Carly's Birthday Celebration

Our girl loves to have her Birthday Dinner at the Olive Garden... she was pretty excited to have her little cousin Leah to help party!  Eli was there too (well, and their parents!) but somehow, he wasn't photographed.  Hmmmm.  

Opening some presents... Note the duck tape hair bow and bracelets...

Fun suitcase from Grandma in Michigan!  She's ready to travel, I think!

This is probably when she was telling us all the exciting stuff she was going to make with the huge box of duck tape Aunt Rochel and Uncle Edgar got her!  My children are easily entertained with tape.  They get this from me.  I love tape.

Contrary to Popular Belief, I did NOT make Carly pick Angry Birds Cupcakes.  Was I secretly gleeful when she chose them?  Yes.  

TEN

How does this happen?  Hard to believe it's been 10 years since Carly made her dramatic entrance into the world!  She hasn't changed her looks or personality one bit... she still has the same brilliant, quick smile and same giggle!  Same sweet, tender heart... same peace-loving, people-loving girl.  Still loves Blankie.  Still thinks she's a Girl.

Happy Birthday, Caroline Renae!!  

We thank God everyday for the love and fun drama to bring to our family!

St Petersburg Women's Half Marathon

One of the things I'm VERY thankful for, since breaking my foot in May, is being able to run again!  My mom tries to warn me that running is bad for your knees (in her defense, she just had a knee replacement!) and I shouldn't do it... and I always tell her that One Day I Won't Be Able To Run, but that day is not today.  Thankfully.  So, in continuing with my goal this year to run a half marathon (at least the distance) once a month, November's race was in St Pete!  I was very happy to have Rochel at the starting line with me... I never saw her again until the end, when she was relaxing on the grass with my kids, with a big old medal around her neck!  She did AWESOME and was super fast.  Me, not so fast.  But finished:)

Very pretty course... all around the water in St Pete and through the Downtown area.  Several people who work with me also ran, so that was fun too.  

I like to pray a lot when I run... mostly that I won't fall over.  Ha.  My heart was so heavy for my friend Debbie as she was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, that I decided to pray the whole race for her and her family.  A different topic each mile.  (You are welcome for Mile 10, Debbie.) Anyways, I'm not sure that was my BEST idea, as I was fighting tears the whole time, but it was good for me.  

The Horrible Pier.  This was when I realized I was stressing about my time, and not enjoying the race.  I had a heart to heart with myself, and started to have FUN!  and take a lot of pictures...

My pink breast cancer bracelets... sent this pic to Debbie to remind her she is loved and someone was praying for her.  And fortunately for her, I'm VERY SLOW, so, lots of time spent out there for her!

This sign made me laugh...

Best part of the race, other than the finish line!  Running INSIDE Tropicana Field!!  We are such RAYS fan, I won't lie:  it's why I signed up for this race!

The wall where Evan Longoria got his last Regular Season Home Run.  Yup, fan.

Home plate.  Yes, I was a complete dork in there and sprinted from home plate to first base.  Dork.

Picture for Ryan, so he knew I was getting close.  Er.

My MOST FAVORITE PART:  Ryan jumped in and ran the last quarter of a mile with me.  He tried not to, but I insisted and it was really fun and he even crossed the finish with me, and I just loved that.  He enjoyed the first race I ran that he WASN'T running, he got to just cheer for me... and I was happy to cross with him, since he is ALWAYS finished before me when we run the same race!

Military personnel handing out the medals...

Booths at the finish...

Little Miss trying on all her parents medals after we got home... We have quite a few now!

Fall Festival 2011

Every year, our church has a Fall Festival.  It's pretty fun, and holds somewhat nostalgic memories for us as it is the very first event we attended at our church, way back in 2001.  Carly was in The Belly and Ben was nearly 3 and dressed up like Woody from Toy Story (umm, the original, not Toy Story 3)... he loved hearing these stories this year.  No, really.  He did.  He particularly loved the part about how we went to Jason's Deli afterwards and he lost his toy (um, Woody, complete with his name written on the boot) and how devastated I was over his For Real Lost Toy (umm, 9 months pregnant) which amazingly enough, we found (at Jason's Deli) 3 months later.  But I digress...

This year, Carly talked her brother into dressing up with her...

She wanted to be Doc Brown from Back to the Future (of course) and begged him to be Marty McFly, which of course, he agreed to... even though he's no fan of dressing up.  This is her trying very hard to NOT smile and look skeptical.

We signed up to be in the Line Up for Trunk or Treating, and apparently we were supposed to decorate our car.  You know, with fall decorations.  Which we don't really have many of, and we weren't going to decorate at all... but then it occurred to us our car KIND OF looks like the DeLorean (ok ok, Time Machine) seeing how it's Platinum Grey... so Ryan decorated it a little for us.

The Lightening Rod is my Uncle's cane, covered in foil... and those are Ryan's models lining up in the back, you know, in front of the Flux Capacitor.  Which makes Time Travel possible.  My favorite part was the movie sound track blaring.  So exciting!

