Karissa's first concert

Karissa by her locker at school







I was shocked to hear how good she is getting with having only been playing since Oct. She did a great job.

Around the house

Kendall sleeps on her belly. Neither one of the other girls did this as a baby!

The girls will be going barefoot to school tomorrow

Katie decided at the last minute (the bus was already here) that her shoes, that she has been wearing since the beginning of school, were too big and she wanted another pair. Well it was too late to change and she had a huge fit over it and I had to put her on the bus upset.

Every morning Karissa has 30 minutes with me alone before her bus comes and so we usually talk about what interests an 11 year old. So during the conversation I looked down at her feet and she had one black shoe on and one brown shoe on. She had to race back home and change one of them while the bus was rounding the corner. From now on I'm going to have them pick out their shoes the night before or they will go barefoot to class!!

Decorating for Christmas

Karissa put our tree together! She loves to assemble things-she is going to be her husband's dream (not that she wouldn't be anyway) she loves and understands basketball and football too! We are almost ready for Christmas.





Kendall is seeing the tree for the first time-she wanted to touch everything!


Princess is thinking- HELP ME!

The Nutcracker

She had a great time and she looked great on stage. Katie is our little performer-she loves the stage!

My girls love Kendall.

Karissa is a GREAT big help and anyone who needs a sitter in 6 months she will be happy to do it! She changes her diapers, she can make a bottle and of course entertain her. I love having a helper around the house especially since Jason isn't home on the weeknights.

Katie can make Kendall laugh and smile like no one else can. Jason says it's because of Katie's big eyes coming at her at full speed!

Kendall ate mash potatoes for the first time on Thanksgiving day and she love them!

Kendall is 6 months old

My mom bought this for Kendall for Christmas and she loves it! It's so hard coming up with gift ideas for her because she has her sisters' toys and she is just 6 months old.

Katie and her best friend Brayden and their teacher

Kendall is 5 months old!

The Haunted house

Have you guessed who the scary people are?

Halloween party

Our old neighbors have a halloween party every year and they even set up a haunted maze up in their back yard. They do a scary and a non-scary tour and the kids love it. I was laughing at Karissa and Jillian because when they won the bandstand babe award I had to explain what that was and then what a sock hop was.



Our bandstand babe



Our little ladybug




Our cute black kitten

My family

Thank you Jason for working (driving) all day and then driving through the night so that we can go to my home in Va.




My mom and sister





Funny how Jason and I ended up with 5 kids in our car and my mom had Hannah and Chanda and Jason just had Madison!!

Nathan age 5 and Emily age 6



Madison age 2



Hannah (age 3) and Katie





My girls loved the country and they were so funny because I didn't realise how citified they were until we got to Chanda's.

My sister my best friend

My sister is truly my best friend which is why I have to keep upgrading my cellphone minutes (thank you Jason for never getting upset for the amount I do use!) I talk to her just about everyday several times a day. I hate that she lives 8 hours away and my wish would be for her and her family to move here.

The Pumpkin Patch

Katie was so excited that I got to go with her on her field trip to the pumpkin patch. She was counting down the days until we went. She has watched me go with Karissa on her field trips and now it was finally her turn. She is doing so well in school and she loves it and she loves her teacher. It's funny because both of my girls love riding the bus and I am so glad. Katie's bus driver plays childrens music on the bus and the kids have a blast! I will ask Karissa from time to time if she wants me to pick her up from school and she will reply no.

Kendall is 4 months old

She had her Dr's apt today and got 3 shots. She weighed 12.9 (which she is smaller than Katie was at this age) and is 24 1/4 inches long. She is a pretty easy baby and I love to hear her laugh!

Swim meeting

Tonight we had the East Middle swim meeting. I'm not sure what to do because the practices start at 8:50 at night and go til 9:50 and they are at Asbury College. I guess my problem would be that Karissa wouldn't even get home til 10:30 and then by the time she gets a bath/shower it will be 11:00 p.m and then the other problem is that Jason works nights so I would have to get Katie and Kendall out of bed in order to pick her up. She has practices 4 days a week. Now when Dennis and Mary move into our neighborhood in Jan they can help me out for the last 4 weeks. The practices go from Oct through the first week of Feb.

