More Talent

When it comes to artistic ability, so far in the Warren house, Rebecca wins hands-down. Coming from her Mom who can't draw a decent stick person, that's not necessarily saying much, but from the art she produces, you would quickly agree with me.

She recently wanted to enter into a color contest the local county paper was having, so both she and Julianna entered it. A week later, I received a call from the Robertson County Times informing me that Rebecca had won 1st place in her age division. We went by the office, had her picture taken for the paper and she received a big Easter basket full of all sorts of goodies.

We are so proud of her. (BTW, keep watching - the school art fair is this week and we know she'll do well in that, too).

This is the picture that was taken & put in the newspaper. It's much more clear that what is actually printed in the paper.

I scanned the winning picture for you to see!

Blessings from God

I couldn't resist posting these pictures. We got them last week from her Thursday Parents Day Out School . First of all, they're just precious. Second of all, my sister, Cassie, made that dress for Rebecca when she was about that age and I love that Julianna gets to wear it, too.

When we found out that she was going to join our family, we had many, many people say to us, "One day, you'll say that you just can't imagine what life would be like without her." Well, they were 100% right - we cannot imagine what life would be like without our precious little Julianna.

She is living proof that God's plans are far better than our plans. She is a gem - a tremendous blessing from God to us and we adore her!!

Julianna - almost 3 1/2 years old

This is Julianna's "I want to smile but I'm trying not to" look


This is one of Julianna's best buddies, Cayman. Their brothers play on the same select soccer team so they see a lot of each other. They also attend her Thursday school together. And it just so happens that Cayman's mom is the director so she had the photographer take this picture of them together.

Happy Easter

What??? More pictures for Mom's blog????

Well, Happy Easter. Not much to blog about..... Had our annual jelly bean trail to the Easter baskets, had church, had lunch at home and then 3 of the 5 of us took naps. That was wonderful. We had a great family day at home. Here are our pictures!!

Patiently waiting to follow the jelly bean trails

Easter Baskets

Christian, Rebecca and Julianna before church

At church

Our family (can you tell it was windy and cold??)

Baby Shower in Memphis

My brother, Justin and his wife, Mandy are expecting their first child (a little boy) at the end of May. Mandy had her first baby shower in Memphis on Saturday and it was the best day for all of us to go. So we met up and caravaned together - Mom and Dad, Cassie and her 4 girls and me with my girls. Our hubbies stayed home with the boys - thanks, guys.

Driving together certainly made the trip a little easier with the girls and it was fun to catch up with Cassie. We had a nice shower with Mandy and her family and then Mom and Dad stayed behind to spend Easter with Mandy and Justin and Cassie and the girls and I headed back home. It was a long day, but we were so glad to get to celebrate with Mandy and Justin at the shower.

My brother Mandy and his wife, Mandy

This is Mandy with the blanket I crocheted for little Baby Payne

A whole bunch of girls (and we're still missing Addelyn - Rachel's daughter!)

Cassie & her 4 beautiful girls

Katie and her beautiful girls

Mom, Cassie, Lydia and me

Rebecca and Anna Blair had matching shirts and were so excited about it

Good Friday 2009

On Good Friday, we went down to my sister, Cassie's house in Leiper's Fork for the day. My brother, Justin and his wife came in from Memphis for a shortened day so we headed down early. We decided to have an egg hunt for the kids and we had over 200 eggs to hide. The weather was turning ominous so we quickly hid the eggs and had the kids go find them. By the end of the hunt, the skies were grey and the lightning and thundering had begun but we made it and found all but one of the eggs (which was later found as we were leaving!)

My neice's birthday was Saturday and we were able to celebrate with her on Friday since we were all together. As usual, when our families are together, things are wild but we always have a great time together. We missed my sister Rachel and her family out in Washington and even my Dad couldn't make it due to work, but we're already looking forward to this summer when we're all together!

Josiah was creative with his Easter basket

Anna Blair finding eggs

Rebecca took a moment for a picture during the hunt



This was in a major prickly bush and Christian's comment was, "I hope it's not a Snickers for all I'm going through." Sure enough, it was a Snickers (he doesn't like the peanuts - it made Dad happy)


Mandy is practicing for her new little one with sweet little Lydia


Julianna and Ruth found lots of eggs

Josiah found a few - the funniest thing was that he found some Life Savers and kept putting them in his basket, which you can see how they would keep falling through the slits, then he'd pick it back up and put it back in and on and on. Too cute!

Hurry!!! A group picture before the rain begins - even Papa got in this one

Anna Blair turns 8 with 2 Oreo Ice Cream cakes and Josiah was quite the helper with blowing out the candles.

These silly girls enjoyed playing dress up with some of Mimi Blair's old wigs - how cute

Justin brought a few things to pawn off to the kids and decided to "sell" them to the kids. You can tell by the smile on Caleb's face that he was the highest bidder on this globe and magic books. Sadly, enough, he paid Uncle Justin for the globe, which his mother wouldn't let him keep so he gave it to Christian. It is now in our car to head to the Yard Sale at church!!!

