New Sweaters...

The kids did Christmas at my good friend Shelly's house this year on the 23rd. She was so sweet and got them a ton of stuff. They were so happy. So here they are modeling their new sweaters from "Aunt" Shelly :).

Oh Knox !

What are we going to do with this wild man ?! He makes us laugh everyday ! I had told him no candy for today. he hadn't complained, my niece was over and busy playing school with Pres in the other room and Knox was missing from my sight for about 10 minutes. I assumed he was playig school. He walked back into the living room and had chocolate all over his face. I mean nose to chin all over :)

Me "Knox is that chocolate all over your face ?"

Knox " What this chocolate ?" (pointing to his face)..."oh this is from a longtime ago"

I could not stop laughing. He is crazy !

30 !

WHAT ! I turned 30 ! I am surprisingly not as depressed as I thought I would be :)...I am super optimistic of what I can accomplish in my 30's and have no regrets of the things that I did in my

20's. So here's to a new decade full of fun and maturity...lol...ok ok maybe not the maturity part but lots of fun :) Love you all !

Christmas 2010 !

Christmas was so fun this year! Im really sad that it has come to an end. Presley and Knlx were in full Santa mode the whole month. They learned lots of christmas songs and sang them EVERY day :). I think that is what I am going to miss the most. Especially Knox's version of Frosty the snowman..."Frosty the snowman was a lovely, lovely guy". Presley really loved Rudolph the Red nosed reindeer. Presley asked Santa for an easy bake oven. Knox asked for a batman batcave, and Maryn couldn't care less. She thinks all of the toys are hers anyway :). Presley woke up at 5:28 and woke knox up who came running down the hall with his eyes closed because he still wasn't awake...lol. We sure do love that crazy boy :). I surprised Bry sooooo good. He is so hard to surprise, but I used my moms credit card and paid her cash to buy Bry a new ipod touch. No paper trail :) and he had no idea. I even wrapped it in a box with old socks and a shirt to hide the shape of the little ipod box. We only bought each child 5 things. We wanted it to be a small, but for them to get quality gifts. With so much extended family they still got spoiled. So next year we might knock it down to 3. I sure do love Christmas and I am so grateful for our sweet babies ! Merry Christmas !

Our white Christmas morning :)
Maryn's Christmas
Knox's Christmas
Presley's Christmas
Our Christmas Bumbles on Christmas Eve...

Rock City Lights...

As a family we went to see the lights on a lookout mountain at Rock city. It was freezing but the kids had fun. Plus it was free ! We used Stacy and Danny's family pass, can't beat that.

Some were not so happy as we waited to get hot chocolate... :)

Sweet baby :)

Garth Brooks Concert....

Garth Brooks did a series of benefit concerts in Nashville. I got tickets for my sister and her husband and our friends Brad and shelly. It was soooooo FUN ! We had awesome seats about 15-20 feet from the stage on the floor.

Ready for Santa...

Presley and Knox have been all about Santa and the elves. They are super excited about Santa coming and trying really hard to be good. The "elves" actually brought them a present early :). We got a wooden swing set that is usually $400 at Walmart for $50 on clearance !! Super steal. We have yet to put it together yet since it has been so cold. Presley had asked why her cousins have an elf and she doesn't so here is my wonderful answer :)..."Well sometimes Pres when kids are really naughty during the year santa needs to send them an elf to remind them that Christmas is close and they need to be good". Presley says, "ya, I have been really good this year". And I can't disagree. After the first few weeks of school she got into the swing of things and has been doing great. She had all blue marks for the month of November so we took a trip to Vegas for Toddlers...you know, chuck e cheese. She earned it and they had a blast.

What ?!?!

Wow...these kids can say the funniest stuff...

Knox: "Dad can I have a mint" (Holding a hand full of spaghetti noodles)

Bry "No"

Knox " Give me a mint right now dad or I will kill all of these noodles " (squeeze)

Christmas Gifts

Every year we have done a charitable act/gift with our children at christmas time. This year I came across "Operation Christmas Child". First you choose a boy or girl and then the age you are willing to buy gifts for. We chose children the same age range as Knox and Pres. Boy 2-4. Girl 5-7. You fill a shoebox with age appropriate toys and a few hygiene items. The boxes are then shipped to 3rd world countries. The kids had so much fun picking out the gifts to go into the box. Knox really wanted to keep the toy tractor but with some explaining he was happy to see it go to a little boy who would love to have it

.

Thanksgiving...

This year we were finally able to have a Thanksgiving with my family :) Bry and I have always been on our own when it comes to the big holidays with the kids since we have lived so far away. Well the last one we shared with fam I was pregnant with Knox. We had fun up at my sisters house and my grandparents came in town. It was a beautiful fall day that we enjoyed with too much food.

I made this yummy looking Ginger Bread Triffle...too bad I didnt add the spices in the making of the ginger bread. It looked yummy but didn't taste so good :(

Sweet baby Janes...

