Weekend Fun

We have had a busy weekend. On top of everything else we had going on this weekend, one of the trees in our backyard was dead and starting to lean towards our backyard neighbor's house, so Joe and Rodney had to pull it down. Joe noticed it Saturday and it was a very windy weekend here, so all night Saturday and Sunday morning I prayed it wouldn't fall on our "grumpy" backyard neighbor's house. He is not friendly and I already need to have a word with him the next time I see him about something he said to my girls this weekend. He told them Saturday that they needed to clean up their clubhouse area in OUR backyard because he was having company and he would be embarrassed by their mess. Mind you, they were playing on the hill in OUR backyard. They have gone down the backside of our property which backs up to his house and on the hillside they pretend it is their clubhouse. They have a cute ladybug broom they use to sweep the "floor." They have an empty baby wipes container that they use for their trashcan and they have some plastic baby dolls, outdoor balls, etc. that they keep in their "clubhouse" among the trees and again I repeat, in OUR BACKYARD. Talk about rustling a mother hen's feathers, when they told me what he said, I nearly walked over to his house and gave him a piece of my mind, but knowing that wouldn't be setting a good example for the girls, I told them we would speak to him the next time we saw him in the yard and they could go right on playing in OUR yard.

Well, back to the dead tree . . . It is now laying across my perennial garden and across our driveway. Joe and Rodney pulled it down but will have to cut it up this week before we leave for PA on Saturday since they didn't have access to a chain saw today. In the process I think I lost one Spruce tree I had planted on the edge of our property and maybe a few perennials but anything is better than our dead tree crashing into our neighbor's garage. Thank you Lord that you protected us from what could have been a lot worse damage.

We have started decorating the house for Christmas since we will be gone 7 days for Thanksgiving. I wanted to have the house ready when we came home from Thanksgiving, so we put most of the house decorations up this weekend. We will wait and put up the tree the weekend we come back from Pennsylvania. I hope we can get our porch decorated before we leave, but that might wait until we get home too. We went to MeMaw's house Saturday night for dinner and while we were there we took some family pictures for Christmas. I'm not sure if they will be the ones I use for our cards but at least we have some cute ones for frames. It was very windy outside and it seemed that every good picture I got either had someone's eyes closed, the wind had their hair standing straight up (not Joe's mind you) or it was blurry. Here are some of the keepers plus some of the bloopers. I read on my friend Jennifer's blog, how she uploaded her pictures to photobucket first and it made them easier to add to blogger, so I tried it. It was so much nicer and the pictures are larger. I will have to try to resize them before I upload them the next time, because these are huge!

Hannah posing on MeMaw's bridge


Our family photo with my hair blown over and parted on the wrong side and Emma looks

worried. This one probably won't go on our cards but it was the best of all the family shots.
I was touching up the coloring and highlighting in this picture. Notice the nice tan I gave us all! The girls lips look too red though and our red shirts bleed together!

Emma on the bridge

Sweet Emma Cate. I know I always have more pictures of her and it is no indication of my love for my girls, it's just she is the ham and loves the camera most of the time and Hannah doesn't like being in front of the camera.

I have to promise to take some "crazy" pictures of them if they will pose for the serious ones. These are the poses they would choose if I let them!

Karate Chopping at the camera!

This one cracks me up. It is blurry but besides that, they were supposed to be loving on their brother and gazing tenderly at my belly. Hannah looks like she is trying to stare a hole into my belly to actually see him. We'll have to show them some good sibling pictures on the internet to show them how to pose!

Lastly Joe walked into our living room this morning before church to find this note Hannah had posted on her dry erase board. She had spilt some water and instead of cleaning it up, she decided to warn everyone of the impending danger in the kitchen! Too cute! Check out the stick person either warning us to slow down by saying "Whoa!" or he might be slipping on the water and yelling out "Whoa!" as he falls. She's a mess!