#4 - September and October Pictures

 Not many things are better than spending your afternoon eating chips and dip and playing Hi Ho Cherry-O!

Thought I was giving her chapstick. Obviously it was colored chapstick.

 A friend at church gave us some winter boots that her daughter had outgrown. Suddenly the boots were worn every single day with every outfit imaginable!

 Meanwhile Hunter wears a flower girl veil around his waist... one gene my kids did not necessarily get is the fashion gene!

 But then I found these beauties at the Coalition (one of my favorite thrift stores) for just $2!! New favorite shoes for Bri!

When Hunter is quiet, I have to go find him in a hurry. (Gumdrops in the pantry!)

 I guess we're packing her up and shipping her out!

 They built towers out of markers and kept telling me to take more and more pictures!

 Quality time with Evan (my nephew) at our yard sale a couple of weeks ago!! (I took about 100 pictures of him! Kids love the camera!)

He wanted his aunt Carrie in a picture!

 Gotta do the bunny ears to unsuspecting 2-year olds.

 Family reunion! This is the only picture I got!

Bri's new BFF, Reagan!

#3 - Videos

We had such a great time last night with some friends from church! We go through phases where we'll get to have nights out with friends or family and then we'll go a whole month and be so busy we don't get to do anything at all. So last night Joe and Meagan and their three kids came over for dinner and Trivial Pursuit. We had a blast! Dinner was yummy and Meagan made a delicious Oreo cake, and then as the kids ran around screaming, we attempted to play Trivial Pursuit. We basically failed at this task, but we're resolved to try again in the future! We have five or six varieties of TP so we'll try an easier one in the future! Hah!

Anyway, my blog today is going to get some videos off my phone that have been on there since July.

This first video is from back in July. Oma and Opa got Hunter a water table for his birthday and shipped it to him early so he could use it all summer! I never got to post this video months ago but this was the first day we put it together. They loved playing with the water table! I'm so sad that it's about to be put away for the winter!



This next video is Brianna at the dinner table. She says, "You love Bri most and Bri loves you "trememously". That's how we love each other!" This is one of her favorite sayings.



And last but not least, here are our children being bad influences on their younger cousin Kaleb. Won't be long before he'll be joining right in these antics!

#2 - I Voted

Stephen and I were planning on voting next Tuesday, like most people probably are. But with our trip to Georgia that we are taking, we took the time to vote early yesterday.

I read in our newspaper that there are just over 63,000 voters registered in our county. Yesterday when I went, I was voter # 4997. We've probably had over 20,000 people vote early so far. I don't know what the numbers are usually like for presidential elections, but I really hope we have a great turnout by the end of voting on Tuesday!

I definitely believe that no matter what the outcome is Tuesday night, God is in charge. God already knows the outcome and He has a plan for our country. Now, that doesn't mean that the people in our country will necessarily make the right decisions over the next six months, or two years, or fifty years and we'll live happily ever after. I think we all know that's not true.

I do believe that no matter who the president is - Romney, Obama, or Yo Mama, as Christians we are called to respect their authority. I believe we must pray for them and the decisions they are making. I don't believe in talking a lot of junk about people in authority. I don't think complaining after elections does a whole lot of good (do you??) because I've never seen it change anything. I'm talking about the kind of complaining that happens between coworkers or spouses or friends, that never goes anywhere beyond your mouth to their ears.

So this election season, I guess what I'm trying to say is, respect the authority. If the person you voted for doesn't get into office, we still need to teach our kids to respect the office. Even if it's the state auditor or a judge. Our kids need to be taught to pray for these people because they are making decisions we would never want to be involved in. (Side note: If you think you could do a better job, you should probably start campaigning for the next election.)

#1 - More Pictures from August

I'm going to attempt NaBloPoMo again! I've done it other years, so hopefully this will help me catch up on the multitude of pictures and events I need to blog about.

It's late, so I don't really have time for a "real" post. My Grandpa Loyd passed away, peacefully, this afternoon. We will go to Georgia soon for his funeral and get to spend some time with the rest of our family (and Stephen's!) while we're down there. I will post next week about the funeral and our trip down there. Until then, this is the blog post you get... a quick and easy one!

These are pictures from the last time I had nursery at night at church. Usually when it's a Sunday night and I have nursery, there are three kids - Brianna, Hunter, and Bri's friend Kassie. It gives us the flexibility to go to the playground if the weather is nice. We love it!

Kassie hula-hooping:

Pushing each other on the swings:

We decided just to chill on the big swing with the dinosaur:

Brianna got a pink hair clip-on from a birthday party and wore it EVERYWHERE for a while. Not sure where it is now though...

Fashion sense:

Daddy's recycling idea - make shoes out of Mountain Dew boxes! After they got tired of wearing them, they would stack them and ride their bike into the stack to knock them over.

How she dressed herself one (not-that-cool) morning. I did NOT tell her to pose like this!

Minnie got a head wound:

This is probably how the head wound happened: