oops…

So when I wrote my girls night post I forgot to talk about my sister. How could I forget to mention Rachie? certainly not because she isn’t important, she’s rach, of course she’s important. I love my baby sister and she is growing up. When she came home for Christmas break I could tell she’s growing and maturing. She was never immature, I just think that not living at home has grown her. We miss Rach (and Dave) a lot when they are gone.

A few things I love about Rach. She is a very mellow person. I have hardly ever seen rach that upset and I have only seen her stressed out a few times (finals at school mostly).

I also think she is very funny. She and Dave play off each other and always make us laugh. She isn’t rude or crude to be funny though, she usually just makes light of the situation or makes me see how ridiculous I am being. She is very good at comic relief in tense situations, that shouldn’t be tense.

Rach is also very non confrontational. She certainly doesn’t let people walk over her or not have an opinion of her own, she’ll let you know, but unlike me, she let’s stuff just roll off her back and doesn’t find the conflict in situations that don't need it. I got really mad in a soccer game and had a heated verbal confrontation with another player and Rach’s comment was, huh I don’t think I have ever done that. seriously? I wish I was more like her.

I will complain about a checker at the grocery store going slow or being dumb and she just shrugs and reminds me it’s really not a big deal and I realize I just spent a lot of energy being upset about something that wasn’t important and if I just let go wouldn't have been a a big deal at all. She helps me see and remember that it isn’t how God treats me.

Rach is also very sweet and loving. When she is home for Christmas break she always makes sure she spends time with everyone. She takes the kids places and makes sure she spends a good amount of time with all her nieces and nephews. She jumps on the trampoline with them, swings them, let’s Allie brush her hair every time she see’s her even though it’s not really Rach’s things, and so many more things.

Rach teaches me a lot and I really appreciate it! If you know Rach you probably love her. I know she isn’t perfect and just like the rest of us she has her faults but I am thankful to have a great little sister and friend.

oh boy… happy valentine’s day? read at your own risk…

should I post this?!? lol, well here goes.

my parent’s and aunt and uncle use to host a sweetheart dinner every year at Valentines. They did it for something like 15 years and decided that was sufficient. So Chrisy and I decided to continue the tradition. I called up mom and she arranged a party for our kiddo’s and we got to work. We decided on a black and white theme and made our guest list.

What we didn’t plan on was Nick’s wardrobe or should I say lack of wardrobe… although it was his suggestion, which I think he said as a joke, we all  pitched in to make it happen and before the big reveal I was super embarrassed and not sure it was a good idea. It was pretty funny though and the small group there all thought it was funny… He put his real shirt back on after a few minutes of fun and laughter. So here is our picture. Oh yeah the night was really fun. Dinner was yum, swopping our stories was fun, and a night away as just couples is always wonderful!I am pretty sure it all came from watching SNL highlights… watch this Chris Farley video at your own risk, lol. (I feel like I need to write one of those pre movie warnings about how contents of this film don’t reflect the opinions of the movie maker…lol) You make me laugh Nicholas Moulton and I am glad you have more Patrick Swayze going on than Chris Farley.

our kids

here are some more recent pictures of my baby girl. (actually this particular one is awhile ago)she love to eat, just not vegetables, she doesn’t like those. She tolerates them if she can feed them to herself.

Wonder where she got this fantastic trait?!?

the many faces of baby while she eats. Notice the little foot on the tray, LOVE IT. Also she can get the spoon into her own mouth and give it back to me, I’m impressed, but let’s be honest it’s not hard for her to impress this momma.

I see that camera…

I love this little one so much!

she love to climb. She was standing up holding this toy a second before I grabbed the camera and than she decided to move on before I could get the shot.

She stands up in her crib when I lay her down. She stands there  throws her pacifier on the ground and stands there crying. I come in a few minutes later and she is half asleep holding on. It’s very sad. She is learning how to get back down better now though so hopefully those days are almost behind us.

the bathroom, as you may know, is a magical place for little people. I don’t love that. She is super fast as well so I am always telling the kids “shut the bathroom door quick”  any time someone goes in she wants to be in there. If any of us take a bath or shower she wants to be in that as well. I tried to take a quick shower while she was in her walker. She got so mad at me that she wasn’t in the shower with me. Funny little girl is starting to show some attitude. She get’s upset and lays her head down and cry’s. Wasn’t she suppose to stay perfect forever?

in case you were curious, the toilet had just been scrubbed clean…but still. Unfortunatly it’s the perfect height for her to pull herself up to standing.

