Happy Birthday Ellie!

Happy Birthday Sweetheart! We love you so very much and hope you have a wonderful day! It is fun to look at the past couple of years and remember all the fun memories with you in our lives...thanks for being you! Love Mom, Dad, Taylor and Gracie.

Christmas Walk

Oswego has a fun Christmas walk every year. So we went with some friends and had a great time. It was pretty darn cold, but nothing a little hot cocoa couldn't help! The girls LOVED this Elf! He was really fun, he was dancing around with the kids...............
This is my sweet friend and neighbor Sarah. We love hanging out. Her son Matt and Ellie are in the same class and are with each other ALL the time................ I love this picture!

Gracie loved all the animals........we took a trolley ride and sang Christmas songs, drank hot chocolate, ate, and had a great time with friends. Thanks everyone for a great night!

Happy Holidays..........what are your traditions?

I took a little break from blogging and am happy to be back. What a wonderful time of year! This is my favorite. Not because of all the presents, but its the time for traditions. I think back as I was growing up, and remember some of our family traditons. That is something that I have always wanted to carry on with my own family. So if you don't have any, well its time to start! It is fun to hear the kids talk about them and remind me of them. I'm sure many of you have heard about our little elf at Christmas time, well I will blog about him and take his picture when he comes!!!! This is something that my kids LOVE at Christmas time, they can't wait fot Fiddles to come. They are trying really hard to be good so he will come. Ellie is struggling a little with it! We have a few traditions that I would like to share throughout this month. I would love to hear about yours as well.. So here's to Traditions!

Happy Birthday Kristen!

Happy Birthday Sis! I don't have very many pictures of just us, so this will have to do. I just wanted to wish a a happy birthday. I hope you have a great day! I wish I were there to celebrate with you. Do the lunch thing and play all day. Thank you so much for being you, we have come along way and I am so glad that you are my sister. You are a wonderful mother,wife and a great friend. You are very talented in so many ways. Do something special for yourself today and know that your sisters far away love you very much!

Gracie just asked me is we were going to see you today! That makes me sad........ I love you very much and I hope you have a WONDERFUL day!

Happy Birthday Steph!!!!!!

Happy Birthday! I love you so...much and hope you have a WONDERFUL day! You are such an amazing sister-in-law. You are always so happy and

willing to help anyone and everyone. You are a great mother and wonderful wife. Your children are so lucky to have a Mom like you, always playing and doing fun things. I admire you in so many ways Steph. You are so beautiful, loving, kind, compassionate, caring, trustworthy, loyal, funny, I love who "You" are! I miss you and wish that I was there to spend theis day with you! Happy Birthday!

New York Part II

Despite of the bad weather, we still had a great time!
I usually don't take pictures of "just buildings", but these were so neat.
I took this picture because, the World Trade Center was twice as big as this building. Wow!
All bundled up and ready to go!
This is Central Park, isn't is pretty?

I could not believe how BIG the movie billboards were.
M&M world
Hershey store
This is a little blurry, but it is Matt from the Today Show. He is coming outside.
Another shot of Central Park. I will have Part 3 in a few

days, and that will be the last of New York. I hope these have

been fun to see and if you have not yet been you will make it a

priority to get there!

Fun Times in New York

Okay, these are not in order and that really bugs me. This is our first night in NY. We were so excited to see GREASE. Diana and I both watched the T.V. show "Your the one that I want" and we voted for Max and Laura. They are the ones who played Danny and Sandy.
The show was great! We had awesome seats and lots of fun! This was the whole reason for the trip to NY. I love Broadway Shows. We wished we would have had time to see more.
This was my first picture coming from the airport. I was amazed at the city.SO much traffic!
This is Max and Laura, the ones who played Danny and Sandy. They came out after the show to sign autographs and take pictures with "the fans". Diana and I were right there. They were really nice.

This is our apartment. Just straight down from "Time Square". It was a great location. We got really lucky, thanks to Mercy. We just arrived and were ready to shower and get dressed up.
Our first day at lunch, going over the "Schedule" of events. Diana was teased about being our travel agent and keeping us on task. Check out her folder. Thanks D, you did a great job!
Of course we had to have a NY hat for out hat day.
Stacy was such a trooper, 6mnths pregnant and walking EVERYWHERE! Her pore feet at night were so swollen and she NEVER complained! I was amazed at her. We had so much fun shopping! Well I have lots more pictures to post so until next time.........

