Alyssa's 6

My oldest baby is 6 years old now! Can you believe it?!? I can't! I love my baby girl so much. She is growing up to be such a beautiful young lady. Hehe. Love you my Syssa girl.


Alyssa's bday cake. What a cutie!



One of the presents she got. She loves books!



Blurry picture but these are some of the outfits Syssa got for her birthday.

Six Flags

This year we decided to get season passes to six flags. There are a lot of good reasons to get these but the water park peaked my interest the most since it gets quite hot here. Today we went for the first time and the kids had a blast, they did the rides today.


Waiting for the first ride.


Nattie acted like a big girl. She didn't want to sit in the stroller she wanted to walk. She wanted to go on all the rides just like the big girls. It was too cute... there were quite a few things for her to do!


On the "ferris wheel" ride.

Nattie didn't get to go on the Wiggles plane ride. She was too small. She was sad for a minute but she got over it once she saw the slide.

The train ride.

Micah lookin' good.

EASTER with friends!!!

We had a great Easter celebration. Our church did something a little different for Easter and I guess it's becoming a tradition at the church. They had bright lights during the praise and worship part of the service and then before the sermon started they handed out noise makers and then bounced beach balls everywhere with a song called "Happy Day". It was actually really cool I thought. Then we came home and ate lunch and did an Easter egg hunt with our friends Raleigh, Heather, and their little boy Isaac. Then we settled down and played some golf on the playstation and then, of course, rockband. Because who can say no to rockband on Easter. Hehehe. Here are the pics of the festivities.


Samara, Isaac, and Alyssa waiting to have at it at the Easter egg hunt.


Alyssa finding eggs.


Samara

Natalie

My beautiful girls and their mommy. I wish I would've gotten a picture of me in my dress. It was really pretty. I'll have to wear it again sometime soon.

Eating a jelly bean... or trying to but daddy's teasing her.

Nattie found an egg.

The gang looking for eggs.

This was the last egg found. Alyssa found it of course.

Nattie with her loot.

Isaac hunting.

Hello girls.. having fun?

There's one Daddy!

Me and my hunny.

WHACK!! haha.

ANother picture of me and my girls.

Heather and her Isaac.

Red Lobster night with the grands!

We haven't taken a lot of pictures lately so I decided to take some random pics. This is what we came up with tonight.


I didn't know that Micah took a picture this close up... hello Kim! haha.


Finger lickin good!



Ketchup is yummy. What cuties!



Goofy faces.

Meemo's goofy face

Micah's goofy face.

Micah's photography.

In the car on the way home I got bored. This is me acting like I'm cool. HeHe.

What a good picture of me and my hubby.

LLLLLICK!

CHEEEEEESE!

What?!?!?

My two cuties!

The grands... beautiful couple! They've been married 49 years! WOW!

Grandpa and Nattie. Eat little girl!

My Syssa Sue with her Meemo.

Busy Busy

So here it is March already and I haven't blogged since January and I have lots of good reasons why. I started doing a preschool/daycare type thing at my church called Mother's Day Out. I teach kids that started in September at 19-24 months old. Now they are all over 2. It's on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9-2 so I'm gone just about all day Tuesdays with the girls' gymnastics class after Mother's Day Out. Thursdays I'm also gone most of the day. In between I do chores water my lawn that I don't want to die and spend as much time with my little ones as I can before they think they're too old for their mom. I am trying to make a better schedule so I'll be able to do the fun things I love to do like scrapbook, cross stitch, blog, etc etc etc. I need to get a lot of my stuff sorted and put away and then I will be fine. Hopefully I can get that done soon. Just rest assured that we are happy here and mostly healthy and are loving life.