Julianna thinks she's so funny - this is bunny teeth gummy candy that she got from school

A Little Fun

The youth group from church has an annual "Disciple Now Weekend" that started years ago when MAtthew was the youth pastor. He also started (what is now a tradition) of going out on Saturday nights and rolling people's houses. We knew that we might be a target, first of all because they always get us, but they were also trying to get some of the 5th graders that will be joining them next year.

We caught the first group of middle school girls (we were up late watching the Basketball games) and took a picture of Matt's truck before he cleaned it off. He has to get up so early in the mornings to go to church that he didn't want to mess with it early. We had our windows open and were up until after midnight and assumed we wouldn't get "gotten" again.... Wrong. The High School girls came (from what I hear around 2am) and got us. Fortunately, they didn't get his truck very much, but got our yard pretty good. Since we
don't have trees, they usually have to get pretty creative and they did.

It's nice that the kids are now old enough and big enough to go clean it up, which we made them do. It's also hard to think that Christian will be in the youth group next year and possibly out doing this, too. UGH!!! Oh well - I got some cute pictures so I thought I'd show you.

They used Saran Wrap and wrapped his truck, but they also put Easter Eggs all in the Saran Wrap which were filled with Candy - the kids liked that!

Many forks in the yard (and you can see the mailbox completely wrapped)

Even Julianna helped clean up

Chalk notes to the kids

Christian helped for a bit but it wasn't as fun for him as it was for the girls

Notes to Matt (you'll see they say "you taught us well, Matt")

Rebecca got a tree for her birthday last year from my parents (Nonie & Pops). She thought it was so funny that it's the only tree in the yard and it got rolled!

The girls cleaned up the swing set - Rebecca attempted to slide down under the Saran Wrap!

Christian's Birthday Sleep-over

Christian seems to have this ability to allow his birthday celebration to be drawn out..... :-) He asked if he could have a couple of friends from school spend the night the Friday following his birthday. Of course that was fine, but as usual a "couple" grew to 4 so we had 5 eleven year old boys and the rest of our family in our house!! But what a great group of boys these guys are. Christian has chosen a great group of boys to be friends with from school and we are very pleased. He's had a very good year at school and we contribute it alot to these friends.

The girl and I scooted out for a bit on Friday afternoon to do some Easter dress shopping and the boys played outside most of that time. The day/evening was full of Nerf gun wars, soccer, basketball, bike and scooter riding, running, hiding, X-box, eating, laughing. We got them settled down for a movie (after about 15 minutes trying to agree on one) and of coruse they laughed and wrestled the whole way through it and hardly watched it I believe. I think they were all settled down a little after midnight.

It's fun to watch our children grow up and to be a part in their lives with their friends. We are thankful to God for our son, Christian!

Watching some silly YouTube videos on the new Ipod Touch


They were eager for him to open his gifts since one boy got him another Nerf gun

Still enjoying the Ipod Touch... Cameron (on the left) is one week younger than Christian - we got a call last night that he got one for his birthday, to0!! :-)

We had homemade pizza and let the boys "decorate" their own. That was a big hit

Play Xbox

C.J., Christian, Cameron, Tristan and Pate

Christian

Below... it's a video of the boys that night. Their 5th grade classes are doing a wax museum in May and then there is going to be a presentation by them of a musical medley they're working on in Music class. They started singing it so I ran and got my camera and got them to start over. I think my camera only got 4 minutes of it and we later got out the full video camer and did it. It's a hoot. Enjoy!

Christian turns 11

On April 1st, our oldest, Christian turned 11. Of course everyone was up early that morning and we had chocolate chip muffins for breakfast and time to open presents. As you can see from the first picture, as he gets older, the number of gifts seem to get fewer, but the content grows - you know? Anyway, since his birthday was on a Wednesday, we had our normal after school routine of art lessons and dinner before church, but Matthew joined us and during Rebecca's art lessons, we were able to take him shopping some things that matched his big gift. Then we went out to dinner as a family and headed off to church.

He had a sleep-over that weekend (that blog will follow) and the he's going to have a birthday party with friends from soccer and church soon. Of course, I'm sure a blog for that will follow, too.

Our 11 year old


Julianna was excited about Christian opening presents

Hmm.... what is that???

Wow - an Ipod Touch!!!! Very cool

Invention Convention

The Invention Convention is an annual competition held in the spring for public and private school fourth, fifth, and sixth grade children. The overall mission is to provide a fun and unique way for children to engage in divergent thought. The competition requires that the students actually make their inventions using their own creative imaginations. It is hoped that the development of such invention will help integrate many of the content areas taught in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade curricula.

Both Christian & Rebecca are in the RISE program at school and they entered projects into the Invention Convention. Then they got to go to MTSU's campus one school day and participate in it. They told me it was like my old science fair days where you were lined up and the judged would come around and you would give them your presentation on your project. They said they thought there was well over 100 projects there.

I had to brag on them for this. They both did very well with their groups and had a lot of fun.

Pirates Also Do Math (Board Game)

Rebecca, Makenzie, Chae, and Hunter (who is not picking his nose but using his pirate hook finger)

Rebecca's certificate

Rebecca's group won first place for "Best Presentation". She thinks they won because they used the word "fun-ducational"

Unbelievable US Travel (Board Game)

Brad, Christian, Rachel and Cameron

Christian's certificate

Christian's group won "Judges Favorite"