I'm coming back!

I'm back! I've totally fallen off the blogging wagon the past month and a half and I have several things that I need to post so please humor me as I catch up. Stay tuned...

I've been tagged!

Well, I've been in blog world long enough now that someone has tagged me. Thanks Tiffany! So I'm supposed to go the 4th picture in the 4th folder in my pictures folder and tell a little about it. So here it is...

This is Reed at 18 months old in April of 2006 I guess after having breakfast or something. The funny thing about this picture is Lauren just turned 18 months yesterday so it was kind of fun to compare her to Reed at that age. Reed definitely had more hair on his head. Lauren's hair is just starting to grow. And, while Lauren and Reed don't really look alike, she gives us this exact same expression sometimes, so I see a lot of her in this picture.

Also, this picture was taken at our old house about 4 months before we moved so it made me think about our sweet little first home and how great it was for us while we lived there. I try not to drive by it anymore because it looks a little depressing. The people who own it now live in Miami and use it as a vacation home so it just looks vacant. It was definitely full of life while we were there! Good times!

So now I tag... Heather H., Heather K., Kyla, & Pamela

Can't wait to see your pics!

Catching up after the holidays - Part II

Good morning! So glad to see some sunshine today! I swear it practically rained the entire month of December and now January too. While I usually enjoy the winter, I'm starting to long for warmer weather.

Anyway, back to our holidays... After Christmas and our visit with my parents and sister we basically just vegged and played our new Wii. It definitely is as much fun as everyone says it is. I'm afraid we're not very good at it yet. Although, I do have to say the first time Jay and I played bowling and golf...I beat him! It will probably be the one and only time I will beat him at anything so I'm relishing my initial victories.

We did absolutely nothing on New Year's Eve and it was glorious. In fact, I slept most of the day. My body needed to crash for a little while so I was very thankful that Jay humored me and kept the kids entertained so I could be a total bum.

We went to see the Grinch Ice exhibit at Opryland on Saturday. The kids really enjoyed it but they quickly got cold so it was a short visit. We bundled little Lauren up and Jay and I took turns holding her in our coats. She was wide-eyed and taking in everything. She probably could have stayed in there longer than the rest of us. She was pretty toasty except for her little nose!

So that's about it. It was a fantastic Christmas and a restful New Year for the McKnights. We spent time with friends and family, ate some delicious food (thanks for that fried turkey, babe), rested, but most of all we remembered what this season is all about....our Saviour, Friend, & Lord, Jesus Christ and the wonderful gift that He is to us all. Thank You, God for another wonderful Christmas!!!

Catching up after the holidays

Well, I'm back! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and a very happy new year! We certainly did, even with a little minor hiccup to our Christmas plans. Please excuse the long post... I've just got a lot to catch up on!

As I predicted, I did spend the days leading up to Christmas frantically working on our bonus room and wrapping gifts. And, we were able to get more done to the room upstairs than I believed possible. I still have a few things I need to sew and we are well on our way to having a really fun room.

*

Part of our "bonus room" gift to each other was a Wii. Now, we were thinking way ahead and ordered our Wii on Amazon back in the middle of November so we wouldn't have to be scouring the stores for one. Jay, of course, wanted to open it right away but I continually convinced him that we needed to at least wait until the week of Christmas so it would really feel like a Christmas present. We both had these grand ideas that my family and us and the kids would play it all weekend long and how much fun that would be. My sister even got Jay and I matching Wii PJs because we had talked it up so much. So Jay was able to hold out and waited until Christmas Eve. At 10 pm on Christmas Eve, Jay hauls out the box and starts to hook everything up. Can you believe it......IT DIDN'T WORK!!! What??? Never in a million years did we think it wouldn't work! What a major bummer. Jay even tried to call Nintendo but they were closed and wouldn't be open until the 26th. So we had a Wii-less Christmas.

I'm proud of my hubby though, because as soon as he saw the kids come down our stairs on Christmas morning to see what Santa had left for them, he cheered right up. Sure, there was the occasional sad comment so we would feel a little sorry for him, but we all had a wonderful Christmas in spite of the little bump in our plans. Jay was able to get in touch with Nintendo on Friday and they had a replacement to us by Monday at lunch. So kudos to Nintendo for being cool about replacing it with no problems. After the whole computer crashing incident then the defective Wii, 2008 was not our year for electronics.

My family came in on Christmas Eve and we had a wonderful time with them. Thanks for coming to Tennessee Pop, Gigi, and Kay Kay. We loved having you here.

We were able to fit some gingerbread house and train making in on Christmas Eve. Here are the proud kids with their creations.

