Happy Birthday Reecer Monkey

Even though you are getting taller, smarter and more witty with your jokes, I can still call you Little Guy. I'm not sure at what age, I'll have to stop that, but when I see your smiling cheery face come down the stairs in the morning and walk up to hug me in the kitchen, I can't help but still think of you as "little". Yes, the Lego phase of all American Boys has struck this household like a plague. This is the process: he brings the box to either Dad or I, we go thru the piece by excruciating piece while Reece does somersaults or pretends to help, then I follow step 1 thru a billion to make his creation, just to have him carry the thing upstairs and break off the wings, propeller and wheels. All accidentally, of course.



It wasn't a far stretch to make Reecer Monkey, monkey cupcakes to bring in to Kindergarten on his birthday. When the teacher passed the monkey's out at lunch, little girls were hugging him and telling him they love him and his mom.

I'm diming out Rick and his "blob" cake as he called it. He used 2 different size cake pans and then 2 cans of frosting to make this Jabba the Hut like turd of a cake. Yes, that's Indiana Jones running across the top of it, probably afraid at any minute the trapdoor on the cake will let loose and he'll fall into the bowels of the chocolate.

Reece, I kept telling myself, your not going to grow up as quick as Emma, b/c your birthday misses the school cut-off and I had you with me at home for one extra year. But, I can't say that anymore and now as I realize from here until you are 18, I will only see you afternoons, weekends and summers. My gentle souled animal lover, quiet by nature, but yet all boy, who before I know it will be asking me not to hold his hand while walking him into school, not eat lunch with him as it's not cool to actually have a mom, or sit up in your room holed away listening to angry music and befriending strangers on FaceBook. When I find the magic to stop you from growing up, don't think I won't use it. Happy Birthday Little Guy, I love you

We are all a little crazy

Ouch ouch this flaming ball of gas in my hand is soooo hot

Happy Birthday Mom- we had cupcakes from Oh Snap! Cupcakes- Hot Mamma, Dalmation, Red Velvet and coconut

Someone's in the kitchen with oatmeal, someone's in the kitchen I know...... OK who wants oatmeal cookies, and whoopie pies? Rick cut the bottoms out of all the quaker oats containers, Reece and Adeline dumped the oats in the tupperware and I cleaned up the rest that ended up on the floor.

Moxie decided to try the rope swing over the pool while no one was looking, or so she thought. We all saw her from the dining room and ran out to snap a quick picture

Jabba the Hut is wishing Reece a Happy Birthday

When there are 8 kids in one house and your bored, grab shopping bags and start creating robots. We kept trying to find the "dance" button on these 2, so we could watch them get funky over and over again

the youngest never gets enough face time

Labor Day Sunday Evening- beach night at chicken bone beach with friends

1st day of school with Backpack the Penguin

Best Friends giving hugs in the Ladybugs Tuesday-Thursday preschool class

Tiny Tumblers Gymnastics started Wednesday mornings and Adeline LOVES it. Here she is in the rainbow room, it has pint sized equipment perfect for her size

Stretching time is first, then mat work, rainbow room, then the trampoline and finish up with stamps of Disney characters- do you notice a common occurrence in all these pictures? Her best friend Abigail is everywhere Adeline is.

OK I know this isn't the best picture of Adeline, but again the girls are inseperable and as the years go by, I hope they grow up together best friends and can look back with fond memories of the formative years spent having fun

Where did these come from?

And by these, I mean all these mystery pictures that were on our old camera from the beginning of the summer. So, I am pulling a reverse blog. In May we took our boat out for Memorial Weekend to get as far away from the main Pensacola Beach for reasons true natives know of. We went out to Ft. McCray and just as we pull in a dark cloud comes quickly towards us, well you can see it was a group of stangrays. Wonder if one of these is the one that will get Rick in a month . Ok I see my mistake of stangray in the above sentence, but since stank is a common word in my vocab, maybe so should stang

Poor Mr. Spadefish, but don't feel too sad, I forced Ricardo to let you go, about 5 minutes after this picture

oooo who is that beauty queen?

Birthday Time for Daddy, let's put on party hats and storm him when he walks through the door

I know cheesecakes are supposed to be white, so I don't know what happened here

Alright, I see what Robin sees in the Alpacas now, they are super cute and squishy

They were freshly shaven and ready for some attention

Group photo and what's funny is that when we stood here, there were no alpacas in the picture, they all ran over to get in the pic