Catching up

I can hardly believe I am finally posting after a year and a half!!  Since my purpose of blogging is to record memories of our family adventures for our kids to have something to look back on I just couldn't bear to leave that gap.  So here are some photos to give just a glimpse of what we did each month since my last post!

April 2009- We celebrated Anjali's 3rd B'day by taking her to ride a horse!  Per her request :)

 

May 2009 - In a Military truck at Touch-a-Truck in downtown Opelika...

June 2009 - Playing in the fountains with some dear friends at the Botanical Gardens...



July 2009 - Helping daddy dig a HUGE tree root out of our yard...

August 2009 - Sweet sibling kisses :)

September 2009 - Feeding the ducks at Joe Tucker park...

October 2009 - Cheering daddy on at the Coosa River Challenge!

November 2009 - Rayna was born!!  They were so excited about their new baby sister!

December 2009 - Jaiden had his 2nd Bday this month!  Celebrating Christmas with cousins...

January 2010 - Loving on baby Rayna :)  So much fun being a family of FIVE now!

February 2010- Daddy/Daughter Dance!  Anjali STILL puts this dress on all the time and says she's going to the Daddy/Daughter Dance :)  She loves her daddy!

March 2010 - Best buds!

April 2010- Celebrated Anjali's 4th B'day with a puppet show!

May 2010 - Picked blackberries...LOTS of blackberries!  We made pies, pancakes, muffins, smoothies and several other things with them.  So much fun!

June 2010 - Camping out with the Franklins!  The fish in this lake liked nibbling on our toes!  Ouch!  Such a fun weekend :)

July 2010 - 4th of July celebration at our church...

August 2010 - Camping on the beach at St. Andrews State Park.  Coolest place ever.  The ducks would swim right up to our site, we could watch the ships coming and going (beautiful at night!!), see the fish jumping out of the water and they have an area in the ocean where the rocks make a natural kiddie swimming area.  Love this place!

September 2010 - Our sweet Lil Punkin!

October 2010 - The pumpkin patch!

November 2010 - Celebrated Rayna's 1st b'day and Daniel's 40th b'day!  We made a trip out to El Paso, TX to visit friends and spend Thanksgiving with Daniel's family.  Our attempt at a family photo at Hueco Tanks...the sun was (obviously) blaring in our eyes!

December 2010 - Celebrated Jaiden's 3rd b'day!  My parents get advent gifts for all the grandkids so they enjoyed opening an advent gift everyday up until Christmas!  Spent the holidays with family...love seeing all the cousins play together!  

 Oh my how I LOVE my family and I'm so excited to see what God has in store for us in 2011!!

It snowed!!!

We were so excited when we saw the forecast for snow today! It actually did snow...and snow and snow for hours! It's crazy because yesterday we had a tornado pass through and today we get snow! Daniel was at the fire station today so the kids and I played together. They built their first snowman!

This is blurry but the only pic I could get of all three of us!

This is our little snowman! About halfway through, Jaiden, who was only wearing socks for gloves couldn't take freezing little fingers anymore...poor thing! So we had to finish him quickly. We're still proud of our little snowman!!

We had so much fun playing in the snow! We don't see much of it around here, ya know;)

Austin, TX

We went to Austin, Tx for Daniel's cousin's funeral....so so sad but it was wonderful to get to spend time with the family. We hadn't seen any of them since our visit to El Paso last March so it had been almost a year!

Papa and Grandma with Jaiden...

Anjali had a blast with her cousin Abigail...they played together so well! Here they are playing dress up...

Nicolette (Daniel's niece) and I were pregnant at the same time with both babies so Jaiden had a little playmate too...Hailey! By the way, sweet Jaiden doesn't look too happy in any of these pics because he was feeling awful. But he still had so much fun playing!

These are the shirts again that I made all the cousins for Christmas and we just happened to bring ours so we tried to get a pic with all the cousins there...

I love this pic of Hailey - so sweet...

Valentine's cookies

First of all, look what my valentine gave me!! Beautiful flowers...everyone loves roses and daisies are my all time fav! He also left little surprises all around the house for me...like Reeses cups! Yum!

Anjali *loves* to help me bake and especially when we're baking cookies! She likes to do it all - measure the ingredients, stir the dough, spread the flour, roll the dough, cut out the shapes and put them on the cookie sheets!

She was so proud of how messy she got! You can't see it too well but she was completely covered in flour!

Her finished masterpiece!

Little Jaiden woke up from his nap just in time to eat a cookie...

We always have so much fun making homemade cookies and the great thing is they have the cookie cutters for every holiday!!