Happy 90th Birthday Grandaddy!

Happy Birthday Grandaddy!


My grandaddy turned 90 this year on Dec 22 so we decided to celebrate with a big birthday party! How many times do you get to do anything 90 times??? What an accomplishment!


Grandaddy, Brayden and Marshall patiently waited for permission to blow out the candles from the ladies in charge (if you look closely at the picture you will see the candles were already burning down quite a bit at this point - I can't believe the little ones were so cooperative!)






Here's a good one of all the brothers and sisters with their Dad. I can't remember now what was said to get everyone to smile (including Grandaddy!) but whatever it was, it worked! :)










My mom, the veteran school teacher, and Aunt Patti made sure the kids had lots of activities to keep them busy during the party. They had talked with the North Pole and found out that Santa's elves had been out joy-riding on Santa's sleigh the night before (to relieve a little pre-Christmas stress) and some presents had accidently fallen out of the sleigh over Aunt BB's yard (ok, so this isn't exactly how they told the story, but you have to admit, my version is funnier... ;). The kids had a great time finding the presents...however they got there. :)



Here are a few pictures of our family taken at the party by Janet Carden of JCardenPhoto - Thanks Janet! If you are interested in having some wonderful pictures taken of your family check her out at jcardenphoto.com.

Marshall's Preschool Christmas Field Trip and Christmas Party

This is a picture of Marshall's Preschool class with Santa taken during their December field trip to Columbus, GA to see a production of The Toys Take Over Christmas at a local college. Sorry for a lack of details...William took Marshall this time so I don't really have any insider info! :)

Kudos to Mrs. Leigh Ann for helping 12 kids paint matching reindeer shirts to wear. If you look closely you will see that the reindeer antlers are the kids hands. So cute! :)

The next few pictures are from the party they had on the last day of school. I went to help set up for the party and took Jack with me. He wasn't very interested with playing with the other younger brothers and sisters that were...he wanted to be right in the middle of everything with his big brother. And I must say,

big brother and his friend Annie were very gracious and even shared their party treats with Jack!

Marshall's Debut Singing Performance

Marshall sang in front of an real audience (other than his adoring parents, that is ;) for the first time in the Tiny Kids choir at church this Christmas.

The planners knew when working with this age range (2yrs - 4yrs), short attention spans were a potential problem. So they only had the kids sing two songs, Go Tell It On The Mountain and Glory to God and they passed out shakers at the beginning of the second song to give the kids something new to concentrate on (to try to lengthen that attention span as much as possible).

Despite this, the kids managed to go from angelic to...something decidedly not-angelic by the end. If you take a close look at the pictures, you will get an idea of how the performance progressed, beginning with everyone roughly facing the right direction and singing the right words and ending with the boys playing with the microphones, bonking each other on the head with the musical shakers and making faces to entertain the giggling crowd (and yes, Marshall was right in the middle of it!).

All in all, the audience throughly enjoyed themselves and the kids learned a little something about the real reason for the Christmas season. I'd call that a sucess any day! :)

Happy Thanksgiving

We were blessed this year to have Nana and Pap-paw and Uncle Jacob and Aunt Elise and new baby cousin Finn come visit us for Thanksgiving day!

Everyone arrived Wednesday night and we spent some time making sure we had everything we needed for our Thanksgiving feast the next day. We also got a crash course in how to brine and roast a turkey that night (thank goodness for Aunt Elise! :) and Dad worked on his signature dish, homemade cranberry sauce.

On Thanksgiving day, Mom, Aunt Elise and Nana worked hard in the kitchen to pull together a great Thanksgiving meal, if I do say so myself. ;). The kids got a chance to play with Baby Finn which they throughly enjoyed (what a cutie!) and hang out with Nana and Pap-paw.

We also took some time out to let Pap-paw practice his photography hobby on us (thanks Davy for the great pictures and Cathy for the outfits - they will come in really handy at church over Christmas too!). The kids were very cooperative and patient which was a real surprise, especially since it turns out that Marshall was getting sick. If you look at the pictures closely, you will notice that Marshall is covered in what we thought at the time was really bad hives.

