Kadee Christmas Tree Farm and 6 months!

We had our annual Kadee Christmas Tree Farm trip this year right at the tail end of Thanksgiving, and this was our group this year! The Clint Spencers joined us, and it was double the fun! :)

We added a Christmas Sweater contest this year, and this was the winner. It was truly hideous and beautiful all at the same time.

This was about the size of the tree we were looking for this year. We have NO more room due to various items of baby paraphernalia.

This was a group picture of the 2008 Christmas sweater contest participants.

A beautiful family portrait. :)

6 months with the monkey! Caden got his first taste of the monkey when he tried to take off an ear. The monkey forgave him and they worked everything out.

We regularly Skype Slappy and Cookie, and this was one of their sessions. Sometimes we give Caden a little "airing out" time before his bath.

We leave for Nashville on Friday, and we CAN'T WAIT!! Merrrrrry Christmas everyone!

It won't be long!!!

till he'll be all over the place!

Before and After

For the past 2 months, we've been spending our weekends in Longview trying to get our house ready for the renters to move in Jan. 1st, and weeeeee're finished!! We've still got stuff we want to do before we move in, but we've made a serious dent. Here are some befores and afters.

Obviously we didn't do this ourselves, but we had the windows and siding replaced.

There were MULTIPLE bathrooms that had beeeautiful wallpaper. This is the first. It was 3 layers deep, and we'd given up on stripping it. So....we primed it to get it ready to paint over, and the wallpaper decided it didn't want to hang around after all. So Adam took the rest off, and we were able to finish it out. All the bathrooms also had these fluorescent light boxes that Adam and his dad cut out. They then patched the drywall behind and got it ready for the new fixtures.

1/2 bath before and after

This was the easiest wallpaper to remove. It came off in super big sheets and was actually kind of fun to remove......for wallpaper.

The master bath before and after. If you look closely you can see in one of the after pictures that they'd painted the ceiling the same green as the walls. We haven't fixed that yet. It's just too pretty to mess with.

Here's the master bedroom. My mom came down for almost 2 weeks, and we tackled this project. The pale pink EVERYTHING was so nice, but we decided it had to go. We ended up getting a free dropcloth out of the curtains!

I'm sad we didn't take some before pictures with the wallpaper on, but this is the laundry room before and after. We're pretty much painting the ENTIRE house, so there will be an update sometime in June with all the rest of the makeovers. I know you'll be checking EVERY day till they're up! ha! :)

Hope everybody had a good Turkey Day!

Frozen Monkey Love on a Stick

This year marked the 2nd annual girl's outdoor extravaganza, and we chose Beaver's Bend for our destination. Last year 3 of us were pregnant, and this year we had 4 babies among the 6 of us.....makes for a little bit of a different trip, but it was SO much fun! These pictures are out of order, but Blogger has decided not to let me move them today.

Saturday we went on a hike and this was Caden's sweet ride. He really loved it. See...he's giving the camera the thumb's up.

Here's the group!

Janelle and Jaymie were GREAT helpers, and Caden ALWAYS loves him some Aunt Nell time.

Katie was our master food organizer, and she kept our tummies full and happy.

Nolan was our youngest adventurer, and he was a trooper. He's just so cute!!!

Friday night, we broke out the Yahtzee and had a good time. Here, Rachel is experiencing a case of momnesia and Mo is helping her add the dice up. Ha!

Pretty little Landry! She was the oldest kid at 7 months, and she helped look after all her younger friends.

Caden conked out toward the end. I think he kind of looks like an old lady with his head covering on right here....can you picture it?

Our guide for the hike!

I turned around and saw a monstrous two-headed creature following me. I took a quick picture and then high-tailed it out of there.

And here we come to this blog post's title. Our hike ended at the Folk Festival, and this was one of the things you could order. I mean....it looks pretty good, but I'm not too sure about the mental picture I get from the name!

Thanks to master fire-builders Katie, Mo, and Janelle, we had s'mores Saturday night.

Nolan and Caden were getting a very strict lecture on some midnight pranks they pulled. I think they'll think twice next time.

YAY!

It was a much needed weekend, and I'm already looking forward to the next one!

I know a weenie man. He owns a weenie stand.....

So...this year we thought long and hard about what to make Caden for Halloween. We settled on the costume you see below. It is a fine specimen of a hot dog, I think. Caden's good friend Norah came to trick or treat, and he was mesmerized by the beautiful bumble bee.

The top is my favorite part of the costume. It just looks so silly!

We got to see Audrey and Wyatt while we were out trick-or-treating, and they looked GREAT!

Caden specifically mentioned wanting to see Grandmommy and Paw Paw, so we made sure to stop by, and he was so happy!

Grandmother and Granddaddy's was our first trick-or-treating stop!

He fell asleep on the way over there, so it took just a bit to wake up and be happy again!

We put on the hot dog before dinner as a trial run, and it was love at first sight!

We're thinking maybe we'll just go down a list of our favorite foods from year to year. Stay tuned next year for our little taco.