Here is another post about our sweet baby Maryn Jane. It seems as though she is getting a lot of her own posts lately. Maryn was really sick for 9 days. 9 days of a fever 102 +, she was so miserable. So here is the run down of the last 2 weeks. I took Maryn in for a follow up with the Dr. for her pinkie nail on monday Nov. 1st. While we were there she noticed that Maryn had thrush in her mouth and around her mouth. Weird since she is 14 months and not nursing. She started the Nystatin and it was helping a ton. On tuesday she started running a fever and wasn't sleeping through the night so I took her back on thursday and found out that she also had developed an ear infection. She started Amoxil on thursday night. She ran her fever all through the weekend and I took her back to the Dr. on Monday morning and her ear infection had cleared but she still had thrush. The Dr. sent us over to the hospital to have some blood work done. They called that evening and told us that we needed to take Maryn to the ER and get a Rocefin shot since her white blood cell count was pretty elevated, just in case it was a bacterial infection that could get in her blood. So off we went at 6:45 and while we were there they did chest x-rays, flu test, uti test, a rocefin shot, and lots of poking and prodding of baby Janes. She was miserable. While we were there her fever was 102.6. We left a little after 2:00am. On tuesday she still had the fever but it was down a little. We started on Omnicef. We called the Dr. back on wednesday when she was still running a fever and the other Dr. called Bry back and said that the mono test had come back negative but that Maryn's SED count was throught the roof...106- when normal is 20. So she def had something going on that on thursday they needed to do another blood draw and if her WBC and SED were still high that we would need to meet with a disease specialist. So now we were starting to freak out ! On thursday morning her normal Dr. called and Maryn's fever had subsided so she didn't feel it was necessary to do the blood work until monday. She think maybe a really bad sinus infection ?! WHAT ?!?! Well if that is all it was thank goodness, but wow ! What a miserable week and a half for our baby girl !

Maryn's Costume

I haven't sewn a costume in 2 years. And I really wanted Maryn to be the Queen of Hearts since Presley was going as Alice in Wonderland. The project started off okay, the fabric I chose frayed quiet a bit so that was really annoying to deal with and then putting in the zipper was such a pain to do with this fabric. I ended up sewing the zipper in by hand. I used double sided interfacing to adhere hearts. I think it turned out okay and she LOVES it. It is so funny to watch her strut around in it :) I will post full Halloween pics soon. I took a lot with my sisters camera and I just need to download them.

Don't mind the drool hanging off her chin :)

Have you noticed that Maryn has a toothbrush in several of my recent posts ? This girl loves to brush :)

Pumpkins

We are only days away from Halloween and I forgot all about pumpkin carving ! Thank goodness Presley is on the ball :). Presley drew her pumpkin face all by herself and Bry cut it for her and I helped Knox make a "scary" pumpkin.

Pickles and Tomatoes...

Epitome of (cute) Mischief

Alright so this is more of a Journaling post for some of the funny things Presley and Knox have said lately. The other day Presley got out of school early due to really bad weather. The thunderstorms were going to include tornadoes and they wanted all the kids and parents to be able to get home safely. So with all the talk about thunderstorms and tornadoes the kids were very concerned. We were leaving Walgreens and Knox says to me "Mom we better hurry and get home before the pickles come." "Pickles?" I said....He said "Ya the scary pickles"...."You mean tornadoes ?", "Ya" he says "Before the tomatoes come". I was rolling ! He is so funny so then his daddy get home and Knox greets him with "Hurry daddy before the pickles and tomatoes come !"

ER visit...

Maryn and her cousin William get into everything ! So together they can cause quiet a mess. On Saturday morning she and William were playing with a bread maker that was on the floor waiting to be put away. They were both playing with the lid and unfortunately Maryn got her fingers squished. So much so that we had our first ER visit. We left with 2 stitches and a missing pinky nail. She was such a trooper. She only cried right when the incident happened and she was all smiles at the hospital. Thank goodness there wasn't a wait or we would have been seen for a long time since she was so happy and it didn't seem urgent. I didn't take a pick of the before but here she is when we got home from the hospital.

Fall soccer

We signed the kids up for Fall soccer at the YMCA. It was about $30 cheaper per kid than most of the recreation teams around town. The only downside to it was that it was indoors and the court that they played on was pretty small. Knox learned not to tackle and not to pick the ball up with his hands. Presley learned to rough it up with the boys a little being one of the only girls in the 5-6 age group. Getting Knox to stay on the court and Presley to pay attention wore me out ! We pulled out every trick, money, toys, candy...but they did whatever and I had to swallow my competitive spirit and be happy for the spurts of determination that made them run after the ball. They were so cute. I wish I would have gotten more action shots but I was too busy yelling :) We are really proud of our little soccer stars.

Halloween Party

We are members at the children's discovery museum here in Chattanooga and they threw a party for the member families the other night and since we had cousins in town we all dressed up and went. Karen is in town with her kids because dad had major surgery on tuesday and she wanted to be able to spend some time with him. The kids had fun dressing up and were super excited to do something fun with their cousins :)

Our little Alice in Wonderland

"Captain and America "says Knox, Presley, and Teagan as Belle
Spooky faces and little William as Robin :)
Playing in the Yard
Here he is muscles himself...
Love these girls
So Teagan and Pres have on matching shirts and so do Knox and William...not really planned, but cute :)

He climbed up all by himself

The Circus !

The circus came to town and the kids were so excited. We went on friday night and took my niece mallory with us. It was lots of fun. The kids were excited to see the lions, tigers, and elephants. It was Bryan and Maryn's first trip to the circus and the 2nd for Presley and Knox. I will have to say though that the highlight was the cotton candy :)

Tight rope walkers...

Knox and Bry
Knox with his blue cotton candy
Maryn eating Presley's and Knox's cotton candy !
Look at those lips :)