Dear Santa

We all went to our Pamida store on Dec. 4 to see Santa Clause. The kids got to tell him what they wanted, Annaleigh wasn't too hip on being near him, but the rest of the kids were glad to give him their wishes. They offered free pics, but I never went back for them since I brought my own camera. It's so nice to live in a small town where we can have Santa come and only have to wait for a few minutes if that. It brought back memories of my childhood when I was in 4th grade, my friend Julie and I walked to our Evanston Pamida and got our pics taken with Santa. I still remember my lovely perm that stuck straight out. I wish I knew where that picture was! :) Aahhh, simple good times. I hope my children can remember their childhood with the fondness that I remember mine.

School's Cool

It's a lot cooler when it starts a little bit later than August 12th though!
The kids started school yesterday, during the dog days of summer. The temperatures this week have been over 105. I think they are all going to have a great year.

6 Months

It's hard for me to believe that my sweet tiny girl has already been with us for 6 months! She fits right in.

We Welcome With Love...

Yes, It has been SUPER LONG since I have posted. A lot has happened in the 9 + months since I have written. I can hopefully do better and get back on track. Anyways, our latest NEWS, is our new sweet baby girl! Yes, we have a new baby!


Annaleigh Taylor Bates was born September 23, 2009 @ 8:06 pm. She weighed 7 lbs 9 oz and was 19". She is a peaceful, gentle baby and we are all so glad she is here.

Family Christmas Pictures

We all drove into Wichita on a horribly blizzardy day to get our Family pictures taken. I am glad we got there and back safely and that they turned out so well. Here are a few:


Cameryn -9

Jesse -7

Luke -5

Caroline -21 mo.

Wow! I know it has been VERY long. I kind of got a bit of an anti-blog attitude for a while and I can't say that it's totally gone yet either, but for now I will try to fill in the many details of our wonderful summer.
Here is a very simple list of what we did this summer: I like to fill in the details and pictures with the right dates, so if you check under this post every once in a while, maybe there will be the fantastic details and pictures sooner or later!
JUNE
School got out on June 9th.
Put house "on the market"
boys went to Chicago, stayed at Charlotte's
JULY
Chicago with Charlotte, Ben & Boys. Zoo, Ribfest, Cameryn's Birthday - 4th of July, Shopping in Naperville, Loveland Cousins
Kansas, living in trailer, looking for housing
Denver, stayed the night at Mike & Eloisa's
Wyoming 3 days at Martins Cove, saw Lots of Bates family
AUGUST
Evanston. Heaven Cousins, Lagoon, Bear Lake, Will's endowment in Logan, William's farewell, Digital Scrapbooking, Will off to the MTC, Shopping in Park City, Lots of fun at Grandma and Grandpa's!
Move to Kansas!!!
Start Home-schooling (yes, not a typo, yes, a ton of work, yes, worth it! - at least this year!)

baby boys

This is an awesome digital scrapbook page that my mom made of a picture of my "Baby Brother" and my "Baby Boy". I love this picture of my baby brother Will, (he's not so tiny at 6'2") holding hands walking home with my baby boy Luke. Will is such a fantastic uncle. He had taken all of the kids to play at the park. Going home, this just melted my heart to see these two walking hand in hand. I am so glad my mom had her camera and went chasing after them to get this shot. It's priceless! (since Will entered the MTC just a few days later :( ).

The Blue Angels

Saturday we went to Cherry Point (Marine Base in Havelock NC) to see the Blue Angels. One word - AMAZING! I am so glad that we took the kids to see this. In case you don't know what the Blue Angels are (because I really didn't before this), they are Navy Jets (Boeing F/A - 18 Hornet) and they fly together in incredible diamond formations. It was so hot, close to record breaking, and being on the tarmac, man it was crazy hot, but it was so worth it. Cameryn had packed her umbrella, wanting to bring it with us and I made her leave it in the car. After we got off the Bus, I felt bad because it would have been nice to have, so Ben bought a big umbrella there. Caroline was loving it too, she would point at the jets as they went by and whisper WOW! Wow! The kids could only handle the heat so long, so we left a little bit early, but I was still trying to snap a cool picture of the jets flying over on our way out. It was an awesome adventure (and is wasn't so loud that it scared the kids - at least ours weren't) and it was free!
WOW!

I took this one myself! (along with lots of others) Pretty good if I do say so!
The kids were glad to get back to the air conditioned car!

Before the air show, we stopped at a campground just outside of New Bern and had a picnic. It felt good to pack up a picnic and have fun free family time. trying to catch a lizard!
me and my girls.

End of year festivities

On Friday morning we went to Jesse's AR rewards program. Jesse has turned into a fantastic little reader. (he received the highest % in his class - makes a mom proud!)

then Ben took Luke to Greenville to get some things for his job while I took Caroline and went with Jesse to his class picnic at Bonners Point. Bonners Point is a beautiful grassy area by the water, I really like this tradition - the kids end of year picnics here. Caroline enjoying the water view.
Jesse with his fabulous teacher. Mrs. Woolard has been such a good, kind, capable teacher for Jesse. I am glad he was able to have such a great first grade year.
Jesse & Caroline in front of The Bonner House - one of Baths historic homes.


That evening we attended Cameryn's Razzle Dazzle Publishing celebration. Her teacher was able to get a grant and all of the kids in her class wrote books. Cameryn & Mrs. Morris.

They had them published, each child got a hardback copy. They worked very long and hard on them and they turned out fantastic. Cameryn's book is called "The Dad On The Moon"
Cameryn in her classroom - she was lucky to have her class in the brand new addition on the school this year. It is very nice. She has loved this year and adored her teacher Mrs. Morris. She says "Mrs. Morris makes learning fun!"
Caroline excited as can be to be sitting at her big sisters desk!
The bulletin board outside her classroom.
Luke getting a drink in the fountain 'just his size'


Ben set up the pool the day before and the kids just couldn't (still can't) get enough of it. They were so happy to take a dip after the party at the school.
Caroline watching the kids swim
Cameryn having a blast
Jesse's loving this!
Luke waiting to get splashed.

Happy Birthday to.... me!

Today was a pretty good day. Ben flew home- (he is working in Wisconsin) his flight from Chicago got here at 10:30, then he got a rental car to come home to us so I didn't have to pull the kids out of school on party day to drive to Raleigh to get him. I had a dentist appointment and treated myself (since it was my birthday:)) to whitening trays, hooray! When I got home Ben had just gotten here, the kids got out of school and then we went out to Chinese. My friend Monica made me a lovely Peach Blackberry Pie yumm, and Ben got me a Lemon Raspberry cake from Sams Club (it was pretty good too).