Bread Makers

For those of you who have been baking lots of bread lately...

My friend Stephanie just posted some great tips for you

HERE

Have fun, and let her know if you found it useful.

More Fun With Wordle

(click on the picture to enlarge it)

Doggie Kisses

I can't help but post this one. Lacy is not crawling yet, but she scoots like CRAZY! Whenever Sandy's cage door is open she heads straight there. Sandy is so old and mellow she doesn't normally care, but this time she stretched out and gave Lacy a big 'ole kiss.Mostly I posted this for mom and Jennifer because I knew they would say, "GROSS!"

A small family reunion

We had a small family reunion on Sunday afternoon with some relatives on my dad's side, who live where it is REALLY cold...Minnesota. My Uncle Martin (the one with the blue jacket) was hilarious! He is my dad's uncle and he was COLD. Really?? We're in Arizona...land of the sunshine. Apparently he keeps is heat on about 80 back home because he doesn't like to be cold. Good times. :o)

In the picture below is Uncle Norm (striped sweater), Aunt Helen (blue-ish shirt in back), Aunt Mary Lou (flowery shirt), Great Uncle Martin & Uncle John (white shirt). Aunt Helen and Aunt Mary Lou are my dad's sisters and Uncle Norm and Uncle John are their husbands. We brought a bunch of stuff for the kids to do while the adults visited, ate and watched the Cardinals game. Here's Hailey and Sydney coloring, Braden, Emma and Talon are in the background.
For some reason the kids liked sitting under the stage. They said it was their clubhouse.

We put Lacy down there with them and the girls thought it was pretty funny that she was sitting with the big kids. From left to right: Emma, Sydney, Hailey, Talon, Braden and Lacy.Aunt Helen wanted to get a picture of each of us with our whole family. Here's Dan (my dad's nephew) with his adorable family.And a close-up. :o) I handed my camera to Aunt Mary Lou and she got this shot of us.After the kids (and Joe) ran off I looked at the picture in the camera. I said to myself, "both of the guys eyes are closed, I really don't like my hair curly, Lacy's looking the wrong way and WHAT THE HECK IS HAILEY DOING WITH HER HEAD?" Hailey and Talon, come here...say cheese."No, seriously pick up your head Hailey.""Are you kidding me? Pick up your head and say cheese!""Last one, look up at me!""Forget it...silly faces!"...and back down her head went.

A Girly Hair Post :o) & 9 mo check-up

It finally arrived!! The beanie hat we won finally came from Canada and it fits Lacy PERFECTLY! I ♥ it! She had her 9 month check-up last week and is doing pretty good. Her height is in the 50% and her weight is in the 20%, but her doctor was pleased with her progress. She did, however, have double ear infections...again. Poor girl. She never even shows any signs of it. We are going to take her back in a month to make sure her ears are clean and to discuss changing her formula to soy.

Big news!! Lacy had her very first pony tail! Joe didn't appreciate it as much as I did. :o)
It was such a beautiful day out we decided to go out back and take some more pictures. What an angel! I think this is my favorite picture of Lacy EVER...well except for the day she was born.Look how happy she gets when her big brother is around.Talon took over as photographer and snapped this shot of us girls. Please excuse my hair...it was windy...I promise I HAVE left the 80's and my bangs were not stuck that way.

Here is a really cute hairdo I have done on Hailey twice now. It's really easy and looks super cute on her. The second time I used some better bows and it looked even cuter, but I didn't take pictures of it that day. (She was playing with makeup while I did her hair) If you want better instructions on the twisty X (Courtney) you can go HERE...Dang that took me FOREVER to find again, but I think it's important nobody thinks I'm not making these up myself. :o) I really don't have a single creative bone in my body, but I CAN follow directions.The back (and cutest) view.The side view.

Wordle

Look what i found! I went to this site http://www.wordle.net/ and entered my blog address and it made this all by itself!I did it again and got this:

Isn't that fun!

Hailey Graduated!!

Last night Hailey moved up another level in swim class!!

