Flashbacks...

Sweet Matthew from 1 year ago!!!

Brandon LOVES his Matty bug!

Here he is now! So big!!

The November Catch up...(part 1)

November starts craziness for the Taylor family. I am always dreading when I turn that calendar page. It seems as though as soon as November starts, we don't rest until June. But, it's all exciting & worth it!!!

We start with my birthday!! Happy Birthday to me! The big 32 hit, and I am feeling every year! Getting old is no fun. Blake and Mary were there too, but no pics.

Here's the boys & I at Gringos!
2 years ago...same place! (and SAME sweater!!!)
Then, we got to celebrate 5 birthdays in our acacia group! To do this easy, we all packed up and headed to La Hacienda for dinner. Our group doesn't get out much, but man...did we have fun!! We had Birthday Boys Lance, John, & Josh G (who didn't show), and Girls Kim & I.

We put the kids @ the end of the 24 person table because of the slightly crazy group of people that you can kind of see to the left.

So what do you do when there's a CRAZY group of older people next to you???

Chris Gilbert asks them to DANCE!!

Chris, you are a NUT. But, you can get your groove on!!

Here's a couple of pictures. I didn't get many...

Raenette, me, & Birthday Girl Kim

Meg & Brooke

Then...my niece Maddy turned 2!!! She was sooooo cute with all of her new toys, mainly her new baby dolls!!

My boys played a round of pin the tail on the donkey. I remarked with, "ohhh, why are you touching a donkey hiney??"

And, Camron learned how to blow a bubble!

The boys are both very much into drawing pictures, and making sure I keep EVERY one of them. Here's Bran's impression of "Dad hypnotized"

Not bad, huh?? Nice gotee! (By the way, urban dictionary defines as a gotee as "facial hair that is sexy")

Camron & Brandon both earned awards @ school. Go boys!! You make Mom & Dad so proud!

I'll have to post the rest of the month later! I have been working on this post for 2 days, and it's starting to fustrate me beyond belief!!

Halllooooowwweeeennn....

It's that time of year again. When the leaves start falling, it's 32 degrees in the morning and 84 in the afternoon, and the kids start bombarding me with "Hey Mom, how many days till Halloween??

To prepare for the long awaited holiday, we carved some pumpkins. I have to say, as the years pass, our carving skills are getting better and better. I would like to go back to the jack-o-lantern face again. It's much easier that what we try to pull off!

Sonic & Mario with the flash on...

then at night. Not bad, huh?

Then comes the dress up time. After a lot of planning, and a lot of searching for size 10 boys overalls (who knew they made such a thing, and thanks DEB for finding them!!),

we end up with Mario & Luigi!!

We got to go to our church's Fall Festival again. So much fun!! The kids had a great time & loaded up on the candy!!

Here's some of my friends...50's, 60's, 70's & 80's!

Here's "Crazy Church Lady" & 80's chick

Crazy Church Lady again with 70's

After the fall festival, some of us joined back up to get ready for our trick-or-treating.

Here's a fine looking group of kids!

And here they are loaded up on the no-hay hay ride.

It was a loooonnnnggg hard day of Halloweening. They were getting pretty pooped & smeared up @ this point. We sure did get a bunch of candy though!! Let me know if you want some.

Things you should and shouldn't do...

You should not let your kids play with their food.

You should pull over to take pictures of rainbows.

You should take pictures of your Mother falling asleep on the couch.

You should have an "ice cream bench"

You should take pictures of your kids crying to use as blackmail.

and then take the next picture where you force them to smile because of the above reason. Cheeeese.

You should watch your friends kids and dogs for them.

And have them crash out so that they are wide awake when Mommy & Daddy get back.

You should not let your dogs on your bed.

You should take silly self portraits with red mustaches with your kids.

You should let neighbors kids come play and let them do sometimes the most random-NOT HARMFUL-things (like hide under bathroom sink for 45 minutes)

Or in the dog kennel.

Let your kids & friends play in yard to find lizards, grass hoppers, ants, beetles, or in this case, tree frogs!

You should visit with long time friends that you don't get to see all the time.

You should take a picture of your son eating nachos with nacho cheese on his nose.

I don't think you're supposed to let your kids play on the ride on things @ Tractor Supply, but we do anyway

You should have a freaky skeleton that you take out every Halloween, name him Fred, and let the kids put tinker toys, swords, and power rangers in him. (It seems the neighborhood kids are doing a lot of random things in this blog!

You sould not allow your children to climb up and hang on the basketball goal. It gives them forehead road rash, some cuts (very small) in the head, and dents in Mom's car. Oooops.

