MORE CATCHING UP TO DO! :)

Then came Halloween......MOM'S FAVORITE!!! O.K., it isn't Mom's favorits...actually it's her LEAST favorite, but I'm gonna post about it anyway:) First on the day's agenda was swim practice. You might be thinking, WHO ON EARTH WOULD GO SWIMMING IN OCTOBER!!! But that's exactly what we did!!! B.T.W., me and J3 are on the YSSC year-round swim team. The water is FREEZING, but it's really fun. After that, Joseph's swim coach, ESC(E...Swim Coach) had the annual YSSC halloween carnival in the YMCA gym. She did a great job!! There was a "haunted house"(a blow-up building), face painting, and so much more!! Me and J3 got our faces painted and got LOTS of candy. Then, we went home ot get ready for the NEXT event of the day, a fall party at our friend's house. J3 was a football player and I was a cowgirl. Here are some pics of the day......


Me and J3 with our faces painted


J3 the football player


Me the cowgirl

Treat your mother right!!

This is just for a laugh!! P.S.The little girl rapping is impersonating Mr. T!! (Be sure to mute music at the bottom to get the full effect!)

Here we go again!

Hi!! A here!!! Since Mom hasn't had time to post in awile, I decided that I would catch ya'll up on what's been going on. So, here we go!! This year, we went to the beach TWICE!! The first time, we went to Seabrook Island. It was great!! The weather was perfect and so was our "home." Here are some pics....


ME and J3


A palm tree outside the house

The second time we went with some of our friends from church. We had a blast!! Here are some MORE pics.....


Some of us playing on the beach


Just a fun picture(good photography J3!!:))

There's more to come!!

Then there was the summer...

"A" celebrated birthday number 12. Is that possible???? We had a mystery party. None of the guests nor the birthday girl herself knew what we were going to do. We even blindfolded "A" at first so that she would really be surprised by our first stop on the mystery tour. It was a sweet group of girls and a very happy day for our oldest child!

We met Gaggle, Mimi and Big Daddy in Dahlonega for a fund raiser for Gaggle's fraternity at NGU. The men played golf while the rest of us enjoyed the quaint little town. The day ended with the kids getting to meet a few of the Falcon's cheerleaders who had come to the golf tournament.

What have we been doing?

Since I decided to hit the highlights of the past 7 months....yes, it still pains me that I am that much of a slacker... I am going to post a lot of pictures and few words.

So here are some of the highlights...


We got to keep a precious daughter of precious friends...Spoiled her rotten and totally ruined the "burrito" routine. Word from the parents is that with some serious retraining all returned to normal!! In the mean time we had a blast with her.

Some of our most favorite friends moved away to Texas. They really deserve a separate post because they are so awesome and so missed.

"A" tried out volleyball. We all thought she was great. She did it with her frequent "partner in crime" K (who did great too). Lala was looking through pictures the other day and commented on how much K and "A" have done together. They have been buddies since they were 4 (maybe earlier with play group) and I am so thankful that they have had each other to grow up with!

J3 turned 8 years old. We just celebrated as a family and kept it very simple this year. Turns out he and J2 are going to go on a big father/son trip to Dallas to see the Cowboys play...so that is his belated big birthday celebration. J3 shares the same birthday with two of his good friends (hence the picture of him with the two girls)...which I think is just really neat!

The kids had an international meal during their home school history class. Yummy and educational. Is there a better combination???

My AMAZING, AWESOME, LOVING, GENEROUS, INCREDIBLE parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. And in the world of blog posts, this definitely deserves a tribute of its own. However, I am sticking to the highlights theme for the moment and will go back and do more if I can. We tried to get a family picture during our time together. However, it didn't work out. The photographer was nice, but just didn't get the quality we were looking for. So we had a fun and memorable day, but no portrait.

The day after the anniversary celebration, we had the opportunity to celebrate one of my nephews birthday. This is especially fun because he lives in Ohio and it is a rare opportunity to get to celebrate birthdays together. My sister-in-law and my brother's sons were with us too. It really was a ton of fun. We went to an arcade with games and laser tag (yes, I played too. What fun!). One of the highlights was when "A" and TC hit the ticket jackpot on one machine. They won 938 tickets, but the machine ran out somewhere in the 400s. That is a lot of tickets!! And you know what that means...fake, flashing teeth all around!

More to come.........................