school. I interviewed and was offered the job! YEPEE! I am so very excited about starting this new adventure. There will be lots to learn, but think this will be perfect for me and my family.

Panama City Beach

She loved the sand!

Molly eating sandy ice cream on the beach.

Forum Post

As you all can tell, this is my family blog! Before I started working full time this was one of my many projects! I really enjoyed posting. Blogging allowed me to stay in touch with family and friends. My parents and my husband's parents live out of state. This was an excellent way to let them into our daily lives. Also, I am not the best at scrapbooking...this is a running record for my children. However, my postings came to a screeching halt after I started back working. So forgive the HAPPY NEW YEAR top post and welcome! :)
Session 2 post:
I would LOVE and have thought about using blogs in the classroom. In January I was hired as a first grade teacher in a school system that I had never taught before. PLUS...I jumped in so quickly that my focus was on getting to know the students and trying to structure classroom management and curriculum and tons of other stuff. So, I believe in the near future, IF BLOGGING is allowed within my system, I will try it!! I think it would be an excellent tool for students and parents!!! I would like to research more about safety issues. Lorrie Jackson touched on this briefly. I am going to check out KidzBlog. It sounds like a neat, safe place to begin!

FInally... Mission Accomplished!

Here is the outcome of today's "pants episode". I thought she looked so cute and sassy! She LOVES this pearl necklace that my friend, Dawn, gave her. She wears it all the time. I have to take it off for naps and bedtime.

My First Hunting Experience

Okay...SO! Everyone knows that I am an animal lover. I also have a husband who LOVES to hunt and owns a hunting lodge/cabin/plantation/farm...whatever. Well, Hamp has grown to like hunting through experiences with Chris. I am okay with that as long as he respects all that goes along with hunting...guns..the land...wildlife, etc... It's hard for Chris to take both Hamp and Jack. They get a little jealous when he takes one and not the other. I have been telling Hamp, "well, I guess I need to take up hunting so that I can take you." Guess what?! The opportunity came. Yesterday afternoon Chris put Hamp and I in a two-seater stand. I was okay. It was really nice. It was great spending time with Hamp. We enjoyed watching the birds and hearing the sounds. I was just hoping to catch a glimpse of a deer so that I could watch them. All the conditions were wrong for a deer to appear. First of all, the wind was blowing straight from behind us towards the field we were hunting. Secondly, I was with HAMP. The child can not sit still. He kept talking and moving around, making noises, dropping his gloves out of the stand, tooting even!!! I got a little bored and started being silly too. I asked him at one point if I looked pretty..HEE HEE...because I looked ridiculous with all my camo and Chris's coveralls on.... Asked him if I could be one of those girls on the hunting channel. He died laughing! Anyway, right at sunset what do we see but a deer! I was so excited. I tried to check her out in the scope from the gun but couldn't lock her in. Hamp wanted to take a look. I asked if she was a good size (I don't know my deer sizes). He said..."Yeah Momma! She's a great size!" So he gets ready to shoot. I was impressed. He aimed and SHOT! Knew all about loading and taking the safety off and on again. She hauled tail through the field and over into another one. Hamp had told me earlier that MY job was to watch the deer if he were to shoot it. So I watched hard! He was shaking because he was so excited. We got down out of the stand to see if we could spot a blood trail. No trail. We just knew he missed. We followed the path she took. Even went through some brush to see if she had fallen in there. Nope. Couldn't find her. So we walked back to the cabin. Later Chris and Jack came back. We told them the story. So, all of us pile into the Polaris thingy to see if we could find her. Low and behold WE DID...in the same brush Hamp and I had looked. She was small. BOO! I'm always preaching about how they should NOT shoot the small ones. And on top of that she wasn't dead...just injured. BOO times two! :( Chris had to shoot her while we stood there. BOO times three! Things went from .."this is okay" to "oh no!" to ....a quote from Chris, "this is your worst case scenerio!" We took her home. Chris cleaned her and well....we ate her. Needless to say...I don't know when my next hunting experience will be.

Elfie

INTRODUCING.....Elfie! Our Elf on a Shelf. We "adopted" Elfie last year. Elfie is supposed to magically reappear every year to watch over the children and report all good and bad deeds to Santa. Every night he changes his stake out location. The kids get very excited each morning searching for Elfie's new post. Elfie was real good about this last year. However, this year...he doesn't seem on top of his game. First of all, he arrived to our house late.....(he should have already been here...I mean the kids had been asking for him...but NO he took his own sweet time getting here!) Sunday mid afternoon was when he made his first appearance. Jack found him. Then later that night Hamp came home and noticed him. The problem is....Elfie has been forgetting that he is supposed to MOVE to different locations every night. The kids continue to point this out....HOWEVER, Elfie still seems to stay in his same spot! The only explanation Chris and I have is this....he must be SO EXHAUSTED at night that he falls asleep to quickly before scampering off to find a new spying place. Hopefully Elfie will "remember" what he is supposed to be doing and will get back to doing his Santa business!!!

Christmas Cards

Here is a sample of what I am trying to do for our Christmas cards. It is always an adventure trying to take pictures with 4 children and 2 adults all by ourselves with the timer set on the camera. Can be a little hilarious! There were only one or two good shots out of about 27 tries. So, I tried to be creative by adding other pictures to a collage. :)

Same Kind of Different As Me

Okay....Chris and I just finished reading this book. It was wonderful. We both looked forward to crawling in bed every night for the past week and a half to curl up together and read. The book is insightful, inspirational, funny, and sad. I think that it drew Chris and I closer in many aspects. It provided us with QUALITY time to read and discuss, but Ron Hall captured a lot of the grief, the anger, and the blessings from death of a loved one. Sometimes I think that it is hard for Chris to understand what I live with on a daily basis....having lost part of my being. The book helped to validate and put into words a lot of what I felt and still feel today. I remember going to Kass' room....lying down in his bed trying to cover myself in him. I remember opening his drawers, grabbing his clothes and trying desperately to catch a glimpse of his smell....never wanting to wash the few cherished dirty clothes he had in the basket. I have these saved to this day. But slowly over time( somedays more than others) I am able to see the blessing in Kass being taken to Heaven. It was for a reason, though I am not quite sure of yet....but for a beautiful reason. This I know because it was in God's plan. Denver's faith helped to add to my faith.



Kass and Hamp September 19, 2002

Kass' 8th Birthday

My First Blog!

Okay....I think I did it!! I am finally a blogger! My intentions are to keep this going, stay up to date for family and friends, and then print it! (You can do that can't you?) I have never been very good at scrapbooking...mainly because I have never had the time. This will make it simple! Thanks Amber! :)
Our holiday season started off with a trip to Texas. Chris was already out there hunting with his brother, Matt, and our dear friend Shawn Utley. I flew out with all the kids by myself! We made it with no mishaps...can you believe it????!!! We spent Thanksgiving there, and as always had a great time.