Oh, I hope I make the list!

Tonight in Lillie's bedtime prayers she said: "and please help Samuel and I to not make the naughty list." It was too precious!

Thanksgiving 2009

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We had a great day but missed all the family that we didn't get to see. My (Audrey's) parents and sister Allison came over and we enjoyed a magnificent dinner prepared by yours truly, Pat a.k.a. the master of the kitchen, aaaaand (cough, cough) Rudy's BBQ. Seriously, they make the best smoked turkey. This was Grant's first T-Giving and while he slept for most of the day he was kind enough to make an appearance at dinner where he enjoyed his feast of green beens, sweet potatoes, and Gerber cereal puffs. Yum! We had a really fantastic day and I know that we have so much to be thankful for. I am above all grateful for the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. I know without it I would not have the joy and fulfillment that I do. I love myhusband and children and I am so grateful for our good health, and strong relationships. Also, it's totally awesome that Tim has a job, and I can stay home with the rascals. In times like these I know that is an especially fantastic blessing. And I can't forget this great big huge awesome family that I am a part of! I love all you guys so much and I just feel so blessed that we can share our lives together! I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and we can't wait to see you all at Christmas!
Below are pics, and again, I can't move them around (blogger, or possibly my computer is/are dumb) so while I am probably the only anal person who cares that they are not in order, I just have to make a note to let you all know that it bugs me. Enjoy!

Thank you for the gorgeous flowers Harry and Dianne. They made a beautiful centerpiece!

The master slicing the succulent, smoked, breast of Turkey. And yes, we had the gigando bottle of sauce to go with it.

This is sadly how Lillie and Samuel spent a lot of the morning. Just can't get enough of the ipod touch! (For historical purposes I would like to note that these do not belong to them.)

Grandad and Lil'Star

Mom Burwell and Audrey preparing the feast. I would also like to take this moment to give a shout out to Tim and Dad Burwell who cleaned up the entire messy kitchen without any prompting from the ladies!

I love food!

And lastly, this was a pre-thanksgiving bake project with Aunt Allison and the kiddos. We had a lot of fun making them and even more fun eating them!

Happy Birthday To Me!

Alright, this is late, but better than never right? So I had a great B-Day on the 7th, (thanks for all the wonderful phone calls!) I loved, loved the package from the Barnes Fam: seriously Christian, that was the most awesome card, Pokemon RocKs!!! And the pictures that Abby and Emma drew for me were the best! You guys are the sweetest. So our day was busy but Tim did all the work and I just got to relax and go along for the ride. Thanks, babe, that was seriously the best. We started with a T-Ball game for Samuel at 8:30am,woo hoo!, then primary program practice after that. Tim made lunch (and breakfast) and cleaned the kitchen while I took a nap.
Tim took me out for dinner while my mom watched the kiddos and we did cake and presents when we got back. It was a fanrastic and realxing day! Thank you everyone for all the thoughtful gifts!

Okay, while I still hold strong to my life long love of aging, it's starting to feel a tad weird to be so close to the dirty thirty.

While my mom was watching the kids they wanted to do make-up. This is the "look" that she gave Samuel:

He answered the door and oh my goodness, we were rolling on the floor it was so freakin' hilarious! Every time I looked at him that night I cracked up. It used half a tube of eyeliner but it was money well spent!

Run in with the Law

Well I thought that I would share my esxperience yesterday morning while taking Lillie to school. It was a beautiful Wednesday morning, the air was crisp, the sun was shining and the mood was calm. Lillie and I were in the car driving to drop her off at school. As I turned onto the road that her school was located off of her and I were talking and not really paying attention to anything around us.

All the sudden I see some lights flash behind me and I start to think "is he pulling me over or does he just want around me". So I pull over to let him by but he follows right behind, "Oh Crap". He walks up to the car, and at this point I had no idea how fast I was going, and asks me if I knew why he pulled me over. I calmly (and truthfully) reply "I have no idea". To which he says "well I clocked you going 24 in a 20 MPH SCHOOL ZONE".

Then the alarms are going off in my head of: this is going to coast a fortune, Audrey is never going to let me live this down, etc.

He then adds "you just need to make sure that as you get closer to a school that you slow down".

"Yes sir I agree" I reply

"Are you taking your daughter to school" he asks

"Yes sir, I am dropping her off on my way to work" I state with hope in my voice that he will let me go

"License and registration please" he demands

I am really worried now. He isn't just going to give me a warning, I am going to have to pay the piper for this one.

He goes back to his car and starts to do whatever cops do while you have to sit waiting for them while acting as the latest circus show for all of the drivers passing by. I was amazed and the look of disgust on some of the 6 year old faces as they walked by. They seemed to be telling me through their eyes "you fast driving jerk, how could you speed in my school zone"

So we are sitting there for about 5 miniutes when all of the sudden Lillie asks "What is taking so long, are we going to be late for school?" This by the way is her #1 concern.

