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.

Just another day running errands

You walk into Home Depot. What do the kids do? INSTANTLY start climbing ALL OVER EVERYTHING!!! Then in the middle of the 5th lecture of "Let me tell you again-the reasons you can't climb on the racks @ Home Depot", Brandon grabs himself (normal!), and says, "I've got to peeeeeeeeeeeee". They ALWAYS have to go to the bathroom @ Home Depot. I think it's just this malfunctioned inner brain thing that they are born with. It goes something like this-You walk into a store and your kid, anywhere from 2 1/2 years old to I think 15ish, and the kid has to either pee or poop. The store that the kid has chosen either does not have a customer bathroom available-and you have to walk, WITH the people that work there, through the super over crowded back room, to a place that only resembles a bathroom because there's a toilet, OR a store where the bathroom is just a few feet away from walking to CHINA. That's the story @ Home Depot. The only way that you could be anywhere close to the bathroom is if you were looking for concrete bags. Seriously. Otherwise, you have to walk 150,000 feet with a kid holding his privates ALL the way to the bathroom. The people who designed these places did not have children.

Anyway, so we make it to the bathroom. I don't know what y'all normally see when you walk into the bathroom @ Home Depot, but here's our experience.

4 Dogs in a cart. In the bathroom. At Home Depot. That's normal, huh??

The Day the Bomber left...

It was a sad morning @ the Taylor house. Well, sort of.

Long story short, we bought an 1990 Oldsmobile Cutlas Cierra 2+ years ago from my Dad, which had been previously owned by my 19 year old sister, in the attempt to try and get us closer to where we wanted to be financially. So what do you get when you trade in a car payment? What ever you can afford,-this was it!! We named it "the bomber" and she was a beaut! Well, she died about a month ago, and is now on her way to being donated to Comal County's Habitat for Humanity. It's kind of sad. We'll miss seeing her in the driveway, rusting away. (Even though I am SURE that my NEIGHBORS will miss seeing her even more!)

Isn't she pretty??

The boys watching...

Going....

Going....


Gone.She did us well, and we can safely say that we got our $750 out of her.

10 years and a WEEKEND AWAY!

We celebrated our 10 year anniversary this weekend and were blessed with some wonderful babysitters (THANKS MOM, TONI & MARY) and we able to get away for the weekend to Marble Falls!! The kids had tons of fun with Grammy & Aunts, and we were able to just be US!

Blake is always wonderful & gets me roses on our anniversary!

Here's an attempt @ a self-portrait @ sunset! (New diamond earings in my ears!!)

We went to a place called Badu House in Llano for dinner. So fun!

Can you believe this view? I just can't get used to it, and the fact that we live so close to this! We LOVE the hill country!!!!

I got all tatted up @ Market Days.

And put on my bikini in downtown Fredricksburg. I am just crazy, huh?

We got to do a lot of hanging out together, even went to a winery for a wine tasting. Very nice! (No pics of that.)

Here we are @ River City Grille in Marble Falls. Outside on the deck, waterfall in the back ground, band playing, no kids around, wonderful weather, just fun.

I LOVE YOU SEEP!!!!!!!! Can't wait to see what the next 10 brings.

When Ike came to town

Ike was a very bad thing. Didn't like any part of him. We had lots of friends and family in Houston that probably dislike him a LOT more than me. So sorry guys.





Ike didn't really come to bad in Spring Branch though. Would have been a little nice to have a couple inches of rain, but nope. Just turn the sprinkler back on, Jen. No rain for Spring Branch, again.





Ike did leave a few traces around here though...

-must have had some big winds. Socks & shoes were all over the house, homework spread everywhere, dog hair in more places than I can count, and there toys were found in every room.

-some evacuees got to come hang out. Troy, Anna, Bailey, Inde, Katy. Winds got so bad @ times, Bailey's ears were out of control.

-poop was spread all over the back yard. I wonder why?? See any culprits?

-acorns got all over the trampoline. Just a mess. Gave Cam a headache.

We were so distraught, that we just had to have a sister sushi night. Then, the tuna tower was different again? Could it have been Ike?

-Then I think the barometric pressure hit the boys. It was throwing them off a bit. Had to put on some sleeveless shirts and jump some more to fix it.

I do have to say, that Ike made my sister Toni not have power for about a week, so she got to come and stay @ our house. And that, my friends, was a huge blessing!! I was much needed to have time with my sis. Really makes me wish that I was around my family more. I miss all of them!

through my head

Since my friends decided to get me into the blogging scene, I now take pictures wondering, "what can I add to this to put onto my blog?"

So, walking through the house the other day, I found my fierce guard dogs ready and willing to take their stance on anyone who was going to come by.

Well, not so much.

This is Lucy. She is normally in 3 places throughout the house.
1. Laying IN her dog bowl in the kitchen
2. Sleeping on her bed
3. or See below

She holds the wall by the back door. Wanna see proof, look at the large quantity of DOG hair on my curtain.

Then there's Cowboy. He's pretty much worthless, but full of LOVE for us. Total companion dog. All he thinks about is being where ever we are. Including when you go to the bathroom. He follows you everywhere and is thinking "What are you doing mom, huh, huh? What are you doing? and can I come in?? huh, huh? Can I see? What's in there? You in the fridge now Mom, huh, huh? You going to go into the laundry room? I wanna see what's in there? Can I come, huh, huh??" Constantly. He loves us. And he loves his ball. Here he is guarding his ball by the front door.

When you become a mom of kids anywhere in the 1ish to probably 80ish age, you learn to NOT go to the grocery store with your kids. You tend to walk out with WAY more than you expected. Here's what we walked out with on Friday.

You've probably all seen them, and wondered, "hey, I wonder if those things are any good?" Well let me tell you, YES they are!! The boys loved them, and so did I.

Saturday we were invited to the Tejas Rodeo in Bulverde. It was tons of fun, and I just found out that George Strait's new video for "Troubadour" was actually filmed there. It's a really cool place if you are looking for something to do. We all had fun! http://www.tejasrodeo.com/

Here's a pretty sweet "brotherly love" moment. Blake and I were still down eating our dinner and we told the kids to go find the kids and sit with them. We looked up to see this...

Then, the boys being boys...not looking @ the signs.

"It's just horses & bulls Mom."

Our friend GRADY turned 5!!! I can't believe it. Happy Birthday buddy!!

Here's what must have been going through Grady's mom and dad's mind that day before. -Geez honey, our son wants a hunting party. What do we get? A cake with a deer head on it, all the kids in camo, some camo note pads, some sticky men (that made the kids go CRAZY), and why not a hunting DOG!!

Here's the kids with their new friend "Chocky"

She's DARN cute!!!!!

Here's all the kids. Aren't they beautiful?

And last but not least, I have to make a shout out to my friend Zane. He's just so darn cute!!! Look @ his little face! And, that smile comes fresh with two dimples. How could you say no to this face when he asks for a snack and a drink "for the road"?

We're gonna try and bunker down for this hurricane that doesn't seem to be coming this way. We'll see!!