Breakfast with Santa 2012

Yesterday the girls and I went to our Church and had breakfast with Santa.  It was a very fun morning for us.  Madalyn asked Santa for what she had been telling me she was going to ask for a Kindle.  However Kenzie threw us for a loop when she asked Santa for a Typewriter....Santa did tell her that might be hard to find!

Cheerleading

Madalyn decided to do Cheer leading again this past Fall.  The 3rd grade girls cheer for the 3rd grade boys flag football team.  This year the  girls were asked to do a cheer for everyone at the opening ceremony for the whole WNSL Fall sports league.  They did great I got a quick video clip of the Madalyn doing the cheer with her team.

back to school 2011

This post is a little late, but that is ok.  I decided to get back into blogging about my sweet girls.  I figure if I have time to bake and blog about that I can find time to keep everyone up to date with all the fun and silly things my two little Monkeys are up to.  They sure are busy.  I can't believe almost half the school year has flown by since this picture was taken.

Kenzie is in Kindergarten this year and Madalyn is in 3rd grade

Christmas Card Time

It is the time of year to figure out my Christmas card....maybe even a bit late to still not have a plan about them, but better late than never I say.  Every year I think I will work on my cards over thanksgiving and get them out by the first of December that has yet to happen.  This year part of my hold up has been I am stumped for a card design.  Usually by now the idea has finally presented itself.   As those of you who receive a Christmas card from me know I usually send some cute and crafty homemade card, but this year I keep being drawn to the Christmas cards on the Shutterfly site and I am thinking that is what I am supposed to send this year.  Recently came across several friends who blogged about Shutterfly and got free cards so I figured why not these are the cards I like and if I can get them for free win-win.  I have received several cards from friends who used Shutterfly this year and was pleased with how they looked and I have used Shutterfly for other projects quite a bit lately like scrap booking- I like to do their 8x8 photo books and upload my digital scrapbook pages.  So I have things narrowed down pretty much now I just need to get the photos for the cards together which means getting my girls in their Christmas dresses for a photo shoot in front of our Christmas tree.  I do have a family photo picked out we may also use.

below is 2 designs I really liked and click below to get the info at Shutterfly about them.

Christmas Card 

Flat Christmas Card

I am also thinking about the idea of getting some Address Labels from Shutterfly to use because they are pretty cute and will save a good little bit of time!

If you have not narrowed down what you want to do for your cards you should definitely check out Shutterfly and don't worry I did not give away the surprise none of these are the design I am going to use....

SNOW

We had a big snow/ice storm (for Nashville) this past winter. If I remember correctly Madalyn missed 4 days of school because of it- she was not complaining! One of the days we were home bound we walked up the street to our good friends the Douglas' house and did some sledding with the girls 2 best friends Gavin and Brady.

Girls vacation 2010- a bit early

Several years ago we started a tradition of going to Birmingham and spending time with Aunt Susan- this became known as the girls vacation. Most years it happens to work out that we go on MLK weekend, but this year we ended up going right after Christmas while Madalyn was still out of school. We always do fun things like scrapbook, craft, watch movies in Aunt Susan's big bed and eat yummy calzone just to name a few. One of the things I like best is having a mini photo shoot with my girls. It seems like a lot of the time at home I am the one holding the camera and taking the pictures.

Christmas gifts for sisters

I will preface this blog post with the fact that I obviously have been ignoring my blog and it has been a long time since I have posted anything about my two beautiful girls. They are getting so big and I am sad that time is going by so fast so I am going to try to make a conscious effort to post more often if not for others but even just for me so I can remember all the stories that go with the photos years from now.

This picture was taken Christmas morning and has a bit of a funny story to go along with it. We decided just a few days before Christmas to give each of the girls $20 to spend on a gift for each other. Garrison and Madalyn walked all over the toy section at target and Madalyn chose this fairy barbie to get for Mackenzie mean while Kenzie and I were also checking out all the toys in target and Kenzie decided the exact same fairy was the perfect gift for Madalyn. They both could not believe it when they opened the gifts and they had chosen the same thing for each other.

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.

Zoo

Alicia and I took the kids to the zoo on Madalyn's birthday. Our friend Brooke and her little boy Brian came for part of the day. We got there early and packed a lunch. All of the kids really enjoyed going around and seeing all of the animals. Madalyn was especially excited about the new little fella at the zoo. They have some porcupines now. Mackenzie gets very excited about the monkeys and Elephants. We try to get a picture of the kids on this bench every time we are all at the zoo together this is the first time we got a half way decent picture. It will be neat if we keep this up and have a picture of them on this bench as they grow up.

She is 5!

Madalyn turned 5 this month which is still hard for me to believe! We had princess party with all sort of royal characters. We had several Cinderellas, Sir William the Dragon Slayer, Spiderman, Belle, and more. Madalyn was Snow White and she looked beautiful. We had a lot of fun at the party.

Hilton Head 2008

We went to Hilton Head Island for our beach trip this year and we absolutely loved it. We went with our friends the Douglas' so of course Madalyn had a blast because her "boyfriend" Gavin was there. She kept looking at pictures of her and Gavin together after the trip and commenting "how romantic..." which she then would follow by swooning onto the couch. She is a mess when it comes to boys already. Most of probably already know that she has asked Gavin to marry her and he said yes- she will periodically check with him to make sure he has not changed his mind. I am glad that her and Gavin are such good friends it will be interesting if they do get married someday, but that is a long way away.
Back to the Hilton Head trip we really liked it there- it is very different from when we go to Inlet Beach in FL. The sand is much better for making sandcastles which Garrison and Madalyn took advantage of and made a large castle complete with little guards and sand Crabs surrounding it. They even put a flag in top when they were finished. We had mixed weather- the day we went to try and fly our kites was extremely windy in fact too windy even for Kite flying. There were sunny warm days and then one really cold day, but overall we had a alot of fun.

She's just being Miley

The girls love to listen to fast upbeat music when we are driving around in the car especially Miley Cyrus. I took this picture while Madalyn was showing us some of her moves and singing along to one of her favorite songs. I think the sunglasses are especially fitting. I think Madalyn thinks she is 5 going on 15- We better watch out!

Easter Egg Hunt @ Church

We went to an Easter egg hunt at our church which due to the rain we had to hang out inside, but we still had a lot of fun. Both the girls had a lot of fun and found lots of eggs. Mackenzie found about 50 I think (although she did not have too much competition) and she got very excited when she realized that there was chocolate inside the eggs. Madalyn also found a lot and enjoyed hanging out with the silly Easter bunny.

Easter Egg Dying

We spent the Saturday morning before easter dying our easter eggs which we then added sparkles to which the girls really enjoyed. We made and egg for each color of the rainbow and then several pink ones. Princesses do love pink!