handsful

Where did it go?

We just finished the first week of December.  Eeek.

In the interest of just wanting to catch up, below you will find lots of photos.

We loved our day trip to Boone, where we hiked up Elk Knob in the snow.  Some of us in shoes that had no business trudging through deep snow and slush.  Ahem.  We had a great time, nonetheless.

There are also pictures of the Testify drama team at our house…with Randy writing and directing the plays, we held two practices for the drama alone, and had a blast doing it.

Pics of Testify Too (the Jr. age choir that Lainey and Dylan are in) in their first Christmas concert.  Too cute.

I wasn’t able to get photos of the first Testify concert, but I’ll get some at an upcoming concert for sure.  Stay tuned.

I’ve also got before and after shots of our house painting project.  I should say our friend Doug’s painting project, since he did all the work! And, did an amazing job, too.  We LOVE it.

Finally, pictures of our Thanksgiving dinner here (just us this year), and our traditional Thanksgiving afternoon trip to our quaint little downtown for family pics.  It was COLD, but we had to grin and bear it.  Heh.

Enjoy :)

Elk Knob trip…

The fabulous Testify drama cast, 2014

Lainey and Dylan are in Testify Too (1st-6th graders) and they had their first concert.  Lainey plays a townsperson, and Dylan plays King Herod!

Let’s see what else…oh yeah, our switch from drab beige to gray paint!

I know the bottom wall looks kinda blue, but it’s really not.  After sweating choosing the color, I’m THRILLED with how it looks.  The browns in our furniture, etc. really pop against the gray.

Lastly, we did Thanksgiving this year with just us.  We still got the big turkey, and I cooked all the usual sides that are totally expected.  We ate (too much) and then headed downtown for our picture session.  We started this a couple of years ago, and I just love it.  We have so much fun running around the almost empty streets, finding fun places to take pics.  It was a bummer that we couldn’t get a full family shot (no one else with us, and couldn’t find the tripod!), but we got some good shots, I think.

Now?  On to all the fun and blessings of Christmas…

As our big kids get bigger, Halloween is changing.

Lainey and Dylan are, of course, still full-out loving the whole thing…dressing up and candy.  What’s not to like?

Dylan, for the 4th straight year, went super hero again.  Captain America!

On the other hand, Lainey had NO clue what she wanted to do.  Weeks ago, we bought her a big, curly blond wig, thinking we’d build a costume around that.  That never happened.  So, pretty much last minute, we pulled together a brainiac nerd costume.  Daniel even let her borrrow one of his school books for a great prop!

Now, Abbey.  My “Peter Pan” child, still loves to dress up.  She used two dresses and altered them into this one dress and headpiece to be a spider queen.  Add the red wig and a great make-up job, and voila.  No trick-or-treating for her, though.  She went to Daniel’s house and they just walked around his neighborhood.  I don’t have a photo of Daniel, but I think he was basically the spider queen’s assistant.  Maybe.

Marley and her friend Kylie both did their make-up and went to a local farm that was having a haunted woods event.  No pic.  Maybe I’ll get one that Marley took, and add it here later.  Marley did both make-ups, turning Kylie into a lovely deer and adding a creepy crooked mouth to herself.

The boys?  They went to their friend Trevor’s house.  I’m told they went to Wal-Mart and bought candy.  It’s all about the sugar.

Because we don’t live in a neighborhood, we always have to crash someone else’s.  We parked at the neighborhood pool, and joined in with the other zillion Elsa and Olaf’s walking around.  Ran into some friends, which was fun.  Then, it started to lightly sprinkle.  No big deal.  We kept going.

Till the sprinkles turned into pelting cold rain, and we realized we didn’t know how to get back to the pool.

Thankfully, we found a guy who lived there and knew how to get us to the pool.  Even walked with us in the rain to get there.

God bless him.  My off-brand Uggs are NOT waterproof and my toes were starting to splash around in there.

We made it home, got into dry clothes, and watched L and D trade candy.  They gave me their Snickers, and gave Randy a few Reece’s.

And, with that, another Halloween is over.

On to Thanksgiving!

MUST get better about blogging.

Anyhoo…

Did I share Lainey’s new bed transformation?  She’s been wanting the bunk beds gone for a while, but we weren’t sure what we were going to do.  Twin?  Buy her a double?

I’d like to say we did this because it’s just cool.  Which, it is.  But, we were motivated a teensy bit by the fact it meant we didn’t have to store the other bed.  Ha.