The back story on this is that we had Marshall allergy tested and he tested postive for corn and oat allergies. The allergist asked us to both from his diet for a few weeks then add it back to see what happened. We had just started letting him have corn again on Tuesday of Thanksgiving week at the school Thanksgiving party. Then, on Thursday, we saw this rash come up all over his face and then spread to the rest of his body! We choked back tears (corn is EXTREMELY hard to avoid!) and started administering alot of Benadryl. After several days of Benadryl to no avail, we found a Pediatric clinic that was open (isn't this starting to sound like the story of our lives? ;) and discovered it was not hives after all; it was something called Fifth's Disease. Fifth's Disease is just another childhood virus and had NOTHING to do with a possible corn allergy. Yay!! Hooray!! Yay!! Yippee!!

So that's the story of our Thanksgiving. Nothing like a little good food, good family and good drama. :)

Happy 4th Birthday Addison Marshall!

Marshall turned four this year and boy, did he do it in style!



It all started when Granny offered to buy the decorations for his party in lieu of a birthday present. My mom is a talented hostess so when you combine that with her 30+ years of experience as an elementary school teacher, you get a really good party!

Granny and Marshall spent a week before the party working hard to get things ready. By party day we had lots of dino activities! They filled swimming pools with sand for the "Dino Dig" in which the kids got to dig for "real" dino skeletons and bones. They built nests, filled them with eggs and hid them throughout the house for the kids "Dino Egg Hunt". They even built a dino cave for the kids to play in and draw cave paintings inside and they blew up lots of inflatable dinosaurs for decoration (and for play too! ;). They also put out lots of coloring supplies and dino stickers for Marshall and his friends to do.

And all their hardwork paid off. The result was a party that in the kids' words was "The best birthday party ever!".




I can't believe my little baby is 4 years old already. How time flies when you are having fun! :)

Spooky Oooky Halloween

Halloween is here again! Its been a long week for us filled with lots of Fall Festivals and Halloween fun (and its only Wednesday - we've still got half a week to go! :).










We had a little pre-Halloween saga when it came to choosing what the kids wanted to be this year, the moral of the story is....never buy a Halloween costume too early! Marshall started out the month wanting to be the hero from the Sleeping Beauty story (this is a favorite bedtime book - there is a big, evil dragon name Maleficient that is slayed at the end of the story by the brave hero, Prince Phillip) so I got on ebay and found a costume complete with dragon-slaying sword and shield. I also found a similar costume for Jack (since his main motto these days is, "Me too!").









Then as Halloween week got closer and the kids at school started talking about what they were going to be, Marshall decided he really, really wanted to be Batman. Well, after about a week of him answering Batman after anyone asked what he was going to be for Halloween, I melted and got out the Batman masks and costumes I had bought at a children's resale to give him and Jack at Christmas. With a little help from Granny, we made a new cape to go with it and our little Batman has never been happier. :)




Once we got through the costume saga, we started Halloweening on Saturday with a Birthday/Halloween party for Marshall's friend, Carson. The kids were asked to wear their costumes and Carson's house was decorated with spooky oooky Halloween decorations (Marshall picked up the phrase "spooky ooky" from the Disney channel and uses it all the time lately to describe anything Halloween-related :). Carson had a giant bounce house for the kiddos to play in and his parents even did a hay ride around the neighborhood (minus the actual hay - I guess it was more a trailer ride than a hay ride but the kids had fun never-the-less ;).






They also had a costume contest in which Marshall won the prize for "Best Boy Costume" and very appropriately, the prize bucket included a plastic bat toy which Marshall absolutely loved (he literally played with it until it fell apart! :). It was a great party!






