Catching up

I am so far behind on my blogs that I don't know how to organize them anymore. I know blogging certainly isn't the most important thing and most of the time I don't enjoy doing it but I do love reading the books that it makes later. I love having stuff written down that I honestly just can't remember otherwise.  So here I go, in an effort to get back into it there is going to be a mess of stuff on here and then hopefully I can get back to normal blogging!

We had an awesome trip to the lake house in the end of September. Josh, Katie, Cora, Hannah, Alli, Derek, Aunt Lois and Uncle Dave all made the trip out to Austin for a long weekend and some of them enjoyed Austin for the first time!

I only have a few pictures and need to get more from Alli so for now this is our trip. We ate at a great restaurant called Salt Lick. It took a while to get to but they got the Texas experience driving there and enjoying the atmosphere. Everyone seemed to love enjoy all the meat you could eat!

We did boat rides and tubing, wake boarding and skiing, jet skiing and fishing, hot tubbing and hanging out! It was a fun trip with everything a great vacation has in it! We ate out mostly so that was nice not cooking or cleaning up from it that much. Aunt Lois and Uncle Dave had a rough delay and airport stay to begin with but we are glad they made it down!

I wish I would have blogged sooner to remember more detail from the trip but I do know we had a great time and the kids loved hanging out with everyone as much as I did. Thanks for coming down everyone!

Rachel was throwing her Justin Bieber doll one day and got him caught in the fan string. They were laughing so hard watching him hang there and trying to jump to get him down.

Colt has loved having free reign of the play room while the girls are at school. He sets up the doll houses with puppies or people or plays kitchen a lot. Here he was "cooking food in the microwave" which was really the pretend washing machine so it was funny watching him "cook." Over and over again he cooked his food with the timer it has on it sitting and waiting for the ding.

The girls love dance class! They can't wait to go every week and are really excited for their recital soon! They are doing such a good job watching the teacher and learning the moves. They love school still and think their teacher is the best, and their dance teacher. They have had one substitute in school and said she was boring, and gone to the other dance teacher for a make up lesson and said she was weird. Glad they like their at least, they are a little harsh.

We had one last pool day in October. They loved it just as much as all summer and had fun doing all the usually swimming, jumping, sliding and playing restaurant.

It's been fun..........until next year pool!

Grandma Brenda found a mother cat and a kitten in her back yard when they returned from a vacation so they now have two cats. As you can imaging the kids are thrilled and always want to hold them, especially the baby. Rachel was so so excited to hold this little guy. He is not really happy about being held though so I'm glad she got this chance!

We ended up having to leave our house in the middle of the night once in October because of a gas leak. At about 11:30 p.m. our whole bedroom and bathroom started smelling like gas really bad. We checked outside and there too, so we called and they told us to leave, they came and shut the gas off and had to come back the next day to fix it. There was a leak but mostly the problem was that the odorant in the gas was too strong and they were getting lots of calls that day. Thanks for taking us in at midnight Grandma and Grandpa!

All through October we were really sick. It started with Colt, then Eric, than Rachel. Livy and Ellie were sick in short doses in between all that. There were combined 35 days of fever, 3 ER trips, 8 doctor visits, and a bunch of medicine and missed school. Glad to be done with it all but grateful that is all it was. Colt had to use a nebulizer which he hated at first but was doing by himself by the end.

Luckily during the sick time they weren't always down and out, just not able to go out and do stuff. But they had some fun at home, this time with bubbles!

Yes that is Ellie peeing on the floor. She has finally moved past this stage a bit-where she can't be without pants because she rips her diaper off right away, throws it in the trash, and pushes hard so she can pee. Lovely. And no I didn't have my camera out to take a picture of this, I was taking a picture of Colt on the nebulizer and turned around to catch her in action. Stinker.

The day after Halloween Ellie walked into the kitchen eating a full sized candy bar. Who knows what she had to scale to get to the candy buckets! She knows what those buckets mean though and there is no stopping her!

The day after she also wanted to play in Rachel's costume. She brought it to me in the morning and didn't want to take it off. If we did she would bring it all right back to me!

Helping daddy get ready for a boy scout camp out.

Self portraits in the car....it is good entertainment!

I feel bad that most of my writing on here is about Colt and Ellie. They are with me more and get into more trouble so there is more to report on but I do want these special girls to know how much I love them and how awesome I think they are. They are doing so good at adjusting to school, friends, home, homework, learning, growing, helping and being kind. They are sweet and most of the time very nice to Colt and Ellie which means a lot to me. I am so proud of the girls you are growing up to be Rachel and Livy! We love you so much!