Happy Gotcha Day Girls!

Today is Kaelin's 6th Gotcha Day and Chelsi's 3rd is Sunday.  I really can't believe it's been 6 years already for Kae.  Amazing!  I absolutely cannot imagine a second without either of them.  I vividly remember both of those days and how we felt and how they each sounded and reacted.

We had parent/teacher conferences and we're busy this weekend so we picked up McDonalds to celebrate.  They even got to get meals for once...no $ menu!  They thought that was pretty cool!

We love you girls!

Mom and dad

PS...Happy birthday M.  We all love you!  Have a great 24th!

Today's Art

The kids have spent all day playing with the neighbor kids outside.  But, they eventually had to go home.  Chase and Kaelin decided to finally use some of the sidewalk chalk I bought last year and do up some big time artwork.  Here's their masterpieces.

My 3 year old...

She reads some sight words and sings songs like no one.  This isn't the best example, but she's really awesome.  Some of the words on the computer screen were words she'd not seen before, so she was trying to sound them out.  Which, is pretty incredible for a 3 year old.  She loves to tell us what letter, every word we say, starts with.  She's very good at it.  Just a little off with Sh and Ch.  She can sing so many more songs, however, she picked a Christmas/Winter song.  It's still an really sweet little voice she has.

You have to admit, my baby is **CUTE**!!

Leapster Junkies

These are my two.  Kaelin likes hers too, but these two are using there a lot to draw and write.  Well, worth the money Santa invested.  ;)



Deep concentration.

Happy Birthday to my oldest baby

Wow....one year from official teenager.  Not that he doesn't act like it already, sometimes...anyways.  All-in-all, we're blessed because he's a pretty great kid that seems to be growing up nicely.

Happy 12th Cole!!



The cleaning of the candles.

The littlest worker

Chelsi loves to help out so much.  I was washing windows after I unloaded the towels out of the dryer.  I went back to my bedroom to fold them and she was just about done.  :)

Lost and Found

Our Lucky left us and is in puppy heaven.  He died, unexpectedly on Sunday morning.  Chase went to his kennel to find him lying by the gate.  The boys took it so badly.  Cole, as usual, took it the hardest.  He's generally the pet caretaker of the house, so he gets very close.  We will all miss Lucky.

Cole had been begging us since about October or November for a beagle pup.  Apparently, his bus driver raises them and had pups at the time.  We kept telling him no because our two dogs were enough.  Well, now that Lucky is gone and his birthday is next week, we felt it was okay to go ahead and let him have one.  So I called them up and apparently they're trying to get out of the business and get rid of all the dogs and pups they have.  So, Chase and Cole, both now have a beagle each.  They're not pups, but the little sisters are 2 1/2 years old, but small.  I think he said they were miniature??  They're cute and seem pretty well behaved so far and the boys are getting them for their birthdays, so they were happy.  The guy raising them likes the boys and felt the dogs would have a good home with fun boys to play with another beagle to teach them to really hunt, so he gave them to us.  They seem like happy little girls, so hopefully, our nights are too loud.  The boys well know it's their responsibility to shut them up at night, so they'll be getting up to yell at them.  :)  This ought to be interesting.  :)

Here are the girls.