My Babys

are growing up!!

Brotherly Love

In April I finally had pictures of the boys taken. My very talented friend Monica was
who I chose for the task and she did a fabulous job. Check her out on facebook at

M. Scarbo Photography

I haven't had any pictures done since Colton was born. Those were done in December 2008. I am such a bad Mommy. I think it is a cardinal rule to have pictures taken atleast once a year to document their changes with each birthday. I am vowing to be better at that from now on.

So I wanted to start having their pictures taken the month of their Birthday but Cody thought that was a waste. Caydens Birthday is in June and I just had these taken so I didnt need anymore so soon. but i foresee another problem-Coltons Birthday is in November so whats the need for family pictures in December for Christmas?!?!

Decisions decisions. If I were rich I would just have them taken every month that way I didnt have to decide. LOL!!

Thanks Monica for the great photos and precious memories captured.

PineCove

Sorry but I have no pictures from our weekend at PineCove. I know it's sad to say that my camera didnt even leave my bag the entire weekend, especially since I'm a scrapper. I'll just say that I have pictures from a previous year that we collectively started a mini-book but have NEVER finished. And from my 1st year I have a completed mini-book. So needless to say I have plenty of pictures of PineCove.
I did however complete most of the projects that I planned on. We actually left

early on Sunday or else I would have completed all the things

on my list. Sonya and I made a set of Halloween houses-small, medium, and

large.

These are my set of house's. It is hard to tell from the picture

but on the chimney of the medium house there is a BAT flying above.

I used colored wire and a 3-d embellishment bat attached at the top. I LUV him.

I made mine colorful because I thought that the boys would enjoy it. The paper line has

little monsters on it. Add on the front porch of the large house I put my friendly

'monster' courtesy of the LBH from last Halloween.

We both completed a double decker frame with crosses as an accent; used bare wood

frames-8x10 & 5x7, coordinating paper, Ten Seconds metal, and random crosses from

craft stores.

I also completed 2 sets of holiday tags from the LBH and intended to

cover the wood blocks with book paper on Sunday.

Saturday evening I made 2 domino pendants, which was my 1st time.
I gave one to my Sis :)

So I say we were pretty productive. This was also the 1st time we have left camp to

go into town. Right off I realized that I forgot the 8x10 frame for our 1st project so on the phone

to see if any store in Tyler had it. Michaels said no, HL wasn't sure, then a 2nd call

to Michaels and they said they found 4. Get there and they were 4x7-no help!

Went to HL and found what I needed and more of course. Back to camp we went.

That was just the beginning of our problems that weekend. Things we needed but

didn't have. Of course we had plenty we didn't use-such as the Cricut.

Overall it was a great weekend. Great bonding time with my lil' sister and seeing

God's green earth in all its glory was wonderful.

Check it out

www.pinecove.com

Pine Cove

Tomorrow my sister, Sonya and I head to Tyler for our scrapbooking retreat

for the weekend at Pine Cove Christian Camp. I am soooo excited to go there,

we have been there several years in a row and LUV it!!

It is beautiful, peaceful and a refreshing breath of

nature. I feel closer to God while I am there, being surrounded

by his beauty.

The camp staff are SOOO friendly and welcoming, the food that they

provide is delicious, the scripture that they share is reassuring, and

during the evening meal they put on a little skit and EVERY year

it gets funnier. I look forward to seeing what they came up

with for this year.

I am excited about the projects that we are going to

create. We each have a set of 3 paper mache houses that we

are going to decorate for Halloween. We also have a

frame set that we are going to alter, inspired by the LBH.

I also have a 2 tag kits to make that I purchased from the LBH

LAST YEAR and I am deteremined to complete them. They are

for Halloween and Autumn.

I will post pictures next week of of FABULOUS weekend.

Hope everyone has a great weekend as I KNOW we will.

This is what Cayden asked Santa for. Dinosaurs that live in a rock.

He explained to Santa what it looked like and where he could

get it. He said he saw it in the toy magazine so it

shouldn't be hard.

Then when he was done sitting on Santa's lap he proceeded to

tell me, "Ok, I told him so let's go get it now."

LOL

He made me laugh so hard but still he didn't understand why we couldn't

go get it since he told Santa. I tried explaining to him that Santa

would be watching to see if he was Naughty or Nice and if he

was a good little boy that MAYBE Santa would leave it under the

tree for him Christmas morning.

Of course, there it is.

He said,
"See Mommy, I'm a good boy!"

Charlie Brown Christmas

We went to the Gaylord Texan with our neighbors-Todd, Amanda and Morgan. Morgan and Cayden are close in age. They all play together well. It was very crowded, of course it was 3 days before Christmas so I didn't expect anything less. What I didn't expect was how rude people were, older people even. People were shoving as if that was going to help. While going through the ICE display people were stopping to take pics, as was I, but some people were not happy about that and an older couple was shoving their way through and in doing so they knocked Cayden over. I was steaming mad at that point and if I wasn't busy checking on Cayden and trying to stop him from crying I would have been even ruder to those people. So I guess GOD was playing a role in that moment so that I didn't say something or act out in front of children. My blood was boiling so it might not have came out so well.

We made the best of it and the kids had a GREAT time.

Cayden looked so stinkin' cute in his coat that was WAY to big for him. He couldn't keep his hands out of the sleeves. I explained to him that way they would stay warm, "Oh, OK Mommy!"

You may wonder why there aren't that many pics of Colton. Never once would he look at the camera, that is how it's been for awhile now. You could say he's camera shy-ha!

As you may notice in this picture.

Home for CHRISTMAS

We were actually home in Texas for the 1st time in years. We are usually in Kansas for the holidays so I haven't decorated since before the boys were born. I was SUPER excited to finally put up my tree again and to wake up on Christmas morning and see the boys expressions.

When I was growing up we had a tradition that I am going to carry on through my family-On Christmas eve night we would get to open 1 present and it was ALWAYS new pj's to wear that night. Usually matching Christmas-y ones. I bought the boys matching Mickey Mouse footy pj's. I wasn't sure how they would react to it. Of course they were uber excited to open a present early and luckily even more so that they had matching pj's. Cayden was soooo excited it brought tears to my eyes. He kept explaining to Bubba that they had MATCHING pj's. They were the same!! It was like he couldn't believe it. They put them on right away. And so a tradition continues......

Snowmen

And so the adventures in baking continued. These are the Snowmen that we

made. The boys were not sooo into this and to tell you the truth I was pretty sick

of it to. Nothing was going right. As you can tell they look like they

are melting-ha! Colton ate part of one but no one else even tried.

I now remember why I don't bake in this house. No one

eats it. The boys didn't even eat the reindeer cookies.

I also made a pecan pie for Christmas dinner and it wasn't till

days later that a piece of that finally was eaten. It was my

1st ever pie to make by myself. We are usually in KS for the holidays

and I help my Momma cook.

Reindeer Cookies

In the Christmas spirit I decided that it might be fun to make cookies

with the boys. I decided on reindeer cookies. Cayden was SUPER excited that he

was going to get to help. He had previously spent some time with Papa Forrest

and has been hunting, aka deer watching, and he is full of stories about that

time. I think that helped add to the excitement.

We had fun and Cayden stuck it out but Colton was only interested in eating

the M&M's. His reindeer was interesting to say the least.

It was sooo much fun and watching the joy that it brought to the

boys made me want to venture futher in the 'baking with the kids' world.