"Well Lillie when you are pulled over, police officers take a long time to fill out their paper work and come back to your car" I reply

"This is taking to long" she complains

"I know but it will be over soon" I say trying to be a good dad

At that moment that police officer is walking up and Lillie starts with one more comment "Dad police officers take a really long time and make people late, right daddy" to which I quickly respond in a whisper "lets stop talking about it before the police officer gets to the window please".

Finally, the officer is at my window and tells me "it my job to slow people down in school zones" and "when I am back on this street I do not want to see you speeding again. I am not going to give you violation today just a written warning".

All I could hear for the next 10 seconds was the sound of the heavenly choirs singing "hallejuha". I promptly signed my warning and continued about my day.

All I can say is that I am glad that Lillie was in the car or otherwise I think that I would have been dead meat and paying a huge fine, so thank you Lillie.

Happy Halloween!

Here are Tim and the kiddos at our yearly pumpkin carving family home evening. Tim does most of the work but the kids do love to help dig out the guts! You can see Grant crawling around back there...
I just loved the way this picture turned out. And by the way, Grant loved his little Grant sized pumpkin. He had a death grip on it when we picked it out and the pumpkin patch and he was thrilled to play with it again. Silly Baby!So here are some Haloween pics. For some reason blogger is being dumb this morning and I cannot change the order of these pics. So they are in some kind of random order. Anyway, Haloween was a trial as usual in our home. So far every TX Doolittle Haloween has been full of chaos. I thought we were good this year because finally, no one was sick! And although L and S were tired, they were pulling through. So an hour before we go Samuel decides to jump off the top of L's loft bed. I'm just outside of the door and I hear a crack and a scream. I go in and of I just know his little leg has got to be broken. So I'm trying to comfort him without moving him. By the way I was all alone. Tim was in Dallas for the Cowboys game the next day. Awesome. I ask him if he can stand up and at first he can't but then he does alright. He stands, takes a couple of limping steps and then crumbles and cries...so sad! So I carry him to the couch and call Tim. Calling upon his vast injury experience and calling a radiologist friend of ours we decide to wait on it for a little bit and Samuel falls asleep. My parents come over for trick-or-treating and we slowly wake up Samuel. Then he fell off the couch. Poor guy. I tell him that I'm going to take him to the Dr. so they can look at his bone and he freaks out! that he is not going to go trick-or-treating! I mean, this kid is unreasonable beyond belief when he is throwing a fit. He gets off the couch and starts walking in a circle saying look, (sniffle) I can walk! Halfway around the room and starts limping and cries, I can't walk! It was so, so sad! So, any good parent would have taken him to the ER but for some reason I didn't. My mom shoved some Motrin down him (he absolutely refused to take it!) and we strapped him in the double stroller to go out. Seriously, it was the only way to calm him down. Ah, how I love Haloween! So we went out for about an hour and came back when Samuel started complaining. When we came back he could walk though so I decided to hold off on the ER and see what the morning brought. In the morning he was mostly fine, just a little complaing and in the end the radiologist, who goes to church with us said that he probably just had a deep tissue bruise. So, he's fine now, but what drama. I've just come to expect it. And seriously, where is my worst mother of the year award? I'm still waiting for that to show up in the mail.

Thanks again Grandma and Grandpa for the cute bags. The kids loved making them. And thanks also for the Haloween cards and treats. The kids are really looking forward to spending their McDonalds bucks! We hope that you all had a fantastic and uneventful Haloween!

Family Pictures Oct 2009

We took some family pictures about 2 weeks ago and we wanted to share them with everyone.

Enjoy

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Father and Sons

I thought that I would take a moment to let everyone know about the first Father and Sons adventure that Samuel and I had this past weekend. It was great. We had a great time exploring and throwing rocks in the near by stream. I was fortunate to get off work a little bit early on Friday so I packed up our things headed up to a place called 'Paradise Canyon' about 30 min from our house. However; on my way up (almost to the campsite) I realized that I had forgotten Samuel's blankets. I was torn, do I drive home and get the blankets or do I let him have my sleeping bag. Luckily I didn't have to do either. I called Audrey and she called a friend, that was about to leave his house, brought a couple of extra blankets for us to use. So crisis avoided.

We finally were able to set up our tent and get situated. Then we headed down to the river where Samuel discovered that there we a lot of rocks. So all he wanted to do was throw rocks into the river. He was in heaven.

It was fun having our friends camping next to us so that I could talk to the other fathers and Sam could play with his friends. We built a campfire and like any good father would do I allowed Sam to eat about 20 marshmellows and 5 starbursts (I made him have a limit on those). Surprisingly he did not have a hard time falling asleep. In fact he was asleep by 9:30pm.

The next morning was full of more rock throwing. I did manage to get him interested in taking a hike with me so we did some exploring of the woods. Then he wanted to go swimming so that is what he did. As you can probably tell, when I am the only watching him he gets to do pretty much whatever he wants to do. This probably is not the best thing but at least he is happy.

All in all it was a good trip and I am excited to continue the tradition of going on these trips every year. I am happy to report that there were no injuries sustained by a member of our party and that everyone went home healthy and happy.

