Fishin' on Lake Toho in Kissimmee

Here are the pictures from our Father's Day with my dad. We had a blast. We woke up at 5:45am and hit the road at 6:15am. It was an early morning, but beautiful on the lake. Enjoy the pictures!

Happy Father's Day!

We have a three day celebtration of Father's Day this weekend.

It started out with a day with David, the best daddy. We took Daddy to Disney's Fantasia Golf and played putt-putt. It was extremely hot...The girls stopped playing after like 7 holes because they were so hot. We were hot and sweaty, but at least we were together. Then from there we picked up lunch and came home to each and take naps. Once we woke up, we all got ready and took our daddy out to dinner to Chili's. It was a fun filled day. (I remembered to take my camera, but I forgot to charge the battery - not a good combination!)

Today, we spent the afternoon with David's dad. He came to church with us, then we went out to lunch and back home for the girls to nap and the guys to watch golf.

We planned to go swimming after our naps, but it is raining.

Tomorrow, we will celebrate with my dad. We leave early in the morning to drive to Kissimmee where we rented a boat. We will be fishing, eating, or catching some rays :) We are really looking forward to that. Once we are home, we will swim and have a cook out.

I'll post pictures of that when I can.

But to David, Wayne and Mark...

We love you! Thank you for being a wonderful dad!

Love, Us

Anniversary Gift Ideas

Okay, so my 7th wedding anniversary is just around the corner (July). We are celebrating early because of a youth retreat at the end of the month. But we are also thinking that we will take the girls with us and try to have a babysitter a few nights so that we can go out to dinner by ourselves. Not really sure if that is practical or not but that is what we are leaning towards.

So here's the question... got any really good, but inexpensive gifts to give a husband? He's into golf, but i feel like that is all i ever give him. I'm sure if you read this you know at least a little bit about my dear husband - so give me a "shout out" (ha, that is so old school) with some ideas.

Alpha, Beta...

Well some of you know some of the letters of the Greek Alphabet. I think I only know them because Kristen had to learn them in High School and they taught her this song that makes you remember them better. Well that certainly worked then, but now I can only remember the first few. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta...

I'm sure you are thinking, "why is Kelly talking about the Greek Alphabet"? Well, because Jasmine is a Beta Fish. I know, I know the connections couldn't be further apart, but it's my blog afterall, isn't it :)

So here are pictures of Jasmine. Our first pet. The girls wanted to name her Katelyn, then Hallye, then Kenzie (are girl cousins names). So after we told them that they could not name our fish after their cousins they settled on Jasmine. "Why", you ask? Beacause she looks like the Disney character "Jasmine". At least to a 5 and 3 year old it does.

We have some people to introduce you to...

Well I know it has been a while since I last posted. We have been super busy.

We went to New Attitude (which was AWESOME) last weekend and right after that hit the ground running with home projects and a garage sale. By the way, you can log on to the NA website to listen to messages. They are pretty much worth listening to about a bazillion times. I think the site is www.newattitude.org (pretty good guess, right!)

Who are the people to introduce you to? Well one is a person, one is well - not a person but she deserves a post all to herself.

I will be posting in the days to come about a new friend who is living with us. Her name is Kim and she is a niece of a family in our church. She moved in Sunday night and will be living with us for the summer, approximately 2 1/2 months. The other girl we need to introduce you to is Jasmine, but we will leave all the details about her a secret for now. You can certainly guess if you'd like, but I will try to post about her soon too. I think she is feeling a little left out.

The girls meet the boys...

A few weeks after the twins were born we were finally able to take the girls to meet Caleb and Tyler for the first time. The girls got colds right after they were born, so we patiently waited. We celebrated Mother's Day with Nonni too, so it was a fun-filled evening. Alyssa seems to be a natural little mommy and although Meredith had a rough start she finally quieted him down. Now me on the other hand, I'd have to say I am grateful that God gives me one baby at a time!

Alyssa's 5th Birthday Party

Kristen's 30th Birthday Party

Happy Birthday Alyssa!

My baby girl turned 5 today!!! Well, acutally not until 10:01pm, but we celebrated already. We had a normal day, but then went to watch her ballet teachers recital then out to dinner at a place of her choice (Olive Garden) and to GolfSmith to get her birthday present. Yep, thats right, GOLF CLUBS...



So now off to bed, to get a good nights sleep so that i can get ready for a birthday party tomorrow. We have about 10 little girls coming over!!! I'll post about that in the next few days.

These 5 years have gone by so fast, I don't even feel old enough to have a 5 year old - but obviously I am. We are so blessed by God with Alyssa, she is growing in serving around the house, by empting the dishwasher, setting the table, putting away all the girl clothes, she even helped me clean my bathroom this week.

Happy Birthday Alyssa! We love you!

Central Florida Fair

This past Monday we celebrated our 10th or 11th year of going to the Cenrtal Florida Fair with the Brooks' and Jones' families. The Davis' joined us this year and Kathy too. There were a total of 10 kids. It was so much fun! I think we all had some sort of stomach ache afterwards from all the yummy food we ate. The kids just went from ride to ride one right after the other. We got there at 4:30 and left at 10:30. It was a late night, but we sure did have a great time!

5 days old...

Caleb David and Tyler Andrew made their debut last Friday, April 18th. Here are a few pictures. More of Caleb than of Tyler only because Tyler was being hogged by other family members. Hope you enjoy the pictures!

Caleb weighed 6 lbs 6 oz and was 17 3/4 inches. Tyler weighed 8 lb 8 oz and was 18 inches long.

Pictures of our trip to Arizona

We are home...

We arrived home about 1:30am last night (Wednesday) from a long day of traveling from Arizona to Salt Lake City and then a tremendously long flight to Orlando. We all took some medicine to help us sleep and we all woke up at 10am this morning. We were greated by a joyful smile and an unknowing tilt of the head as we opened the door to dear little Brooklyn. But what a joy it is to be with her again. It was a long week of wonderings about how she was doing, what she was getting into, what she would be like (attitude) when we got home, if she would look like she grew up at all, etc. The musings of a mom, i'm sure you all know what i'm talking about. Today has been full of unpacking, checking email, going through the regular mail and a few loads of laundry. I'll update a blow by blow account of our wonderful trip to Arizona as I can.

3rd Annual Strawberry Picking Day

Last friday, the girls and me and a lot of friends from church went strawberry picking. We had a lot of fun. The girls gave up early this year, as you will see in the pictures. We had only been there about an hour and they thought it would be more fun to have snacks and play in the van. Brooklyn got completely filthy and I don't even want to think about how much dirt she ate. She would walk down the rows and squish the strawberries in her hand and then shovel it in her mouth. I could only handle that for so long. The thought of the dirt and possible bugs she was eating was too much for me. So she went in the car too, and her mommy prayed, Lord protect my little girl from anything harmful she ate today. We had a great time. And we came home with 20 quarts of strawberries for $10. They sure are yummy!