Sadly, the Judges did not get our Theme... I think one might have said, "Where are your pumpkins?" hahahaha...

And here's Bam Bam and Pebbles.  Since we haven't seen them in a while!  Welcome back to Auntie's Blog.

And finally, a brief look at the Fiddler on the Roof (HillBilly Style) musical Ryan was in for the Entertainment of the evening...

Shout out to my brother-in-law, TIM for the flannel shirt rental.  THANK YOU!  Also entertaining for the evening was Ben and Carly dancing... at some point the musical took a very odd turn to include the Thriller Dance... Turns out, Carly makes a very good Zombie, and Ben wasn't too bad himself!  Baby Girl's got rhythm and we have NO IDEA where she got that from!

** Side note:  In case one is wondering... it took a full bottle of conditioner to remove the whole bottle of "white hairspray" from Carly's ratted out hair.  Which never even looked that white.

Tooth Fairy Correspondence

Dear 

      Tooth Fairy,

              This time you come over to my house can you give me five $ please. I love that you come around every night  that I have a  tooth fall out. You are one of my best friends, escpeically when you bring me money for my tooth    :]$. Now I’m a lot older than i was when my first tooth came out, now I’m starting to loose canines and molers. Pretty soon I’m going  to have braces all different colors. this is my 11th tooth not to mention it’s my first molar! Have a safe trip and NO TRICKS!!!!!

                   Sincerly,

                              Carly  

A Boy... Really. A.

Swim Season is in Full Swing.  Who am I kidding... it's ALWAYS in Full Swing.  Year Round Swim Team.  I should clarify, Short Course Season is in Full Swing.  It's our favorite course, and lasts until the end of February.  

September 17th, we headed out to Winter Haven, FL for a meet... early in the am.  At least the sunrise was pretty...

Both kids swam really well, but BEN got his Best Ever Time for his 50 Freestyle, clocking 28.18 seconds!!  This is also what is known as an "A Time" in the realm of Motivational Time Standards that are put out by USA Swimming (official business there!)  This time is also a Junior Olympic Cut, which is VERY exciting... I hate to bring up the Aging Up issue, so I will refer back to THIS POST... and this will be the case again, but we are still CRAZY PROUD of him!  He swam this race again the past weekend and cut even MORE time off, and now his best is 28.12... those 0.06 of a second are huge in the world of swimming.

Just a fun picture of the water... (and probably a Line Judge)

We are so proud of BOTH of you.  It's why we spend so many hours on the Pool Deck cheering you on.  Even though you don't love the cheering (Ben) and even though the cheering completely distracts you and makes you wave at us (Carly!).

Carly's Newest Endeavor

Pretty far behind in my blogging, which stinks, since I get it printed into a book at the end of the year and it serves as my Very Classy Scrapbook.  I don't want to forget these fun moments, so I will fill in... now.  

In August, Carly went for a Kind of Last Minute Audition for the Gulf Coast Children's Choir.  It's a local youth choir organization that Ryan's best friend, Rodney, (aka, Uncle Rodney) works with.   He actually directs the older kids.  Anyways, he's been talking it up for years, and FINALLY we remembered in time to get the Girl to an Audition.  The audition involved her attending an afternoon of their choir camp with all the other Already Members, then singing and reading music and various other exercises, with the director (not Rodney).  I must say: She's NINE, so I thought this might be a little overwhelming, you know, to try and break into a group that's already been working together for a while.  You know, kids she doesn't know, blah, blah, blah.  

Silly me.  

We dropped her off in the New Enormous Multi-Million Dollar Music Building at the University of South Florida and she ran right in without a backward glance.  She spent the afternoon with these complete strangers (Uncle Rod did stop by for a brief visit/spy mission), then we showed up at the end for her audition.  She, of course, made herself right at home and introduced herself all around... why do I ever worry about this kid???  When it was time to do her solo act, the director suggested that non-family members leave (there were several people waiting around for their child's audition, etc) and Little Miss goes, "Oh, I don't mind... they can stay!" and proceeded to sing the song she was randomly asked to sing, read some music, and sing some scales.  All with the big old smile on her face!  She's never really done much of this kind of stuff, so we were pretty impressed that she learned so quickly and duh, is a natural.  ANYWAYS, she got in:)  And she's been made an ALTO:)

Couple pics from her first night of rehearsal...  she thinks she's all that, seeing how it's at the university!

And her Get Up for the first night... I was at work (practically right next door!) and got off just as they were finishing (very convenient, I might add!).  She's had several rehearsals and a performance so far, and she JUST LOVES IT!  She jumps in the car very excited and happy, so it's pretty fun to see.  She told us this past summer she wants to be famous and be a singer like Selena Gomez, so we told her she has to learn to sing correctly, then she can do whatever she wants:)  She's taking it all VERY seriously!!