O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum

Fake Christmas trees are awesome!! Especially ones that are pre-lit and only have 3 pieces and the base. It took me all of 7 minutes to put up our tree this year. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Couple of Cheeseballs!!

Claire Bear's Birthday

First and foremost Happy Birthday Claire Elisabeth!!
She turned 1 year old on the 22nd and she celebrated at home with mom, dad, and her sisters that evening. These pictures are just from that night. We also had a big to-do with all the grandparents and aunts & uncles. I'll try and upload those pics tonight.

She likes cake. :)

Silly Girls!

Have a great day today!

Here are a couple of smiley faces to make you happy!

We can't wait for everyone to get here for Turkey Day!!

Twinkle twinkle...

We recorded this for Grandma and Pawpaw but we'll let the rest of you see it too.


Can you believe that I've only been playing guitar for 9 months?!?!

Of course you can.

I can also play happy birthday. Thanks for the guitar mom & dad!!

Have fun today!

Halloween costumes....

So about a month ago we decided to spend an arm and a leg and buy a few Disney movies for the girls. Among the ones we chose was Toy Story 2. Its really a cute movie and surprisingly enough the girls ask to watch it almost everyday and never ask to watch Sleeping Beauty...I would have thought they would have liked Sleeping beauty better just based upon the fact that they are Disney Princess addicts. I think they both would switch lives with Ariel if given the opportunity. Anyway, I asked the girl's last week what they wanted to be and Jenna promptly said "Ariel!!" and I just knew Abbi was gonna say "Ariel!!" as well but she said "Jessie!!" and I was kinda thrown off (because if you know her you know why I would think that) and I asked her if she was sure and of course she said yes. I even showed her the costume online (will post the pic) and she INSISTED she wanted to be Jessie. I completely do not have a problem with this but I just have a bad feeling if I order this costume and it comes and its not pretty pink princess and she sees her other 2 sisters dressed like princesses she is going to flip out. So what do I do? Do I buy the Jessie costume and risk it or should I just buy her a princess costume and avoid a potential toddler tantrum/breakdown? I need some opinions...

Privacy please!

I was thinking the other day that it was time to go private. I don't like the idea of random people looking at my little girls. You can copy and paste any of the pictures we put on here, and I don't like the thought of strangers doing that. Anyway, If you all would like to still view our severely neglected or hardly ever updated blog let me know and I will put you on the list. We will switch over in about a week, thanks! :)

Just so everyone knows, we won't publish anyone's email addy if you want to leave it in the notes. And we want all our friends and family who want to read our blog to be able to do so, even if you're just the occasional reader who blog hops to get here. Thanks! :D

Everything is OK

Mommy and Abbi made it home from the hospital at about 2:30 Sunday morning. No we didn't go to church. Abbi is fine, she just has the flu. It is not H1N1. She spent the day in her room watching movies on our laptop. Thank you uncle Levi for suggesting the VLC media player. It is awesome. Abbi will be staying home from school for the next few days but it doesn't matter today because schools are closed in our county because of rain. That's right, Rain. It's flooding so bad in our county that portions of Interstate-20 are flooded. Anyway, hopefully we can prevent the other two kiddos from getting what Abbi has but that never seems to work. I'll post some pics of the sick one looking pitiful tonight.

Waiting...

Abbi's been sick today. She woke up this morning at 3 am or so complaining of a bad dream and feeling very sweaty and hot. I put her back to bed not thinking anything of it. She and Jenna woke up around 7 am and she was not feeling very good but she ate breakfast. I felt her forehead and it was still very warm. She just had the flu vaccine on Thursday so I thought maybe that's what's making her run hot. I gave her some ibuprofen and she sat on the couch most of the day. When Jamiee got home from school at 10 am we took Abbi's temp and it read 102. We called our nurse line and they told us to wait it out and if she's not improved by tomorrow to have her seen by a doctor. We continued to give her ibuprofen every 6-8 hrs and she went to bed tonight still feeling very icky. We just woke her up around 11 pm to give her one final dose of ibuprofen and found her awake, laying in bed in her own pee and burning up. She had a 103.2 temperature. We quickly got her dressed and she and Mommy headed for the hospital.

Just waiting now...

First day of school and the park

Ok so we're blog slackers, but who isn't. Abbi is going to pre-K!! and she loves it! She loves it so much that she wakes her Mommy up early every morning to get ready and go. Literally, she will walk into our room 10 minutes before Mommy's alarm goes off. Mommy just loves it. (/sarcasm) We didn't take pictures of her before going to school (no good parent awards for us this year) but these are right as she got home so she looks a little tired.

We love our Sammy-dog!!

These are just a few crappy cell phone pictures of the girls at the park. I took them there all by myself last Saturday while Mommy was getting her hair did. Mommy's hair looks great btw, maybe she'll post some pics of it.

Jenna - just chillin.

Claire loves to swing. :)

VACATION!!!

Ok here they are, our shameless vacation photos. We enjoyed 6 days in beautiful Chicago, Illinois. We stayed with Jamiee's sister and her wonderful family. They were so very kind and hospitable to us during our stay. Abbi and Jenna had tons of fun with their cousins. Claire had fun with them too.

We played in the park






































































Bella has a swingset so we spent a lot of time SWINGING!




























Bella also has a "Roller coaster." We spent hours on it.




























Abbi, Jenna, & Bella got to paint porcelain figurines (unicorns)






































































We went to Navy Pier





















































































































It was really hot so we got snow cones and went on a boat ride tour of the shore




























They asked Jenna if she wanted to drive














She said no.










































Navy Pier from the water














Soldier Field (home of da' Bears) and the Shedd Aquarium




























The boat ride was really fun




























Part of the Chicago Skyline from the water














We also went to the Lego Discovery Center and Museum
(VERY COOL PLACE! Better for older kids though, 8+) These pictures may look kinda funny. I think all the Lego sculptures look two-dimensional but trust me they are all very 3D. It must be how the camera "sees" the legos. Almost like pixels.





























































































































































































































Look familiar?














I also got to fulfill a long time dream of mine game while we were there. I got to go to U.S. Cellular Field and see the Chicago White Sox play! (Sorry, no pictures. I didn't take the camera.) Thank you Tracy. I had a blast and I'll never forget it.

Then it was a long 15 hours home.