Talking to daddy.

Laurel's first family photo!

Bringing Laurel home!

Pretty cool. Let us know what her name will be

She was born at 10:16am. 8lb15oz! 20 2/3 in long. Her name is tba! Welcome to the world baby!

This is a new experience for me. I got up this morning at 3:15am, got ready and now we are on our way to the hospital to have a baby. Wish us luck!

Aspen's Comics

Click to enlarge:

No baby yet.
But we are having lots of fun with grandma and playing with our Christmas presents!

Merry Christmas!

Out of the Mouth of Babes

Olive drew this at church today.

The diet Coke and mentors geyser!

Making gingerbread houses with grandma! (No baby yet...)

Emily requested one last belly shot. I went in today and I am at a 6 now. Hopefully that means I'll go soon and fast! (But not so fast I can't get to the hospital!) if all else fails, I am scheduled for induction on the 27th. (Darn that insurance deductible starting over!)

Merry Christmas everyone! We are sending out Valentines cards this year since a Christmas card without our newest seems so incomplete! I hope to be posting good tidings of great joy for our family soon!

We love you!

(This IS Cedars pose). We got a fun package from some friends in Japan. Included in it were these little puzzles. They are 150 pieces and when put together make a 5x7 puzzle. Even harder is that 3/4 of it is white! Cedar had a good time putting it together! Thanks Tomoko!

Aspen and Hannah. They got to shop and help out behind the scenes!

Daddy and Cedar shopping till they drop!

One of our new favorite Christmas traditions is to go to central services and "load the sleigh." It's where you help package all of the angel tree gifts to be picked up by parents. Last year was our first time helping and the kids couldn't wait to go again this year. I love to see them getting so excited about picking out Christmas gifts for OTHER kids. We always leave with a big dose of Christmas spirit!

Happy birthday Olive! I can't believe you're 8!!

Linden really enjoyed the rain this morning! The driveway had a little stream that he could play in. Too much fun!

Blast From The Past: 2005 Slideshows

Here are some slideshows of the kids we put to music back in 2005. About 18 minutes or so if you watch them all.

We did Olive's party the other day. My mom got a really cute idea to dip water balloons in chocolate and let them dry into bowls from Pinterest, but the chocolate was so hot they popped! Hahaha.

-Aspen

First, they decorated goody bags with lots and lots of stickers.

We also had the candy table ball game. It is where you wrap up a whole bunch of candy and the first person gets to get it. Then the next person tries to roll either doubles or a specific number, your choice.

The kids racing.

At the party, I was a coach. We split into two teams, so my dad, Cedar, and I were coaches.

Linden doesn't get the fancy $10.00 sets, so he gets plastic ones.

One of the activities- racing.

It's official guessing time! Our baby girl is due December 25th, but as of Tuesday she would be considered "full term." I have never gone very early. Aspen was 4 days early, Cedar 45 min late, Olive was right on time and Linden one day late.

My mom gets here the afternoon of the 20th and she has had perfect timing. If she's not here by the 26th, I will schedule an induction on the 27th. My mom leaves the 30th. (And our deductible starts back at 0 on the first which would make her a VERY expensive baby!)

Now it's your turn! Chime in and tell me when you think she'll come. Winner gets ultimate bragging rights. Guess the day, time, her height and weight! Good luck!

Have you heard of speed stacking? Yea, me either. Until about a month ago when Cedar and Olive came home with pamphlets from PE. In a nut shell, you have 12 cups and you build pyramids as fast as you can then take them down as fast as you can. It's an actual sport. When Olive came looking for ways to earn money to buy a set I told her to get some cups out of the cupboard. (Wrong mommy!) There wasn't really a way for Olive to earn that much money so Jonathon came up with a good plan.

We had been trying to get Olive to decide on a birthday activity. She was going back and forth from a family outing and a friend party. Jonathon suggested she host a cup stacking party. Since they've been doing it in school all of her friends know about it and like it and that way we would foot the cup stacking bill.

The cups came yesterday and the party is in a week ( as long as baby doesn't want to come to the party!)

The kids are having fun. Stay tuned to see if this was the best party idea yet or... Not!

Olive vacuuming the cobwebs and dust bunnies.

The list!

What do you do with a 5 day weekend??? Since we have no travel plans and the kids have minimal homework they are earning computer time with chores! This really is one of my all time favorite things. We had to cut out computer/tv/wii time during the week because we simply don't have time. Now though with 5 almost empty days ahead the kids want to catch up on screen time. I give them a list of chores that need to be done and the approximate time it will take them, then they get that same amount of time on the computer or wii. Total win win situation!

I am on my filet trip for Beta. We went to the mall and I tried one of these!
Aspen

She's off! Aspen loading the bus to head for Nashville for the state beta competition! She was so excited! I hope she has a great time! (I will need to reload her phone, she only has a few texts left!  I think she's used 100 texts in the last 8 hours!)

Cedar's soccer banquet. The ate and played Xbox soccer. Great way to entertain so many boys, too bad Cedar had no clue how to play...

Roarrr!

Jonathon's weekend tradition. It used t be cre

We voted, did you?

We celebrated Aspen's birthday today with her birthday dinner of salmon and green beans and death by dark chocolate cake. Happy birthday (again) Aspen!

Blast From The Past: Aspen Playing, "The Thing That Has No Name"

Accidental twins!

Learning the ropes with daddy.

As promised...
Here is Olive. This is pre makeup, and a bit more layered than Saturday, but she finally gets her picture up with the rest of us.

We had a ton of fun trick or treating. Jonathon came home a little early and we ate then headed over to our friends house/neighborhood. We started at 6:00 which seemed pretty early as we pulled in and no one was out yet and it was still bright outside. We hooked up with our friends and set off. We were the first trick or treaters at many houses but it ended up perfectly because the kids had a little time to hang out with their friends before we had to go home. We left at 8:00 and the kids brought their haul in and made it to bed almost on time!

Happy Halloween!

Aspen's birthday party.

Happy birthday Aspen!
(And she didn't think she'd get any presents this year...)

Trunk or Treat

After Cedar and I got home from his last soccer games and Jonathon had been playing Mr. Mom all day we hurried and finished up our costumes for the trunk or treat.  I had seen this neat idea for a skeleton on pintrest a month ago and had everyone but the girls on board for a family costume.  The original idea was to make everyone's, but after finding cedar and Linden perfectly wonderful skeleton jammies that they liked, I decided that a done costume was worth 10 unmade wonderful home made ones!  Good thing too since up until it was time to put on our costumes I was drying them with a blow drier!  Jonathon made the cute baby skeleton and it turned out about a million times better than the thing I had made.  (Think alien baby.)

Jonathon and I.  (With baby!)

Aspen who wanted to be a cat, not a skeleton.  (Forgive my beauty, I hadn't even looked at my hair since we left for soccer at 7:15 am...)

My cute boys!

Our skeleton family.

Olive was too busy running around getting and trading candy so I never got a picture of her.  I will be sure to get  her Wednesday before we leave the house.  She was a very cute devil!