Thursday, November 20, 2008

A Month In Review - Part I

For those of you who follow or check our blog regularly, I'm sure you've noticed there hasn't been anything new in a while...I'm sorry!!! Life has been full of taking care of my sweet husband and four precious boys. Can't complain! So below are the things that stick out the most in my mind when I think back on the last month of our lives.

**this will be in two parts because I'm such a blabber and obviously have too many pictures that it won't let me post it all as one**

Our Little Barber:
That's right, one of my sweet boys is trying to follow in the footsteps of his mother. You see, I've been cutting our hair for almost 11 years now (although I'm taking a break from doing my own now and that's nice for a change). It has saved us a lot of money, considering how many of us there are and how much hair we have in this family! :-) So of course, I've got several pair of hair cutting scissors in our bathroom. Well one night about a month ago we were all in my bathroom getting vitamins and brushing teath (actually, this was the same night as the seriously, are you kidding me blog...this is the rest of the story you've been wondering about). The phone rang and I knew it was Chris calling so I ran in the kitchen to grab the phone. As I came back only about 2 minutes later I rounded the corner to see long (about 3 inches no lie) locks of brown hair scattered around on my bathroom floor. I know as a mother I should not panic when things like this happen but you just have to know how much I LOVE these boys long hair!!!! I ran over to Callen (yep, you know it was my little Curious George!) yelling "no, no, no, no, no! Where did this come from?" as I'm running my hands through his hair all over his head trying to figure out where the hair came from. By the way, he had the hair cutting scissors AND Chris clippers in hand, but the clippers were not plugged in so I was pretty sure he had not used those! Fortunately, he had cut his hair right on the 'cow lick' so it was not extremely noticable unless you were actually looking for it. He also cut it on top a bit but I just gave him a haircut to try and even that up a bit. My worst fear and the reason for totally flipping out was that I just knew I was going to have to shave his head and I knew I was going to lose it if I had to do that! Praise the Lord!, He protected us from having to do that this time...notice I say this time, trying to prepare myself for the possiblility of this happening yet again one day, although I pray this was our only experience with...a little barber! You know I had to take pics, so enjoy giggling!This is what I walked around the corner and saw! Now you understand why I flipped out!
This was the face he gave me when I asked him what he was doing!
This is the top of his head where you could see a chop in his hair.
This is where he cut it almost all the way to his head, now it's already grown back out to about an inch long...his hair grows soooo fast!
This was after clean up and Cade insisted in being in a picture with "Talwen"...that's how he says his name! :-)


Trunk-or-Treat:
This year for Halloween we were all Pirates...well, Cohen was our pet monkey, but the rest of us were pirates. I chose this theme because I hoped to think of something that all the boys would enjoy doing so we could have a theme on Cohen's first Halloween but I knew that was going to be difficult because they are at an age now that they want to pick what they are going to be. They all went for this though since they were going to get to carry guns and swords and stuff! Thanks to some of our good friends we didn't have to buy all of this but were able to borrow obout half of it and I pieced the other half toghether from thrift stores and dollar stores. I think they turned out pretty darn cute considering we only spent about $20 total on all 6 of us!!! Can you believe that? Here are some pics from Trunk-or-Treat at our church. Kim and Bobby showed up with a surprise for the boys...they brought Polo dressed up in a pirate costume as well! She was sooooo cute!!! We had a lot of fun!The whole pirate gang!
The cutest pet monkey ever!!!
Posing for mommy!
On the hayride with Aunt Kim and Uncle Bobby :-)
Cade playing hockey, he actually made all his shots!
Corbin playing football...and he got one ball through the hole!
Mommy & Daddy with their little monkey....right before we had to take it off because it was tooooo hot!
Cohen and his friend Griffen.
Callen, Corbin, Grayson and Michael.
Polo the pirate! Soooo cute!

