Its official

We are sticking around Georgia for a little while longer.

Ryan has officially signed to work with Kaplan Higher Education after graduation and is VERY excited about what he'll be doing/learning. We'll be in Atlanta for the first 6-9 months and then ??? who knows where to after that. We feel REALLY grateful for a good job right now and so excited for it!

If I was to break my foot, this is probably how...

Robbie and Aubrie like to have FNPY's (my siblings know about those. That is code for FuN PartY's and we thought we were tricking my parents by using that code in front of them when we were going to get up in the middle of the night and have a party.) Anyway, For 4 months now Robbie has been getting up every night. Recently we put he and Aubrie in the same room and now he invties Aubrie join the party. Previously, he has always gone back to sleep right away--once one of us gets out of bed and puts him back in bed that is. But the last 2 nights, the kids were up for a few hours. I am not sure doing what. All, I know is I repeatedly had to get out of bed. The final straw was when Hallie got invited to the party. I think my 3:00 a.m. lecture lasted for 20 minutes. So, we were all a little grouchy the next day. Ryan didn't get home till after they were in bed and so after I put them to bed and put them back in bed for 40 minutes I was exhausted. I felt so relieved as I finally get up from sitting outside their bedroom door where I'd been stationed and walked downstairs and then, I looked around. WOW. I realized that it was going to be another 2 hours of cleaning, dishes, etc. and that...was when I REALLY wanted to just kick the wall as hard as I could out of pure frustration.

the other time was today when I cleaned poop up off the floor for the 9th time in 2 days.


Robbie's was cooking...and I discovered a little too late. lil' pretzel, cheese with S&P and a dab of quick oats.

and this picture...I just had to add because everytime I look at him I smile. Miss you noni!!! that is a face worth kissing repeatedly.

What a wonderful 3 weeks...

We made it!!! Aubrie did not forget about putting the ornaments on this advent calendar, even one day! She was so excited on Christmas Eve. The ornaments are all gone, TOMORROW IS CHRISTMAS (it reminded me of the excitement I always had growing up when there were just a few ornaments left and then NEVER being able to fall asleep on Christmas Eve. Don't you just love it!)

Christmas, post-Christmas, New Years and post-New Years have been SO full and so much fun.

The Christmas party at our church performing as Santa's elves. Shelley, excellent work on putting this together. Cute kids!!
We had a "quiet" Christmas here at our house. The kids don't get the getting up early thing yet, but when Aubrie got up-we all heard it. Santa came! Santa came! What a fun way to have Chrsitmas, with kids. They just make it magical. It was a lazy, full day of playing with the kids with their toys, eating and layign around watching movies. We were still in our pj's when it was time for bed again. :)

The matching PJ party. Robbie was too tired for it.

Ryan showing off his new slippers/shoes. Aubrie's new beautiful necklace from her aunt.
The "treasure hunt" to find the kitchen (See previous post) we made for them...
The next day we packed and headed to Birmingham--
I don't currently have pictures of our Family Reunion in Birmingham but I will when I get them. It was just F-U-N. 25 people in one house and 11 of them under 5. Good times for all. I love family!!! Museum, playing games (Syd and Chad taught us a fun new game-Ruckus) and as Extreme Uno is always a winner, impromptu dance party after bringing in the New Year (shake that thang, Anna :)), movies, playing at the park--alot, running with my sisters, another "Christmas", taking family pictures (AHHH!), etc. To everyone that came, thanks for making the effort. We just miss you all so much now!!!


After we left Birmingham, Calls and Jordans came back to our house with us and our cousin Becca drove over from DC and the party continued. We went on a date together (that has been awhile) and left our 9 kids with 2 poor, poor--wonderful young women that did wonderful! We had a tour of Athens and lots of playing. As everyone slowly trickled home the house seemed so quite. Anna and her three boys just left yesterday (sniff, sniff). As Robbie said when we walked back in, "mom, i'm weally gonna missssss 'dem". We miss you all so much already!!! The house is way too quiet.

A few of the highlights of things we did this past week with Anna and her kids:
-A trip to Georgia Aquarium (Carl and Court joined us from Birmingham) and that place is just AMAZING. I could be in there for days. I wish I could spend more time reading all the information about each of the animals. Anna and i had a fun 3 hour trip home (TRAFFIC-blah! and getting lost once) with 6 hungry and tired kids. We'll just stop there.
-ZUMBA!!! Anna is hooked. That is the funnest dance class--little hip hop, salsa, rhumba, cumbia, etc all mixed in to one hour of fun!
-We went to see Drumline LIVE. Which was SUCH a treat. I had never heard of them but they kicked off their international tour here in Athens and it was good! They ended the performance by the whole stage (a mini-marching band heavy on the drumline marching down the aisles and out into the foyer and then New Orleans style--led everyone outside into the streets. The audience might have been as fun to watch as the performers. I am so glad we got to go!!!
-Memorial Park Zoo. We fed Beck's shoe to the birds and Jack wanted to feed Bricky to the bears.
-Dinner and socializing with our cousins from Atlanta the Allens and our good friends the Meadows! THANK YOU for driving up here! It was SOOO good to see you.

And, that is probably enough for now. I am SOOOO grateful to have been with our family so much the last 3 weeks. and I have LOVED having Ryan around a lot more (one HUGE perk to having being back in school).

WElCOME TO 2009 everyone!!!