"THE SWEETEST THING"

We lucked out on Saturday and got to keep baby Aubree while the rest of the Ford family went out riding on their new RZR ... it was such a pleasure having her around and I was able to get in my baby fix!! What a sweet little baby girl she is ... the boys had so much fun entertaining her and trying to make her smile and Rilyn kept saying "baby baby" and immediately kicked into mommy mode herself playing with her giant baby doll that Grandma got her for xmas, Baby Reese!! She even jacked Aubree's bed for baby Reese and fed her bottles and gave her kisses!!! Kinda funny ... the age difference btw Rilyn & Aubree is almost exactly the same as the boy's!!!

Rilyn taking care of Baby Reese ...... !!!

LOOKING BACK AT 2010

Normally this time of year I am ready to kick off a new year with a fresh start and excited to see what the new year has in store for us .. however this year I am having a hard time letting 2010 go and believing that it is indeed 2011!!!

When thinking back on last year I cant help but stop and realize how incredibly blessed we are to have such an amazing family, friends and the simple fact that we are able to enjoy and do so much as a family with our 4 beautiful children who each amaze, entertain & test us in their own way every day!! I wanted to take a minute and reflect on some of my most favorite "moments" and "memories"(only to name a few) from last year:

• All the crazy vacations & outing's we have done, each fun, challenging & memorable in their own way!
• Trey starting kindergarten and stepping into a whole new world so confident & proud!
• Having my Mom and Normy finally move here after years of begging & pleading!!!
• The NIGHTLY pranks the boys play on me by putting lizards, snakes, spiders, etc ... under my pillow for me to find when I go to bed and how they are so excited the next morning to find out how bad it scared me!!
• Watching Rilyn grow up into the beautiful, awnry, bossy, sassy, determined, and at times mean yet sweet as ever little one year old she has become ... from learning to crawl and walk to feeding herself and now running around and beginning to talk!!
• When Rhett ask's me for "bacwone" (cologne) every time he gets ready!!
• The happy, anxious, excited feeling I get in my stomach on the day Clay is coming home from working out of town!!
• When I am driving and I look in the back seat and see Rhett holding Rilyn's hand and she is sound asleep!!
• Seeing Trey receive his 2nd place trophy at his first race. And the scared to death yet excited and proud feeling that I get in my stomach every time the boy's are out on the track racin'!!
• Sitting with Trey and listening to him read ME a book ... so awesome he started reading!!
• Tucking the kids into bed at night, scratching their back's & booty's, each one of them having their own little special thing: Charlotte always tells me "I love you a million times..plus 1", Trey "I love you around the whole wide world a million times" and Rhett "I love you all the way up to heaven and back" ... god only knows what Rilyn will come up with .. hahahahahaaa!!!!
• Clay and I celebrating our 6th anniversary in Havasu!!
• Rilyn's open mouth kisses and queezies (squeezes)!! We all enjoy these!!
• The kids before dinner prayers .... especially Rhett who always starts out with "Deew Lowrd"!!
• How brave & tuff Trey was after he broke his arm ... I will never forget when we found out he was going to have to have surgery and he looked up at me with those big ol blue eyes all welled up with tears and asked me "Momma how bad is it gonna hurt"!!
• When Rhett asked Trey if he could borrow his dreamcatcher to sleep with since Trey was going to be sleeping on the couch ... one of the sweetest things ever!!
• And last but not least (as I said this is just some of the many moments), simply watching the relationships that have formed between all our kids as they get older ... it always amazes me to sit and think about how different each and every one of them are yet they still mesh and get along so well ... for myself growing up in a very tight knit family and being very close to both my brother and my sister, I absolutely adore the bonds that they have formed amongst each other each unique in its own way .. and I always make a special point to remind them how lucky they are to have each other!!

Sooo all that being said and moving on to 2011 ... although I dont have any "New Years Resolutions" I do have plenty of "Goals" for the new year .... but to sum them all up ... my main mission for the year to come is to ..... SIMPLIFY my life in any and every way possible and hope for love, laughter & health!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

CHEERS TO A NEW YEAR FILLED WITH FAMILY, FRIENDS & FUN!!!

The Ford's came over for New Years and we celebrated with a fire, fireworks, crafts for the kids, confetti balloons, sparkling cider ... !!!

The boys hangin by the camp fire .... Rhett is FREEZING & TIRED!!

