Fall Fest 2008

We were a family of Bugs this year for halloween and we won first place in the family costume contest at West End Church of Christ's fall fest.

Pumpkin Patch

This was Madalyn's second field trip and Garrison and I were both able to go with her. We had a lot of fun. We went to the Gentry's Farm pumpkin patch. I definitely think we will go again sometime as a family. It was fun to get to meet some ofMadalyn's friends from school.

ELEPHANTS

For those of you who do not know Madalyn has quite a collection of elephants. At the time we took this photo she had about 15 I know she has received several since then. She has mostly stuffed animal elephants but a couple of figurines and some elephant book. This whole collection came about as a fluke. A friend of my mom's gave her a pink elephant silky blanket which then led to Garrison making up a song that he would sing to her as her put her to sleep which he called The Elephant Song- he still sings it to both girls now at bedtime when they ask for him to.

Homework

This was Madalyn's very first homework assignment of Kindergarten- she had to practice writing her name. It took her forever...... the funniest thing about this whole thing is this story- Back when I was signing Madalyn up for school and filling all the paper work out I asked her what she wanted her call by name to be her response was how about chocolate milkshake. I told her that was not really what it meant she needed to pick Maddie or Madalyn "So, not vanilla milkshake either" no not that either so she decided on Madalyn. Now fast forward to this homework assignment which is probably 2 months or so after this first conversation and Madalyn asks "what is shorter Madalyn or Vanilla Milkshake?" Madalyn is shorter "oh fine!" and back to work she went. In her defense I know at that moment even I was wishing we had given our children shorter names Madalyn Strickland is a lot to learn how to write- Mackenzie is even longer hopefully she does not want to be a milkshake too

Our First house

In July of 2008 we closed on our first house. We are in Cane Ridge, TN- which is basically the area between Antioch and Brentwood. The girls each have their own room and we have a great bonus room for them to keep all their toys and play. It is so much fun having a house that is ours

lost pictures

As I said previously I was going to go all the way back and hit some highlights over the almost 2 years I have left out, but then I started looking at the photos on my lap top and they do not go that far back. The pictures from then are not gone forever just on our other computer which had a hard drive failure so we are in the process of recovering them from our off site backup. So knowing myself if I wait around for the pictures I will never get back around to updating the blog so I am just going to work with what I have maybe later on down the road I will throw in some if the stuff I am skipping but who knows

Wow it has been a long time.......

I can not believe how long it has been since I have put anything up about the girls. I am thinking about starting to keep up with the blog again- now I just need to decide- do i pick up where I left off or do I just start from the present...I am going to ponder that a bit maybe there is a solution that is in between the 2 extremes. I think I will probably go back all the way but just post my favorite moments then as I get closer to the present start trying to post something new every couple of weeks as things happen- the girls are always doing something that makes a good story. This is a good way for me to remember it all because it sort of forces me to right something down before I forget. So get ready for an onslaught of blog posts over the next couple of weeks as i get caught up.