little princess

Molly and I went shopping and she found this dress. She immediately ran over to it, pulled it off the rack, and hugged it. She was NOT going to let go of that dress. Fortunately for her, I thought the dress was adorable and just couldn't tell her know, so it came up with us. As soon as we got home she wanted to put it on, but I talked her into taking a nap first. When she woke up, the first works out of her mouth were "dress, put dress on!".. And she ran out of her room, downstairs and grabbed the dress. She has had a fascination with big poofy dresses lately and it's all she wants to wear...

Playin' hooky!!

It was 68 degrees out today and I decided to play hooky with the kids and go to the zoo!!! The zoo here is in Columbia, SC and about a 75 mile drive. Not close enough to go all the time like Tacoma or San Antonio, but still close enough that it can be done every now and then. Nicholas is out of school for a couple days and Caroline wasn't feeling very well yesterday, so, since the sun was shining, we were gonna go have some fun!! And that we did! Caroline went a little camera happy on our trip and the battery died while she was taking photos, but here are some from the day..

This is Vivian or Lucas. The zoo had two baby giraffes: one born last February, and one born in August. It was fun to see them wander around...


The Gorillas wer out today. There were 3 of them and at one point they were all at the bottom of the hill pulling down some bamboo. It was neat to see them so active. Here's a close up of one of them....


This little flamingo was very friendly and he was not very happy with me reaching over with my camera to get this shot... oh well :)

The three munchkins. This was at the beginning of our day... yes, Caroline has shorts on, and by the time we were done she was in just her t-shirt! It was SO nice to be in the warm sun today!!!

Another one of the animals perfect for a picture.....

I dug this pic out from the archives. It is of Caroline back in October 2005. Caroline wasn't two yet. Same turtle, same zoo :) amazing how much she has grown up!!!!!!

Craziness in our house....

This is how Joe found Molly and Nicholas the other day watching TV in our room. Goofy kids!

We have been slowly working on trying to get this little Miss to potty train. She really has not seemed very interested, but I found her like this the other day peeing in the potty without me prompting her. And then she did this again tonight before getting in the tub... Silly Girl!!!1

Bath time!!!

The Quarry

Yesterday we took a trip with Caroline's Girl Scout troop to a Quarry that is just down the road from our house. It was a really cold day for GA standards (about 28 when we went). Thankfully their bus that they use for tours wouldn't start in the morning (and it didn't have heat) so we got to drive around in 4 different trucks that had heat and get a really up close look at the whole Quarry. It is a granit quarry that they have been mining for about 30 years and it's estimated that they have at least 75 years more in reserve. It was a very informative field trip and at the end of it some of the employees grilled hotdogs and had lunch ready for all of us. Here are some random pics from the day...

The big pit that they are currently working on.


One of the loaders. They run 4 loaders a day and take the large rock up to the crushers where it gets broken down into over 11 different sizes from 1 foot rocks, to sand.


Caroline and Sophie


From the bottom of the pit looking up.

Santa through the years...

I've been meaning to scan our Santa photos for quite a while and just never got to it. I wanted to be able to have them in a safe place as a back up just in case something ever happened. I get the "copyright" issues for "artistic reasons" but they're our kids right?! So anyway, since I scanned them, I thought I'd put them up to see the progression. It's pretty funny that each one of our kids at somepoint is sitting on the rocking horse and crying! I'd almost begin to think that it was the horse, not Santa, that made the kids cry... but sadly no. Oh the torture we put the kids through just for a pic.....

The very first... Caroline was 13 days old. :)


Caroline, just over 1 year


Caroline, 2; Nicholas 6 months


Caroline, 3; Nicholas, 1.5

Caroline, 4; Nicholas, 2.5; Molly, 5 mo.

Caroline, 5; Nicholas, 3.5; Molly 17 months

Caroline, 6; Nicholas, 4.5; Molly, 2.5