Karissa really wants to do this but I'm not sure I can do it all. I tried to talk her into some other activities, but she only wants to swim. I don't want to disappoint her and tell her no because of Jason's hours. I looked into maybe letting her swim at the Y but she would have to join and then we would have to pay 300.00. I'm not even sure if she would make the Y team.

Our Violinist

The life of Katie

Katie was waiting for me to read her a book in our bed when she fell asleep wearing her cat ears. It's part of her Halloween costume!

Bumbo time

You can't tell it by her expression, but she loves her Bumbo chair. They didn't have this when Karissa and Katie were born.

Fall is in the air...

at least for this week! My girls were so excited that they could finally wear some new clothes! Katie is all about clothes and shoes so today was her day. It is the end of Sept so it is time for the change of season. Katie's shorts were looking like daisy dukes and it's a good thing she is 5 because I wasn't going to buying her new shorts. Karissa's shorts were ok because bermuda shorts are the "in" thing so her long legs were covered!! Karissa looked so grown-up (or aleast like a 6th grader) in her long sleeve purple shirt, jeans and her UGG like boots that my girls call their fuzzy boots. I love those boots!!
Kendall is even in her fall clothes and she looks so cuddly. Kendall for the past 2 days has been wanting to go to bed around 9 and sleeping til 7:00. She is drinking 6oz now and is lasting longer between feedings. She really is a good baby and goes with the flow. All my girls were good babies, it's just when they hit 3 that they had "opinions".

Jason's work week this week will be a little less stressful on me. We at least know his hours and where he will be driving this week unlike being on call where he has an hour to get to work after they call and you have no idea when they will call. One day last week we had just went to bed and 5 mins later they called. I still don't like the hours this week but at least I know when he'll be gone and I can plan my days around it.

Dennis and Mary's house is going up pretty fast and we're excited. I could really use the help so I can't wait til they get here. The girls already have plans to ride their bikes or walk to their house and oddly enough eating breakfast there. I say oddly because neither one of my girls eat breakfast. I have tried everything in order to get them too. I will buy them whatever they want just so they will eat, but it doesn't work -so off they go to school without food in their bellies.

Midterm grades

I know it's early but Karissa's midterm grades were awesome!! She has 7 A's! She is doing so good in school and I hope she keeps it up. We are so proud of her. My mom gives her money for every A she makes and Karissa is saving up for an IPOD Nano so she is excited! She's been saving for awhile. We give the girls allowance and they are great at saving. They even buy presents for everyone at Christmas. They get so excited shopping with their money and love watching everyone open their gifts.

After these 9 weeks pass her electives change and she has Math Lab which I'm worried about. She doesn't like math and I've heard it's hard.

Gatlinburg 2009

We saw.........

A mamma bear and two cubs in the tree at Cades cove!!

Kendall is 3 months old!!

Gatlinburg here we come

We will leave for Gatlinburg as soon as Jason gets off work which he's been driving through the night so it will probably be Sat afternoon before we get there. We have been going to Gatlinburg for Labor day since Karissa was 4. I love that Joe and Krista come too-it's about a 5 hour drive for them and it works out perfectly since we only get to see them maybe 4 times a year.
We usually hang out at the cabin, swim, enjoy the hot tub, walk downtown Gatlinburg and drive to Cades Coves looking for bear, deer and coyotes. One year we actually saw 4 bear -two of which were cubs!! Our trandition is that we say goodbye to Joe and Krista after a great meal at the Apple Barn. We all can't wait to get there!!

Violin time

Karissa got her violin tonight and she is so excited. She can't wait to play it tomorrow. She wanted to play it tonight but the teacher told them they can't until they put the roslin on. They also told them not to tighten the strings and I looked over at her and she goes I know I've already learned my lesson. A couple of months ago Karissa decided to tune her guitar and broke the string and her grandparents took it to get it fixed! So now she knows NOT to tune her instruments.
She can't wait to take it to class tomorrow.