Sweet kids in their Christmas PJs.

Santa brought Audrey a Kitt Kittredge doll (Because she looks like Audrey) with a closet of clothes and a beauty parlor chair.

Reed got a cool fire house with fire truck, ambulance, police cars, and rescue helicopters. You can see Lauren in the background there trying to climb up her new slide!

Mama got Daddy and Reed some Hulk fists to fight with. Here is Reed trying them out with Pop. Reed likes them a lot but Lauren loves them. She'll put them both on and come up to you, beat them on your lap while she growls at you. Super hilarious!

Pop, Gigi, Kay Kay and Audrey playing a dominoes game Audrey got for Christmas. She's pretty good at it!

OK, so this has gotten kind of long and I'm getting sleepy so I'm going to continue this tomorrow.

Happy "late" New Year Everyone!

She's skipping right to sentences

OK, OK, OK sis...I get the picture. If I harass you about reading the blog, that means I actually need to post something for you to read. So this one's for you KK.

Things have been bananas around here lately. Christmas is definitely one of my favorite times of year, but man, it can get crazy. And in typical fashion I am probably trying to accomplish too much in too little time. On top of gift shopping, parties, decorating, and all of the other typical busyness, Jay and I have decided our gift to each other this year is to get our bonus room finished. That means a big TV for Jay and fun new decor for me. Of course, that also means Jay orders a TV and hooks it up and is finished while I agonize over what I'm going to do with colors and fabrics and then when I finally do, I'm going to paint and sew it all myself so that means many hours of work. And OF COURSE I really want to get it done before Christmas because my family will be here and I want everyone to enjoy it over the holiday. Realistically, it will probably get halfway done and I just have to be OK with that. I can only do what I can do, right?

Anyway, this post is really about my sweet little baby Lauren. Lauren has decided to completely skip saying the simple first words like "mama" and "dada" and has gone straight to complete sentences.

Friday night Jay was making some hot chocolate for Audrey and Reed. Lauren walked up to him and said something that sounded a little like "Ah on suh" while holding her hands in the air toward the mugs. After she said the same sounds several times in a row, Jay said "I think she's saying 'I want some'". I told him he was crazy. I mean, she's said ma-ma and da-da before but only when we've prompted her. There was no way she was now asking for hot chocolate with words on her own!

Later I was giving the kids marshmallows for their drinks and Lauren caught sight of the bag from across the room, came straight up to me and said "Ah on suh! Ah on suh!" Jay was not crazy. She was DEFINITELY saying "I want some!" Since Friday she has also picked up the phrase "Eh meh" (Yes mam) which I am very proud of! So she won't say any of our names but she knows how to request the food that she wants and be polite in the process. What more could a mother want?

Here's a pic of little LL helping me decorate the tree. Precious!

And here's the finished product. We love big trees at the McKnight household!

Merry Christmas everyone!

The Mom Song

A friend of mine just sent me this link and I thought it was hysterical! Man, I feel like that everyday....Enjoy!

(go to the bottom of my blog and pause the music on the playlist so you won't be listening to both things at once)

Thanksgiving in DeRidder

I realize this is a little out of order, but I wanted to share our Thanksgiving pictures with everyone. We traveled Tuesday night/ Wednesday morning to spend Thanksgiving with Granny and Papa in good old DeRidder, Louisiana. (We spent the night at a sketchy hotel in Vicksburg, MS) We also got to spend some time with Uncle Ryan, Aunt Katie, Maddie and Anna. Unfortunately, we did not get to see Uncle Adam because they were working him to death at Target. (You know, it being the busiest shopping day of the year and all.) Anyway, we had a wonderful time visiting with everyone and preparing our Thanksgiving meal. The food was great (as always...except for that oyster dressing...sorry Granny...I just can't do oysters!) but the fellowship was even better. The kids always love spending time with Granny and Papa and don't mind spending 12 hours in the car to do it! (By the way, neither do we!)

Granny and Papa wanted to take a picture of us all together for their Christmas card. So, my wanna be photographer husband brought our camera, a tripod and his trusty remote and we gave it a shot. Here are the best of the pictures out of about a hundred shots. And you know what, the kids did great...if only we could get Papa to keep looking at the camera!!

Papa and Granny with Maddie, Anna, Reed, Lauren & Audrey

Uncle Ryan, Anna, Aunt Katie & Maddie

The whole clan (Except for Adam.. we missed you!)

James Reed McKnight... his Jr. and the Third (or "fird" as Reed says...)

