I am normally an animal lover.....

But if I catch Mr. Beaver in my yard he has it coming! I don't think that he is one of the protected animals at our house......and even if he is, he's toast if he eats another tree in my yard. Let's backtrack a little here. Thursday morning I was in the kitchen and looked out the window and saw this:




Now it was 77 degrees the day before, sunny skies, no wind, etc. At first I thought I was losing it. Surely I would have noticed such a storm. But as I got to looking closer I saw shavings around the trunk. No natural disaster that I know of ever leaves shavings around the tree it knocks down.......beavers do though! Beavers are really fond of sweetgum trees. So if you have those trees you have to protect them like this:

Because the beavers will eat all the bark around it until it dies.

After breakfast the girls and I headed out to examine the damage. Here's what we found:

Now he eat two cedar trees. This one he had the decency to take with him:

But this one he left behind.

And here's the proof that the little booger was hard at work:

Nice......

Now this happened Wednesday night but my computer got a nasty virus and wouldn't let me do anything. And to my surprise I was able to read a lot and get it off all by myself! Guess I'm not as dumb as I thought I was......of course it only took me two days, ha! Anyway, I guess the beaver is going to halfway clean up after himself after all. This morning half the tree was gone, only he left behind several branches. Good thing Christmas is right around the corner. I'll have some fresh garland and wreaths out of cedar. They sure will smell good!

Bye Bye Baby

Bed that is! A few days ago I took the plunge and put the girls big girl beds together. It took me a long time to get to this. I've had the beds since August (after a long deliberation on which ones to buy) and it's now November....procrastinate much? I still have the cribs up for now but we're saying goodbye to them soon, real soon. I'm feeling cramped in there with four beds in one room so they are coming down in the next day or so.

The girls love their big girl beds so much and I think they turned out looking great! Here's a look when you walk in the room:

Mary Collins picked the bed closest to the door, which is good b/c she's usually the early bird.

And Margaret Ann's bed is closest to the windows:

All the walls upstairs are painted yellow and I was dreading putting their stuff in there b/c I just knew I'd have to paint their room pink (I hate to paint). But I actually think that the yellow is okay in there so I'm leaving it.

These pictures are kinda yellowy looking. Their bedding is really green and pink.

MC's first night in her big girl bed:

My thumb-sucker -- MA:

They've slept in their big beds since I've put them up but somebody falls out almost every night. I never put any rails on any of my kids' beds but I'm thinking I may go purchase some for them so I can take those cribs down and not worry about them falling out of the bed.

In other news I've been sewing. I made these outfits for the girls last night. I think they turned out pretty cute:

And them modeling them this morning:

Bed-head models, gotta love it!

A Real Post

This is a real post, not playing catch-up! Can you believe it? I can't. Anyway, our new house is on a lake. It's actually some wildlife reserve/refuge/something like that for a few different animals...don't ask me which ones. I have no idea. Anyway, I've been feeding catfish in my backyard. These catfish:

There are windows all on the back of the house and here's what I look at from my kitchen:

See that box on a stick out there? That's a wood duck box. They nest there every year. I have been waiting on them to get here since we moved in! I cannot wait to have babies!

See those specks out there? Those are ducks! There were six ducks in my backyard this morning! I was so excited! They weren't wood ducks. They were some other kind of duck. I don't care what kind they are personally. But anyway, when I saw them I got so excited that I called my mom to tell her. I couldn't even think of what ducks ate at the moment (sad, I know) so my mom told me bread.....mom's are so smart! So I ran to the pantry and retrieved the bread and ran out to feed them. At first they were scared of me so I threw the bread out and walked back to the house. Then they started toward the bread, slowly. Well, before they could get to it the catfish attacked it! I didn't know catfish ate bread but apparently mine do. So I went up to get some catfish food and threw it out there and went back in for some more bread. Well, I came back out and the ducks were munching on the catfish food so I threw them out some more bread and they swam away from me again and the catfish ate it up again before they made it back to it. But they stayed in my yard all day sunning in my back yard and have finally mosied on down two houses down and are sunning on their dock. But I'll be back tomorrow to see if I can get them to come eat again, that is if my catfish don't get to it first, stingy little boogers!

