Growing up...

I am amazed, excited, and saddened all at once, when I see how quickly my little 8 year old Courtney is growing up! She's almost as tall as Alex now (who is VERY tall for his age), and she is slowly changing into a pre-teen. She is such a sweet, sweet girl. She is sooooo giving, too.

Beautiful Kids!

I took some headshots of the kids recently for the FCHE homeschool yearbook. I thought I'd share them here-

Alex 10 years old

Courtney 8 years old

Avery 4 years old (or "FOUR AND A HALF!!!" as she'd say if she read this!!)

Ashlyn Belle 2 years old

Snowy Day in GA!

We recently were blessed with a snowy day in GA! It is always such a surprise here, but ESPECIALLY when it's March!

Avery stood at the door watching the flakes fall for quite a while!Here is the front of our house (with Dan on the porch), with some flakes falling!The kids couldn't do much since it didn't stick, but they had fun running around in it!
A view across the street through the snow. Some of the flakes were HUGE!

A view from our backyard to the golf course through the snow

Courtney and Alex had to stand on the chairs and scrape enough snow off the umbrella to form a snowball! :)

Avery in her too-big snow clothes :)

Mom's Visit

I enjoyed spending a week with my Mom recently! My Dad went on a fishing trip to FL, and he dropped my Mom here on his way down! We only got to see Dad as he dropped her off and picked her up- but it's better than nothing, right?

We got to do some fun things while she was here- we took her to the kids' karate class, and she got to go on the floor as Avery's assistant- here they are practicing her axe kick:

Remember that pinecone bird feeder wreath we made? (see blog entry below) Here is Mosby stalking a squirrel who is helping himself to the birdseed and peanut butter! :)

Then on Wednesday night, Dan treated my Mom, the kids and me to a WONDERFUL dinner at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse! Yummmmmmmm......

The family before we left

Alex all dressed up... He's getting TOOOOOOO BIG! He looked wonderful!

Here's my little Avery before we left for dinner. She was under the impression that celebrities are always at Ruth's Chris, so she wanted to dress like one. She was animal print head to toe, with a faux fur purse and sparkles in her hair. Ooh-La-La! :)Courtney was beautiful. She is also getting WAY too big. She has a special scarf in her hair that her Aunt Liz got when she was in Ireland. She gave it to Courtney on her last visit.

Courtney enjoyed her meal! It's almost impossible to get this kid to eat, so that's pretty impressive!

Avery got her fill of a tomatoe mozzarella salad. Right up her alley!

After her meal, we found Avery at the corner of the table, very cafefully considering the wine list. :)

Alex ate his weight in salmon and steak. He never ceases to amaze me!

We had a WONDERFUL TIME!!!!!

Homeschool Valentines Party

I didn't take many pictures of this event, but we had fun! Our homeschool group went to Catch Air (a jumpy place) to burn off some energy and exchange Valentines. The kids had a blast! I couldn't get great pictures, because I only had my iPhone, and the kids were in CONSTANT motion, hence the blurriness! But, it was a good time!

Many members of the K-3 Group...

Fun Bird Feeder

We really live in a great place. We are very close to the city and all it has to offer, yet our neighborhood borders the Chattahoochee River, and we often have wildlife roaming through our yard. Families of deer will cross the golf course and walk into our yard. As you can imagine, sometimes this will create quite a bit of commotion in the midst of 4 children and 2 loud dogs!!! Anyway, we decided to try to attract more of the gorgeous birds that hop around on our back porch each morning, so we constructed some of the birdhouses as seen on the Crafty Crow Blog. If you haven't read that blog, you should certainly check it out! Here we are with some of the projects...

First, we took two coat hangers, and straigtened out the bottom sections to create on large circle with one hanger left at the top. Then, we collected a TON of pinecones, and tied them on to the hangers with string. I was afraid the yellow would scare everything off. Alex thought it would attract certain wildlife. Maybe he was right, because this thing was picked clean within a couple of days!!!

Then, we slathered the pinecones with peanut butter. My 8 year old daughter Courtney was convinced we'd wake up to find 100 dead birds in our yard, keeled over from Salmonela. :). I'm pretty sure she might grow up to be a veggie burger. She's already become a vegetarian. Anyway... Then, we rubbed birdseed into the peanut butter and hung it up outside! The squirrels and birds are in constant competition to see who can rule the pinecone wreath! :)

A day at the beach...

We spent the early afternoon at the "beach" in the local dog park! It has a really pretty stream running through it, and the kids had a blast just getting their feet dirty. They brought their instruments, and played a little on the shore.

...and one random shot of Ashlyn Belle sleeping. Isn't she sweet????