Happy Halloween! - Blast from the past

maggie - cave girl -1996

maggie & tim - indians - 2000

aunt di & maggie - witch & hula girl - 1997

maggie - pat benatar -2007

friend mackenzie & tim - hannah montana & police officer - 2005

our family at disney world - dracula, skeleton, fairy, geisha - 2006

maggie & tim -2007

maggie & jenni - hula girl - 1997

maggie & grandpa - 1996

tim & maggie - danny & sandy - 2002

Sprout running scared!

While we were eating dinner tonight, we noticed our kitten, Sprout, snatch a bird out of the tree in our backyard.

Seconds after she caught it - she dropped it and took off across the yard. I'm not talking about any normal run - she was terrified!

She looked like one of those lizards that run on its back feet in the national geographic specials!

Before we could really wonder what she was scared of, a Hawk landed and enjoyed Sprouts dinner!

It was cool because I have never seen a free hawk up so close before. Poor little Sprout better count her blessings that she wasn't the hawks dinner!

pics of the hawk taken through the kitchen window

what was left of the bird after the hawk flew away - it sure didn't leave much for kitten!

friends

Tim's favorite neighborhood friends are Emma and John Matthew Gibson.

They are home schooled, so he only gets to play with them in the evenings and on the weekends. They are AMAZING kids!

These pics are from a few weeks ago -we have a pond down the street that they love to fish in! These are the days that great childhood memories are made of!

yuck

Poor Tommy has always been cursed with planter warts - yuck

He has had them burned out a few times over the years, but they keep coming back.

Here is a pic that Maggie took with her phone from this time.

Again, yuck.

Poor Tommy.

This little piggy went to market....

My friend Stefanie and I took a quick trip down to the Dallas Farmers Market this morning. I used to go pretty regularly, but haven't been in a while. It was a nice cool morning to go and all of the colors were so vibrant that we just had to snap a few pictures!

I didn't buy a whole lot today, just some plums, grapefruit, avocado,tomatoes, spinach and an eggplant. I put the avocado and some spinach on my turkey sandwich as soon as I got home - SUPER YUMMY!!! Can't wait to try the eggplant in my potpie!

Aren't all of these colors beautiful? I would love to do someones photo shoot down there - I know all of that color would make a great backdrop! I'm definitely going to have to work on doing that soon!

Blast from the Past!

Mother's Day 2006.

Magnets that the kids made in primary.

Tim loves me - it's SO obvious.

Will you take a dollar?

We typically try to do all that we can to avoid the semi-annual neighborhood garage sale - however, this fall the kids agreed to go through their stuff and participate. They were told that if they did the work, they could keep the money. Tim was all over that! (until it actually came time to work of course!)

Maggie set everything up the night before and was lucky enough to find the source of our ''mystery garage smell''! A decaying mouse in a bag of her clothes! We were shocked and really grossed out to see that people were undaunted by the nasty odor - they not only bought all of her clothes, but held them close to their bodies as they picked through other items! YUCK!! I guess they were fine once they were washed, but I'm not sure I could have made it all the way to the washer with that smell in my nose!

Anyway - Tim sold ALL of his toys and earned about 20 bucks for them! He had trouble helping at times - he would rather chit-chat with all of the strangers, but he did have moments where he worked. He even helped carry a ladies stuff to her car! I was so proud of his gentlemanly behavior! Then he said, "Dang, I thought if I helped her she might give me a tip." So much for a mothers pride!

They kids shared about a $150 dollar profit - not bad for a mornings work!

Screams!

Maggie had her 15th birthday party at 'Screams Haunted Theme Park' again this year - it was cold and dark and scary and fun!! You'll have to check her blog (the story of my life) for more pics soon.

Her cute BAT invites

coming out of what was apparently a scary house!

the gang

this lady was scary! she kept crouching down and popping out from behind trees!

"Don't let them get me, Haley!"

What's going on today

A little more remodeling.

We aren't doing too much this time - just a cookbook cabinet and a big cabinet (with cool Rollie drawers) in the utility room meant to increase our pantry space. (how can a house this big have a pantry fit for a one bedroom apartment? I'll never understand)

Nevertheless - I feel like we are remodeling the whole kitchen- -which would be nice, Tommy - wink, wink! -- We have canned food and cookbooks everywhere! Even piled into laundry baskets - thank you Tim for that help!

That's what is going on today!

Run

Tommy likes to run - he runs on the treadmill everyday like clockwork. He was sidelined a bit because of his shoulder surgery, but he is back! (he still keeps his sling on the arm of the treadmill just in case, i guess) I hate to run - so I am proud of him for getting up to do it each day, and for trying to keep himself relatively healthy. Mostly, the kids just thought this picture was gross with all of that sweat, so I wanted to post it for them! Run Tommy, Run!

Rain

It seems like we have had a whole lot of rain lately - I love it, but unfortunately, so do the weeds that have sprung up in my vegetable garden- "it's ok lettuce... it's ok spinach... I won't let them get you!"

Blast from the Past!

The reasons I am keeping this blog are #1 it is a journal of sorts for our family and #2 I can create a book of pics and posts at the end of the year that will serve as our family scrapbook.

So I am really killing two birds with one stone, right? Well, what about all of those pics over the years that I intended to scrapbook but somehow never got around to doing?

I thought about this as I was cleaning out my craftroom last week (sorting through ZILLIONS of poorly taken photographs!) This is the solution I came to - Blast from the Past!

Great idea, huh?! I was going to start it in January so that it would begin in our 2010 book - but I couldn't wait!

These will be in no particular order - if I try to organize I will not get this done either!!!

Tim and Friends on kindergarten field trip - Dallas Zoo

May 2005?

girl, jacob, mackenzie, lily,

tim

Backyard play

February 2003

maggie, josh, haley

(LOVE maggie's belly shirt! - They are STILL friends!)

haley, maggie, josh, caleb, tim

Florida 9-09

Tommy and I took a little vacation in september to Orlando. we went without the kids - the first time we had been away from them for more than one night - EVER!!! We had a great time together!

We went to Mickey's "not so scary" halloween party dressed as cavemen!

We were super intimidating! (as seen below)

We drove to the Orlando Temple, but had not brought church clothes, so we just walked around and took a few pics. (this is us with temple hedges!)

There is a new ballon ride at downtown disney - of course we went up in it!!

We also took a drive down through Tampa and into St. Petersburg. We spent just a little bit at Mediera Beach.

This is a few pics of us at the airport.We felt like we spent half of our trip there.

We had a bit of trouble with our flights. Gotta love being put on standby!!

Here is how we looked after about 7 hours!