Christmas Tree Decorating

Earlier this week, it was time to pick out and decorate our beautiful Christmas tree. We have an artificial one but Jay insists that we get a real tree if we are going to be home for Christmas day. So, after a long day of travel on Saturday, we got out in the bitter cold on Sunday and bought our 13 foot tree from the Boy Scouts. One of my favorite things during the Christmas season is going to pick out a tree as a family. I also really love getting all of the ornaments out every year. They truly hold many memories for me. For example, I know you are all tired of hearing about Disney but this year we added some Mickey Mouse ears to our tree to commemorate our trip. In the years to come, whenever I see that ornament it will always remind me of our wonderful vacation. Every other ornament on the tree holds some special meaning just like that one and it is so fun to take a trip down memory lane, especially at this time of year.

Anyway, this is the first year that I let the kids take their own ornaments and hang them on the tree themselves. What craziness!!! Audrey, in all of her enthusiasm could hardly get any of hers on the tree because the anticipation of the next box opening was just too much for her to handle. Reed basically just wanted to play with his Thomas & Percy ornaments that my mom gave him a few years ago. And Lauren, well let's just say, was in the middle of it all!

I took a picture of what the kids did. This is a close up shot so you could see everything, but just imagine, the rest of the tree is empty! It looked really funny for a while until Mama came in and shuffled things around...just a bit... and then added all the breakable ornaments up high. I'll post a picture of our tree when we are totally done. I just have a few finishing touches to make.

Audrey brought home a little writing assignment the other day. She said that they were supposed to answer the question "What would you do if you were a reindeer?" This is what she wrote. (She had no help to spell the words...they want them to try to sound things out for themselves.) The translation is below...

Audrey said "I would fly all day and night today to Santa."

Just thought it was cute and wanted to share.

Daddy's trying it out

One of my most memorable Disney events was the breakfast safari I went on with Reed. This picture was the best...

I tried to discuss the difference in a rhino and a RINO with him, but he wasn't interested in Dad's political ramblings at the time.

Joanna poured herself into the planning of the trip and I'm thrilled that we got our pictures back (partially because she might turn down the "let's go back" heat). We had a wonderful time thanks to her efforts.

Let's see if this works...

- Jay

Thanksgiving Feast

Last week, Audrey had her Thanksgiving feast at school. Her class all made Indian shirts and headbands to wear. They were precious!

In the spirit of the season, I just want to say how thankful I am for Oakview and the wonderful principal and teachers there. Audrey is absolutely loving school and learning so much. I love hearing her tell me all about the things she has done through the day and having it inspire me to find other ways to challenge her at home. We are reading a lot and she is getting better at it every day. She is also very interested in writing, especially what she calls "joke books". She will take stacks of paper and write these little sayings all over them that basically make no sense, but she calls them her jokes and thinks they are hilarious. When she reads them to you, you MUST laugh! Then after reading them she always wants me to staple them all together into a book. So maybe I have a writer in the makings or a comedienne or maybe a publisher....who knows? Maybe all three...

Cracking me up

Reed was eating his favorite lunch the other day ("circle sandwiches" i.e. Uncrustables) when, after taking his first bite, he looked at me and said "Look, Mama, my sandwich is happy....and now it's sad." I just love his little observations!

YEAH! Disney Pictures Recovered!

I am SOOOOOOO excited. After much back and forth with the Geek Squad, they were finally able to recover the data from my fried hard drive. Now I have a computer that is toast, but I will leave that to Jay to figure out with Dell. (It's still under warranty.) I am super happy that we got ALL of our pictures from Disney World back, however, I have now lost my reason to go back ASAP! (I am absolutely in love with that place...) Anyway, as promised, here is the picture of Jay with Minnie. I mean, really, has anyone seen him smile that big, ever?

Family Pictures

Back in October, Audrey's school had a big fundraiser (the Hoot, Scoot & Boogie...their mascot is Ollie the Owl) and I bid on a photography and Christmas card package at the silent auction. We had our pictures taken on Sunday at the Ellington Agricultural Center in Nashville. Katy Southern, who used to be the art teacher at Oak View, was our photographer. When we got there, I was so excited about the location because the fall leaves were absolutely breath taking. It was very cold, but Audrey and Reed did an excellent job of staying happy. And as long as we had snacks, Lauren was good to go!

If you're in the market for some pictures, check out her website at http://www.katysouthern.com/. Katy was great to work with. As many of you know from your own experience, trying to get kids that are 5, 4, and 16 months all in the same place at one time is a challenge on it's own. Katy managed to do that and capture some beautiful moments! Thanks Katy for braving the cold...you were awesome!!!I can't wait to see the rest!