Happy Halloween

Here is cute Ellie dressed up like Sandy frome Grease. She had so much fun!
Taylor dressed up like Shar pey From High School Musical......
Three cute girls.............
The Porters came over again this year..We love them!
This is Gracie, really tired and dragging her bag home! (these are not in the right order)

Kelly and Gracie carving the pumpkins, Kelly's favorite part of Halloween!
I think he ended up carving about 10 pumkins....The neighbors had him do some for them. He is really good at this and LOVES it! Good job babe!

I guess I saved the best picture for last......Little Gracie as Raggedy Ann. Is she cute or what? Now what do I do with all the CANDY? We had so much left...Then the kids added what they got to the bowl. I really wanted to start a diet. (CRAP)

Back To Being A Mother

I just arrived LATE last night from the most AMAZING trip, with some amazing women(thanks girls). We had such a great time in New York. I have never shopped so much in my life. Today my feet and back hurt so...bad, but it was well worth it! I will be posting pictures all this week about our trip. If you have never been to New York, well you better start planning it, what an experience. The people, the food, the shopping, the traffic.Did I say traffic yet? I have NEVER in my life seen so much traffic. Well I don't want to say anymore until I post pictures, so look forward to seeing much more on New York with 4 crazy gals. I have to say thanks you to my sweet husband for being so great while I was away and making sure that I had a wonderful time. Thanks to my girls for missing me so..much and making me happy to get back to being a Mother.

For those of you who are wondering.........

I decided that I would blog about this, due to many phone calls made to other people asking about our home for sale. Yes, it is for sale. We have a few options at this time and just thought that we would put the house up and see what happens. We are not really in a hurry, except that we would like to decide which area by June because that is when we need to refinance. So as of right now, there is not much to tell.We are not really sure where and when, but when WE know more ourselves, we will be happy to tell everyone! So if you know anyone that wants a GREAT house, just send them our way. We are trying to sell it on our own first. Then if we HAVE to, we will get an agent. I am not looking forward to having to keep the house SPOTLESS all the time, because that seems impossible with kids and a husband.......Happy cleaning to me!

I Love To See The Temple

Taylor had the opportunity to go to the Temple for the first time. We cannot believe that She is old enough. We were so excited for her. Kelly was very happy that he was able to go with her her first time. They had a wonderful time and Taylor said it was AWESOME! I am so grateful for her and her wonderful example in our home, she is amazing! I often reflect on my life growing up and think to myself , what would I have done without gospel? And now many years later, our children are faced with so much more than we were faced with. I am simply amazed at the amount of strength, courage and faith that Taylor has at such a young age. I am grateful for the opportunity that I have to be her Mother. Thanks you Taylor , for being such a wonderful daughter and example to our family.

Gotta Do What Ya Gotta Do!

Well this weekend my sweet friend Diana and I decided to do a garage sale! We are going to New York in a few weeks with a few other of our friends and I really wanted LOTS of shopping money. So I thought I would de-junk my house and spend the day hanging out with a friend drinking Diet Coke and listening to Hairpray Soundtrack and make money doing it! Sounds great right? Well it was great! we had a fabulous time and made great $$$$$. I was actually shocked , I myself made over $500 dollars. Can you believe it? So we decided to do it again with the left over stuff this next Friday.So my advice to all you girls, de-junk your house, have a girlfriend over, drink some diet coke and you will get paid for it! Thanks D for a great weekend, you are a GREAT friend, one whom I admire alot!

Girls, Girls, Girls

Well I may not be a"FOOTBALL MOM" but I am a "CHEERLEADING MOM". And do I have a cute cheerleader. Ellie is loving cheerleading this year, we found a different league this year that does not travel and DOES NOT play on Sunday. It is great. Last night they had a night game under the lights. It was fun! She is so cute. Way to go Ellie!
All the neighborhood boys asked me if they could come watch her cheer! I thought that was cute, and it was fun for me to hang out with some BOYS!!!!!!!
Taylor just had her late birthday party......she had a bunch of friends over to play volleyball and BBQ and play games. I think they had alot of fun, they are a good and fun group of kids.
All the girls..................................
All the boys............................

Girls keep us on our toes and very busy with cheerleading, gymnastics and just running them around. I feel like I LIVE in the car...Taylor made the JH 7&8 cheer squad and will start practice next week everyday after school and then cheer for like 3-4 games (basketball) a week so she decided to take a break on dance for a while because we can't do it all and we are still on the lookout for another dance place with better standards. That has been so........hard. Anyway I just wanted to catch our family and friends who live out of state up of what the kids are doing....Love ya!