Here are a couple of pictures that I was able to take while there.

Here we are on Saturday morning about ready to go down to the river to throw some more rocks.

Here is Sam playing in the river building a dam with some of the other kids who were there. Yes I did let him play in his pants.

Surprise, it's Grandpa!

Grandpa came for a quick surprise visit last week and it was so fun to see him. The kids were thrilled to have him here again, if onyl for a few hours, and I know that it was nice for him to see Grant again. Thankyou for the Halloween bags G-Ma and G-Pa! The kids put them together yesterday and had a great time. We'll post pics at Halloween time so you can see them.

P.S. - Grant is learning to crawl! He'll do about 3 little crawls now before he stops. He's learning so fast I have a feeling by the end of this week he's going to be all over the place. It's amazing how they quietly learn and put things together and then boom! all of a sudden they just take off. It makes it feel like it's happened all at once. He is so happy to be able ot move around on his own now. You can see in his face that he feels like one of the big kids now and he is thrilled!

Day Out With Thomas

So we found out that Day Out with Thomas was coming and we had to take Samuel. We wanted to take him anyway but before we had a chance to talk about it Samuel saw what we were looking at on the computer and freaked out in a happy way. There was just no way that we could deny him. Lucky for us by the time we bought the tickets we only had to wait 4 days because that was all he talked about (and threw fits about) non-stop!
We were a little worried because there was a huge storm the day before and morning of and rain threatned all day, but fortunately for us it held off. The air was a freezing (for us!) 58 degrees but it was refreshing. We picked Lillie up early from school (she thought that was way cool) and headed out. Let me tell you, when we arrived and Samuel saw Thomas pulling in from a distance, well, I just don't know if I've ever seen him so thrilled. You could just see how magical it was for him and in that moment I decided that even of the rest of the day was terrible that one moment was so awesome that it made it worth it. Fortunately the rest of the day was awesome. While we waited for our train ride we went to the gift shop and bought t-shirts for L and S and they played with the train tables. It was a little hard at first for S to get used to playing with the trains with so many other children but he figured it out.

I thought this next picture was classic though. Man S was playing as nice as he could be and this kid came up and tried to steal James right out of his hand. S fought him for it though and then the kid threw a fit so his mom made him leave. Good. I like it when parents take responsibility for ther children. Waiting in line for the train. Everything was so smoothly run. There was so much to do and you never felt like you were just waiting around. Good scheduling Sir Topham Hatt!
Oh my goodnes, Samuel could barely contain himslf that he was actually getting on Thomas the Train!
Lillie was actually really excited about the whole day as well. I'm glad that she was able to come. But now she keeps saying that we went to Thomas for Samuel so now we need to go to Disney World for her. Yes Lillie, those are totally comparable!Okay, this is the new face that Grant makes for the camera and I love it! And he was such a good boy all day!I love Thomas the Train!Both S and L really loved these tattoos and have kept them on for a while. Their pretty upset that we're making them wash them off before church.

S was just as excited to meet Sir Topham Hatt as he was to meet Thomas. Thanks Sir Topham Hatt for bringing your engines to the "Big City" so we could meet them. We had a great day!

Show "N Tell

Lillie had her first show and tell of Kindergarten. This is what she brought...
and this is what she said...
"This is mine. It's special, so no one can touch it but me." The End.
Well, she showed it to them. And she definitely told them stuff. Maybe our next Family Home Evening should be about sharing....

And in other funny Lillie news, tonight we had a good one. Lillie has an issue with raw carrots. They have to be perfect in every way to be considered worthy for ingestion. So tonight this was our dinner conversation:
Mom - "Lillie, which is worse? A carrot that has a crack in it, or a carrot that has a dark spot?"
Lillie - "Both are bad."
Dad - "But if you had to eat one, would you eat the one with the spot, or the crack?"
Lillie - "I wouldn't eat either one... I'm good at this game!"

Science Experiment

While Lillie is away at Kindergarten I'm trying to introduce some new things to Samuel. Right now we are really enjoying some science experiments. Today was the playdoh volcano. As you can see below, Samuel was pretty excited about it.

And once more for good measure....ah, there's the green food coloring we put in!

Look at me!

I'm cute!

...and relaxed!

...and busy! ...and chunky!

Samuel's 1st Day of Pre-School

Samuel started his first day of pre-school last week and he is so excited and proud! It's great for him to have something to do now. He's at the same place that Lillie was last year and it's great. He's in a class with two of his good friends from church so that's good too. He loves his class and his teacher and BTW.... he's back on track with potty training! I don't remember if I mentioned it, but he regressed when Lillie went to Kinder. Over the weekend he decided he was ready again and now we're not going back. Good job Samuel.
Look out world, here I come!Checking out a roly-poly before we leave.

Thank You Grandma!

It's always fun to get packages in the mail and a few weeks ago the kids got a great surprise... a surprise package from Grandma! Thank you for the beautiful clothes Grandma, you know how to make us look good!

We love having such a talented Grandma!