Happy Turkey Day!

It's been a while since a blog post has gone up on here. But, here for your viewing pleasure, is some pictures of my favorite turkeys:

Annual family photo shoot

Taking our family pictures is always an adventure! But I love the way the card came out.

Scarlet Stars Christmas

Make a statement with custom Christmas cards at Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

Back to school!

So, some sense of normalcy has returned to the house now that school is back in session. The kids are all doing really well. Emily is in 5th grade now (and was quite annoyed that I wanted to take her picture on her first day of school). Matthew has started first grade and so far, so good. Molly is also going to school! She is in a full-day pre-k program that is offered through our district. She gets to ride the bus to school and they even give her breakfast and lunch! She's loving it.

Here's a picture of her with her new teacher, Mr. D!

Molly really likes Mr. D. She talks about him and the aide in the class, Mrs. Lezzi, all the time. She actually thinks that Mr. D and Mrs. Lezzi are married. Trent and I tried to tell her several times that if they were married, she would probably be Mrs. D, not Mrs. Lezzi. Molly insisted. She knew that they were married because Mrs. Lezzi calls him "sweetie" and "honey" and even gave him a kiss on the cheek!

Well, back to school night was last week and we finally got to meet Mrs. Lezzi. Let's just say that the familial relationship Molly should have thought of was mother-son. Mrs. Lezzi is a sweet, little ol' Italian lady who is probably old enough to be Mr. D's mom! We got a good laugh out of that one.

Matthew....

Matthew continues to crack us up at regular intervals. Last week, he had a rough day at school and got a red card. A red card is a lot like a red light - it means "stop" and signals that we aren't using our best behavior. So, he had the red card and had to sit in the "thinking chair" and didn't have time left in free play time to get to the dinosaurs. He was not a happy camper and his teacher told us that he was pretty weepy and clingy.

So, the next morning, we talked about it. I asked him why he had such a hard time with his behavior the day before. Straight-faced, my boy told me that someone stole his angel, so he had to listen to the devil instead. the boy still thinks that he has an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other! LOL Gotta love kids!

We spent some time landscaping this weekend. We had to replace the floor of the porch last summer and had to take out some of the shrubs when we did that. We weren't quite sure what else we wanted to put in so we waited until this year to figure it out. Here are some before pictures:

We spent all weekend working on it - from cleaning out the extra weeds, to planting, to mulching...and we still aren't done! We got some window boxes and hangers to place extra flowers on the porch that haven't gotten finished yet. But, we're getting there! See...

Here's the new holly bush on the right hand side of the house:

And here is the front view, before the mulch went in...

More to come later!

The joys of children...

My friends' daughter turned 1 last week. Trent had to work a prom so I took the kids by myself. All was going well (if you don't count Matthew trying to get a Smirnoff drink from the cooler because it looked like water! Thank goodness for other moms!) until after the gifts were open. My children decided to play with the baby's new ball and proceeded to fight over it. What you see below is the result of Molly tackling Matthew to get the ball and my intervention! Gotta love kids!

My favorite Mother's Day card...

Last year, Emily gave me a hand made card with this poem written on the inside. It is my favorite. All of the misspellings are hers. It was hard not to correct them but I resisted the urge since they add to the adorableness of the whole thing.

Mom the best one
Outgoing with your conversation on the phone
Thoughtful you get us stuff
Helpful with my homework
Entelegant you are very smart
Reperdouce you help make people
Super you rock!

Delightful you'r almost never grumpy
Almost always nice
Young your only 31

That is your special mother's day poem. Love, Emily
age 9, 3rd Grade