I said mostly healthy because I am going to be going to an ENT (Ear, Nose, and Throat) dr on Wednesday because I lost my voice about 5 weeks ago and it still hasn't come back completely. I've been told it can be many different things so I'm going to go and see if I can get it taken care of before it turns into something bad. I'm not nervous at all but I'd really like my voice back completely really soon. I'll post again when I figure out a good schedule. Until then, I hope you live in joy and happiness
:-)

GYMNASTICS

Alyssa and Samara started gymnastics yesterday. They loved it. We went to check it out last Tuesday and while we were watching I could barely restrain them from going to the classes that they would be going to. They went for the first day and bounced on trampolines, did uneven bars, did the floor etc. We are excited for them to start doing something to expell their energy and they are so excited for something new and exciting. I think I've found a piano teacher for Alyssa as well but I haven't contacted her yet. I'll keep y'all (I had to do it since I'm in Texas now) posted on all that we are up to.

Our church also has this thing called Mother's Day Out where you take your kids from 9-2 on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and they get to learn about Jesus and letters etc. They are getting an actual curriculum for next year and are opening up three more classrooms so they need more people to teach. It will earn me a little extra money and get Samara and Natalie in for free and I love to teach little kids especially about Jesus so I decided that I'm going to be a teacher next year for Mother's Day Out. (It starts in August again.) This year though they needed some help because there are quite a few people that are going to be out of town or even when someone gets sick or the like that they need a substitute teacher. I substituted on Thursday and yesterday and I loved it. I subbed for the 12-18 month olds. Tomorrow I'm going to be subbing for the 3-4 year olds (Samara's class). I think Natalie would do better in her class if I wasn't in there with her but I think Samara might do just as well. We'll try it out tomorrow and if doens't work out to have Samara in my class then for next year I will just do a different age group. It's a great opportunity and I'm so glad that the Lord has provided this for me.

Popcorn

Last night I popped some popcorn for myself and didn't eat the whole bag so this morning when the girls got up and Syssa went off to school Nattie and Mara asked if they could have some of the leftover popcorn. I told them, "sure you can each have a handful after you finish eating your oatmeal". Nattie got done and got her handful of popcorn and then Mara got done and wanted her handful as well. She ran over to the popcorn bowl and put her tiny hand in. I said, "no, let Mommy get your handful." I thought she was going to fight me on it but she didn't and quietly sat back down in her chair and waited.

Now this doesn't seem like a "spiritual story". But I thought about something that happens I think quite a bit in my own life. God tells us that he has a great big handful of popcorn waiting for us, but we want to get our own handful of popcorn. We want to do everything ourselves. So in the end we end up with a human-sized handful of popcorn instead of a God-sized handful of popcorn! Wow, how many times do I do that and wonder why the help of God isn't coming. It's because I have stuck my hand in the popcorn bowl and won't let God in.

I just wanted to share that with everybody today and I hope you are all blessed because of it.

Gift Exchange

Every year we do a Christmas gift exchange with my siblings and my neices and nephews so that it cuts the cost of what we would be spending on everybody. I have 7 siblings with 3 married and my mom has 10 grandchildren so you could imagine what that big bill would look like if we didn't do things this way. This year we decided to do T-shirts. Melissa had Micah, Jack had Kim, and Chantel had Natalie. Here is what we got this year. They are too fun.

It fits Micah perfectly

Pie, Ice Cream, and a bath

Today for dinner we did something new. We had a rather late lunch so for dinner we decided to have apple pie and ice cream and that's it. Believe it or not the girls didn't eat much... I guess it was too sweet... but when we asked them if they wanted anything else they said no. I'll bet the ate too much for lunch. Even though I didn't think it was a good idea at first the girls loved it! They were so happy that they were allowed to just be kids. After that of course they were a mess. In our new house we have quite a big tub in the Master bath. I love it so I thought I'd share it with my wonderful kiddos. They had a great time splashing around. They did get a little too out of hand so I had to tell them to stop splashing so much. Then, after that we got to play Disney's Scene It with the girls. Nattie didn't understand that she wasn't supposed to take the pieces off the board so we tried to remember where we were. We had a great night. I hope all of you had a great night too.