Her teacher is so sweet. Our little Miss Hailey is not very good with new instructors...OK she's terrible. Every single time she has to switch she goes backwards a few weeks and does A LOT of crying. Miss Christina got a new job and was leaving Swim Kids forever. :o(

Hailey was pretty close to graduating (which usually involves switching instructors). She would be set back a lot if she had to switch, get used to the new instructor, then graduate and switch again. So, Miss Christina came back one more week (just for Hailey's class) to give her another chance to graduate. That way she would only have to change instructors once. Yeah!! We totally owe her!!

Hailey was in the Bronze Junior class and was required to jump in and make it all the way to the other side of the pool by herself. They teach them to float, roll over into supergirl (arms up, head down in the water) and roll back to floating. Plus, they have to do it in their street clothes - it's a survival thing. I am not exaggerating when I say it took her 15 minutes!! She just layed there and floated for soooo long each time. There were kids in classes all around her, jumping, swimming, floating, and some crying. It didn't matter to her. She can float FOREVER!!

She finally got to the other side and got to ring the bell. EVERYONE cheered for her (mostly because they were all laughing at how long it took her). Then the kids showered and got dressed. Yep. Those are PJ's. It's 8 pm. I'm sorry about the quality of the photo. I KNEW there was a very good chance she was going to graduate last night, but STILL forgot the camera. My phone stinks, but at least we have something. :o) Isn't she cute...and so proud!While we were waiting for her little ceremony Talon and his friend, Brandon, wanted to get in on the action. We'll call them silver and bronze.We are so proud of our little swimmers!!

Friends

Some of our "old" friends were in town for the holidays. We had a get-together at another friends house on New Years Eve-Eve and then had the JONES over the next day to spend some more time with them before they took there WONDERFUL trip back home (I think Steve's exact words were "Never Again".) I wish I would have taken more pictures while they were here, since it seems by his blog entry that they may never be coming back.

As soon as Austin saw that our house was on a golf course, and we had a few golf balls in the backyard from the golfers who aren't very good, he went out to their van and got his clubs.A couple of times I thought he was going to kill one of the other kids, but they all survived (and so did our back windows :0))

I love this next picture. Austin is getting ready to take off someone's head. Steve is supervising. Talon and Hailey are watching from the jeep and Jillian and Benjamin are showing off their cute bums.

Thanks for coming over guys, and I hope you decide to make that wonderfully awesome car ride again. The kids kept asking when their new friends were going to come over again.

Payson

Here are some photos from our trip to Payson last weekend. After Amy, Tyler and their crew stayed with us Friday night we walked out the back to the park. It was sooo cold. I was a lot colder there than I was in the snow the day before. I think we were just not dressed for it this time. :) Here are Hailey, Shyann and Branson on the tire swing.The girls.The girls and Amy.I love how Amy's kids just stop whatever they're doing to pose for you when you take a picture! Here's Trulie being so cute!Amy & JarvisMe & LacyJust in case you couldn't tell how cold it was at the park, I took this picture of Hailey right when we got inside. Her red cheeks and snot show it better than I can tell it.The girls were so good the whole time. Here they are coloring after our trip to the park. Nice look Hailey!!!Here is daddy tucking in the kids after a long day of fun.Of course we need one of Lacy too...where she isn't asleep!! We headed back home on Sunday afternoon. The weather was yucky.We stopped at the Dairmans for Sunday dinner on our way back. By the time we got home the kids were exhausted!! Check out the "baby" in the car seat...who taught Hailey to prop a bottle up like that??Goodnight Talon.

Snow Day

We spent the extended weekend in Payson. We met the Smith's at the gravel pits on Friday and had a great time! As soon as our kids got to the snow they tried to make Snow Angels.Both of them told us on the way there that they didn't want to go on the sleds, but they would watch everyone else. Nick was great! He got Talon going and then had to keep pulling him up the hill to go again. He had a blast!!Even Joe got in on the action!Then Talon was ready to go on his own.Joe even talked Hailey into a short ride. She had a lot more fun that it looks like here. :)Joe set them out to race each other... ...but there was no winner because they stuck together... ...all they way down.Laurie got a lot more pictures than I did (including this one of our whole family)...you can see hers HERE.

We missed Amy & Tyler and their crew...they were just getting there as we were loading up to go home, but they came over and stayed with us at the cabin that night. We took a little trip to the park behind the house on Saturday, so I'll add those pictures next.