Monday, December 31, 2012

Top 12 of 2012

January

Tan started riding his bike with out training wheels

Ryleigh lost her first tooth!

My favorite blog post from January is this one

February

Tan Man turned 5!

March

We enjoyed having 2 five year olds

April

We celebrated Ryleigh Claire's Birthday

Aunt Whit ran a half marathon!

We went to Spring Break!

May

Tan fished and fished and fished some more!

June

We just enjoyed the Summer! It was the best Summer ever!

July

We spent almost 6 whole weeks at the beach this Summer!

August

The kids started 1st grade and kindergarten. They are getting too big too fast!

We spent the weekend in the woods. 

September

Blakeley arrived!!!!!

October

We had fun dressing up for Halloween.

November

I didn't blog much but we implemented Gave, Save, Spend

December

We celebrated Jesus's Birthday! 

The year started out great and took some very crazy turns! There were a few points that I didn't know what was going to happen or how things were going to end up. This was the year more than any that taught me that God is in control. If you are one of my close friends or family then you were probably right along with me praying for us. The crazy thing is, we survived. I have no idea how (well I know how, I'm just amazed) but we did it. And you know what? We came out the other end closer as a family and better off overall. Like I said, I learned that there's no where to put your trust or faith but in God. The lesson that I took away from 2012 is that I can't control anything in this life, it's all in God's hands.

Here's to a wonderful New Year!!





Sunday, December 23, 2012

Silly String!

Tonight Ryan and I were bored! We had plans but they fell through so we were just at home. Well you know Ryan and sitting at home don't mix! Wesley had walked over from Aunt Lisa's so we decided to go prank everyone! 

We went to the dollar store and bought a ton of Silly String and the to the Fireworks Store to buy those streamer pop things. First we hit up Whitney. The funny thing is she was asleep in the recliner. We really scared her! 

 Next we went and picked Jordan and Evan up from their grandmas and brought them to Whitney's and then got them! They said they were wondering why we just randomly came and picked them up.
These won't go back in order.

 Next we went to Aunt Cheryl's to get her. She said when she saw all of at the door she thought we were there to sing her Christmas Carols! ha! By this time Whit, Jordan and Evan had all joined us. Lil' Ryan was at work and Lindsey goes to bed at 6 pm.

This turned into a progressive dinner. We had Reese's at Whitney's and when we got to Aunt Cheryl's she had spaghetti and pecan pie. (You know your family likes to eat when they just randomly have enough food to feed everyone. Even when they have no idea you are coming over.)
These are out of order...we actually went to Aunt Lisa's last. When she saw all of us she knew because she was at the house when we planned it. It was still fun!
 Tanner got a little swirly action!
We went to Mom's after Aunt Cheryl's and she got it the worst. It was all over her stove and cabinets and her! She had ham, dressing, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, rolls and loaded mashed potatoes for all of us. Oh, and chocolate cake! :) 
Aunt Velvet wasn't home or we would have gotten her too! It was a really fun night! Merry Christmas Eve Eve!

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Santa

Our kids don't believe in Santa...I know, insane! Go ahead and get the shock out of your system. :)

We've gotten a lot of questions in the past few weeks about why they don't believe in Santa. We have many reasons on why we think it's better for them not too think he's real.

The funny reason is that Ryan doesn't want Santa to get credit for the presents he buys! Lol!

The other reason is that we also encourage them to always tell us the truth and we promise to do the same to them (in an age appropriate way.) So we don't see the point in lying to them about Santa. Because basically that's what it is, lying. Now I know that may seem kind of extreme but its my blog, haha! We teach them on a daily basis that Jesus is a real person who performed real miracles. Not make believe ones that involve reindeer and red suits. We don't want to use Santa as a distraction on the real meaning of Christmas. This also helps when we are teaching them to give. They used their money to buy bikes for other kids this year. If they believed in Santa then they wouldn't need to give back because Santa would take care of it.

We still do the fun Christmas stuff. We have an Elf on the Shelf, we get pictures made with Santa and put out reindeer food and cookies for Santa. We don't discourage the fun of it all. But seriously, one man goes around the whole world in one night to deliver toys?? That's not even believable! I mean the love Cinderella and Spiderman but they know they aren't real people.

We like to keep the focus on what the focus should be this time of year. Jesus, family, friends and food!

FYI-they don't believe in the Tooth Fairy or Easter Bunny either. :)

What have we been up to?

Miss me? I promise to get better at keeping up with the blog. When I don't it stresses me out so I told myself I wasn't going to worry about it this month. This is the craziest month for me at work and then throw Christmas in on top of that and it's INSANE!!!

Scout the Window is back! They thought the green milk was absolutely hilarious!
 My rental car got broken into in Atlanta. One more reason why I hate big cities!
 When it was Ryan's night to set up the elf he made him fly. They also loved that!
 We took the boat out. This is one of my favorite things about Mobile-warm weather all year round!

 I love these 3 kiddos!!
 We celebrated Aunt Whitney's birthday! I told yall that Blakeley loves me more, she doesn't cry like that when I hold her. :)
 We went to the North Pole stroll (do not recommend this) and Chill with friends!
 We went to Ryan's work's Christmas party and celebrated our 8th Anniversary.
 We have loved on this sweet girl every chance we get! She's getting so big!!
We went Ice Skating. Well they went Ice Skating, I just watched. The last thing I need to do is break my leg. Everyone knows I'm not known for my grace!



 After Ice Skating we rode the ferris wheel at the Wharf and Tanner was TERRIFIED!!!!
 We've played dress up numerous times!

 We celebrated Jesus's birthday at our annual Happy Birthday Jesus party!
 And we've drank lots and lots of hot chocolate!
Christmas is in just a few days and surprisingly I'm actually ready! It feels good to have everything done and to just get to sit back and rest. I'm thankful I am done because Tanner has the flu! We took him to the doctor Thursday night and they gave us the bad news. Thankfully they gave Ry some medicine to help prevent it so I'm hoping she doesn't get it as well.