We've been very blessed this year because all of her teachers are very nice and they really enjoy having her in class. We got to tour her school on Sat and meet her teachers. Her homeroom teacher came up to us and before I could even introduce myself she goes Karissa is a very sweet girl! Karissa is a great kid and we are so proud of her.

Kathryn's adventure

Last week Katie had a sub on the bus. I was waiting outside and saw the bus turn around in our court and then flew past me. I started to panic because they forgot to drop off Katie. My neighbor saw me so I yelled to see if she got off the bus at her house and of course no so Kristy gave me the bus garage number and I called. The nice lady then radioed them and told me that they would turn around and bring her back. Sure enough the bus came back around and gave me my baby girl back. The guy said he was sorry, but when he called out Kathryn no one answered and down the street they went. I looked at her and told her, "your name is Kathryn and sometimes people will call you that, you just tell them you go by Katie." Plus I know she knows her name is Kathryn it just doesn't trigger her to go OH they're talking to me. I also said to her didn't you see your house go by and she responded, I wasn't ready to get off the bus yet.

Life raising a preteen girl

It is so nerve racking raising girls and the first born is the hardest because we don't have anyone to ask for advice and she's our guinea pig. She came home yesterday asking "again" if she could shave her legs. She said all her close friends do. I was planning on letting her if she made the swim team, but then yesterday happened. I remember being in 6th grade when I shaved my legs for the first time. So I talked to Jason and we're going to go ahead and let her.

Then she wants a facebook page so again Jason and I talked and we agreed that she could go ahead and have one but I need to be in the room when she is on it. We're going to talk to her about only accepting kids that she knows -not a stranger. This year so far has been full of challenges with her mainly letting her have more freedom. For example I let her and a friend ride their bikes to certain points in our neighborhood. It's hard finding the balance on letting go just enough so that we're not treating her like a baby but hanging on just alittle bit longer. Man it was so much easier when she was a baby and toddler.

The Southland Challenge

Lets just say that this didn't go over too well. I came up with the idea that the girls would buy a toy for a little girl and a little boy. So we headed to Walmart after church and they picked out a toy. We then headed to a hospital and we're told that we couldn't give it to a child. Karissa and Katie were confused about why and Katie was crying because she really wanted to give the toy to a little girl. We were told that we could just put it in a bin, well my girls know how to do that so that wasn't the lesson I wanted to teach them. I thought people were able to volunteer at Shriners so I didn't think anything about going and passing out a toy to a child. So after getting turned down by 3 hosptials we headed to downtown Lexington to see if we can find a child outside. We didn't see a single child. I then drove to Nicholasville and drove around and even went to a park and no one was there either. We did this for 4 hours and we were very discouraged.
I then decided that maybe this wasn't the challege for us so we decided to bake cookies for the fire department and sheriff's department. We delivered them on Monday evening.

I think in order to help out a family, it's all about who you know and if they know someone in need because I then called my friend and she was trying to do the same thing and they couldn't find anyone to give the toys r us gift card to.

2nd day of school

Karissa and I were so nervous about Middle school that I forgot to take pictures of the day so we captured the moment on the 2nd day. So far she likes middle school and she's excited to be learning how to play the violin. There are only 3 kids in her class and she's hoping it stays that way because the teacher has told them that it will be like having private lessons. She also said that she hopes it stays small because if she's good at it she doesn't want anyone to hold her back. She also asked that if she's good would we buy her a violin!!

She is also wanting to go out for the swim team which I think is great. She has had papaw teach her how to dive this summer and now she is diving off the diving board! I'm so proud of her, she has really blossomed these past couple of months. We've had alot of "firsts" with her this year, first time going to camp, going down the water slides, going on a zip line, diving, riding a roller coaster (not bad for a girl who is terrified of heights!) also a new school and starting a new program at church.

I hope this is her year to shine!!