Pumpkins and kids

OK...so I am not the good mom with taking pictures in the pumpkin patch every year, but I wish I was. Here's our this year attempt.

2008

And here's 4 years ago!!
I told you I wasn't good. 2 in 4 years. Come on. But the ones I have sure are cute!!

A Tribute to my Friend Jamie

I have been blessed with MANY friends here in Spring Branch. Luckily some are still here, while a few have moved away. Yuck. The one I am talking about today is my dear friend Jamie.

Jamie is an amazing person. She has several, SEVERAL talents. Some including being a wonderful mother to two BEAUTIFUL children who keep her very busy and an amazing wife to a great husband. She home schools those two children, and STILL manages to be one of our Children's Pastors @ our church. There are several posts on our VBS here that you can scroll down and see the proof that she's one busy person. She is also normally followed by her sweet and close family. She lives on the "compound" with her WHOLE family. (There's 6 houses besides her's!) She's one heck of a good person to know!!

Well, about 21 weeks or so ago, my sweet and crazy friend Jamie called me. After about 20 minutes of conversation, she said, "Hey Jen, there's something I need to tell you." I just kept talking throwing in "what? you're pregnant?" and continued on with my conversation, never skipping a beat. See, my friend Jamie and I, along with several of my friends (AT THE TIME), were in this secret "we're done having kids" club. The "you're pregnant." comment is just the normal thing you say when you say "Hey...guess what?" Welllll...Jamie didn't continue to the next conversation, she kept going with that one saying "Yes."

So, the last 21 weeks have been VERY eventful in Jamie's world, and I am lucky to have been a part of it. It started with me getting sonogram jelly on my neck (long story) and is continuing with many, many laughs and MANY prayers. My sweet and jolly friend has been put on bed rest and house arrest. It's kind of like putting a baby Jack Russell puppy into a kennel, for a month. And never letting it out. She's starting to bust at her seams, literally. This little sweet baby girl she's cooking inside of her little oven is coming, and a little too quickly. So, she sits at home. With her husband, her 2 children (that she is continuing to home school-on her bed!), and her 3 dogs. Oh-and she is still our children's pastor. Again, doing it all from her bed/couch!! She is quite the multi-tasker. She is LUCKY to have many family members around to help, and to sometimes make her laugh (which she's not supposed to do too much) AND drive her nuts. :) The husband and kids are doing REALLY well, considering the complete upside down-ness that has happened in their world, and we hope that she just gets to stay @ HOME to keep being with them. So, we as her friends try and help too, the best we know how.

Here's my latest attempt on keeping her feeling her plugged in.

Here you go friend...

the Deep Water Crew

Ahhhh..."Doing Life Together". Another term for "let's get a group of people together in someone's house once a week, that don't know each other, and get them to do a boring study in hopes of bonding them together for life." Well, that first group came, some went, and some more came. Now it's this group of people who amaze me. I can't even describe the feeling. I was thinking about them all this morning, and here's an ode to the Deep Water Crew.

WHY I LOVE MY ACACIA GROUP

1. They are 29 of the coolest people I know (Picture missing the Riedels and the Josh's)

2. They pray, and pray hard!

3. Some of them can do the worm, and a couple of them can do it well.

4. We're 3 years strong!!!

5. We have LOTS of funny stories, and always repeat them to show our love for each other.

6. We are all REALLY good cooks!

7. We go through the good, bad, and sometimes the ugly. (Not really the ugly, but had to have it in there to make it look real)

8. We have a GREAT group of children that all really GET ALONG!

9. When one gets baptised, we ALL get baptised.

10. They can build or rebuild pretty much anything you can think of!

(including our pergola!! Thanks guys!)

11. The men are strong husbands and fathers and LOVE their wives. (Here's some of them, but not all)

13. We get to celebrate a LOT of birthdays!!! Come on, there's 29 of us!

Latest ones, Happy bday Kendall & Katilynd! (looking @ the pic, Kendall's not even in there! But it was the best picture I had of the day)

14. We miss each other when we're gone. (missing our friends on their trip to Israel & Turkey!)

15. You can call any one of them up when you need something/someone.

16. Between all of us, we have any power tool, lawn mower, game, camera, clothes, food, yard tool, computer skill, craft skill, question, answer, kid, idea, shoes, jewlery, movie, or anything else you can think of...that we could all borrow @ anytime.

17. They ALL LOVE JESUS, and make it a point to show the world his Love!

18. We can challenge another acacia group to a cabin make over challenge, and WIN.

(sorry other group. It was really fun!!!)

19. It's our FAMILY when we aren't around our own families.

20. We support each other the best way we know how.

Love you guys.