Five years ago today, this little bundle of energy arrived...



... and life hasn't been the same since! Happy Birthday Allie girl- we love you! Mom, Dad, Claire, Olivia and Levi


Just a funny line: (from I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown)

Lucy to her little brother, Rerun: "Rerun, having an older sister is like having your very own compass to guide you through life."

These words are just echos from Levi's future :)

4-2= a quiet week

I spent the day with my parents yesterday attending the funeral of one of my good friend's dad. Stephenie and I have been friends since we were about 2 or 3 years old. Our familes grew up together, we attended the same church and school. Her mom was the high school math teacher and had all of us kids at one time or another in school. Steph was also one of the attendants in our wedding. Our parents were close in age so having her dad pass away was kind of a shock. It really made me appreciate my own parents and Charlie's. The funeral was one of those bittersweet events where the occasion was sad but it brought together a lot of people I had not seen in many years so I was glad I went. It was an uplifting service, full of laughter and tears and it is comforting to know he will spend eternity in heaven.

So while I spent the day with my padres, I also managed to talk them into keeping Claire and Olivia for a few days. (Reason #562 why I love my parents) Anyway, our house is very quiet this week, even with Allie and Levi here. I don't think Allie quite knows what to do with herself. Charlie said the two of them fell asleep on the couch watching a movie last night :)

I'm kind of backtracking, but I forgot to mention Thanksgiving. We had a great weekend, got to spend some time with Charlie's family. His brother and his family spent five days so it was nice getting to catch up with them. We even took advantage of some shopping on Friday. Charlie's mom offered to take all four of the kids so we could spend an afternoon together. It was a much appreciated gesture! We got a majority of our Christmas shopping done and went out for dinner. A nice evening...

Now I leave you with some new pictures we recently had taken. Our good friend Michelle came out and took some shots of us. She always does a great job! Here are a few of them:

Happy Thanksgiving!

We just want to wish all our family and friends a happy turkey day! We love you!

(After seeing a Christmas commercial on TV)

Allie: "Mom, it's hard to be good. It's haaaard. Did you know that?"

Me: (thinking to myself) Should I ask for further explanation on this one? Probably not.

Posterchild for seatbelt safety....

Miss Olivia decided to crawl out of her seat belt just about the same time dad caught a red light. Nice, huh?
















Allie lost tooth #2 tonight... she actually had two teeth fused together so she got a 2 for 1 deal.


And Claire just wanted her picture taken, too.
Did I mention we are having family pictures taken tomorrow. They should look great with a black eye and knocked-out teeth (not really knocked-out).

Failure to communicate...

Yesterday afternoon Allie came down with a high fever and spent the rest of the evening vomiting (not so much fun). Well, this morning she was feeling a lot better, but we decided to keep her out of school just to be on the safe side, so she is spending the day with Charlie at his office. Well, this morning we were getting ready and I gave her some pedialyte to drink. She asked what it was and I told her, "Pedialyte." "Well, it tastes like cool-aid, Mom," she says. A few minutes later, she is telling Claire about her drink and she says, "Claire, this is Pee-a-lyte, but it doesn't taste like pee. No, it takes like cool-aid, it's good!"

We weren't really sure what Allie came down with. She got the H1N1 vaccine on Saturday, so we thought she might have had a reaction to that or it could have just been a little stomach bug. Anyway, she is feeling a lot better today and is actually keeping stuff down, including the "Pee-a-lyte."

Playing catch-up

Our little chunky monkey... he weighed in at

12 lbs and he's 23 1/2 inches at his 2 month check on Thursday. He is doing well, as you can see he is getting quite the little personality. Hard to believe he will be 3 months soon! He does have an umbilical hernia that we will have to keep an eye on. If it doesn't close up on its own he will have to have it repaired in about a year or two :( But otherwise he is a healthy boy.























Sleeping is still one of his favorite past-times....

Halloween... do you see a theme? And, no there's not exactly a gypsy in the story, I just liked the costume.

This was our trunk-or-treating get-up...

The cutest little scarecrow... one of our friends at church borrowed her to sit in her scarecrow patch... she had a good time eating all the candy!

Carving pumpkins...

What we've been up to....

Last week, Thursday and Friday, Allie had Fall Break and since Charlie was on-call that same weekend, the kids and I headed south to Texas to spend a long weekend with my parents. My sister Aimee and her family also came down from Searcy and got to meet Levi. We had a nice relaxing weekend and got to spend some nice time together.






Levi with his cousins, Zane and Lance. They were so good with Levi and the girls, they really kept them entertained all weekend.


A little play-dough session on Saturday morning








Aunt Aimee getting her baby fix.... it's always nice having the extra hands around to help!

On Saturday we decided to take all the kids on a hike up "The Mountain." It's actually just a big hill back behind my parents house, but it makes for a nice hike and there's some pretty cool rocks (boulders actually) up there. It also makes for some pretty good views. My parents live right on the Red River and this is it from the top of the hill.

Trail blazing at it's finest... we had to take tools up with us to get through all the greenbriars (and a shovel in case of snakes). We were trying to get to a clearing at the top that we used to play at when we were little kids, but no success. It was all so overgrown.


(That machete is not just a decorative item for the house!)

This is one of the neat rocks on the side of the mountain. It's kind of hard to see but there are lots of names and dates carved into it.

The was a cute shot as we came down the hill...

Today was Allison's class field trip to "Daze in the Maze."

