Meeting Lydia Leigh Fish

I'm going to blog a bit out of order here, so bear with me. This blog is about going to meet my new niece, Lydia. I have not blogged yet about my girlfriends weekend, but still plan to. I just need to pull out a few older photos to include, so it'll take just a bit more time.

So after basktball games today, we traveled down to Leiper's Fork to visit Cassie and her family. We arrived around 2:30 and stayed until about 7:30. Cassie looked great (although she did add a tad of make up for us!) and little (and I mean little) Lydia is just darling. The big kids all play so well together that it really gave the adults a nice visiting time.

I brought a double pot of chili and the fixings and Mom, Dad and Papa came over for dinner. Between the 7 adults and 8 kids, we basically wiped out the entire amount of chili. Yummy! It was a nice visit and so wonderful to spend a little time with them.

And of course here are some pictures of our time there:

Proud Aunt Katie

Precious Lydia Leigh Fish

Christian couldn't wait to hold Lydia

Rebecca has the sniffles so Daddy told her she couldn't hold the baby. Aunt Cassie came to the rescue with a mask!

Papa loves the little babies... this is his 13th ??? Great-granchild

She's so tiny



Ruth & Julianna with their matching tatoos

Silly girls

Leah wanted to be in the picture too

Now Rebecca has to be in with the girls

And of course, Anna Blair, too - what a cute group of girls

The boys with Lydia

What a goofy group of kids - they're singing the Who's song from the Grinch

Leah is taking gymnastics and wanted me to take this video of her. What a great cartwheel she is learning to do

I've been tagged...

My sister, Rachel tagged me...so I thought I'd participate. Here's what you do:

1. Go to your 4th folder where you store your photos.

2. Select the 4th photo (no exceptions).

3. Post the picture with an explanation and link it back to your tagger.

4. tag 4 people to do the same.

This picture was at a skating party. This is Julianna and Aiden, one of her best friends from church. This was her first time to skate and she loved it. She & Aiden were hillarious and as soon as she fell here, he fell too and they just rolled around and giggled non-stop. Aiden has moved away but his family still returns "home" and visits and she loves seeing him.

I tag Tiffany, Anita, Linda and Angie!!!!

Caught in the act

So our schools were out today because of ice, which it didn't quite get as cold as they thought and the ice melted away pretty quickly, but that meant all 3 of the kids were home today. So much for my work day!! Anyway, it was requested that I make some more home-made Chex-mix so with Christian's help (yeah, right!), I made some. As it was cooling, this is what I found.....

Climbing on the table to eat it...

Went and got a spoon to eat some more.....

The aftermath - see all the nut skins on her face and even her forehead??? Crazy girl!!

School Days

I meant to post these sooner, but I forgot. I scanned the kid's school pictures from the fall since I do a bad job these days of actually distributing them to family & friends. They're getting so big!!

Christian - 10 years old - 5th grade

Rebecca - 9 years old - 4th grade

Julianna - almost 3 years old - Mother's Day Out

Julianna

4-H Posters

Well, we are very proud of the kids and the job they did on their 4-H Posters. This was Christian's 2nd year to do one and Rebecca's first. Last year, Christian won 1st place in his class which meant his poster then went to the County competition and he won 1st place there, too for his grade. We even just found out that he received an award at the 4-H banquet which we did not attend. He got a neat little 4-H pin and his name was in the program, etc.

Anyway, below you will see the 1st place posters this year in each of their classes. Rebecca came FLYING out to the car on Wednesday saying she'd won first place in her class. Christian was much "cooler" today when he announced that he, too, had won first place in his class. So this means both of their posters will go to the county competition again. We're so proud of them. Rebecca especially did a good job on hers as she had more artwork to do. Christian did a whole lot of gluing since the Cricut machine did most of his cutting!!!

And of course not to be forgotten, Julianna, while we were cutting all the stuff for the posters, got her own 10 1/2 inch paper doll princess to play with so of course her picture had to be taken, too!!!

Rebecca with her 1st place winning poster!

Christian with his 1st place winning poster (note the new hair cut - he said it's too hard to do that and he doesn't have time in the mornings anymore!)

Julianna and her princess paperdoll!!

