Who's that lady?

 Recognize her? There on the right?

How about a close up?

What a hot mama I have! :) 

When we moved here to Frisco, we happened to move about a mile from my mom's cousin Kip and his wife. Tonight Kip gave me this old picture he found of her. That's Kip with my mom in the picture in front of her beloved Austin Healy Sprite (the car). It's so fun to see pictures of her and funny to think that the pictures of me now my kids and grandkids will be amazed to see because things will look so different in 50 years. 

Hey kids, if you're reading this...don't make fun - it's the style :) (whatever it is that looks silly...).

 Love, your Mom who is dorky but is trying

Life Recently

I've been feeling really blessed recently for the wonderful life that I have. Life with 3 kids isn't as bad as I had expected from all the horror stories I heard, but it certainly is much busier! Here's a little of what we've been up to.

Grace has started doing some chores. One of them is unloading the dishwasher. Here she is with a good dishwasher-unloader pose :) She gets a dime for every job she completes and she loves paying her tithing to the Bishop and getting to spend her money on things she wants.

Cute clean boy ready for an adventure.

 Dad and Rue getting some work done.

Like father, like son. Looking so handsome all ready to go to church.

Meet Sparkle.

 This morning we got together with some friends for a field trip to PetSmart. They gave us a tour and the kids got to see and touch a few different kinds of animals. All the kids went home with their very own Betta fish. Grace even used her very own money to buy her fish. His name is Sparkle. And later she told me his name was Sparkle Annette Lily (and then, I guess, technically his last name is Carter), but we just call him Sparkle :). Welcome to the family Sparkle!

 

Grace is so cute. She wants to have Sparkle everywhere she is. Too bad now she wants another pet!

Utah Trip Part V: Random Fun Times

 We had a blast hanging out with the McMullins and Grandma Annette and Grandpa Dave for the week or so leading up until Christmas. I give you an overview in pictures:

Grace and Henry un-strung a cassette tape and wound it all around the house

We had a Carter sibling family fun night where we did a puzzle race. Sadly, we girls were distracted by the kids and just barely lost to the gloating boys.

 Barney kept Ben and Bailey entertained most of the time.

 

 

 Ever full of awesome ideas, Jeff thought it would be fun to see if he could roll a mint into Tommy's mouth using a measuring tape. They actually got pretty far!

 Grandpa got some good back scratches from Grace.

And he dressed up for his work's ugly sweater contest...looking good Dave!

 Related, much?

 I love this face on Benji :)

 

 

 Ruby fell in love with Barney live in concert...it's totally obnoxious and she wanted to watch it all.the.time. Yay for us.

We had a little incident with some hot candle wax. Looks gory, eh?

 This is how I found Ruby when I went to put her back into bed while she was supposed to be napping. She changed into her jammies and put on her snow clothes. Girlfriend just wanted to play in the snow!

 For my speeding ticket, I had to do a ridiculous amount of work:get a cashier's check for the amount, get a notarized statement saying that I hadn't taken a driver safety course in the past year, and then send it all via certified mail to the courthouse just to say that I wanted to take the driver safety course.

Rob found out what happens when you try to open a bottle of frozen root beer. Also, just the flavoring bubbles out leaving the thawed root beer tasting nasty, in case you're wondering.