The clan ... we made 2010 glasses (which it just dawned on me when I went to post this that we really should have made 2011 glasses not 2010, but hey I'm a little slow what can I say!!), crazy hat's and water bottle noise makers!! The kids had a blast makin all this stuff and everyone but Rilyn lasted til the new year!!

Once 12 o'clock hit we let the kids pop the confetti balloons that we made and do a sparkling cider toast!!! It was a great start to a new year!!

HAPPY 9TH BIRTHDAY CHARLOTTE RAE

Charlotte Rae turned 9 on us and we still cant believe how big she is getting!! For her bday this year we got her a quad so we decided to go out riding for her birthday and surprise her with it! So before her mom dropped her off at our house that morning we got the trailer all loaded up normal like we always do when we are going riding and we loaded her quad into the back of the truck and then covered it all up with blankets and stuff ... so once we were out to the spot where we were going to start our ride we got everyone and everything unloaded, got the boys all geared up in their riding gear and acted like we were ready to go ... then Clay said hey Charlotte there's one more thing we need to unload can you come help me out real quick so of course she did and when she uncovered her "very own 90" in her words she was ECSTATIC!! So cool to see how excited she was!!

She kept saying "I got my very own 90 now .. I cant believe I have my very own 90"!!!

Later that evening we went up to Peter Piper Pizza with Grammy, Grandpa John, Aunt Susan, Uncle Darin, Grandma, Grandpa Normy, & Aunt Lorie and the gang and had dinner and a few more presents!!

CHRISTMAS @ GRAMMY'S & GRANDPA JOHN'S

After we were done doin our christmas morning thing at home we loaded up and headed down to Grammy's house for brunch and believe it or not more presents!!! Grammy always makes a killer breakfast and we also get to enjoy mamosa's & bloddy mary's ... mmmmm mmmm!!! We hung out over at grammy's pretty much all day and relaxed and watched movies!! This completed our christmas festivities!!

The boy's cant wait to race their new RC cars with Uncle Darin!!!

HERE COMES SANTA CLAUS .. HERE COMES SANTA CLAUS!!!

Before bed the boys spread the magic reindeer food out in the runway for the reindeers and made a plate of cookies for Santa along with a special note!!!

" SANTA CAME ... SANTA CAME ... SANTA CAME"!! This is what Clay & I were woken up to christmas morning!! Sooo fun!!

We told the boys to cover their eye's ... mom & dad have one more surprise for you out in the garage!!

"A NEW QUAD"!!! Rhett was totally stoked!! He got a new 50 thats bigger and even blue!!!

Trey Mo got all new racing parts on his quad .... and now it is BBAAAAADDDDDD!!!

Rilyn digs her new bike complete with a seat for her baby doll as well!!

The boys got nintendo chairs to go along with our new PS3!! We had an awesome Christmas this year its so crazy how much the kids have grown and how they totally get it now makes it so much fun!! It seems like it came and went soooo fast and now I am left with figuring out a new home for all this new stuff not an easy task but I'm sure we will get there eventually!!!

CHRISTMAS EVE WITH SISSY

This year we had Charlotte for Christmas Eve so we saved up all the fun stuff to do for when she was home!! Daddy went and picked her up first thing in the morning and once they were back we made our magic reindeer food and our gingerbread house. Then we all got cleaned up and ready for the day and headed into town to go take our picture and see Santa, Rilyn was not thrilled at all and SCREAMED the moment she even saw Santa!!! I planned on trying to sneak a picture but that didn't work out .. hahaha ... somehow the lady taking the pic's captured a moment when Rilyn was taking a breath from her ear piercing screams so although her face is bright red and the crocodile tears are flowing, our picture with santa turned out half way decent, considering!!! After Santa we went and grabbed some dinner and let the kids each open the one present that they had picked out from under the tree and last but not least we unloaded the ranger and cruised around looking at xmas lights, jammin xmas music and drinking hot coco!! Once we had all froze our butts off enough and got our fill of xmas lights .. we loaded back up and dropped sissy off to her mom before heading home to prepare everything for Santa's arrival!!!

Our magic reindeer food ... which we added glitter to this year (thanks Candis for throwin a new idea at us) ... all ready to be spread out in the runway for the reindeers!!!

The kids did a great job on our ginger bread house!!

We found this AWESOME culta-sac that was totally decked out with lights ... they even had reindeer going around all of the roof's from one house to the other ... very cool .... the picture doesn't do any justice!!

Bbrrrrrrrrrr!!! Although it was cold it was well worth the freezing our butts off to see all the christmas lights on the ranger!!