Rebecca scores!!!!

So I didn't get a picture of it happening, but Rebecca scored in her basketball game on Saturday. Her teammates did everything they could to help her out and she finally had success. I wish I could have captured the smile on her face and her teammates jumping up and down and squealing for her. A special thanks to her coach Chad and his daughter Sydney!!!

Miscellaneous Pictures

Here are some fun pictures I took mostly throughout December - they didn't necessarily merit their own blog but they can share one! Enjoy!!

Julianna and "Santa" at her school - this is hillarious - at least she was willing to sit with him - maybe next we'll get a smile..... (yeah, right!)

Rebecca shows off her new styling boots with her new American Girl, Ruthie, and new clothes from Gigi!

Playing a little Donky Konga!

Sydney, Rebecca's friend from Chattanooga was here for a week so she spent the day with us. They are just two peas in a pod - so cute. They had to match so they put together matching outfits of Rebecca's and had to get their picture taken!!

Julianna HAS to be in the picture with the girls

Gotta have the silly pose

We had our friends Lesli & Braden over for dinner and games - Donkey Konga is still a huge hit!!

My friend Chrissi & I at the Ladies Christmas Luncheon

Having some fun with Santa Hats!

A two-headed monster for sure!

New Year's Eve

As we have each New Year that we've lived here, we headed to the Locke's for our New Year's Eve festivities. We were laughing on the way over saying this is all Julianna's ever done on New Years in her life - although that first one where she was only 1 1/2 months old wasn't so thrilling, since I believe Chris & Brandi had to wake Matt & me up to see the ball drop.....

Anyway, we always have a lot of fun with lots of yummy foods (which I should have taken a pictue of that!) and games. This year, we took our new Guitar Hero World Tour and that was fun. We had to keep shoo'ing off the kids because they wanted to play the adult game HA!!! We eventually gave in, albeit reluctantly!!!

We rang in the New Year, sent the kids to bed and continued to play the Wii until about 2:30am. And just for fun, we hung out most of New Years Day, too. As always, it's just a fun special time with special friends.

Watching TV and waiting for the fun to begin

Michael stylin' in his new hat and with his new Bakugan

This was the adult game but Morgan kept finding her way in.... :-)

Getting sleepy....

Morgan rockin' to "NO SLEEP TILL BROOKLYN"

Julianna made it until 11:40 and then passed out on the couch!

Celebrating with Sparkling Grape Juice

Bringing in the New Year

The girls being silly - trying to wrap their arms around to drink

Julianna got to use her special glass for breakfast since she missed out at midnight

Rocking in the New Year

Rebecca said, "Look, Mom - I'm Toadette"

An all girl's band

Julianna took some pictures the morning after....

Tired from a late night but still smiling!

Fun Christmas Happies

There are some neat little things I wanted to share with you.

First of all, I crocheted a blanket for our bed and it turned out really well. I only know how to crochet one pattern, which is a baby's blanket, but I have a friend who saw my pattern and adjusted it for a more "regular, non-baby" blanket. That's what I used for Christian's. Well, Matthew's been wanting me to make a blanket for our bed for YEARS so I finally gave in and started one for him. I was able to talk him out of using alpaca yarn (which is extremely expensive) and we agreed on this homespun yarn. Also, thanks to him, we adjusted the pattern and added in something to break it up and voila - we hae a nice new warm blanket on our bed. Below are a couple of pictures of it for you to see.

Below those pictures, you'll see some other neat items we received over the holidays....

A close up of the new pattern


The finished blanket on our bed

A friend of mine made these and I thought they were so cute - she called them bacon and eggs..... it's 3 pretzel sticks with white icing holding them together with 2 yellow M&M's on the top. Isn't that darling???


Julianna has a good friend from school, Connor. Connor's Mom made this for her and it's too cute not to share. It's a purse that's made from a Santa hat. Isn't it great???

Here's Julianna with her purse - she loved it. (And the newest hand-me-down GA outfit from her friend Lily Grace)

My extremely creative friend Becky made this for me for Christmas and I LOVE it. It's so pretty that I just had to share it with you. It's a note cute that she's stamped on the sides and then made a beaded pen to match it.