Some children would be eating all those animal crackers, but my Paisley is just following in her siblings footsteps and finding ways to climb. She thought this would be a great stool to get into the dishes and water. She was right.

Number 25 Ethen Bergen reverse

Monkey Luke! 3 years old and never ceases to amaze us!!!

Hair

This was a fun one that I did on Phoebe one Sunday. I left kinda a lot of ends out. Next time I will probably make the braid a little longer so the whisps are shorter. I learned how to make hair bows at our church Super Saturday this last weekend , so now i have a bunch more bows to use.

I am sooo thrilled that Paisley can finally get her hair up into little piggies. Even if she does try to pull them out right away. Some days I can manage to distract her long enough that she forgets about them for awhile and leaves them alone. I still haven't figured out how to get her to leave in a big bow yet. That will make me so happy :)

Silly little ones

Haven't had a picture of them in awhile so here is a silly session. These two are quite the characters!

You can see the joy in her eyes in this pic. I just love watching her cheer. We had games for the kids at the same time this week and so the girls went to cheer and the boys went to Ethen's game. I got home and Scott asked about the game and who won and I couldn't even tell him because I was just watching Phoebe :) I had the video camera with me so next week I will post more of Ethen.

Phoebe Cheering

CANDY

I would just like to know why EVERY store these days has candy in it? I can't even go shopping in a clothing store anymore without there being candy bins of some sort all over the place! Don't get me wrong, I do like candy. However, it makes it very difficult to go shopping with kids in tow and not have some kind of meltdown over the sweet stuff. It is super annoying to me. Just another battle that could be avoided easily if food was left to the food stores where I am prepared beforehand to allow or not allow a treat. Does anyone else feel the same way or is it just me?

12 Inches

I have been wanting to cut my hair for awhile now. The length was just really starting to annoy me. So today I went in and decided that if I was going to cut off 8 inches I may as well put it in a ponytail and make it at least 10 so I could donate it to Locks of Love. It ended up being 12 inches and now I have a wet ponytail laying out to dry so I can send it off. It feels so good to be rid of it. I should have done this at the beginning of Summer! Here is the new do :)

I got tagged

6 Unspectacular Quirks

#1: I bite my nails so I won't pull out my eyebrows. I still pull them out a little, but biting my nails helps to avoid the pulling. I will probably be an old lady that had to paint on eyebrows.


#2: I am a night owl. I could take a nap everyday around 3 o'clock. But if I stay up past 10 then I am usually good to go for a few hours and actually prefer to get things done in the quiet of night. I'm not sure if this is because I know things will stay clean for awhile since the kids are in bed, or if it stems from always staying up late as a kid. But this is difficult to do with 4 kids that wake up early.


#3: I have to find the best deals. I think the trait is inherited from my Dad. I shop around when purchasing just about anything and have to make sure I get the best deal. This becomes very annoying to people at times because it can take me forever to finally decide to make a purchase, but I have saved soo much $ by finding deals. (i.e. free tree, $16 phone service, $15/month cell phone service).

#4: I am very indecisive. This is linked to #3 I am sure. I take FOREVER to decide on things. For me life would just be easier if there were only 1 or 2 choices. I don't want to purchase something unless I know I will like it in 2 years still. Because I pretty much assume I will still have it in the same place for the next long while. BUT I am indecisive on almost all decisions like where to go out to eat, or what to eat on a menu, or even what to wear. However, I am NOT picky so I am happy for someone else to just make the decision for me.


#5: I really do love to argue. I don't want to get into any screaming matches, but I am pretty sure I am usually right about things and so I will let you know. I don't usually give into this though as it can cause unwanted confrontations with people. Maybe I should have been a lawyer.

#6: If a song has clapping in it then I will probably love it. You know that double clap like in so many 50's tunes?! There is just something about that beat that makes me smile :) Yeah , I know this is a really weird one, but I also was a crazy Elvis Presley fan growing up. Even had Elvis stuff all over my room. How I got into him I'm not sure because it wasn't like he was on the radio.

If you have gotten to the end of this and are still reading then I am tagging - Nathan, Alana, Mom, Alison, & Katie. So get on your blogs and tell me 6 of your unspectacular quirks!

Art

It was an art weekend here. Phoebe went to a birthday party where they painted on canvas. Here is her work of art. I think she did a fabulous job!

Rainy Day Activity

With hurricane Ike on the prowl in TX everything was cancelled today. Even though we are not on the coast we were still expecting a pretty big storm from him. He ended up heading more east as we just got rain most of the day without too much wind. In fact it wasn't really even a storm for us, so that was good. Since we were inside most of the day with the kids they got pretty antsy. So I got out the salad spinner paints and we had a little fun. The kids love this activity. Probably because we don't do it all that often, so it seems special.

All you need is a cheap salad spinner and something to catch the drips underneath



some paint and paper plates


and the final works of art! TADAA!!