Then on Tuesday night we went trick-or-treating with some friends that live in the best trick-or-treating neighborhood I have ever seen! Last year we went with them on Halloween night and it was pure chaos! Everyone in our small town trick-or-treats there - there were so many kids. The city even stations cops all over the place to direct traffic and generally keep things safe. The one downside last year was that since there were so many kids everywhere, homeowners just sat on their front porches and handed candy out of big buckets so none of the kids got to ring the doorbells and wait to yell "Trick-or-Treat!".

So this year we went on Tuesday night which is only for kids who live in the neighborhood (or, in our case, those kids trick-or-treating with someone who lives in the neighborhood). It was definitely much calmer this way and Marshall and Michael had a great time (not sure about Jack and Lauren - they were good sports, no complaints at all but "fun" as a descripter might be stretching it a little.... ;)






Wednesday night we went to the Fall Festival at the church. We played lots of games, won lots of prizes, rode on another hay ride and ate waaaay too much popcorn and cotton candy.








And to think, this is only the halfway point of our Halloween week! :)

Peek-A-Boo

Here are some pictures of Jack playing his own version of Peek-A-Boo at the park.

He cheats! :)

Funny Things Kids Say

Ok, I know its not the New Year yet, but I have made a resolution all the same. I am going to try to write down the funny things my kids say so that when I am old I will remember them! Here's the first of what will probably be a long list (if I can stick to it :).

"Mom, I asked God to come into my heart and He did. He said my stomach is a cave." - Addison Marshall

Marshall's First Field Trip: Landmark Park

Last week Granny, Jack and I went with Addison Marshall on his first school field trip to Landmark Park. They had been studying farm animals all week so the kids were really excited to go see some up close. They got to see goats, pigs, sheep, chickens, cows, and mules and they were even allowed to pet them (if the animals came close enough to the fence).

They explained some of the mule-driven farm equipment and had grown some crops for the kids to learn about, like sugar cane, cotton and peanuts. Marshall even got to pick a few peanuts himself since its peanut harvest time right now.

They also had lots of really old buildings (100+ years) for the kids to walk through. Marshall was really fascinated with the out-house. Thankfully, it is no longer a "working" out-house...

After snack-time the kids got to play at the park part of Landmark Park. There was a really cool rope swing that kind of worked like a zip-cord (thanks to my mom and Sam's mom for helping the kids with this one - they were probably both sore the next day!) and an old-fashioned tire swing (this is a picture of Marshall and his friend Galvin swinging on it).

The kids had a great time. In case you needed evidence, this is a picture of Marshall walking with his teacher, Mrs LeighAnn after the tour. He was telling her all about the stuff he had just seen and learned. It was very cute. :)

This is a picture of Mrs. LeighAnn's class. I am still amazed that she was able to get all the kids to stand together long enough for the parents to get a picture!

Should I Be Worried About Where This Is Leading...?

I don't think I like the glint I see in Jack's eyes!

Fortunately, I don't think William can legally ride him on the bike for a while!

A Day at Grandaddy's Farm

Here are some fun pictures of Marshall, cousin Bella and Grandaddy from our trip to Grandaddy's farm this summer. The kids had a great time feeding the horses and riding the Gator with Grandaddy.

Jack didn't get to do all the outside stuff this trip (he was too little ride in the Gator with the big kids) but Grandaddy made sure he had a good time learning about tractors with the help of the legos set!

Gone Fishin!

William and Marshall got up this morning and decided they wanted to go fishing. Now, they have gone fishing a couple of times but have never actually brought anything home, so you can imagine my surprise when they came home pulling a bucket-full of fish behind them! Apparently the key to it all was simply to keep Meg (our dog) away from the shore long enough for the fish to bite. :)

William got out his fillet knife and went to work (I'll bet Nana and Pap-paw never imagined the cute little bistro set they got us for Christmas would be used quite in this way...and I must admit, I never imagined it either! :) and the result was some yummy grilled bass and brim for lunch.

I did try to get a picture of Marshall holding up the big bass but he got poked and dropped it back down in the bucket before I could snap the picture. After that, I couldn't convince him it was worth the risk to try it again just so mom could get a picture....

Boy, I cannot think of a better way to spend a beautiful fall day!