Austin is 13!!

Austin is turning 13 TODAY! I can't believe that 13 years ago today I became a mommy! He can be a pain in the you know what but he is a GREAT help around the house and taking care of his younger siblings.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY STINK! (he is going to hate that I posted his nick name)

No More Crib for Me Mom

At 18 months I take my kids out of their cribs and put them into "Big Boy/Girl Beds". I decided to keep William in his crib until he was 2 years old. He thought other wise. I put him down for a nap yesterday and got on the computer to pay bills. About 10 minutes later he comes walking up to me. I went upstairs and asked which kid had gotten him out. It was the "not me" game. I finally decided that someone just didn't want to get in trouble. I put him into bed again and told all the kids not to get him out! He again joined me about 5 minutes later. I then put him back into his crib and this is what I saw:

He is my only child who has climbed out of his crib. I guess he didn't want to be in there anymore. He slept in his "Big Boy" bed last night and it went better that I thought it would.

Box Car Races

Jared is involved in the Cub Scout program at his school. It is a good program and have the BEST Den leaders and Cub Master. They have many great activities that they do as a Den and Pack. This is there first year so they are trying to do almost everything to see what the boy's like and what doesn't go over to well.

This is the Box Car races. The Cub Scouts invited the Girl Scouts from the School so Josie got to join the fun.

This is Josie and Jared's box cars. Josie did her all by herself and did a pretty good job. Jared got his box done but I helped with the painting and lettering.

Each race consisted of three people and 4 pit stops. On the first stop the racers had to"Get their windshields washed" this meant that they had to get their sunglasses wet with a spray bottle and washed off. The second pit stop was "Change their oil" This involved sipping water and spitting it out three times. The third pit stop was "Changing the Tires" this involved taking off the racers shoes and turning their socks inside out and putting everything back on. The last pit stop was "Re-fueling", the race had to drink a cup of water. Then they raced around the track one more time.

We found that most racers with a mom as their pit crew won because mom's know how to take socks and shoes off quickly and put them back on.

The kids all had fun. Jared won 2nd place (Austin was his pit crew and the "tire change" is when he lost the lap that he was up) and Josie was 1st place (I was her pit crew)

The FRENCH BRAID

Anna HATES for me to do her hair. She will let me make sure she has no tangles but will not let me do anything to it unless I talk her into it. Imagine my surprise when after taking a bath she wanted me to french braid her hair so that she would have wavy hair like Josie, in the morning. She has short hair so I didn't know how it would go, but if you look at her face you can answer that for yourself. This is the finished product. I think I did an ok job, but poor girl has hair like mine and the waves only lasted for about 1/2 the day. Oh well, she was happy to have the wavy hair.

Playing in Leaves

Austin had to rake the leaves up and thought it would be fun to let his brother play in it. Josie they decided to take pictures. They had fun playing in the leaves and throwing them all over again. Austin didn't even complain about having to rake them again.

Close up of the leaves on William taken by Josie.

My oldest and youngest.

Christmas 2009

Here are some pictures of Christmas 2009.