They invited parents and siblings to go along, so,

since I was off, Claire, Olivia, Levi and I went along.

They had some really neat corn and hay bale mazes to walk through.

The only downside was that it was COLD and WINDY! Wow, we had a

huge change in weather! But it was still fun and I think the kids

liked it anyway.

The sisters in front of the hay bale maze (they really are stair-stepped)

Me and the girls... Levi was all snuggled up in the stroller... one of Allie's teachers was nice enough to offer to sit with him while the four of us went and played. He slept the entire time, of course.

Walking through the corn maze. It was pretty cool, although a little remanescient of The Shining. I certainly wouldn't want to be stuck out there at night!







Check out how tall those stalks are....

They also had a petting zoo with lots of miniature horses and cows. Allie braved-up and rode one, it was her first time back on since she fell off the mule this summer... her Papa Ed would be proud!







Allie and her friend, Briley. So cute!

Allie's pre-k class.

Follow the Buck....

One of Allison's favorite things about Fridays is that she can buy football ribbons and tatoos from the cheerleaders. So, at the end of every week, she starts asking for money. Once the tooth fairy made her debut, I told Allie she could spend that money on the stuff she wanted. Last Friday she came and told me, "Don't worry, Mom, the tooth fairy will bring me more money. I've got more teeth loose." Good to know someone else will be supporting her habits.

I need a new name for my blog, you know since we added to the family and all. I just haven't thought of one I really like, so if you have any clever suggestions you can leave me a comment.

Rainy Fall Day

I really love this time of year and I love that the weather is already getting cooler. Today we are having a rainy day with chances of storms (yea! I actually get excited about storms).... so what better excuse for the girls to play with their umbrellas!

Just a note on what we've been up to... We have gotten back into our regular routine (kind of) with work and school. This was my second week back to work and things picked up a little there. We were having a really slow month business-wise which I think has a lot to do with flu season. This, on the other hand, was good for Charlie b/c he's been busy with cold/flu. We've just been praying he doesn't get IT (you know the plague known as H1N1) and so far he's been lucky. Our biggest fear is that one of us would bring something home to the kids, especially Levi, but we've been fine so far. As for our crew, everyone seems to be doing well. Allie is enjoying school and seems to be doing really well. She comes home everyday and catches us up on the day's happenings. And she's still trying to teach her sisters everything. She is also losing teeth at an alarming rate. Actually, she has only lost one but she's got two more that are loose. Claire and Olivia are involved in a love-hate relationship. Since Allie's been in school, it has really changed the dynamics of her sisters during the day. Claire and Olivia fight like cats but then they love each other to death. Olivia seems to be growing up since her brother has arrived. We went through a rough couple of months with her but now I am seeing some positive changes in her. I've also started her in potty training (oh, so fun!), or we've gotten serious about it, I should say. For about the last week, she has done really well and seems to be getting the hang of it. 3 down, 1 to go! Mr. Levi is doing well. His favorite thing to do is still sleep, although he is becoming more alert and making some eye/face contact. He weighs about 8.5-9 lbs now, getting quite the little belly on him.

Claire and Olivia have become really quiet.... I have a feeling I should see what they're up to!

Back to work...

This week I started back to work. It was kind of a slow week, but it also made it easier getting back into the groove. I'm going to take Levi with me on Mondays which is really nice. This was his first day at the office... when he wasn't helping Amy, our receptionist, answer the phone, he was sleeping (which was about 95% of the time).

Levi and his pal Amy

Girls will be girls...

She insists Olivia did this to her, which I don't doubt, but HOW she did it still puzzles me...

Don't be fooled by this sweet and innocent face... :)

Poor Levi doesn't know what he has waiting on him!

Weekend trip... and, well, you'll see

Can you name this city?




If you said St. Paul, Minnesota you would be correcto! That is where we spent our very fast weekend. We went up there with some friends of ours, Paul and Megan, doing a little scouting work for our church. We also managed to go see some friends of ours that we hadn't seen in about 8 years. When we were at ACU, Charlie and I led some spring break campaigns to St. Paul working with a group called the St. Paul Urban Ministry, most of the group was young kids. These kids are primarily Hmong (a population of people from Laos that came to the U.S. as refugees after the Vietnam War). Well, 8 years later, we got to catch up with the couple who leads the group as well as many of the kids we worked with back then. It was really exciting to see some of the same kids, all grown up leading strong Christian lives. There was one guy we talked with who was 12 or 13 the last time we saw him, and now he is married and has a little girl. Talk about making us feel old! It was really encouraging to us to be there.

Now, I go on to say that we drove 12.5 hours (one way) and these are the only pictures I took (pretty exciting, I know). But we did a little sightseeing, checked out the Mall of America once again and St. Paul's Cathedral (which is now on the register of national shrines, in case you didn't know... a little tidbit of info the security guard gave us after he told Allison, Claire and Olivia to stop climbing on the concrete railing (or wall?) out front).

On the steps of the cathedral...

The best traveler of all...

The LOOOng ride home....

Somewhere in Missouri (at times it felt like Misery)...

And today's news...

Yes, she was crying, only because she was scared it was going to hurt, but it was out of there in no time. Then the blood freaked her out a little....


Her first tooth... and no, that is not blood, just a red towel.

All smiles (look at that little toothless grin :)... and she gets to use the pillow her great grandma made for her.

Now, the tooth fairy has to go find some cash...