She’s since picked out a really pretty king-size comforter.  She loves it.

Dylan had a Shriner’s visit a little while back, where we picked up his 4th prosthetic leg.  That’s 4 in the span of about 3 1/2 years.  This is a picture of his recent x-ray taken WITH his old leg on.  Kinda cool looking!

It would be tacky to say something like “this boy is on fire”….so, I won’t.

All four :)

Garner Senior High

Randy and I both celebrated our 30th high school reunions this month.  It was great getting two nights away together (they were only 2 weeks apart).  It’s nice having big kids that can hold down the fort and care for Lainey and Dylan while we’re away for a night!

Apex Senior High

We had a great time at both!

Look closely and you’ll see a fish and a worm on the screen above.  This is Dylan’s class at church, and Payton provides the voice (and accents) to Billy Bass and Wormy.  Billy is a country boy fish, complete with a “suthern” accent.  Wormy, on the other hand, is from the Indian ocean and has a very thick East Indian accent.  How he keeps them straight, I don’t know.  But, Payton loves doing it.

Now, we’re up to this past weekend.  We crammed a lot into yesterday, fer sure.  Testify had a fundraiser, giving car washes and selling BBQ plates.  It was very successful, and we had a lot of fun helping out.  I got a chance to channel my inner “lunch lady” and made up plates of delish bbq, beans, slaw, and rolls.  Randy supervised the car washing.  The big kids each had shifts helping out, and the littles jumped in to help wherever they could.

Dylan also had his last soccer game on Saturday.  He really enjoyed this season, but he tells us he wants to get back into Acro and take free running classes.  We’ll see.  I do think he might go back to soccer eventually, he loved playing goalie (the above pic shows the ball that rolled between his legs and went straight into the goal…heh), and he was never afraid to get in the thick of all those kids kicking at the ball.

They played Brazil on Saturday, and one of Dylan’s classmates at Classical Conversations played on the other team.  Avery is such a cutie pie.

We ended the day heading to our favorite farmer’s market in town, to let the littles pick pumpkins.  We want to find a time for ALL of us to do this, but it’s been hard to get us all in one place at one time.  Sigh.

Dylan picked his pretty quickly.

Lainey searched and fretted over all of them for a while.

But, in the end, the perfect punkin’ was found.

I think that about catches everything up.

Happy Fall, ya’ll :)

Of all the sports that our big kids ever tried, soccer was never one of them.

But, it’s the sport that Dylan has had his heart set on for a few years now, so he’s giving it a shot.

This Y league is just two short months long.  We think it will give him a good taste of the sport to see if he really wants to play it longer term.

As any good soccer mom, I went out yesterday and bought 5 camp chairs.

Today was their first game.

He’s on team Mexico.

He’s had 3 practices so far.

He loved playing goalie.  Got a few great blocks, let a few balls sneak by him.

It’s a learning process.

He’s definitely scrappy, and not afraid to get in the middle of it all.

I can’t say yet that I loved watching soccer more than, say, baseball or basketball.  We’ll see.  Another sport he’d like to try is baseball.  I’m psyched that.

But, for now, I’m a happy soccer mom, cheering my little dude on from the comfort of my camp chair on the sidelines.

Go Mexico!

Yeah, it went by really fast!

We didn’t get out on the lake as often as we would’ve liked.  But, when we did…we had a great time.

Here are some shots from our last outing…

Payton is a little absent from the pictures…he prefers to ride and swim, rather than kneeboard or wakeboard.  He loves to tube, but we didn’t do that this go-round.

Me?  I’m strictly a swimmer and rider, too.  I’ve been tubing and attempted kneeboarding before.  I’m so not a sporty girl.

So long, Summer 2014.

You were too short, too busy at times, but always fun.

So, my last post was a month ago.

Oops.  Getting major slack from my kids about this.

It’s not my fault!  Summer has sped by!  I’m still waiting for those lazy summer days so I can tackle a few projects.

(The kids dual enrollment classes and Abbey’s community college classes begin Aug 18th.  Our other courses at home will begin the following week.)

Who am I kidding about projects?

But, I’ll still share a few of our favorite pics from the last month.

Buckle up.  This will be long.

I think I mentioned that I took Marley and her friends Kylie and Kailee to Hilton Head for a weekend.  It was her 16th birthday wish, rather than a big party.  Since I got to enjoy a first-ever trip to HH, I whole-heartedly agreed!

