Doh, almost a whole month has went by without a post of my lovely children! How did I let that happen? Oh, I know…it’s called being busy! Here’s our life…oldest to newest:

One day while changing Carter’s sheets, I decided to take off his bed rail. It was kind of annoying when changing the sheets and I thought to myself, we can’t keep it on here forever! Well lemme tell ya there were tears at naptime! He did not want to go to bed without that rail! He laid in bed and cried for at least 10 minutes and saying, “I’m gonna fall out!” and “Mommy, where did you hide the rail?” He finally fell asleep AND stayed in bed. That night as I was doing my routine checks before I went to bed, this is how he was laying…I knew he if fell out of bed I’d never hear the end of it from him:

We got together the weekend before Mom and Dad’s birthday for pizza, cake, and ice cream. We also gave them their birthday present – a mini laptop! For suspense sake, I wrapped a huge box with 2 smaller boxes inside. Inside each of those boxes was another wrapped box. Mom opened the laptop and Dad opened the wireless router. I’m still not quite sure Dad knows what the wireless router is for…

The kiddos hanging out that evening:

While at Mom and Dad’s that night, we realized none of us had plans for the Super Bowl the next night. So we invited them all over to our house to watch the game. I took a few pictures of the kids:

Last weekend we went to Tennessee to visit some of our friends, Jon and Kathy. Brad was stationed in Germany with them. They just had a little girl, Olivia, who was born on Sam’s first birthday. We had a great time visiting them! Friday Jon took us to the Ripley’s Aquarium in Gatlinburg. The drive there and back deserves it’s own post…Sam was a HUGE crab and pretty much cried nonstop. I’m pretty sure Jon was hoping Olivia wouldn’t follow in Sam’s ‘lack of enjoying car rides.’

Saturday Brad and Jon went skiing in Gatlinburg and Kathy and I took the kids to the mall and then we all just hung out at the house that evening. Carter chilling out on the couch, most likely watching Pippi Long Stocking:

Sam trying to get one of the cats through the cat door. He did end up getting scratched by Abby…surprise surprise, if you’ve ever seen him around animals:

Olivia was only 3 1/2 months old, so she pretty much slept most of the time. I did manage to get a few pictures of her awake before we left on Sunday:

My new website, Embrace Your Tech is now alive and kickin! There’s a couple posts on there now and my first full How To will be on there tomorrow and it will really show what the new site is all about. I also removed RantsAndStuff from the link list over on the left and replaced it with the new site. Check it out and let me know what you think!

I’ve been slacking in the picture taking department lately. In the past few days I’ve snapped a few pictures of the kids though.

I made Sam a homemade football tee kicker out of an empty Diaper Genie refill. Genius if you ask me…especially if someday he ends up in the NFL:

Just like Carter, Sam has become obsessed with books. I think today we’ve read at least 50 books, and Sam doesn’t even have 50 books yet. Yes, we read books over, and over, and over, and over…

I always check on the kids before I go to bed. Brad asked me one night why I did that…I guess it’s the mother in me, who knows! I just want to make sure they’re all nice and cozy before I go to bed. The other Sam was laying with his leg in between the rails – don’t worry, I checked to make sure it wasn’t stuck:

A couple nights later I found him like this…think it’s time to upgrade him to a king size?

After Sam woke up from his morning nap I was changing him out of his pj’s. He’s a bear lately to try and change his diaper or clothes – the kid has got to be moving! Once I got his shirt and socks on, he was literally crawling off the changing table, so I just let him down while I got his jeans out. Of course he ran out to hang with his BFF:

So we’re finally on the mend after having either food poisoning or a stomach virus. Whatever it was, it wasn’t fun! Thankfully Sam never got it. Today I had to get out of the house, so we ran a few errands and I asked Carter what he wanted for lunch. He said he wanted a picnic. I told him it was too cold for a picnic – he said we could have one in the basement with our picnic table! So we stopped by Taco Bell for a cheese taco and cheese quesadilla and did just that – had a picnic in the basement:

You can’t tell, but we were watching Willy Wonka:

Carter just HAD to take a picture, so I told him he could take one. He took this magnificent picture of Sam and I:

That’s all for now…we’re off to Sam’s 15 month check-up tomorrow as long as the weather cooperates!

I’m finally posting the pictures from the Slusser Winter Gala! We had a great time and really enjoyed having it at Jeremy and Annette’s new house in Jacksonville. They were great hosts!

Eating and hanging out:

The talent show!

Family picture time!

Mom & Dad:

Josh, Sheri & Brea:

Emily, Jake, Paul & Dinah:

Cousin Annette, Molly, Hannah, Jeremy & Grace

Cousin Tony, Alex, Trela & Luke

Cousin Jaime & Chris:

Cousin Chris & Megan:

Bernadine, Sandy & Aunt Sue:

Kids playing:

Only 3 because these were the longest 3 and the free Vimeo account only allows 500MB per week. So next week you’ll get the rest of the videos! I think you’ll like these 3 though…