Happy Thursday Thought

This morning my goal was to renew my drivers license. It expired almost 5 months ago. I found out it expired because I took a flight back in May and it wasn't current. I mean who actually looks at the expiration date on a DL? I figured I had a good few years left at least. I mean I have never lived in a state long enough to require getting a renewal. Usually I have moved and it is part of the moving process. Needless to say I was NOT looking forward to the SUPER LOOOONG lines at the DMV. So I picked a day I knew I would only have one kid with me and went out this morning. So I get there and wait about 25 minutes to see 3 people get helped. I had approx. 15 more people in front of me and knew there was no way I was getting out of there in 45 minutes. Why 45 minutes you ask? I had to pick up Luke from preschool in 45 minutes. So I decided to leave and get something accomplished instead. I went to wal-mart and picked up some much needed fish food for Ethen and new undies for Luke. After picking up Luke I went online to see if maybe I could do something about the form there. And wouldn't you know it, a new online system allows for renewals ONLINE!!!!!!! You can only do this every other renewal but since my last one was in person I qualified! Hooray, Hooray, Hooray! SO that is done and I could have done it months ago instead of trying to figure out a way to wait in line with toddlers. My Thursday has turned out super :) In fact I have been having a lucky week :) This feels nice.

Scouting

Today Ethen was in charge of planning everything for his scout group. So to pass off a requirement we decided to plant a tree. This meant actually going to find a tree to plant and that proved a little more difficult. I thought the nursery's would have their fall trees out already, but I was wrong. So we went to 3 different places looking for a small tree to plant. I wasn't about to spend $100 on a tree this week. However, the persistence paid off and we found a nice little tree. The only problem was it wasn't marked. I couldn't even find another tree in any size that looked like the same one. All I knew was it was tagged as "flowering". So I took it up to the register and asked them what they would sell it to me for. I thought maybe I could get a little discount since I didn't know what kind of tree I was buying. Lucky me - he said I could take it for free! That just made my day! I love finding deals and free is the BEST deal. So we had our tree to plant and the boys worked hard getting it in just right and digging in the hard clay soil we have here in Texas. I guess in the spring we may have a better idea of what kind of tree we bought.

The finished product. Look at these boys pose!

What kind of camera do you have?

So, sadly my digital camera is broken. It got wet and so its life of reading the memory card is over. Which means I am on the search for a new one. I thought I would ask around out there as to what people are using and why they like them.

Ready for some Football!

To finish out our day Ethen played his 1st game of the season under the lights Saturday night. Ethen played corner back most of the game as well as reciever and kick return team. The cowboys took the win 7-0 and Ethen came off the field just glowing from all the fun. Nothing is more fun to a 9 year old boy than being able to crash into players. He is the only one on his team with white cleats and this makes it easy for me to find him on the field, and it makes it easy for you to pick him out in pictures too. The only thing is that it is hard to get a good picture of him on the field when Luke and Paisley are running around and I am having to use the video camera to take pics. It was much nicer watching the game in the evening out of the heat. These 4th grade boys are looking bigger now and it makes for some fun football! We will have much more of this to post about for the next 3 months! Aren't you excited!!?

CHEER

Today marks Phoebe's 1st day of official cheerleading! She is on a squad with girls all in her grade. Most of them are her good friends from school. They looked so cute out there. Her squad cheers for a 4th grade 49ers team. Since Ethen is on the Cowboy's that means double football games for us on Saturdays. Phoebe loves cheering and doing all the moves. She has been walking around the house everyday practicing cheers and doing moves all with a big grin all the time. It is so cute and so perfect for her spunky little personality. She didn't even complain about the heat at all, so I know she really likes it! Isn't she just too cute!?

emmie cakes

My friend has started a little business with the cutest banners. It's called emmie cakes, so click on the link or the Title above and go check out her site to order some for yourself. The hardest part for me right now is deciding which to get. You can even get the kit, already made, for you to put together if your feeling crafty. Here are a couple of my favorites!

New Toy

The kids have been having soooooo much fun with our new toy. It really isn't a toy, but since it has been entertaining them for hours I am classifying it as one. It is our Logitech webcamera. My parents live overseas so this has let us be able to talk for free (through Skype) and see them. It is so great. There are a bunch of special effects the camera can do and the kids love playing and making little movies. So here is one for your entertainment. Thanks for the great gift Mom. We really love it!

A new beginning

It's another 1st here. Luke had his 1st day of preschool. He is sooo ready and was so excited to go this morning. He had Ethen fix his hair in his favorite do (mohawk style) and made sure he had his special school bag. He was lucky enough to be the snack person on the 1st day so he loved being able to have a load of snacks to take in his bag. On the way to drop him off I asked Luke if he wanted me to take him into class or just drop him off at the door. Part of me was hoping he would say to take him in, but this boy wants to be a big kid like his brother and sister and so he wanted to be dropped off at the door. No problems. He just hopped right out and went down the hallway without even looking back at me. On the way home he did say it was a long time at school and that he was tired. This means it is perfect for him and is keeping him busy and entertained! Yay for Luke starting preschool