This is Marley checking out the view from the Harbour Town Lighthouse.

I also took them to go para sailing.  Randy and I did this in Mexico last summer, I knew the girls would love it.

One of the girls was a little nervous, given the height and water thing, but she immediately said she’d do it again in a heartbeat.  I’m protecting her identity ;)

Coming in for a landing!

View from our balcony…Randy’s traveling = hotel points. Our stay was free.

It was a great weekend, despite a few too many clouds.  They had their beloved beach day, we ate some delish food, and we spent both nights taking LONG walks on the beach.  I had such a great time with these girls!

Another summer highlight was our Family Weekend Vacation.  Despite our best efforts, we could never find more than 3 days that we were all available..no one working, or had other commitments with friends, etc.  I’m learning that, as they get older, they have these LIVES that don’t always include us. Makes me happy (they’re becoming independent young adults..gulp), and sad at the same time. I find myself wanting to re-live when they were all little.

Hindsight, ya know?

We decided a nice weekend in Atlanta would hit the spot…especially if we included a Braves game.  That always makes us happy! We also visited the Georgia Aquarium, which was super crowded, but also really fun.

After spending 5+ hours (yeah…) at the aquarium, we decided we were hungry.  And, since the theme for the weekend was “follow the crowd”, we had no choice but to head here.

Where is “here”, you ask?

The Varsity.  The ultra-famous burger joint that serves 2 miles worth of chili dogs per DAY.  It’s been open since 1928.  I mean, Elvis used to order cheeseburgers to-go several times a day.  It’s a legend.

But, when Randy saw that line, he gave me that “are you kidding me??”  look.  But, being the great dad that he is, we ventured in and enjoyed our Varsity lunch!  The kids were thrilled, because they’d come here on Testify tour a couple years back.

We then fought the traffic (again), and  made our way back to the hotel, and got dressed for the game..

I LOVE going to Braves games.  And, we’ve been to about 4 in the last few years.

They’ve won all 4.  We’ve got a good record :)

How much do I love this picture?  A lot.  These are the “Braves Girls”…we asked Dylan if he wanted a picture with them.  He sauntered right up there and smiled big.  Heartbreaker.

Abbey-girl.  The girl is busy being a young adult these days, and isn’t around as much as she used to be.  They’re all growing up so dang quickly.

Sigh…I digress.

I call this one “Payton contemplating entering the scary crowd of people”.  Remember the theme?  Get over your claustrophobia, dude.

Before the game, we hit the Braves store (of course, it was crowded), and picked up a few new T-shirts, etc.  Payton bought this…fans of Evan Gattis (Braves catcher) call him El Oso Blanco.  It means White Bear.  Good luck getting this back, Tater.

Braves win!!

The required pic of Randy and me, after the game.

Back to the hotel, and then we headed home in the morning.  But before we did, Randy managed to find a few locations in Atlanta where the Walking Dead is filmed.  This is one of their fav shows.  I always wimp out and go to bed when it comes on.

Zombies, ewww.

They’re sitting in front of someone’s house.  Rick’s maybe?  I dunno.  But, they were pretty psyched, as you can tell.

Ethan would have been in the pic, but he’d been sick off and on since the day before, and was feeling pretty lousy that morning.

Thankfully, he made the trip home fine.

What else this summer?  Lainey and Dylan went to a week of Y camp. Marley and Lainey had a week of Acrofitness camp.  We all had an awesome week of VBS, where the big kids helped in elementary classrooms (Ethan and Marley), a group of girls learning a dance for the week (Abbey), and as skit characters named Zip Quick, Wormy, and Billy Bass (Payton).  Marley is currently in the middle of two weeks at the beach with Kylie, and Abbey left this morning with Daniel for a few days at the beach with his family.

As is usual for us, our summer was full.

Maybe Fall will be a better time to finish those projects?  :)

We have a houseful of 16 year olds now.

Eeek.

They take their driving tests end of August.

Why do I complain about all the driving I do?  Soon I’ll just be worrying about all my kids driving THEMSELVES everywhere.

Birthday dinner…with family and friends.

They elected to skip a party this year…wanting instead to go on trips with us.  I took Marley and two of her friends to Hilton Head for a weekend.

Pics of that to come later…

The boys and Randy went to Boone to hike and white water raft.

Both trips went great…special memories made for all of us.

And, this concludes our July birthdays for 2014!