The best easter picture ever!

Okay, the story behind the first picture:
It's Easter morning, we're already running behind because we had to see what the Easter bunny brought everybody. All morning, I'm yelling, "hurry up, hurry up... or we're going to be late to church!" So I run up the stairs to see how everyone's doing about 45 min. after being awake... Brooke's sitting in front of her dresser pulling out blue jeans. So of course I freak out, pull out a dress for her, tell her to put it on, and to .... HURRY UP! So 10 min. later I walk up the stairs to do her hair, and I take one look at her and she's got everything on BACKWARDS! So we have to get dressed... AGAIN! Anyway, not a good morning, because mom was in a major PMS mood anyway-- not in the mood for the easter bunny that day, but what do you do?? Try to not kill anybody, take lots of deep breaths and remember how precious and wonderful they are! So anyway, in an effort to be nice, I wanted a picture before church, now Brooke's not in the mood. She truly tried to stop crying before I snapped the picture, but just broke down and couldn't help it. Poor girl. It's so true, if mama's not happy, aint nobody happy! We hugged, kissed and made up. :)

Happy Easter!

Brandi's favorite outfit

I had to post a picture of Brandi and her favorite outfit. She thinks she looks really cute... and I have to agree with her. :)

Restricting Access to Blog

Hi! I've decided to only allow my friends and family to view our family blog. I just want to be safe. I kind of creeps me out knowing that some stranger could possibly be lurking in on my family's life. If you have an alternate email address, just let me know... I'll fix it.
Anyway, this week is going to be fun. We're preparing for everyone to come this weekend for Brandi's baptism. See ya'll soon! :)

Updates

Seems like time just flies by before I even think about posting something new to the blog. So to everyone out there that has been checking and checking and nothing new... Sorry! Life seems to go on without thinking about this blog ! :)

We have been, as always, pretty busy around here. We've been battling colds and fevers this past week. I think I got hit the hardest. I haven't been sick in so long, so this has been miserable!! The kids seemed to recover within a day- I've been trying to recover now for 5 days!My really sweet neighbor brought over some chicken noodle soup and homemade breadsticks and some cupcakes tonight for dinner. Yummie

Let's see... since the Christmas letter I posted, I have enrolled Brandi and Booke in gymnastics class and they are loving it. I haven't taken the camera to capture pictures, but I will soon. Brandi is really a natural. I'm impressed by her posture and her flexibility. I knew she'd be great, but didn't really realize how great! Now there's even more flipping and cartwheels at home. Just what I knew would happen. :) Brooke is just funny with it. She's mostly in la-la land during class. Hopefully this can help her hone in on her attention span. Okay, maybe not.

This month I also threw a surprise party for a lady at church who turned 80! That was fun. We had a big turnout of all her friends. We had a nice lunch and then she got to open presents and eat birthday cake! How fun was that?! I wonder when the last time she had a birthday party and got to open presents?! She's such a sweet lady. I think we really surprised her.

Next... Valentine's Day was nice around here. Ronnie came home with roses. Aw, isn't he sweet? Our present to each other was our new tv we bought the week before.

One thing I should mention, too. Ronnie and I both went in to have a consultation on lasik eye surgery. We both were considered "candidates" but he was the only brave one to schedule surgery. To make a long story short... he couldn't have surgery because they are testing him to see if he has an eye disease called keratoconus. Basically, Ronnie's eye should be shaped like a basketball but his is shaped like a football. The dr. said that it's very rare. Maybe 1 out of 100,000 patients are diagnosed with it. They did say that there are other factors (like severe dry eye) that mimick keratocanus and hopefully he doesn't have it. We think dry eye makes sense- it's so dry here during the winter. He'll go back in a month to see if there's any progress. We'll keep ya posted. As for me, I'm not having surgery anytime soon. I watched the video and chickened out! :)

Okay, now on to the snow around here! There's just two words to say about that... 'GO AWAY'. It really is getting old really fast. But today was nice... it warmed up to 35 degrees. Yippie!
Well, that's my quick update. Talk to ya'll soon!

Our Cousins

We recently went down to SC and GA to visit our family. Here are a few pictures from that trip. Don't we have the cutest cousins ever? :)

Sledding is FUN

We have a great hill in our neighborhood called "The Secret Hill" because you can't see it from just riding around. It's hidden. It's the perfect size for the girls. We've had so much snow between Christmas and New Years Day that we wanted to take advantage of the winter fun we can have up here. Watch these videos and you can see that it was a blast! This video is the longest, the others are quite short. Enjoy!

Christmas morning... Webkinz ... just what she wanted!
Brooke also got a Webkinz, dolls, dress-up, etc
Gotta love the Wii
Our present for New Year's (that's our sidewalk he's scraping)
Sledding in the snow!