I thought this was cute. Allie decided she needed a baby to play with. I love watching Keira crawl into the middle fo where Wills and Allie are playing and find things to play with it. It’s pretty sweet.

she found the camera…clapping

she also loves to climb the step stool. ANother funny little tid bit is that Nick has taught her to stick out her tongue and smile at him. She just barely sticks it out and smiles very sweetly so it is cute but I think it is funny that she does that for him now when he walks up. She got mad at him yesterday for not saying hi to her when he came home. It was kinda sweet and funny. She is also starting to get a little shy when people she doesn’t know well talk to her. She hides her face into my shirt. She was in the backpack at the store yesterday and she was trying to hide her face when someone was talking with her.

William loves to pick her up. I try to tell him to only do it when she needs it but that is up to his discretion so we are working on it. I am not sure it is the safest thing in the world but it is pretty funny to see them and he does a good job most the time. Allie tries it though and that is Not safe so we are working on that.

hope you have a wonderful day :) that’s all for me today. My girls are sick. Allie has a cold fever thing going on and Keira has a cold. Allie doesn’t sleep that well when she is sick and she get’s pretty demanding so I hope they feel all better soon.

Girls night

I decided that I need to start having better girls nights. I am kinda tired of my girl time usually being baby showers and things like that, I am always excited to celebrate life but I need to broaden my horizons, so we did, and it was super fun!

My sister told me she wanted to do something fun while she was home so we had a spa night. We started with drinks and yummy pluto’s style salad and than started the pampering, we wrapped it all up with a movie :)

First let me say that I am truly blessed. I have a wonderful family and a big one at. I decided to keep our girls night small because that made who to invite easy and we could all fit in my house and be really comfy with each other. So I had my “sisters”, mom and aunt.

Here are a few paragraphs about who they are and what they mean to me. I grew up living next to my uncle Matt who has 9 kids, two of which are Jocelyn and Maria. We lived with an adjoining wall since I was 4 years old so I saw them everyday, and we were both homeschooled for a while, so we spent a lot of time together. Maria and Joc are Dave and Rachel’s ages and as we have all become adults it has been such a blessing to be really good friends. Most people have cousins but mine are really more like cousin-sisters cause they are also some of my best friends.

I also had my “big” sister. My brother Dan married Chrisy almost ten years ago and she had already been my big sister for years. I use to follow her around, she would have me over to her house, she did my hair, you know, the whole nine yards… she also considers herself my own personal Dr. Laura for awhile, lol. Let’s just say she helped my mom and I navigate my teen years.

I also had my momma and aunt Nancy (Maria and Joc’s momma) and I don’t need to elaborate on the point that I am one blessed women to have my momma and Aunt. They are such great examples to me. They are a huge encouragement. They continually points me to Christ and I am truly thankful for both of them. We also needed some mature wisdom there… that makes me laugh and I won’t elaborate on why :)

So all that long ramble to say, I love my girls and am truly thankful for each one of them and I am extremely blessed by God to have them in my life. I just wanted to take the time to say that.

here are some pictures. Hope they don’t mind me sharing. Hope they enjoy seeing them.

there’s the treatment right there. Face, hands, and feet.

Nick took The big kids up to my parents house but I kept this little one. She’s so cute :)

before realizing they were caught by the camera… than after, lolgetting a foot rub by Chrisy 

putting on the avocado yogurt face mask. lol!!! 

so funny, if you ask me, I hope they don’t mind me putting these up.

looking lovely, but feeling great! Joc giving me a hand massage which was following my face massage :) plus rach gave me a foot rub and painted my toe nails… pampered for sure! (ria may have painted my toe nails, I can’t remember)

watching a movie

okay so these two crazies were painting each others toe nails simultaneously. LOL, that crack me right up.

We all had a great time and hopefully we will have many happy returns on similar nights. Love you girls!