Halloween

We had a great time last Friday night. We went over to the H's house so Audrey and Reed could trick or treat with their buddies. Dinner was lots of treats like ham and cheese mummies and green goblin punch. What fun!

As you see, we had Princess Aurora (Sleeping Beauty), Buzz Lightyear and Tinkerbell.

The trick or treaters are ready to go get some candy!

Tinkerbell gives us a mischievous grin.

To Infinity and Beyond!!! (LOVE this pic!)

Disney World really is the happiest place on earth

Well, as most of you know, our family went to Disney World a few weeks ago and we had a MARVELOUS time. I made a countdown calendar for the kids (translation: for me!) and as we peeled off each number we got more and more excited. It was a great trip and it was even more magical experiencing it with Audrey and Reed. No, we didn't take Lauren. She got the special privilege of being spoiled by Granny for the entire week!

Here's the bad news.... We took a crazy amount of pictures... I mean probably like 2000 pictures. We have a memory card that holds about 500 and I have a brand new laptop that I just got in May so we figured we would just take as many as we like, then we would transfer them over to my computer and clean off the memory card and start over. When we got home, I got all of the pictures organized and was getting ready to sort through them and make a back up copy of the ones we would actually use. I am not kidding, on the night that I was sitting down to finish this all up, my computer totally crashed. We have taken it to the Geek Squad and they couldn't do anything so now it is being sent off to this data recovery place in KY. Hopefully they will be able to find our pictures and it won't cost us a ton of money....but we don't know yet.

Luckily we did still have some pictures from before the trip and the last 2 days we were there on our memory cards. Here are some of my favorites...

Peeling off the last number before we go on our trip!

Here we are with Lightning and Mater.

While we there, our good friends the Kellows were there too! We actually kind of just ran into each other and got a picture of all of us.

This was at Chef Mickeys which was an absolute blast! I think it was the most fun thing we did as a family! We were celebrating Reed's 4th birthday and the characters were SO great and funny. One of the pictures we lost was of Minnie giving Jay a big kiss. I promise if we get it back I will post it because I think it's the biggest smile I've ever seen on Jay's face in a picture.

Audrey and I went to the Perfectly Princess Tea Party which was also a lot of fun. Audrey enjoyed it very much and got to meet Aurora. We met all of the Disney princesses on our trip with the exception of Jasmine. Audrey also keeps reminding me that we didn't meet Tinkerbell, but at the time she wasn't doing character greetings. Her movie came out 2 weeks after we were there and now Tinkerbell is there. I guess we'll have to go back soon so we can meet her!

This picture was taken LATE on the last night we were at the Magic Kingdom. I realized that we had not gotten a family pic in front of the castle because every time we were there, there was some kind of parade or show or something. So Jay set up the camera on a trash can, set the timer, and we tried. Though you can't see us very well, I think the castle looks beautiful!

The kids and I in line at this really awesome new ride at Hollywood Studios called Toy Story Mania. We rode it 3 times and would have done it more but you can only do so many fast passes.

It's a 3-D arcade game and you play for points much like the Buzz lightyear ride at MK. So much fun!

We had to bring our little Lauren some Minnie ears. Even though we were having fun, I missed her like crazy. We know she was in great hands. Thanks again Granny, she had a great time with you!

Funny Things Kids Say

Hey everyone! Well, I'm starting off my blog with a few funny things the kids said to me today on the way home from school.

First, Audrey got in the van today and was telling me that her class learned about pilgrims today. I asked her to tell me what a pilgrim was and she responded with... "They are people that came across the ocean on a BIG (her emphasis, not mine) boat called the Cauliflower!" I love it when she gets words mixed up. It always brings a smile to my face!

Reed's story goes something like this... A few weeks ago Jay got really angry at Reed and really gave him a stern talking to. This upset Reed very much and he was quick to let Jay know. They were making up when Reed looked at Jay and said "Daddy, you broke my heart." Well, of course that melted us both to the floor. I have no idea where he heard that saying but it worked that night in getting him out of trouble!


Anyway, if that wasn't cute enough, today we were talking on the ride home from school and he said, out of the blue, "Momma, remember when Daddy broke my heart?" I said yes and asked if it was still broken. He said "Yes, Momma, but you can help me fix it. When we get home we can get my tools out and you can fix my heart for me." Again, smiles on end for me. Now, I don't really think that he was still upset with his Daddy...he was tired from a long day and was feeling a little mopey, so I guess he was looking for a little sympathy. Again, it totally worked!

Anyway, I wanted to get these little stories down before I forgot. I will be posting some pictures from our recent trip to Disney World and from Halloween very soon. Stay tuned!

Welcome to the blog world McKnight family!