Valentine's Fun

To get ready for Valentine's Day, we of course, had to make valentine card holders!  This year we made the kids little bags out of felt. 

Emma worked really hard this year and made her very own valentines for all of her friends.  

Olivia insisted on Dora cards!  They had a glow bracelet in them.

Walker chose Star Wars and we added a glow stick for a light saber. 

Here was daddy's card from me!

And this is the digital card we sent to Granny, Pa, Nana and Grandpa!

We had a Valentines feast complete with candy heart boxes on their plates, balloons for everyone and lots of chocolate hearts on the table.  We ate a traditional american breakfast of eggs, turkey bacon and heart shaped biscuits.  We just didn't have it until dinner time!  (My favorite time for breakfast).

And Daddy surprised us when we got home in the afternoon with flowers and an awesome homemade card for me, a decorated chalk frame (that he "borrowed" from the Monday afternoon youth craft that week) and boxes of chocolates for the kids.  He got lots of bonus points for being super thoughtful and creative!  (Even if he did borrow!)

End of Emma's Upward Cheer Season

We finally finished up with the Upward basketball season and Emma's cheer leading for them.  She had a wonderful time and I think that it was such a great experience for her!  I just wanted to share a few pictures of her and some of her teammates.

Here are the girls getting ready for their professional pictures.  It was hilarious trying to get all of those fidgety little girls to be still long enough to get a picture of all of them!

Here is Emma and sweet little Ava, that we go to church with.

Emma doing spirit pom-pons!

Emma getting her individual professional picture taken.

And this video is hilarious!  The girls did their first cheer with posters.  We got really tickled at the girl with the last letter.  She got a little side-tracked and forgot to put her poster up!  

Gulf Coast Getaway- Our family and 4 Brave Young Adults

In January, our family and four young adults from our congregation traveled to Panama City, FL to attend Gulf Coast Getaway to learn about missions opportunities, check out the conference, have worship time with people their age and of course, hang out at the beach.  Gulf Coast Getaway is a conference of college ministries from throughout the Southeastern U.S. You can find out more information about them here: gulfcoastgetaway.org.   

The journey took us 10 hours each way and I was very impressed with these four brave souls who found this conference worthwhile enough to endure that much time enclosed in a small space with our entire family!  And I am quite certain that the lure of the beach helped persuade them to travel with us :)

The brave beauties!

The brave girl and even braver hubby (he took this trip with a lot of women!)

Sweetness!

The girls looking beautiful!

While we were there, I took advantage of the beautiful scenery and we did a little photo shoot with the kids in their Valentine's outfits that Bonnie and I made for them!  Since right before the sun was setting they all went and jumped in the pool, I had to work with wet hair!  But, I got some pretty neat shots of them just being kids and I loved it!

I also took pictures of things that I could use as headers on my blogs or in crafts or pictures to decorate the house:)  

And as I said before, we spent a lot of time just playing :

I think I could get used to waking up to this view every morning!

I am amazed at how mature this young lady is looking (and sometimes acting)!  

And Olivia never allows us to get bored.  She is full of life, energy and a fiery little personality!

It was a great trip!  And although I don't have any pictures, the conference was wonderful and the Sunday morning worship service was so uplifting!  

Happy Birthday to Daddy!

On February 16, Chris turned 36!  Emma was wanting so badly to throw him a big surprise party, but I told her that I wasn't so sure that he would really want to do that.  So, I decided to just ask him how he wanted to celebrate.  He decided that he wanted to take the kids to Chuck E. Cheese for the afternoon!  Of course, the kids were thrilled!  So, after Emma's morning Upward ballgame and an early lunch, we headed to Jackson.  When we got there, the line was out the door and along the sidewalk!  We were very tempted to turn around and leave, but the kids would have been so disappointed!  So, we stuck with it and eventually worked our way through the crowds as we realized they were all waiting to eat.  We decided that the pizza was just not worth that wait.  So, we bought tons of tickets and started to play!  The kids loved it!  And I have to admit, we ended up having a very good time despite the really loud noise and the crowded environment.  We played against each other in skeet-ball and race cars and lots of other games that I can't even begin to describe!  The best part for me was watching their little faces light up when the played again that gave them lots of those crazy little tickets.  By the end of the afternoon, everyone was getting hungry and so we decided to cash in all of our tickets.  We had over 700!  You would think that would buy us something really special.  But, once you divide that by 3 kids, we ended up with some pretty silly little junk toys.  But, you know they still loved them!  We had dinner at the mall and then drove back home.

Chris is really not a big "cake" person, so Emma and I made him some brownies and decorated them:

Our pretty pitiful decorations with a single candle (because he is now way too old and 36 candles is just more than we wanted to have to put on our brownies!)

Singing Happy Birthday!

Blowing out his candle.

My sweet family:)


Happy Birthday to my hubby!  He is now as old as I am!!!

Emma Performs Her First Dance Routine

Last Saturday, Emma's cheer team, the Tornadoes, performed their first dance routine in front of a crowd.  To say the least, it was entertaining to see as a parent.  They had only practiced the routine a few times.  Their squad is made up of all new cheerleaders ranging from ages 4-7.  And their music messed up.  But, we were so proud of her!  She has learned so much and really enjoys cheering with the Upward program.

And probably what makes it even more entertaining is that Walker and Olivia were fighting through most of the video about the phone I was trying to use to record this video.  Walker had been using it when the girls ran out and I had to grab it away from him (although in my defense, I had warned him about 5 times that when they ran out, I needed my phone). And they were also fighting about eating popcorn.  You can actually hear a lot of those conversations in the video.  Oh the joys of siblings!

Walker's Unique Game Playing Location

Our son, Walker, loves to play games on the iPhones and iPad.  For the longest time he was seriously addicted to Angry Birds.  This picture was taken last year, but I just recently came across it.  One morning I heard a strange noise coming from our bathroom.  I went in and this is what I found:

He was sitting on the bathroom counter. He had apparently found his daddy's iPad there charging and decided it was a good place to play! He was still in his pajamas, enjoying his quiet time with his favorite little creatures, Angry Birds! 

And as time went on, apparently he got tired. When I returned, he had decided to lay down.

Happy Holidays from the Frys

Free digital greeting card made with Smilebox