Anthony's B day April 7th

Happy Birthday to Anthony....

We had a great swim party at the hotel! The little fish had a great time!
He is getting so BIG!!!!

Even Leelnai enjoyed the party! Tween's are hard to please.

EASTER PORTRAITS!!!

We love our new family portrait. I think the kids had a lot more fun than normal! Shows their personalities off a bit more too... can tell who is more cautious for sure. Here is the whole Carlisle Bunch...
This is just our branch of the clan...

Visitors from MT, AK, AL... YEAH!!!

March 2nd we were descended upon by Carlisle's!!! Jim, Evelyn, Heather, Christine, Kenny and Baby James. We were very blessed to have them visit... We miss them!

We were very lucky and had the whole Carlisle Clan come to visit this Easter. Anthony's birthday happened while they were here so he felt like he celebrated all week long. JW and his handlers came as well. It was nice that the cousins were able to get to know each other a bit.

The game was nice... it wasn't so crowded where we were so we could stretch out. It was a beautiful night as well.
The kids got to stare and Grandma in shock as she yelled her particular brand of motivation at the team.

Here is Grandma and Grandpa with their grandchildren.

We all had a great time... The boys have really taken to baseball.

Texas Blizzard???

The kids were so excited about not having school... the only problem was they missed out on their Valentine's Day parties.

(Please note the snow skateboard on Tyrell's snow dude.)

I thought the song was called Texas Tornado...

not Texas BLIZZARD?

We got about a foot of snow this past couple of days. This a lot of snow for us! Everyone else was so excited... Bill and I help saying, "Didn't we move away from all this?"

Kaiyla is a harsh supervisor... she was not happy with my first attempts at a snowman head. She kept telling me to make it rounder. Luckily I discovered the snow packed well enough i could use a knife. HA HA FINALLY i came up with one that made her happy. Anthony was grounded and he got a reprieve to come and play in the snow. He was pretty glad.

Everybody worked hard on their own snow dude.

Anthony helped me make a TX snowman...

Kaiyla worked hard on hers...

It all started of course with a nice snowball fight!

I particulary enjoyed the argument the twins got in because trees kept dropping a bit of snow on them, and they kept accusing the other twin. It was quite funny. They each were convinced the other one was telling a lie about not throwing snow. Whish I really wish I would have videoed it.

Basketball Time

The boys have been working hard playing ball. It is so funny... one week they will be "on fire" on the court. I will think to myself.. they get it... they are starting to get it. Then the next week they stand and just watch the ball.

I figure it is all part of the learning curve. They both had pretty good games today... they both won. YEAH!

Parental Reflections

One of the lessons today was talking about how God loves us so he lets us make mistakes so we can grow from them. It made me realize that many times I do that with my own children. But that I should allow them to do it more often.

I get so used to helping them avoid catastrophes that I help them avoid lots of things that will bring them pain or suffering. There are some things they need to learn on their own and I need to let them. I need to practice more love and logic parenting and let them create their own lives. They are little... but need to learn about their freedom to choose and that there choices have real consequences in life.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

We had our 4th annual New Years kids party with the Holt's. We added our new friends the Green's last year and were able to have them this year as well. We had good food, fun games and lots of loud horn blowing. After so much confetti last year, the kids did snow angels in it, I opted for no confetti. Well they figured that out very soon and I was guilt ed into pulling out the confetti.

I made them do it outside this year. So they had a confetti fight, only one casualty.

We are grateful to have such great friends in our life. We miss our old ones, look forward to meeting new ones and appreciate the ones that got away. May the new year bring you happieness and enlightenment.