Springtime is Here

Can you say SPRING any better than this?

The Grandparents Brunch at FCA. The kids did a program for the grandparents. This is Jonah and Megan performing "Lean on Me". Megan was keeping Jonah in line, it was really cute!
Hannah and Caleb performed "Jesus is My Super Hero" with their class. Here they are in their Super Hero masks.

Caleb got so into this song! He's the only one facing the crowd! He's a definite performer.

Okay, there's lots of picks of Hannah in this blog. It's just so hard not to put all of them of her, because she's just so cute right now. This is her dressed up for the Grandparents Brunch. Don't you love her purse and giant bow!

The other day we went fishing as a family at the State Park. Caleb was really into playing with the worms more than anything. Here's a shot of him kissing the worm and telling it he loves it. Then that was followed by ripping the worm in half. Boys? Go figure?

After ripping the worm in half, he proceeded to do what every brother dreams of....terrorizing his sister. Hannah would run around screaming, but she loved it at the same time!

Jonah was a little too cool for all that "kid stuff". He was busy perfecting his cast. He's growing up so fast...such a good kid.

Intense Easter egg huntin'....now where are those eggs??

Hannah with Papa checkin' out the Disney World book and just lovin'. Priceless.

I think Hannah saw something she liked in this picture. My parents, us, and my brother and sister and their families are all going to Disney World this summer together to celebrate my parents retirement from teaching. My mom should be totally recovered from her knee surgery by then. We're super excited! Caleb woke up every day for a while asking "Is today the day we go to Disney World?". He's so ready to meet Buzz Lightyear.

Just a cute pic.

All the little cousins (Myka was inside). Hannah, Logan, Jonah, Landry, and Caleb

And we got news that my brother and his wife are having a new baby. Can't wait to meet
Baby Lindsey in November!!!

Tootsie's birthday was a couple of weeks ago. We got to go down and go out to eat with her for her birthday. We had a great time with her at Olive Garden and we finished off the night with this cake! The kids specifically requested a "pink" cake for Tootsie, so here it is! Tootsie took a hard fall a couple of weeks before her birthday, so she was not up for pictures that day or else we would've snapped a photo of her too. We love you Tootsie!

Hannah eats everything by herself now - she demands no help!

Playing Outside

Caleb: Hmmmm, a little water - what harm could this do?

A little water turned into a lake of water...

And a giant mudpit - these are not mudclothes by the way. And Hannah had brand new shoes on...Dad was the "innocent" photographer.

Easter Egg Huntin' at church. Caleb is in a "pirate" phase of smiling. If you ask him to smile for the camera, this is what happens. All of his school pictures looked like this. They took like 20 trying to get him to smile regular, but this is what happened each time. I love it, it's a great memory to look back on. What a character. He's my character.

Hannah egg huntin' for the first real time. She picked up on it immediately.

Easter Morning

APRIL FOOL'S Jonah and Caleb were so proud to trick Daddy on April Fool's. If you look closely, he has a black circle around his eye. We put black makeup on the end of a paper towel tube and then Jonah sneakily tricked Dad into looking through the tube. Gotcha! Jonah was so proud. He's his Daddy's son...he loves to have fun!

Daddy's girl

We took a trip to Tyler and got to see Buckshot (Adam's grandfather). Buckshot has Alzheimer's and is living in a private facility. It's really beautiful and he seems to be happy there. It was hard to see him like that, so different than what we used to know. Buckshot was such a big part of Adam's life growing up, he really looked up to him and learned a lot from him. I'm so glad to have such a great picture of the whole family with him.

Here's a picture of family bible time one night. We have a Family Bible Time once a week where we learn and interact with a bible story together as a family. We have so much fun. The kids really look forward to it. This night we studied the story when Elijah calls down fire from heaven to consume the wet wood. Thus the fire....I had another picture, but as a I typed I accidentally deleted it, and I'm way too tired to put it back on there right now!

Adam and I had a night away at a hotel in Rockwall. It was such a restful, romantic weekend - much needed.

Hannah likes to let the Guinea pigs nibble her toes.

Hannah's first hair cut!

Crazy Cousin Day! My sister and her husband went on an overnight retreat, so we all went to stay the night at their house. We had Crazy Cousin Day!!!! As you can see, we did science experiments and even made our own t-shirts.

Here's Hannah and my mad scientist hair! I think I look more like Punky Brewster.

Maaaadddd Scientists!

When we went to Tyler we also met up with Adam's Dad and the family. We rode go-karts. Can you see Caleb's little red head poking up in the car?

Luke and Jonah took the lead!

Pop took a boat ride with Hannah

Luke, Adam and Lee - Adam's brothers have passed him in height!

Nona and Laura Beth were there too, but I didn't get a good picture of them!

Here's my beautiful sister's debut in fame! She tried out and made it on Johnny High's Country Music Review in Arlington. I got to go to the show she was in. This picture was taken after she performed. There were so many talented people singing there - but Michelle was definitely the best! And I'm not just saying that because she is my sister.

Valentine's Fun

My Precious Family - snugglin' on the couch!


Dad and the Boys playin' Alvin & the Chipmunks. Can you see Caleb's shiner? A couple of days before they were having a "disco" . Dad had helped them tie a flashlight to the ceiling fan. They twisted the rope and then would let it spin around and made a disco ball. It was actually a really cool effect - to go along with all of their funky dancin'! Well, Caleb decided to do it by himself and stood up in the chair and got whacked with the flashlight really hard!..A few days later he rolled his whole face up in the car window and his nose and head got stuck in the window. He was yelling Help!!, and by the time Adam got there his nose was bleeding and he was still stuck. Adam had to rescue him - how do boys come up with these things?