Hope you get inspired to make time for a break and have some girlfriends over. You won’t be disappointed you did!

continuing to catch up…

so where was I… oh yes, new years. We got back from Georgia on the 29 late at night. Nick worked the next day and than we headed up to my parents house to party. We actually had a pretty low key night. Dan and Chrisy came over with their kiddo’s so we all hung out. My mom bought wii dance awhile ago and so the family finally busted that out to play. It was pretty entertaining to watch. Those are actually the only pictures I ended up taking :0) the rest of the evening we played a game called buzzword. it was fun. we ended up staying the night because as midnight rolled in 3 of the 5 of us were asleep and 5 min later nick joined them…

funny funny funny… they just party danced since there were so many of them.

rachel and Joc Laughing it up Autumn sitting and watching.

and can I just say for the record that Dick Clark needs to retire. Seriously!!! old age is a part of life. embrace it and move on, preferably to a non televised format.  Him making out with his wife makes me throw up in my mouth. yuck. ok my rant is over. Happy new year (LOL)

Christmas

Ok so obviously I am a little behind… but I am catching up. We were able to fly to Georgia for Christmas to be with Nick family. Nick is the oldest of 8 and it was such a special treat to all be together for Christmas. The last few times we have visited with his family we haven’t been able to all be there so it was an extra special Christmas. Nick’s sister Missy and her husband Chris have three sweet little girls that are our kids ages so it was a blast to have all the cousins playing together. His sister Beth and her husband Craig had their first baby this year as well, so there were three babies and four big kids. Nicks other sibling were built in entertainment :) yay!

Nick’s grandma was also able to be out from AZ visiting so that was special too! I am not a huge fudge fan but Grandma Mckellars fudge was DELICOUS seriously, I mean  come on now I’m blogging about it, two months later… good stuff.

We flew in the day the 23rd and stayed for a week. Our flights went great. It’s a long flight. Even with out kids you start getting antsy after that many hours of traveling but kids get burned out. We flew to San Jose first and than TX and than GA so it was just a lot of flying. They all did really well and we didn’t have any embarrassing screaming moments or anything. The baby is a champ, seriously. It was before she crawled and that was really nice because she didn’t want to get down. She would be a lot harder to fly with now. It really is amazing though that you can hop on a plane fly all day and be all the way across the US pretty cool! When we flew home we only had to switch flights once and all three kids slept for awhile on our second flight because it was pretty late GA time. I think we landed at 10:30ish.

We had a wonderful trip and we are so thankful for all the fun times! Thanks to all the family for making our trip great. Especially Nick’s mom and sister Katie. Seriously they both did so much cooking and so many dishes. Grandma McKellar did lots of dishes as well. There were 21 of us together and 19 of us staying there a couple nights so it was a cooperative effort to get everyone fed and everything cleaned up. We all pitched in here and there but after one particular meal Nick mom was back in the kitchen prepping for the next meal an hour later… Thank you for all your sacrificial love you’re a great example! Katie you were a servant to all of us thank you!!

I will probably continue my narrative through my pictures… so here goes

Christmas morning was a long process to get all those gift opened. The kids had a blast! I don’t have the picture of the mess in the stair way but I will have to get it. There was  a lot of wrapping paper!

see in the kitchen…

Christmas Night we got snow! A White Christmas, very pretty. The kids were very excited and they headed out for some play time. Here are a few pictures. I didn’t have the “big” camera but these are still pretty cute.

Allie was running around full tilt and than all of a sudden decided she was tired and Aunt Missy’s lap looked inviting. pretty cute!

we were trying to get a family pictures but Anna was tuckered out! She had been sleeping for a long time but I think she went back to sleep after this picture.

the group ( I took the picture and evidently Missy’s baby was sleeping, I don’t think I have any pictures of her but I promise little Rachel was there!)

these two were so cute. Wills is a month older than Anna and he had so much fun playing with her. He would go looking for her any time she wasn’t around.

the kids did some ginger bread houses while the big boys went out and played some Frisbee golf. I think everyone had fun.

watching Bambi

here are these 4 cuties.

Anna is 4 (bday Aug) Allie 2(July) Sonja 2(April) and Wills is 4(July)

(Allie’s shirt really does fit she just was pulling her arms up…)

One of my favorite parts of the trip was being able to play games together after all the kiddos went to bed. We stayed up till late at night playing Pictionary, buzzerwezzer, hearts, and a few more and it was a lot of fun! We had a wonderful time and it was great to meet the newest members of the family. so Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you had as wonderful time as we did with your friends and family.