Nature Walk

Pops took Sam and Luke out on a nature walk last weekend in Birmingham. It's just a short walk from their house and Sam has grown to love it. Now that Luke's getting around so well, he got to go with them. The last picture is Sam's new friend: the slug. He's been talking about it all week. Don't worry, it's still in Birmingham thank goodness...

Kole and Sam... after they decided it would be fun to demolish Pops' birdfeeder. I think Kole realized the mistake they made before Sam did, as evidenced by his hand over his mouth.

The whole family

We had two goals for our trip to Birmingham last weekend: eat LOTS of good food and get a picture taken with the whole family. We accomplished both and had some fun along the way.

1 Chronicles 16:34

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.

"my granddad's cooler than yours"

This past weekend, my kids got to see just how cool it is to have a granddad that happens to be an engineer. I heard Anne Madison having a conversation in the kitchen Saturday with Pops. "Pops, show me something you've never shown me before..." This propelled Pops and my step-brother Chris into coming up with something creative for the kids. Who would have thought an extension cord, swivel office chair, and leaf blower could be so much fun? As you can imagine, the leaf blower sent the kids spinning and they had a blast!

There was also a homemade hot air balloon. Pops folded up some plain white paper for the little basket on the bottom and attached it to a trash bag with the help of a little thread. Then he turned on his lighter and we had ourselves a working hot air balloon.


So if I ever hear my kids tell one of their friends "my granddad's cooler than yours" I might just have to agree with them. Of course, I'll tell them it's not nice to say things like that and we should be kind to each other. But deep down, I'll know it's true...

"I was the center of attention in Birmingham this weekend. Except for Sam's storytelling and Luke's dancing. Other than that, it was all about me." -Laney Grace

my sweet nephew Kole

this is just one picture from many adorable memories we made this weekend in birmingham. more to come...

our family of 5

Last weekend we had our family pictures taken. (Check out Katie's website if you like what she did and are looking for a photographer.) It was a fun time and I'm thrilled with the pictures she got. Here are just a few of them...

not sure how i did it, but i managed to get a picture of the boys going VERY fast on the carousel the other night. most of the other pictures i took were blurry, but this turned out and it captures the moment perfectly.

Laney is 5 months old...

Our sweet little Laneybug was 5 months yesterday.

sam's recent haircut

i took sam to get his hair cut friday. i ended up taking more pictures of luke because he was having such a great time. in this first picture, he was saying moon over and over again pointing up to the ceiling at something he thought looked like the moon.

luke enjoyed trying to bite off part of the plane's steering wheel.

to sum it up, this time around was much better than when we went 6 months ago. i was 8 months pregnant at the time holding sam in my lap for the cut. he was kicking and screaming so much that i started having contractions at the salon and they lasted for about 3 hours after the haircut. ugh!

bed time

We caught Laney with some cute expressions the other night...

our weekend in atlanta

it's been quite a while since ron and i have had a weekend away without the kids... we took advantage of ron having a day off and my family's willingness to babysit and went to atlanta. after checking in to the hotel, we headed to the "art of touch" for a relaxing massage. we had to start the weekend off right.

we shopped at ikea saturday morning. not only is it one of my favorite stores, but they have killer food. here's a glimpse of their yummy cinnamon rolls.

we went to a local mall and found out 50 cent was there. let me just say we're not his biggest fans. we're really not fans at all. but it's fun to see someone famous. who knows why... it just is.

here we are sunday right before heading in to the falcons game. the weather was gorgeous!

the stadium was really nice. unfortunately, we were sitting near a vent and were freezing our buns off.

we made it home just before 6pm and got to spend some time with the kids before they went to bed. although it was a great time away we were glad to get home to our kiddos. thanks b and pops for helping us make it happen!

my sweeties

if you want a hug from luke, ask him to squeeze you. he puts his hands on your cheeks and squeezes good and hard!

sam. pretending to be asleep.

this guy loves chewing on his blanket these days.

bright eyes.

There isn't a good reason for me to put these pictures on the blog other than the fact that I happen to think these boys are adorable. No good story to tell, just a couple of cute pictures.

Fall Festival

Whitesburg Baptist is where the kids go to school and MDO. They happen to have a free fall festival, so we went last night for the second year in a row.

Luke only played this one game. You were supposed to throw the rings onto the suckers. Instead, he placed each ring on the piece of blue tape he was standing on. Part of what made it so funny was that he did it in slow motion. The man would hand him a ring and he would very slowly bend down and place it on the floor.

As usual, Sam enjoyed riding down the inflatable slide.

After heading outside to check out the farm animals we went to dinner at Rosie's. After dinner, Ron took the boys out for a quick trick-or-treat. It was too chilly to stay out long without being bundled up.