Merry Christmas!

This Christmas we wish you all peace, joy and love. As cliche as it sounds, we really do mean it! We rejoice in the true meaning of this season, Jesus Christ. It has been interesting this year, teaching our children that we are celebrating Jesus and not Santa Claus and presents. They have grasped it in a way that has humbled and amazed me. This time of year is truly magical. Merry Christmas!

Snippets

Just some snippets of the McMillan kids:

Super sweet Gav. Love this kiddo!

Ever wish you knew what your kid was thinking??

She'll do anything to make us laugh!

This is how Myla came home one day from preschool. There was a face painting center where they got to pain their own faces. She got pretty...artistic. It took some scrubbing (and lots of Myla tears), but it finally came off.

Favorite past time - jumping off the couch. Most of the time I'm nagging them to quit jumping on the couch, but they were having a great time and were getting along. I chose to not fight the battle this day. :)

I went in to check on the kids before I went to bed and found Cade like this, covered in chocolate (at first I wasn't sure what it was and was relieved when I smelled chocolate instead of poo). We wouldn't let him have a cookie right before bed and it seems he took matters into his own hands. Cade stole the cookie from the cookie jar and forgot to eat it before he fell asleep. It was in crumbs all over and around him.

Long time no see!

I am so behind on blogging that I don't even know where to start! Do I go back over the past 4 months and try to catch up or do I just start now? Right now I'm just choosing to start now. :)

Family pictures! I love family pictures. We haven't had them taken since Gavin was 6 months old. Seeing that he is 2 now, we thought it was time. Here's some picture overload:

When Life Slows Down

Lately, all my time has gone to three things: my sweet family, my new job (creating curriculum and lesson plans), and trying to keep my house from becoming a hazard to our health (I'm not sure I'm succeeding there.). I have no time to blog, no time to watch my favorite shows, no time to work out and barely any time to sleep. Life is good. We like being busy. We feel very blessed right now with the way things are working out in our life. I'll get the hang of our new schedule soon and then I'll get back to my favorite pasttimes. So here are some things I want to blog about when life slows down:

End of summer fun stuff
Cade starting Kindergarten
Myla starting MELP and preschool
Me teaching Language Arts/English at a small charter school
Gavin's cuteness
Kevin's radness or raddness (I type it both ways and I can't decide which it is)
Our super fun trip to Utah
Jay and Anna's wedding
A few fun recipes to share
Birthdays
Mommy Moments

Kroger Giftcard Winner

Julie is the winner! She said:

No kids in school yet. However, I'm looking forward to joy school with my dd.

Congrats Julie! My friends are starting a joy school too. Hope yours goes great!

Sum-Sum-Summertime

Summer is coming to a close. We have mixed feelings about it around here. The kids are SO excited to start school, but it's been fun to play and sleep in and not stick to much of a schedule. So, what have we been up to this summer? Our summer began by hanging out with the UT McMillan cousins! It was such a treat. Ryan and Aubrey and their two sweet boys came and stayed a week. It was a week jam packed with swimming, Chuck E Cheese, bbq's, splash park, and more swimming.

Aiden and Cade

Gavin and Ollie

I found my point and shoot camera and I was a little excited to see what was on it. It's been awhile. I love this picture. Could he get any cuter??

Um, who is that? Not my husband. :)

We went to Jump and Shout at Riverview several times. The kids love that place. As do I. It's air conditioned, the kids get out and exercise and it's very family friendly. What's not to love?? They have special family days where admission is discounted. Perfect!

Slip n Slides

What do you do when you don't have a pool? Bust out the slip n slide!

Seeing Lifehouse and Daughtry with my mom and sister.

(A highlight of my summer!)

Swimming with friends!

Playing in the monsoon rains.

Celebrating National Cheesecake Day!
This was a very yummy and easy cheesecake. I got the recipe here.
The only thing I did different was double the crust and make the crust from graham crackers instead of chocolate cookie crumbs. It's a must try.

Hope you all enjoyed your summer!

Don't forget to enter the giveaway. It ends tonight!

Back to School $25 Kroger Giftcard Giveaway

Can you believe it's that time already?? Around here, we have less than two weeks before school is in session. My oldest is starting kindergarten and I've got a huge case of the school jitters...and I'm not even the one starting school! Anyway, we've been doing some back to school shopping here and there. I've found that history definitely repeats itself. Cade, faced with a zillion cool backpacks to choose from, chooses a Super Mario Brothers backpack. He's all about Mario these days. He even told me he will name one of his ten (yes, TEN) kids Mario. I have to giggle.

I digress...

Coming up on August 8th through August 21st, Kroger stores (Fry's around here) will be having an "Add Up the Savings" Event where you can stock up on all your favorite General Mills and Kimberly Clark items. (If you're anything like me, you need to know that those items include brands like: Cheerios, Huggies, Yoplait Yogurt, Pillsbury cookies and biscuits, Kleenex, Betty Crocker brownies, Cottonelle and Lucky Charms.) When you buy 8 of the participating items you'll receive $4 off. All you couponers, get your coupons ready!

