memory lane

whenever i look at this picture it makes me smile.
i can still remember the day....my birthday 1995 @ chi chis.... the only place in town where a poor college student could stretch her dollar on free chips and salsa. it takes me back to a time when many of my best friendships were formed- carefree times.

we've changed and grown so much in the past 13 years. when i met tim i was a "stubborn city girl", as he so affectionately called me. tim and i were so different. i knew that hunting was a real thing, but i thought only people living in montana actually did it. i thought cowboy boots were tacky. i had never been off-roading. i measured my distances in minutes, not miles (this one still causes arguments). tim introduced me to so many new things. he intrigued me. some of my fondest memories are from those days. we would go out for coffee almost every night of the week to Perkins (no dennys for us, we were sophisticated:) we would sit for hours drinking pots of coffee while tim ate his chocolate chipper, me my cinamon roll, talking about all the homework we still had to accomplish.

we celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary last month. we laughed because tim(who insisted on wearing his cowboy boots to our wedding, thus causing me to write a disclaimer in our program) suprised me with a quick trip to a resort where we golfed. he never would have seen that coming ten years ago:) we reminisced back to those early days of marriage and realized how much our lives have changed since then. we laughed about everything that went wrong at our wedding, we talked about all the good times, we laughed about all the things we fought about in the early years of our marriage.

as much as i look back to those days and crave all the time that we had, the lack of worries, the carefree fun, i wouldn't go back. after ten years of being together we are in such a good place. it's a comfortable place. we know each other well enough to read each others minds, we understand each other WAY better than 10 years ago- our arguments are much more efficient now ;) we have 4 beautiful children, and he still thinks i'm hot!.... oh so much to be thankful for. i love you tim, can't wait to see what the next 10 brings!

yep, she's ours

whenever anyone meets stella i always hear " yep, she's one of yours." from the moment i laid eyes on her she has always felt so familiar to me. her looks have changed a bit through the months.... when she was born i thought she looked a bit more like austin. however last night i was going through old pictures and i pulled out sydneys 6 mos picture....


sydney 6 mos


stella 7 mos



our beautys!

ride on girl!

so summer has come and gone.... all summer long we have asked sydney if she would like to try to ride her bike with her training wheels off. her answer always "nope, i like my bike just as it is." she could not be persuaded to try it.

well, yesterday sydney went into the garage to get her bike out only to discover that the front tire had completely fallen off. she came to tell me and in the back of my mind i assumed tim had taken it off because she left it out in the driveway or something ( bikes have been known to wind up in trees around here if they are left in the driveway for too many days in a row :) i called tim, nope it must have just fallen off on it's own.

anywho, i told her to go ride dylans tricycle. literally 15 minutes later she comes running in to tell me she can ride austin's bike for a little bit and that i have to come sit and watch her. sure enough she could ride short streches without falling over, and by the time austin came home from school and demanded his bike back she was a pro! true to her personallity, she learned to do it completely without the help of tim or i. no running up and down the driveway hanging onto the back of her seat for this girl..... kind of sad, but were oh so proud! here she is.... (and i must say, my first video upload to the blog!)

look out spidey

the other day austin asked if he could borrow some of my thread. sure. for the next half hour or so i didn't hear a peep out of him. i went downstairs to peak on him and he was so proud...."look mom, i made web!" it was pretty impressive.

feel the love

over breakfast in the morning i go over the details of the day with austin. he is my "type a, don't surprise me, just tell me how it's going to happen, and then don't you dare change any of those details, firstborn" this morning i was telling him whose van he would be driving to school in , and that i would be driving sydney to school at noon and together they would ride the bus home.

austins response "can't you just pick her up and i'll ride the bus? she's a lot of work and she really slows me down, i'm so tired of waiting for her"...... nice, feel the love syd.

good bye summer....

what an absolutely beautiful weekend!!! we had a most excellent time camping with all of our friends. it was so good to be together again and reminice about "the good old days".....some stories never get old! Now that our kids are getting a little older (well, at least some of them), it's getting so much easier and way more fun! We are able to do more hiking, fishing, take longer bike rides, go exploring more etc. The kids enjoy being able to walk through our "block" of campsights and play with the other kids, and they are old enough to just take off on there bikes with no worries. Favorites of the trip.....
austin- hiking in the woods
sydney- catching 2 fish
dylan- splashing in the lake
stella- not being put down for 3 days straight :)
tim- being able to sneak up on the deer in the woods
me- watching the kids and everyone have such a great time.... it was very refreshing

stella still loves the sling even though she oozes out of it

stella liked splashing in the water in the "small lake"

sydney's first fish!

catching seeweed

kevin the "manny"

taking a bike ride to get stella to sleep :)

i heart ludington....see you next labor day!

Sweet Stella's 6 mos.

this is a few weeks late, but it's hard to believe that stella is 6 months old already. she is still so very sweet! here are her 6 mos stats for my record keeping, so feel free to tune out if you're bored....

stella can sit up well on her own now, and rolls all over the place on the floor. Anything she finds she puts in her mouth. she really enjoys playing with her toys, and will grab at anything within her reach. stella is very aware when she is all alone, and she cries when you leave the room or when she catches sight of you and you aren't holding her or right with her. she loves to stand in the palm of her daddy's hands and "walk around". she is very fond of most baby foods and cries whenever we are eating and she is not. she loves to eat those biter bisquits and graham crackers. she likes formula now and is taking a bottle a day. in fact she now kicks her legs excitedly and then cries when she sees a bottle (a big change from 2 months ago). stella still usually takes 3 or 4 naps a day, usually 2 decent ones and a few catnaps in the car and in between. she goes to bed around8:30 ish and is sleeping till around 7am. she loves to sleep on her stomach with her rabbit and rubs one of the ears between her fingers. she no longer likes to sleep when you are holding her, she just wants her crib....it's so sad! Stella, you are such a blessing to our family. The kids still cannot get enough of you and at 6 months still fight over who gets to hold you when you are awake. we love you!