My awesome class! Here they are dressed up as bats for their bat play they wrote themselves. We have been learning about bats in Science, so they wrote an informational play and performed it for the other elementary classes. They did such an awesome job! I am blessed with the best class ever!

Phase One of the Snow Fort. The boys and Adam worked hard packing snow into storage tubs to make the first phase of the snow fort.

Here's the final product. Dad stayed up late to finish it. He said it was his lifelong dream to build an igloo (and it probably was). Very authentic! Jonah has plans to make a snow chair and couch. His mind is always spinning, just like his Daddy's!

Caleb takin' a peek inside. It was actually big enough inside for them to sit in. Jonah got all the way inside. Boy was he excited! We couldn't get Hannah to go in..... A little boy's dream fort!

Snow Day!!! I don't know how much snow we got - but I'm thinkin' it was at least 8 inches. What a beautiful way to celebrate Valentine's. Caleb summed it up best -When he woke up on Thursday and it was snowing, he immediately yelled out "I'm so 'cited, Thank you God!!!" Ditto Caleb.

Our new additions! This was an early Valentine's present. These are our 2 new guinea pigs, Jesse and Rosey. Caleb named Jesse after a certain movie he's obsessed with (Buzz Lightyear), and Jonah named Rosey, because she has pink eyes. They are very gentle and actually pretty cuddly. We are all so proud of our new pets. -- I was asked if Hannah was scared of them...Definitely not, in fact they should definitely be scared of her. Curiosity and a one year old, a lethal combination. I'm just waiting to see Hannah strolling one of the guinea pigs around in her stroller!

Favorite Quote of the Week

Here's my favorite quote of the week told to me by Caleb's preschool teacher when they were talking about their noses:

Miss Aliesha: What do we smell with our noses? Caleb what do you smell with your nose?

Caleb:....(pause)...(sniff, sniff)....I just smell my boogers!

Hope that gave you a little smile...it's the simple things in life!

Barker Life

Caleb and their new bunk bed! He feels so big in his new bunk bed. He even has his prized Buzz Lightyear poster above him to fall asleep looking at. He got a Buzz Lightyear and Woody that he has practically carried around for the last month. He found a lot of our toys that resemble the Toy Story toys and so he keeps them all together in a basket to play with every day. It's so precious. Jonah was never obsessed with anything for too long, but Caleb sticks with something when he gets into it!

I have to tell a funny story from the other day. It may be a little gross, but it's really cute to me. We were standing around after school when our school principal asked Caleb if he was feeling better. (He had just finished a bout with a stomach virus)

Here's Caleb's reply: "Yes, I frew (threw) up out my bottom alot."
We all just laughed and agreed that was a very good description!

Just one of the Boys!

Jonah and Caleb had their friend Sebastian over the other day. I walked in and Hannah had grabbed a hat from the hat rack, put it on backwards and was busy playing cars with the boys. Priceless.

She's saying a lot of little words now: Pappoo(which means pacifier), Daddy (which is still what she calls both of us), Mommy(but she chooses not to say it much), They i is (there it is), Hi, Bye, Baby, Puppy, Quack-Quack (which is a duck), Moo, Cookie, and many more that I can't recall right now. She also says long strands of chipmunkish sounding words that have the cutest little voice inflections. She'll just go on and on when I pick her up from preschool in her little chipmunk language - I think she's telling me what all happened that day. Oh -She still smacks her lips together when she's hungry or thirsty too.

Here's another picture from Christmas! This is at Tootsie's house when we opened presents. Uncle Collin and Amy (soon to be Aunt Amy) flew in from California to visit for Christmas. We got to spend a lot of great family time together. I think my best memory was when Caleb and Jonah had to go to bed on the last night before Uncle Collin and Amy were flying out the next morning. The boys had been wrestling, playing and having such great quality time with their Uncle and it was time for them to go to sleep. Uncle Collin told them that he had to go home the next day so he wouldn't be there the next morning. They said their goodnights....After Uncle Collin left the room Caleb said in his sweet little three-year old voice, "I'm sad, I'm gonna lost Uncle Collin".


This is my Uncle Dennis with Hannah and his crazy hat!

We had Christmas with the Britt side of the family a few days after Christmas. We all enjoyed an exciting Karaoke night. It was so much fun! Here's my mom and dad singing "their song" "I Got You Babe". I didn't know they had it in them!!! I guess after being married for 39 years, they have definitely "got" each other.

The cousins getting their groove on to the Beach Boys. My personal favorite was Adam's interpretation of "Ice, Ice Baby!"

Jonah had Tae Kwon Do Testing a couple of weeks ago.

I'm so impressed with how much he can remember! This is a picture of him showing his form to test for yellow belt.

Here he is a week later when they had the belt ceremony. Most of the kids just calmly walked up there. Not Jonah. He was ready waiting on his toes and took off running and excitedly jumping to get his yellow belt. The guy next to me said, "You have a little Jim Carey on your hands." ...You have no idea.

Here he is taking off his previous belt. Mrs. Andrea his instructor helping him.

A little more excited! This is the yellow belt dance!

Five people got awards for different things, and Jonah was one of them. His award was for

100% Effort! That really describes him in TKD, he puts his whole heart into it. It's such a great sport, it teaches such respect and discipline.