Messy, Messy, Messy!?!
Sometimes I feel like that is all my boys ever are...well at least Callen and Cade that is. The problem is, they really don't mind being messy, in fact, they actually think it is fun to make a mess and get extremely messy while doing it! So what's a mom to do but take a few pics when it gets really funny and/or amazing! :-) And believe me, many times it truly is amazing to me that it does not bother them to be this messy! The first 3 pictures were taken on halloween after we had made some brownies in different halloween shaped and covered them in powdered sugar for the cake walk. They were enjoying the leftover powdered sugar to the fullest! The next 4 pictures were taken one day when I let them play in the mud...which they ALL LOVE to do!!! Corbin licking the powdered sugar off of his arm...we wouldn't want to waist any!
Callen licking the sugar off of the cutting board he was using!
Cade's face after licking sugar off of his cutting board...he just knew he was so funny and cute!
Corbin only really got his hands muddy...he always has been my cleanest child!
Callen had dots of mud ALL over him, from head to toe...he was truly loving that mom said "yes" to playing in the mud!!!
This was Cade's face...truly caked in mud, how he did this without eating any or getting it in his eyes I will never know...didn't bother him though, as you can see below...
...where he is threatening to come and get mommy with his nasty hands! Don't worry, they didn't go in the house like that...they got sent to the back yard where they were stripped down and hosed down before going in to take a good, long bath!!!

Antiques & Canton:
Most of you know that my first love in decorating is shabby chic antiques and of course one of the greatest places to find stuff like that is Canton. My parents were gracious enough to keep the 3 older boys while I went with Lauren and Sarah and we had a blast! It was a bit crazy out there because we had no choice but to go on a Saturday (which I will never do again if I can help it) but we found some GREAT stuff. Can't wait to go back again in the spring!!!This is a BEUATIFUL mirror...the picture doesn't do it justice! The original price tag on the back said $298 and I got it for $25!!! No lie, I was soooooo excited!
I found these awsome old pieces of wood and bought several of them. This was one of the bigger ones that I put a SLAH piece I had on it. LOVE it!
These are two of the smaller pieces of wood that I put smaller iron pieces that I had on them...I plan on hunting for more wood and iron pieces and selling these!...truly love them!
This is my Christmas present from Chris! I've been looking for a fireplace screen like this for 2 years now and when I saw this one, I fell in love with it. Then I saw the price, which was a 1/4 or less than any others like it I've ever seen, and I knew I wasn't going home without it!

6 Months Old and Growing!!!
My sweet Cohen is getting so big I can hardly believe it! He is officially crawling now...at only 6 1/2 mo. old! He sees something he wants and goes after it. Gone are the days of being able to just lay him on the floor and go do whatever, 'cause now not only will the boys accidently step on him but he will also dissapear and go get something he doesn't need! But believe it or not, he is still in his bassinett...I know, I'm a bad mom but he still sleeps so well in it, in spite of being the size of it, and I can't wrap my head around him not being in my room any more. This last baby thing is harder than I thought it might be, but the Lord is good and has given me the sweetest baby possible. We have the sweetest moments together and I'm cherishing every one of them!!! He says MaMa, DaDa and BuBu here and there, he eats cereal, fruits and vegetables like they won't be there tomorrow and believe it or not, he is already eating table food as well...crackers, cherios, hard boiled eggs, french fries and whole green beans to name a few. Lets just put it this way, he loves food as much as his brothers ever did and I'm sure will be on full blown table food by 9mo at the latest. What a joy he is in our lives!!!Playing in my exersaucer-like seat
He loves it!
Sitting straight up in his rocking seat...first one to figure that out and he did it at 5 months old!
He just pulls up on his toy bar and then takes it right out, he is so strong!
Also at 5 mo. he figured out how to turn completely over in this chair...while being buckled in might I add! We were all eating breakfast at the kitchen table and he wanted to see what was going on. I turned around to check on him just to see those sweet little blue eyed peeking over the top of the seat and could hardly believe it! He is smart, strong and determined!
First time on a kiddy ride (at Incredible Pizza)...Daddy put him on it and he LOVED it! He is going to do everything way faster than all the other boys because he has 3 older brothers he wants to be just like!
It's sad I know, he's as big as his bed...time for the big bed mommy!