Trick or Treat

We trick or treated Sunday night in our neighborhood. The lots in our hood are all 1 acre minimum sized lots so our friends the Seibs hooked up their trailer and we trailer rode our neighborhood. Y'all it took forever. We didn't even hit the whole neighborhood and we were all pooped out by the time we quit. Here we are before heading out:

Charlie was GI Joe or something like that. He pitched a fit for it in target and I caved. William was a transformer, his pick. Henry changed costumes at the last minute. He was going to be Buzz Lightyear and then decided he wanted to be Woody so I had to run all over town the night before his school party to find the last woody in Tyler, TX. The girls were supposed to be Ole Miss cheerleaders but decided they wanted to be bunnies.

When I bought those bunny suits last year I thought I was being a little frivolous spending 30 bucks a piece on a costume for them but after two years of wear, that only makes them 15, not too bad!

Before hitting the first house:

The girls trick or treating:

MC:

The boys were too quick to snap while they were scoring their loot......they had that trick or treating down pat!

MA showing off her candy:

We dug in after we got home, even though it was a school night.

Woody lost his suit as soon as he hit the door:

The kids did a lot of trick or treating but b/c the lots are so big we didn't do as many houses. Usually we trick or treat until their bags get full and go home (and their bags aren't that big). Then I munch on their bags throughout the week b/c they surely won't miss a few pieces.... But I felt bad this year b/c their bags didn't get filled all the way up so I went by Walmart to pick me up some loot half price after Halloween. And y'all, our Walmart only had the junkie candy half off......the good stuff (i.e. chocolate) was still regular price! I couldn't believe it so I inquired and got some central office blah blah, and regular candy, blah blah. Anyway, I only scored a bag of kit kats and they only lasted a day b/c the kids found my stash. Oh, well, there's always next year!

Pumpkin Patch 2010

Prepare yourself for a long post of pictures........

Last Friday after school my friend Heather and I loaded up our kids and headed to the pumpkin patch for some fun. (Nothing like waiting til the last minute!) But the best part about this pumpkin patch was that it was all free. All you had to pay for was your pumpkin, if you chose to get one. Here we are before we went in.....my kids are so thrilled to be taking pictures.

Clearly my kids are challenged......I mean how hard is it to look at the camera when a crazy person is standing behind the camera counting to three? Maybe I should state that I am the challenged one. I'm the one who has to try and capture a Christmas card photo, yikes!


They had this cute bucket to take pics in for babies, but my 2yr olds fit right in it!
Here's MC:

And MA:

They had a mini hay maze which was just right for the little ones b/c we could let them run free and could still see them. They ran around that thing forever. And even though it was a little kiddie for the bigger kids, they didn't seem to mind one bit.

MC:

MA:

Then they had this train that was pulled around by a tractor. Mr. tractor driver put in his time b/c my kids rode like 5 times! I didn't think I was going to be able to get Margaret Ann off the thing!

Mary Collins was a fraidy cat and wouldn't ride.

Oh, the smile lines......need to buy some youth serum!

Charlie with our friends Blake and Avery:

I finally forced MC to ride on the train with Charlie. I gave her the whole speech about fraidy cats missing out on lots of fun, etc. She liked it after it started moving:

MA:

We attempted to snap some of all of us. These are basically all the same but I couldn't tell on the little camera screen and since I spent the time to download all of them you'll just have to look at them. My mom won't mind:)

After that we went and spent all our quarters on fish food to feed the catfish. I tried to tell the kids they could feed fish for free at home but it's all part of the experience; right?

Then we hit another photo opt:

And finally loaded up on the tractor to head out to the pumpkin patch to pick some pumpkins. There were hardly any left, which made some quick decision making, which was good for all involved b/c we were tired! Here we are waiting for the tractor to move:

Clayton showed up as we were picking out our pumpkins so he missed out on all the photo opts....he's devastated I know (he hated pictures). After that we loaded up and headed out to eat with the Seibs. Party of 12, please. How many kids menus will you need? 7 please....geesh!