15 Years

My hubby and I are celebrating 15 years of blissful marriage today. OK they weren’t completely blissful but they were pretty darn good. We’ve had our good times and our not so good times but I would never say we’ve had bad times. He’s given me 4 beautiful children that fill our lives with love and joy (a little chaos too) and he’s been a wonderful husband to me. I couldn’t ask for anything more. I love you babe!

Here's one while we were dating. Which one of us do you think has changed the most?

Scrapbooking

All of my scrapbooking supplies have been buried under a pile of dust and cobwebs. A friend came over a couple of weeks ago and asked me if I would teach her how to scrapbook. Yikes! Where to start. I decided if I was going to help her I needed to get organized myself. So, I have spent oodles of hours on my computer & in my picture boxes sorting and organizing. I haven't been very smart over the years with my pictures. Most of them don't have any dates or names on them. It wasn't too hard telling the kids apart but sorting them into years was another story. Sometimes it was a process of elimination. It took forever. I'm a bit sleep deprived right now but it's a great feeling knowing everything is organized chronologically and by child.

Haley was right there next to me a lot of the time. NOT helping but looking and laughing at all the pictures. She would say "Mom the boys were so cute, what happened to them." She kept saying it over and over so I finally said "Haley, you were so cute too, what happened?" I have to say though, I do have cute babies! They are still handsome as ever but they tend to lose some of that "cuteness" as they grow up. I think it's the attitude that slowly develops that kills the "cuteness".

Now that I'm all organized I can actually sit down and do something. I've put together 3 layouts in the last couple of days. These are the first pages I've done in probably 3 years. The Christmas ones are from a swap I did last year. All I had to do was plug in the pictures. You would have thought I could have glued on a few pictures long before now but noooooo. I did the swap and then shoved them in a cupboard. Lame!! My favorite is the Halloween one. They are my favorite pictures to scrap. Feel free to copy. I'm all about copycatting. Maybe I'm being to bold as to assume anyone would want to copy but I do think they turned out pretty cute. If you don't think so just lie to me.

Wolf

Nate was awarded his Wolf badge at pack meeting tonight! It is only his second badge as a Cub Scout and he has worked on it for almost a year. The first badge, the Bobcat, only took him a couple of weeks to earn so this one is his first big accomplishment. On top of that he earned 1 gold arrowpoint and 3 silver arrowpoints. These are elective he can choose to do once he has completed all the requirements for his Wolf. In order to earn one arrowpoint he has to complete 10 electives. That means he completed 40 electives to earn his 4 arrowpoints. He has worked very hard on this and has really enjoyed being in Cub Scouts. Next month when he turns 9 he will advance to a Bear. And then the whole process starts over again. Yeah!!!! I am so proud of him, he has done a great job!!!

Nate and his buddy Noah. Their birthdays are only a month apart. They have been working together all year. They both were awarded their Wolf tonight.

Jaxson is 4!

A couple weeks ago (yes I'm a little behind) Jaxson had his 4th birthday party. One of his favorite things to do is swim so we broke out with the waterslide and made it a water party. He celebrated with his cousin Gavin who's birthday is just a couple of weeks after Jaxson's. We're starting to get so many cousins now that it's nice when birth dates are close enough to combine parties.

Last year when we bought this slide Jaxson was really cautious about it. Not this year! He has learned from his brothers to have no fear. I'm just glad we haven't had any broken bones yet (KNOCK ON WOOD)! Here are some pictures of the kids having a good time.

Jaxson

Nate! What did I tell ya. NO FEAR!

Jaxson invited a couple of his little friends from church.

Spencer

Weston

We even had a small pool for the little guys & Jaxson had just as much fun in it as he did on the slide.

Jaxson is really into Indiana Jones right now. We took him to the theater with us to see the 4th one and now he runs around the house using whatever he can find as a whip (belts, rope, shoelaces, rubber snakes etc.....) He even sings the theme song - or trys to at least (he gets a few notes right). So my mom got him an Indiana Jones action figure. Only problem with that is it came with an actual whip. Just what he needs. Thanks mom. He loves it but for some reason (cause he's Jaxson) he won't leave it's clothes on so they're all lost now.


He is so cute. He gets so excited about little things. This is right after he blew out the candles.

I can't believe my baby is 4 years old. On top of that I just turned 35 a couple weeks ago. I think I've officially hit middle age. Yikes!! Jaxson might be my biggest trial in life but I sure do love him and wouldn't trade him for anything (even my sanity!)

Back to school

The pictures I added on the right of the kids are the most recent pictures I have of them. These were their first day of school pictures. I know they are kind of goofy. Especially Nate. The older my kids get the more they forget how to smile correctly - they become extremely cheesy! There is hope though. Haley did the same thing - I have some very cheesy pictures of her - but she eventually grew out of it and takes beautiful pictures now.

Camping in the Rain

We went on our annual family camping trip to the White Mountains over Labor Day. It actually only ended up being a 1/2 of the family camping trip. It was just our family, my sister Tammie & her family, my sister Crystal & family and my mom. Last year we had 39 people go - this year only 17. It was still fun but not as much fun.


The weather was brutal this year. We always get rain every year but never as much as we had this year. It started raining late Saturday afternoon and it didn't stop until Sunday afternoon. And we got WET!! We had WET tents & bedding, all the kids had WET shoes & clothes, most of our chairs were WET. It was miserable. My mom, Crystal and her kids ended up going home a day early because they were out of dry clothes and their bedding was too wet. The rest of us stuck it out but we did cheat a little. My sister Kelly lives in Eager which was just about 40 minutes from our campsite. Tammie & her two kids, and Me, Jaxson, Haley & Amber all drove into town the last two nights and stayed at her house. The guys stayed at camp and roughed it in Tammie & Jeff's trailer (it even got a little wet inside). Once it quit raining on Sunday it stayed pretty dry after that but it was COLD. Thankfully the kids were able to stay warm enough and they had a blast. As for me, I just considered the whole trip a grand adventure in the great outdoors. And I was never so happy to crawl into my DRY, WARM bed.

At one point we were tired of the mud so we stripped down Jaxson & Kaleb, put them in the trailer and started a movie for them. What would we do without Dora the Explorer!

We also had two birthdays while we were there. Jaxson turned 4 on Saturday and my mom turned ?? on Sunday. This is a picture of both of them but I think the birthday girl was a little camera shy.

Here's Kaleb. I don't know what is on his face but it looked like this the whole time.

The boys built this awesome fort. I wish I had better pictures of it. They made this little cave out of tree branches. It even had a door.

Here's the whole gang. I took this not too long after it stopped raining. I think the older kids had had enough by this point.

Where to Start

OK! The big question was, WHERE DO I START! So I figured I would just take my camera and start with the pictures that are on it right now. Fortunately I have some pretty cute ones.

Jaxson just loves being outside with dad when he's doing the lawns. Mom also loves it when dad is doing the lawns because that means I get a break - some Jaxson FREE time. Aren't they cute. I just love Larry's sexy hat!