On top of that, be sure to take advantage of the special Bonus Box Tops offer. All you have to do, if you haven't already, is sign up at www.rewardyourschool.com. Once you register, you automatically get 5 bonus box tops. You will also receive custom offers for box tops for buying participating items. These offers are:

* Buy any 4 Box Tops items and get 10 Bonus Box Tops

* Buy any 8 Box Tops items and get 25 Bonus Box Tops

The offers you select are loaded directly onto your Kroger Shopping Card to be redeemed once you purchase the item. They go directly to the school of your choice, so you don't have to clip and save anything. I like that feature because I can't pretty much assure you they would never get to the school.

Okay, still with me? Now is the fun part: the $25 Kroger gift card giveaway! To enter, all you have to do is leave a comment. Any old comment. Need ideas? How are you feeling about school starting? Happy? Sad? A little of both? What do you do to prepare? How do you deal with the Mommy school jitters? What do you do with all your "free time" once the kids are in school? (Funny, huh? I've gotten that question a few times.)

You have until Thursday, August 5th, 11:59pm to enter. Good luck! I look forward to checking out all the back to school blogging that will take place. :)

** General Mills, Kimberly Clark and Kroger Foods provided the giveaway gift card through MyBlogSpark.

Camping 2010

I haven't been a very good blogger lately. This summer has been busy! Kevin and I have been working a lot more this summer, so it's been crazy. We decided we wanted to get out of town for a weekend so last weekend we went on a campout with my brother and sister and their families. It was so fun! We haven't been camping since Cade was a baby, and it had been too long. We threw this little camping trip together last minute. We went up to Canyon Creek where we used to camp as kids. It was perfect. There weren't a lot of other campers and the weather was great. Here are some pics of the fun:

The McMillans

The Haws's

The Webbs

All the Webb cousins

Playing at the creek

Cade

Kevin and Gavin

Gavin on the swing

Cade on the swing

Myla on the swing

I have so many other pictures, but it takes so long to upload these days. Maybe I'll get around to uploading more soon.

I learned a few things this camping trip:

* Pack double the clothes for the kids you think you'll need.

* Don't make your daughter go to the bathroom behind a tree instead of the outhouse in the middle of the night when she has never done it before...even if there is a random bear roaming the woods. She'll inevitably get her pjs totally wet. That is where packing double the clothes for the kids comes in.

* I really don't like sleeping in a sleeping bag. Claustrophic feeling. I do really like sleeping on top of one though.

* A little rain is heavenly. A lot of rain, combined with windshield wipers that bust in the middle of the storm while driving down the winding highway, can be almost disastrous.

* Just when you think you can't get any dirtier, you can.

* Just when you think you can't have more fun, you can.

* Just when you think you can't love your family any more, you can.

* Just when you think you can't be attacked by any more gigantic beatles while trying to play games at night, you so can!

* Just when you think you can't possibly laugh any more, you can.

The Princess Turns 4

This is my baby...who isn't such a baby anymore! Gavin turned the big 2 recently and we had a great time celebrating him.

A few tidbits about Gavin:
* He is so independent. We have to keep a really good eye on this kid because he just wants to run. He doesn't really care if mom or dad is around. He's outta here.
* Gavin doesn't really say much yet. But he definitely knows how to communicate. He says a few words on his own: down, no, stop, mama, cheese. You know, all the important words. But mostly we hear: na na na na na. Gavinese.
* Gavin loves his brother and sister. Anything they are doing he wants to be doing. It's sweet. And they are so good about playing with him.
* We've been doing Mommy and me swimming lessons and he likes it. He doesn't want to do anything we ask him to do, but he likes being in the water and roaming around.
* We moved all the kids into one room because Gavin was so sad about being left out. Every night, at bedtime, we'd put Gavin in his room downstairs and he'd make the saddest little cry as the rest of us walked upstairs to our rooms. I'm so glad we moved him up with everyone else. Now his room is the playroom and all the toys are in there.

On Gavin's birthday we went up to a cabin in Pine with about 4 other couple friends of ours. They brought their youngest kids, who happen to be Gavin's friends. All girls and so cute. We brought balloons and stuff and celebrated a little up there. The next day, when we got home, we had a family dinner with cake and ice cream.

Trying to wrangle two year olds into sitting still for a picture is fun. :)

Here we are after all the kiddos are put to bed. We played games and laughed and had a great time. It was nice to get away for a bit. Thanks Picketts!

Cade's Celebration

Today we went to Cade's preschool celebration. The kids sang songs and we watched a DVD of the year. It was kind of emotional. Cade has had so much fun and has learned so much this year. He is ready for kindergarten. He told me the other day, "Mom, I'm going to kindergarten and that makes me happy. But I'll be gone from you all day and that makes me sad." That is exactly how I feel too. But we still have the summer and we will enjoy it to the fullest! Here are some pics of the day:

Cade and Friends singing songs

Gavin and Myla watching the show

Cade and Shayna
Cade says he's going to marry Shayna when they are grown ups. So cute!

Cade and Cole

Cade with his teachers, Teacher Cece and Teacher Hope
I couldn't ask for better teachers. They were amazing. They sincerely loved these kids.