Seeing double...

When we became parents there were a few things that we certainly wouldn't have believed we would resort to! Children have a way of making us eat our words so to speak, and they certainly have a way of humbling us! We never thought we would have any potty training issues, and here we are praying every night for wisdom with these potty issues. We have recently tried to making sitting on the potty fun and exciting (I have spend a lot of time sitting in here as well with stacks of books).


We never would have dreamed we would be bribing Zach to sit on the potty by allowing him to play Tetris on our cell phone!! Due to the unfortunate timing of this particular event, no one was available to read to him, so we resorted to this!! He was super excited about his success in the game (made it to level 2), not so much about his success on the pot!

To brighten my morning and my outlook on the situation, I found Eli in his diaper doing exactly what he had seen his brother doing - minus the real phone. This is one of our many pretend cell phones!! Hilarious!!

The Many Faces of "E"

Eli is just beginning to realize how to show off! He loves to try to do exactly what his big brothers do and then he wants to show Mommy and Daddy what he is up to! This is fairly dangerous at the park, in the backyard, and basically everywhere! But here are a few faces he has tried on in the past few days!!

Biker Dude!! He might have a little trouble riding with the helmet on backwards, but he doesn't seem to mind it (he's just following Daddy's example). As you can see from his shirt he had a little drooling issue! Sorry Mom, no bib today!

Spider Man!! He loves to put this mask on! The only problem is that he also wants you to try it on as well - I didn't realize how badly the inside of the mask stunk until I put it on yesterday - I thought I might pass out! From now on it will have to go into the wash periodically!! Again we have a shirt/bib issue -it has been a trend this week!!

Zach is our big goggle wearer. He always wears his goggles in the bathtub and then dives for things. Eli took over the goggles during this particular bath - he kept sticking his face in the water and blowing bubbles!

Construction worker. Doesn't every boy want to wear a construction hat...and eat chocolate chips as evidenced by the shirt!!??

Beat this Rachel Ray...

Today the boys and I sat down to the table to make some whole made granola bars. I have been using all sorts of different recipes, and the recipes we made today are forgiving. They don't crumble as easy, and I can substitute things and they still turn out great. In fact, the boys like them so much that I have to ration them!


It started out pretty...The ingredients were all together, very concise and very need (at least it made for a pretty pictures).

Seth and Zach alternated putting in ingredients. That's one of the great things about making granola bars...tons of ingredients for them to mess with!!

Eli thought he was helping. He was making noise, drooling, and shouting all sorts of directions to me!

Zach is very exact with measuring...not so much with stirring. Oh well, that's what vacuums are made for right!?

Eli got so noisy I had to give him a sample of the chocolate chips to keep him quiet!
Somewhere along they way, after the bars were in the oven, Eli made his way up on to the table to look for leftovers. He thought he was pretty hot stuff being up so high!

Since my 9x13 pans are pretty yucky, I partially filled my Pampered Chef pans. Half with just chocolate chips for the boys, the other with chips, dried cherries, and nuts for Justin and I.

Just in case you would like, here is the recipe:

• 2 cups rolled oats
• 3/4 cup rice krispies
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup wheat germ
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 cup all-purpose flour (I substitute 1/2 whole wheat flour)
• raisins, choc. chips, dried fruit
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil (I substitute some with peanut butter)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Generously grease a 9x13 inch baking pan.

1. In a large bowl, mix together the oats, rice krispies,brown sugar, wheat germ, cinnamon, flour, raisins and salt. Make a well in the center, and pour in the honey, egg, oil and vanilla. Mix well using your hands. Pat the mixture evenly and very firmly into the prepared pan.
2. Bake for 20-25 minutes in the preheated oven, until the bars begin to turn golden at the edges. Cool for 5 minutes, then cut into bars while still warm. Do not allow the bars to cool completely before cutting, or they will be too hard to cut.

A Masterpiece...

It starts out like this...a palate of colors just waiting to be used.


Then the artist uses his expertise to manipulate the colors onto a blank canvas...


And then the masterpiece is complete...


The first week of January is already over! In no time we will be ringing in 2010! This past week the boys had some painting time and I could not help but be reminded that the coming year is an empty canvas...who knows what masterpiece will be painted this coming year. "For I know the plans I have for you says the Lord...to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11

Happy New Year to you all!!

Christmas Eve

My family has always had Christmas Eve traditions...they vary from year to year, depending on the circumstances...but food, family and presents are a constant theme.

Three sisters (my sister-in-law is certainly one of us, but unfortunately we didn't get a picture with all 4 of us this year - sorry Mary!)

This year a very special Christmas baby...Cadence...about a week old here, she slept through most of the festivities, which left her Mom and Dad to open her presents for her. (Thanks Kelly for the picture!)

Food, food, and more food: Shrimp, little smokies, The Original Roadhouse's Texas Egg rolls (to die for), and lots lots more...

The boys...I couldn't really include a post without pictures of them - they are just too handsome to leave out! We only exchanged gifts for the kids this year (of course my mom fudged on this rule), 9 kiddos this year around the Christmas tree...and also singing carols around the piano - we couldn't have asked for more!

Cookie day!!

Decorating cookies is a Holiday must - at least in my opinion. My sister Erin and I decided to make some Easy Press Cookies. We thought this might be a little bit easier for our kiddos to decorate!!

