The Great Eight

The staff at Rowan's school refer to his class as The Great Eight. They are the youngest kids there and, well, you know, great. Here is his class photo.



And this is his photo.




He's lucky he is so adorable because I'm about to pack his bags if he asks "Why?" one more time.

Chicken Beginnings

Remember this post? My backyard chicken dream is coming true. I asked for a chicken coop for my birthday and my in laws went far beyond what I expected. It's not only my birthday present but a gift for all of us.

Here is the tractor just off of the 18-wheeler that backed into our cul-de-sac. We are going to turn those pallets into a compost bin.



Not long after we took the shrink wrap off, someone crawled in.

And we put the other one in too.
They loved it, despite the sad eyes in this photo.

Here is the run before assembly.

During assembly.

Once we got the coop all together we had to wheel it in the backyard for a photo op.
And, phew, it fits through the gate. You can see our new raised bed gardens in this picture. We are excited to see how things grow here, as our last garden was in College Station, TX. If you garden and know that area then you know what I mean.

Here she is all put together. As Rowan says at least once an hour, "It's awesome."

Proud husband talking with our neighbor, Joe. It's cool they still love us.

Pics of chicks coming soon....

February Memorables

We got our snow. It was the perfect snow too, fell softly all morning and melted by sun down. The obligatory "first snow" photo shoot results are here.









Ryder is all over the place and into everything. She pulls up on anything and has let go and stood alone a few times. She is signing more and all done, although they look exactly the same. She loves for her Daddy to chew ice and feed it to her. Gross but true. Her biggest accomplishment of the month, she got her first tooth this month. See it?


Rowan is still adjusting to being a big brother and having to share us and his toys with Ryder. He is learning to spell his name and is curious about what letter your name starts with. I've enjoyed seeing things click with him. This was a photo from our snow day but I cropped all of the snow out to enjoy those eyes. I think he is saying "cheese."


He had his first Valentine party at school. They sat in a circle and each stood up and put their cards/candy in each others envelopes. Rowan went first and he wasn't sure why he was doing this but he went with it.

This is Rowan's buddy, Ben. They hang out by the computer a lot and have deep conversations about Mario Kart. They even coordinated a t-shirt day where they both showed up in a Mario Kart shirt.
Grandma came to stay with us for a few weeks this month and it's such treat for all of us. We get to do things like happy hours and concerts, my mom gets to love on my babies and my babies get spoiled rotten. This was what we walked into several nights during her visit.


We are back to the grind now, trading off kids while the other works out or does something fun. On the to do list, Find. A. Sitter.

Brrrrr, It's January

Rowan came home from school and taught us a new song. It's the first one he taught us. Just ignore the yogurt all over his face and enjoy the song.

Ryder Mae - 8 months

Ryder rolled over for the first time over Christmas break at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Until then she just sat there being cute. Now less than a month later she's crawling and clapping.

Ignore Thomas the Train in the background.

4th Quarter 2011

Oh my! I have a video of Miss Mae crawling and I want to share it on this little, family blog but I just can't do that until I post some pictures of us (mostly them.)

This was Ryder's first Christmas and she was more impressed with bows and paper than anything. Rowan was into it more this year than any other thus far but still appreciates small doses of gifts. Here are both of them with our stockings at home (Christmas 2011 #1 of 3.)

Rowan's favorite gift from Fayetteville Santa was a pair of black shoes that are very similar to Esten's. He asked me to put some pants on him so he could wear the shoes immediately. He needs pants touching the shoes or they just aren't right.



I mean he really loves them.



Ryder and her first purse.



In November, the 30th to be exact, Rowan turned 3. While he was at school I put all of his gifts together on our coffee table so he would walk in to this.



He was thoroughly unimpressed! He didn't want to open his gifts but after a little coaxing he did.



That night we went to Chuck E Cheese's. Did you know they serve beer? We were delighted to discover this. Now our trips there will cost even more. A few of our friends came to celebrate with us, including Luke, Rowan's nieghbor buddy. Candles were his thing this year. Fire equals fun.








And in October we all dressed up for Halloween. No explanation needed here.






These are a few randoms from October.










And finally, at the beginning of October we went the Harvest Music Festival. The weather was unseasonably warm but we managed. Our kids were great and we will be back next year albeit in reserved camping. We are too old to camp with the stay up all nighters.











That was just a glimpse but mejor que nada.

Let's Go Get Cloned

Enjoy this video from the Vintage Vernon Festival in September. And because everyone needs at least one Doc Mason song on their Ipod buy this song on Itunes. It's called, Let's Go Get Cloned.