2007 Christmas letter

Another year has passed… my! Where has it gone? This year seems to have been our year of change. We’ve changed homes, which resulted in a change in schools and friends for the girls. We’ve also had personal and spiritual changes as well. We’ve had a great year as a family. We were fortunate to have so many of our family members able to come and visit us this year. From Ronnie’s brother, Jimmy to my parents and Ronnie’s parents to my sister, Lisa and my sister in law, Emily and my two cousins, Michelle and Christy and all of their children J. We seemed to have had a summer full of family. We are so thankful that all of you made such an effort to come and visit with us. We love you and had a great time with you. Here is what we’ve all been up to this past year. We’ll start with Ronnie. Ronnie is doing very well with work. It has been his most successful year so far. He loves being “The Seal Man” and is very good at what he does. With him being 100 % commission, he has to make sure he’s doing his very best all the time. But that’s Ronnie anyway. He is always trying to improve. He is a wonderful husband and father. I couldn’t ask anything more from him. He still stays busy with his sports. He played football and will be starting basketball season soon. (Although he loves it, he complains that he’s not as fast as he used to be! Poor baby, right? Briana is just beautiful and getting taller by the day (can you tell by the picture?). She is really beginning those “transition” years into a teenager. Although she’s not quite there yet, she is fast approaching. She turns 12 this next year and cannot wait to go into the Young Women’s program at church. She has also transitioned quite nicely into 6th grade this year. She has made Honor Roll this first semester with a 4.0 GPA. She loves Harry Potter and has read all the books a few times over. And she’s watched the movies several times over, too. She has also been learning to play the clarinet in band and has loved every minute of it. She’s very self-motivated when it comes to practicing. She is also now our built-in babysitter. Yippie for me and Ronnie! It’s the day we’ve been waiting for. J She does a great job helping with her sisters. Brandi is our little ball of energy. She is our little gymnast (minus the classes). She tumbles and flips around the house constantly. Thus, always finding herself injured in some way. Mom and dad seemed to have lost sympathy somewhere along the way. I thought her boundless flipping and tumbling was a stage, but she has been at this for a long time. So maybe it’s time to put her in real classes. J Brandi is always cheerful and has a great sense of humor. She is always laughing at something- (because at this age, everything’s funny for some reason). She started 2nd grade this year and has done very well. She is a great reader, like her big sister. She has made a great friend here in the neighborhood right across the street. They ended up in the same class at school this year, too. Brandi is getting very excited about her next birthday because it’s the Big 8 yrs. old. We know what that means! She will be getting baptized. She bore such a sweet testimony last Fast and Testimony meeting. It was her first time wanting to get up and bear testimony and she did so well. She is a sweet girl and we are excited for this day to come, too. Brooke is… well, what can I say about Brooke? She definitely keeps us on our toes, that’s for sure. Her little mind is constantly thinking. Much of how I described Brandi reminded me of Brooke. She too has boundless energy. She asks us a million questions and always seems to come up with the funniest things to say. Brooke started kindergarten this year and I worried that she was too young. She started at 4 yrs. old and didn’t turn 5 until last month in Nov. (Michigan’s cut off is Dec.1 and not the traditional Sept 1). So she is a young kindergartener. But already I’ve been amazed at the progress she is making. She is doing perfectly well. She may not be the most focused… but I’ve been to her class many times—I’m not sure any of those kindergarteners are very focused. Tammy is doing very well. I’ve had a year of change, too. With no longer being the Young Women’s president, I’ve found myself wondering what to do next. It was really a privilege to work with the young women of our church (the teenagers). It took up a lot of my time, which was very hard, but it was also very rewarding. But no rest for the weary, now I’m serving as the Secretary in the Relief Society. With the purchase of our new home, I’ve been actively decorating and spending lots of money. (don’t tell Ronnie … okay, he knows! This year, all the kids are in school and it’s been very different for me to have “alone time” at home. I think I drove myself crazy for awhile, but now I’m very used to it. The first day all the kids were gone, I took off shopping. Then I thought, “What am I doing leaving a quiet house?” So the next time they were gone all day, I stayed in my PJ’s, watched a movie on Lifetime and cried, then went to soak in my jetted bathtub and took a nice long, hot bath. “Ahhh!! This is the life!”, I thought. But that kind of day hasn’t happened again for some reason. Maybe I’ve snapped back into reality and realized there is so much to get done. But I think I should schedule some more of those kinds of days. Anyway, life is good. We are healthy and very happy. We love each of you and hope you have had a great year to reflect on as well. We are so grateful for such wonderful family and friends. We want each of you to know that you are thought of and missed very often.

Wii

This is been the hi-light of Christmas...the Wii!

Brooke's brithday

"I'M 5!!!!, I'M 5!! I keep thinking I'm 4, but I'm really 5!!"

That's all I heard on Monday. Poor child didn't have kindergarten, so she was home all day waiting for something to happen-,we had to wait for the girls to get home from school! But we did make a cake together. (we didn't eat it until the next night) We celebrated that night by going to a fun kid-friendly restaurant called Red Robin where they sang to her and gave her balloons. Then we went to go see The Bee Movie. Her real birthday party will be this Saturday (on Ronnie's birthday) She's invited some friends to go bowling.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BROOKE!!

Halloween pictures

Happy Anniversary

Ronnie and I celebrated our 14th anniversary on October 7th. (Sorry, there's no picture-- I know you're all so disappointed :0 ) He surpised me with a beautiful necklace and earrings to match. We also went out for dinner. We feel so fortunate to have such a happy marriage. We hear of others that are struggling and feel so fortunate and blessed that we are closer and more in love now than we ever have been. I remember thinking when I got married... and even said it out loud- that I didn't think I could ever love Ronnie any more than I did on that day. But as time has passed and children have come, and challenges have come, we feel closer than ever. I know that I have a wonderful husband-- he's very sensitive to my needs and feelings. I trust him 100% . I have truly married my best friend. Love you, honey!

Sparkles

Okay, I know no one but me and my girls care... BUT-- these pictures are cute. We have a fairly new kitten at our house. We've had her for a few months. Her name is Sparkles. The girls took a little Barbie crown and put it on her head and thought it was the funniest thing they ever did to her. The poor cat doesn't get any rest around here. They 'torture' the poor cat to death with all the crazy things they put her through!! Brooke and Brandi especially cannot get enough of Sparkles.

Apple Orchards

"The Man"

Look what I found!! I found the perfect shirt for Brooke. Ronnie has this on-going joke (that only he thinks is really hilarious) with the girls... they call him "The Man" occassionally at the request of... "The Man". Brooke is the only one that will still comply with this request. Give her a few more years and she'll be like Briana and Brandi: a little older-- and a little wiser. :)