Prayers

I completely believe in the power of prayer and I need some prayers right now for some very special people.


1. Please say a little prayer for my sister-in-law who is 25 weeks pregnant with my little nephew. She recently had some contractions but luckily they were able to stop them. More tests are being done to see what is going on.

2. Please say a prayer for my best friends little girl, Regan. She is 6 months old and they found a 11 cm tumor in her little belly a few weeks ago and she had surgery on Tuesday to remove it. She was moved out of ICU today which is great news. Tomorrow results from the biopsy should be back and we are praying for a benign tumor. She is such a strong little girl and I can't imagine what her parents are going through right now.

3. For all those who prayed for Kylie last week, it was very much appreciated! She had her second set of ear tubes put in and she did great. I am so glad it is over because I know it will help her feel so much better.



Thanks in advance for your prayers!!

Elfie

I couldn't wait to start the tradition of Elf on the Shelf with the kids this year. Not only would it help them understand how Santa works, I would be able to use it when trying to get the kids to do things they don't want to do :)  I seem to be a little more creative as the month has gone on so I am sure next year will be awesome!
I will have a follow-up post after Christmas to give more highlights of where Elfie has shown up this year, but here are just a few places we found him:

Mommy & Kylie

Kylie and I had a date night and went to see the Nutcracker. I was skeptical because she is only two, but I had high hopes because she loves to watch people dance and I knew there would be plenty of princesses to watch.

We went to dinner at the Bristol first and then made our way to watch the ballet. Nana, Katie, Austin and Maggie were with us as well as my mom's best friend Tina and her daughter and two granddaughters. We all had a great time and Kylie did great. I can't wait to make this a yearly tradition with Kylie. Next year we will make a bigger deal about it and go out a buy an entire new princess dress for it for her to wear. I can't wait!

An Amazing Gift

I knew this time of year was going to be tough for our family because we are going through all of our firsts without Paula. We do have one amazing gift from God that we get to celebrate right now and that is the pregnancy of Emma and Nathan. I know I am so excited about bringing another little Thacker boy into this family because Blake needs someone to wrestle with! Kylie is pretty excited as well and I captured her on video talking about Aunt Emma being pregnant with a baby. We made this video to send to Emma and Nathan:

Santa!

I was so excited to take the kids to see Santa this year. Aaron and I have really been talking him up to the kids - especially now that Elf on the Shelf has debuted in our house (which is another post). My mom's hospital has a yearly Christmas celebration so that was our first Christmas experience of the year. 

Here are a few pictures of the visit with a short video at the end. Blake was hilarious because he went up to Santa and then saw a fake present and grabbed it and thought it was his!

The Most Wonderful (and busiest) Time of Year!

December is so busy for us! With holiday parties, school ending, Christmases, dinners with Friends, Christmas shopping...I can go on and on....we are so busy but I love it! Especially since I am now officiallly completed with school for the semester. I huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders because it is one less thing I have to worry about and now I can focus on the kids and having a wonderful Christmas. 27 credits down and 9 more to go - only 3 more classes and I will have my MBA!
Here is how our December has gone so far:

The first weekend in December was packed full. Friday night we had Aaron's office party at French Lick Resort & Spa and we had a great time. It was so nice to get away for a night and see the beautiful decorations at the resort. They also have the Polar Express train ride where you can actually go on a train ride and visit Santa! Tickets sell out almost a year in advance so I will be getting our tickets for next year very soon!

Here is the beautiful tree outside of the hotel:

Saturday was my brother Brad's birthday and we went out to eat with the family. My sister and my cousin Lauren and I also did the shopping for my grandparents for our family's Christmas which is this coming weekend. We shopped for 18 stockings and 10 kids presents. It was a lot of fun but a lot of work. We did it pretty quickly and got finished in just over 2 hours. That Sunday was spent writing a paper and doing a presentation for one of my classes. Not fun but the end of the semester was near.

My Miss Priss

This little girl is a diva. She has just recently turned into one. That may be because I have introduced her to pink nail polish, lip gloss and pretty hair bows...but still. She loves it and so do I. She still has a little tom-boy in her because she loves to wrestle with her bubby and kick a soccer ball.

She also LOVES her baby dolls and pretend cooking. She recently started using a pad of paper and a pen to 'take our orders' to eat. It's too cute!

Cookies!

Blake and I LOVE chocolate chip cookies. OK maybe I like them a little more than Blake but he does like them. We made some this week and I took a few pictures. For some reason I didn't get any of us eating them :)

Thankful

There are so many things I am thankful for in my life. My beautiful babies, my amazing husband, my awesome family, our health, just to name a few. This Thanksgiving my heart is so heavy because there is someone so special to our family that should be here celebrating with us. We are so thankful that we had the time with her that we did, but it was just not enough at all. It was our first Thanksgiving without her and it was very hard, as we expected. My mom said that the next year will be the toughest but it will get easier; however it will never get 'easy'.

