Pre-halloween festivities

Well, it's that time of year again! The annual pumpkin carving...(this year Cam was really into his bald wig, and would not take it off)

Lights on

(Busted kid in background)

Lights off

Then it was time for the school version of dress up. They are to dress like a "book character" to keep it nice & clean.

Captain Underpants and Wolverine away!!

Always gotta put the Brandon/Madison pic in here!

Trip to Roundrock!

The boys & I decided to make a trip to Roundrock to visit Charlotte, Corey & the kids while Blake spent some good time in worship @ The Men of Light Conference.

This trip was 4 fold.

1. To visit one of my dear friends that I hardly get to see.
2. To watch Lincoln play t-ball!
3. To watch Gwenyth play soccer!
4. To watch Maison play volleyball!

Did I mention that we went to go watch some sporting events?! They all did SOOOO well, and it was really fun to see the Kosse's. We miss having them so close!

Lincoln & I before the game

Tatum

Char & I

Me & my favorite boys!

Lincoln running home!

The proud mama!

Piggy tails & a soccer ball!

One beautiful 9 year old girl!

I still have my french braiding skills!

We had so much fun, and can't wait till the next time we get to see them all!

Why I do what I do...

Brandon made me this at school. I love this kid! (And Cam too...but he's out of the "writing Mom special notes" stage already.)

you get chickens, you get chicken eggs!

So I thought to myself one day, I wonder if I can let the chickens roam throughout the backyard? Really, it's OUR training, not the chickens I was worried about. Can we be SO careful not to let the 2 dogs out, so that we can keep getting eggs and not have chicken stew?

So, after a phone call to my friend Rob & Kim, my chicken goo-roos, I decided to let em out of their cage! And man...do they LOVE it! They chicken around all through the backyard & have a blast! (These pics really pick up all the beautiful hill country rock we have in the backyard. It's free, by the way. Just come load & take as much as you want!)

Then, they do this strange dirt bath thing where they waller around in the dirt. It's weird.

And now they're coming up real close to the house! They're getting braver & braver!

Right after we started letting them out, they started laying more! I was so excited one day when I got this!

Then, a couple days later, we were up to this!

Needless to say, we eat a lot of eggs. And egg sandwiches. And omlets. And egg soup. And boiled eggs. Eggs, eggs and more eggs. Blake checked today, and found 11 more! Seriously!

Fun in the Rain & Favorite Shirts

This blog is about 2 things. Control and Fun.

1. I love control. One of my big control things is picking out my kids clothes. I pick them out. They don't have their own "style" they have "what Mom picks out style". I think this stems from all the pics of me as a child, not wearing the coolest clothes. I don't want that for my kids. So, I pick out their clothes.

2. Fun. I love for my kids to have fun. Especially if they can do it neatly and quietly.

This day was about NEITHER. There was NO control over what they wore, and it was very messy. But, they had a BLAST!!

There's nothing like playing in the rain, in what you picked out to wear. (At the time, it wasn't raining very hard, so we had to add the sprinkler for more fun.)

Camron has on a pink shirt. Go figure. The kid is starting to come out of his shell. He thinks pink on boys makes them real manly and cool.

Bran has picked out green shorts and an itsy-bitsy-teeny-tiny power ranger under-roos top. Classic Brandon.

I just love these kids!! They are SO fun!

Brandon's missing tooth

Bran's second front tooth came out last night, so he's officially looking for his two-front-teeth! Camo already had his big tooth coming in when his came out, so we never had that tooth-less grin with him. So, I'm pretty excited about Brandon's! It's just so dang cute to see that little grin!! He was SO excited, he was shaking.

One other fun part, is Brandon's friend Madison is also missing her two front teeth. I just don't know if you could get any cuter that these two faces!!

And-we're 2nd week into school & the kids are doing GREAT!!! They are having a blast, and their teacher's are wonderful! Yeah school!

the chickens are a growing!

The kids are growing...the chickens are growing. Everything's growing. Except for the garden. It's dead. Dead as a door nail. It's a sad corner of the yard now. Oh well. There's always next year.

We got our new little experiment, called a chicken coop, back @ the end of April. It's been fun, and WAY messy & stinky, but fun.

This was the first day @ home - at about 12 weeks old.

Now they should be about 28 weeks, I think.

Now, if it would just cool down and not be 400 degrees, maybe they'd start laying me some eggs!

First day of school 2009!!

Well, exactly 1 year ago, this same post started the Taylor family into the the fun world of blogging. It's really hard to believe it's been a year!! Time flies!!


We started off our morning @ the ripe 'ol time of 6:22am. (I have this WIERD thing about time. Everything is always on wierd times. It's been following me for a long time. Sorry.) The kids woke up really excited and ready to go!!

So, our annual 7:10am picture taking in the front yard (prob more like 7:11 or 7:12)-

Then on to school! Cam had some butterflies in his stomach on the way there, but we decided to throw them out the window. Didn't need them @ school.

Brandon wasn't nervous at all.

Then it was off to the gym for both of them to wait for their teachers.

Gym means you're big now. No more library for Bran.

Quick recap of the last 5 first days of school. (I didn't take one for 2004. I was such a rookie back then.)

I just can't BELIEVE that we have been in the same house for 5 years now!!!! We have been able to have 6 first days of school here, and that just blows my mind away. I just LOVE that!

It's flippin hot

...And my kids know it. They mainly know it from hearing me complain like crazy!! They're so used to hearing me complain that it's hot, that it's now becoming their language. I say, "Cam, go run this over to Gary's" (it's right across the street), he says "MOOOMMMM, it's too hot!" I say, "Go outside & play!!" They say, "MMMMOOOOOOOOMMMMMM, it's too hot! It's like 175 degrees!" I have NO idea where they get this stuff from. :)

So, it's hot. And people are running out of water. I did not comply to our non-water restrictions last week. It was too hot to jump on the trampoline, so we turned the sprinkler on. Who knew the kids would have so much fun!!