My Niece did a whole lot more eating decorations AND dough than she did actually decorating the cookies. I'm sure she had a mouthful of candy, but she was giving us her "happy smile!"

Not only did Zach take this task very seriously, he definitely used most of the decorations. He literally mounded the candy on top of the cookies.

Seth enjoyed our cookie time...he decorated the cookies, ate the decorations and then followed it up by licking the remaining decorations out of his plate. He really doesn't like to waste things...especially sugar! He takes after his Daddy!

All three kiddos...being silly as usual. I guess as a Mom I have this idea in my head about how something like cookie decorating should go - sweet, quiet, clean, and pretty. I almost romanticize the idea of it all...but kids are all alike...silly...love sugar...messy...and just want to have a good time!

Looking back...the memory are great...even though our cookies weren't really edible and didn't quite look like Martha Stewart's!!

A White Christmas

As you can see from the last two posts that my husband has had too much time on his hands!! Today he is back to school, so you can rest assured there will be no more crazy video clips. Although you do have to admit they made you at least crack a smile!!

I thought before I actually changed my Christmas background here I should post a few memories from the last couple of weeks. So this week will be dedicated to our holiday memories.

Our boys got their wish this year for a white Christmas!! Last year, as you can imagine, there was little snow on the beaches of Antigua; and this year the boys were VERY disappointed to learn that there wasn't snow in Alabama. Most of you know we headed out to Oregon, and if you read Justin's post a few days ago, you know we barely made it there. The area was hit with several storms in a row...causing chaos throughout the state. The airport looked like a homeless shelter and I can honestly say it has been several years since I have seen so much snow!


This is taken in front of my sister's house. This car actually faired quite well - several vehicles we saw driving the 45 minutes from Portland to Salem were completely covered with snow with no chance of driving out of it until it all melted.


Because there was a good rain fall just prior to the snow, the leaves and branches of the trees and flowers were completely weighed down. Many tree branches had broken off, and we saw several trees that had completely fallen over!


One of the leaves from the above tree, after the snow was brushed off. A thick covering of ice was over everything!

What good is a White Christmas if you can't get out and play in it! We packed everything we needed except for boots...oh well! The older boys had a great time anyways!!


My niece enjoying snow time with her cousins! The Arbor Vitae trees in the back ground are usually about 3 feet higher but the tops were completely bent over because of the weight of the snow and ice.

There is nothing quite as fun as snowball fights with your Daddy!!

We enjoyed a nice toasty Christmas...and loved seeing the snow as well. Thankfully we weren't one on the hundreds of families that had to endure Christmas without power and water! We were thankful...to be warm...and to enjoy our time together...and to have our White Christmas!

Vonnie and Justin caught New Year's Eve

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Our Three Boys

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Hood River Visit during Oregon Christmas Trip

As always, we had planned to make our stop at Hood River at the beginning of the Oregon trip, but again, we landed under less than ideal conditions. We believe our flight out of Houston was the only one to make it as scheduled the day we flew into Portland. We had thought our flight landing at 2AM (OUR TIME) in the morning was a bad deal. As it turns out, we were very blessed to make it into Portland on time. We also spent the night at what has become known as "our hotel!" We would not probably stay there under ideal conditions. However the last time we flew in and had 2 inches of ICE everywhere, this is where we stayed also. We checked in at 5AM (OUR TIME) and the boys actually slept in pretty nicely. I guess that happens after you mess with their sleep! The boys did an excellent job the whole trip! Thanks for all of your prayers.


Sorry for the little aside, we decided to keep an eye out for a nice day sometime during the 10 days we were in Oregon to make a quick trip up to see my Grandma Audie, Grandpa Dude, Uncle Rick, Aunt Elise, and Cousin Elliott. The weather finally let up enough to make the trip up on the 28th. When I called to tell them we were coming, Grandma Audie said, "You better be calling to tell me you are not going to try and come up here!" Needless to say after that initial encouragement the trip went off without a hitch. The road through the GORGE was wet, and there was a lot of rain, but nothing for a Suburban to worry about (Thanks Wayne and Mary!).

Here is Great Grandpa Dude measuring up Eli...and Eli doing the same. When Zach (in the background distracted by a DVD) first met Grandpa he cried pretty hard when Grandpa had one of his boisterous laughs. As you can see, this visit went much better! E could probably have taken him if he got too feisty!


Grandma giving Eli a couple of Eskimo kisses! They had a nice little time cuddling together and he is a pretty happy guy who will smile at anything. You can tell the smile on Grandma's face tells a little different story than the phone call telling them we were coming!


Aunt Elise enjoying a little time with Eli as well...we had to wake him up as we arrived just at nap time and Grandma could not believe he had slept for about the first 2 1/2 hours of our visit. If we hadn't woken him up, they wouldn't have gotten to hang out with him and really meet him.


Here is a picture of everyone using Vonnie's camera and Grandpa's tripod. We tried to steal it, but you all know how hard it is to get a picture out of the front room. I almost tried to hang it on the wall in Grandpa's studio and they might have let is go as they are always happy to let us have a new picture or two (or 3 on this trip) when we visit. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa...it was wonderful to get to see you let you love on the kids a little bit!