I found this poem and it fits perfectly.

I cried when you passed away. I cry today still.

Although I loved you dearly, I couldn't make you stay.

A golden heart stopped beating, hard working hands at rest.

God broke my heart to prove to me he only takes the best.

We miss you Grammy and we think about you everyday.

We had two Thanksgivings like we do every year. Thursday we celebrated with the Thacker's and Saturday we celebrated with the Hall's. We have had a great 4 days spending time with family and I really don't want to go back to the grind this week. Kylie and I started our morning today with a visit to the ENT because we learned last week that one of her ear tubes fell out. Not fun. We found out because she had strep, an ear infection and thrush. She did great today and didn't have strep or an ear infection. She did get a hearing test that wasn't up to par so we are going back in 2 months for another hearing test and then we will determine if she needs replacement tubes.

Here is a picture of the cutie at the doctor's office this morning. She was watching Micky Mouse on my phone.

Here are a few random pictures from our weekend.

We ate a lot of this....

The kids had fun in the tub....

Austin lost his first tooth!!! You can already see the new tooth coming in.

And we would like to wish a HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Aunt Memma (Emma). Her birthday was Sunday and the kids sang Happy Birthday to her while I captured a few pictures.  They love to sing Happy Birthday.

We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Long-Winded....

These past few weeks have flow by and it's been a while since I have blogged about our doings. Life has been crazy as usual but at least I am a couple weeks closer to being completed with this semester of school. Feels so good to say that!

So about about last couple of weeks, not much has been going on but things have been nonstop. Two weekends ago I had a baby shower and a wedding on Saturday. It was a busy day but a good one. I got to see so many wonderful friends at the baby shower and for some reason I walked in a started crying because I was so happy to see everyone. I miss them all so much and I hate that we all don't live in the dorms at Georgetown anymore. Wait....maybe I am glad that we don't there on campus but I still wish we all lived close. Baby showers and wedding showers bring us all back together now.

Here is a picture of me and my girlfriends at the baby shower. I love and miss them all!!

This cute little guy is my friend Amanda's little man. He is so adorable! I got to have lunch with him and his mommy this week which made.my.week.

That Sunday one of my wonderful, talented friend Catherine took the kids' pictures. The kids did better than I thought they would but I was still sweating when we got done. It is so hard to get 2 kids under 3 to sit still and smile long enough to get a picture! Here is a sneak peek at some of the pics. I love them all!!

Are they great! Kylie has such a cute smile and I know that it's in there. Maybe next time we can get that pretty smile like this picture -

This past weekend Aaron and I had a little getaway to Lexington while Grandmom and Roger watched the kids. It was so nice to get away, but not too far away. On Friday night we went to the UK basketball game and had a blast. On Saturday we went to a concert at a small local place and it was so much fun!

This week we tried a new local sandwich shop and it was pretty good. The kids liked that it also is an ice cream shoppe so we all had ice cream afterwards. Yummy! I got some cute pictures with my phone of the night.

I do need to brag a minute about myself. For each test I have for school I always end up studying 5-8 hours at least. Well I had a test a week or so ago and I go a 96% on it....in finance....I hate finance so I was pumped! And glad it's over, but I have one more for that class and then I am done with that class. We did get some crappy news today at work. My department was recently moved under a different director which is a good move and great opportunity. However that new area is on the complete opposite side of town....and we are moving in 30-45 days :( So on top of one of the bridges closing I will have an extra 20-25 mins to get to work (if you don't live around here all of the bridges connect Louisville and Southern Indiana where I live). Getting to work is not even the worse of it. Getting home will be the bigger pain. Folks I know that are currently out at the new office say that some days it takes them 2 hours to get home! OMG!!! Not.looking.forward.to.it.

I am really hoping when class is over on Dec. 12th that I keep up my blog better than I have been. Every night I am either in class or doing homework or a paper for class. Sorry for the long post. Sometimes I get long-winded :)

Wordless Wednesday

...almost because you can't see the bottom....Happy Birthday, Uncle Nathan!!

Trick or Treat!

We had a great night of trick or treating. Blake really got into it this year and Kylie did a little. I don't think Kylie felt too good because she was up a few hours in the night and ended up sleeping in our bed. I thought she was still a beautiful princess. Blake was so excited about being a pirate. He has been so into pirates since Jake and the Neverland Pirates first aired on the Disney Channel.

Blake started out slow but by the end of the night, he was running around like Austin's shadow. Kylie did great as well. She was better at saying thank you than trick or treat. Austin and Katie did great too. Austin was the big brother/cousin and all of the kids did what he told them to do. He was also a pirate, Jack Sparrow to be exact, and Katie was Ariel. Don't you just love her wig? :)