My Family

A few months ago Tory asked what I wanted for my birthday and or mother's day this year. I told him what I really wanted were professional family pictures. I have wanted some since Michelle was born, but she has been somewhat fragile and I haven't dared chance her getting sick or not being able to get to an appointment. We have definitely taken our fair share of pictures though, (I think we over 3000 by now) but they aren't professional quality. Well we just happen to have an amazing professional photographer in our family. Tory asked Tammy if she would take pictures for us for my birthday, and to let you know how amazing she really is she said okay, even though she was already 9 months pregnant.



Well here are just a few of the many amazing pictures she took it was the best present ever. Tory even thought ahead and bought a huge frame so that we could blow one up and put it above the fireplace. What a beautiful family I have.

The Marvelous Michelle

Michelle has been tagged by one of her best buds, Tyler. She is supposed to tell you eight things you might not already know about her (since this blog is fairly dedicated to her, we will see if anything surprises someone).

1. She is currently an only child and whenever we ask if she wants a brother or a sister she just answers "Nope." You can only imagine the reaction we get when we ask her if she is excited about the baby to come. She has even offered to give it away.

2. She takes after her daddy when it comes to sleeping-she just doesn't want to.

3. She takes after her mommy when it comes to eating-she just doesn't want to.

4. Her favorite food, however, is salsa, with a close second being chipotle sauce. And maybe you could guess she is a major fan of beans and rice. What do those baby books know anyways?

5. She wants to do everything herself, get dressed, do her hair, wash herself in the bath tub, put together her feeding tubing, fix her ventilator. You know, all normal toddler stuff, right?

6. She is not afraid of dogs, even semi-aggressive barking dogs. She just growls back. But that is another story for another post.

7. She is becoming extremely well educated. Whenever Tory gets out his books to study he has to give her one of his books (not one of hers-she knows the difference) so that she can study too. We have decided that her first word will probably be something like "Neuromuscular-blockade".

8. The last thing is she is not only our Marvelous Michelle, she is our Miraculous Michelle. She is our hero and inspiration.

Well for all those parent's out there who love their children too, here is a tag that gives you an excuse to brag about that amazing little one who has stolen your heart.

When Mommy is Gone

So I didn't think we had any new pictures to show you all, until I got our camera to download one from a month ago and low and behold, all these new pictures were on the camera. I was rather bewildered then Tory started to laugh and told me how he had taken all these pictures while I have been at work. He wanted me to know what fun they were having while I slaved away at work. So here are just a couple of my surprise pictures.



Here they are out on walk one beautiful afternoon. Remember I'm slaving away at work.

Here they are eating dinner, this was probably Tory's idea of a "fruit," orange twizzler is a fruit right. Oh well, at least she enjoyed eating it.
This was Michelle at bed time. Totally passed out, and for the first time ever sucking her thumb. I have been pretty happy that she hasn't been a thumb sucker, but it really is pretty cute.

This last picture, I was actually there for. Tory loves having Michelle's hair done up in different girly ways. What can I say, he loves having a princess and especially a pretty princess. He has been begging me to put her hair in a ponytail for months, but I just didn't think it was long enough. So I finally tried and it went back so easily. Personally, I think Tory wants the ponytail so he can go out and get her a tennis, soccer, or maybe softball outfit. The ponytail is the first step to her sports career. What a funny daddy.

I guess I can now explain, why I am so behind on our posts (other than the fact that I have tried working a little extra to help save for Tory's last semesters, and I am tired beyond all reason). Tory and I have been trying super hard to work on our yard this year. Tory has put together three raised garden beds for us so we can plant some fruits and vegetables. So far we have carrots, beans, peas, cucumbers, tomatoes, raspberry bushes, and strawberries planted. We still one more tomato plant, and some pepper plants, onions, thornless blackberry bushes, and some herbs. We are soooo excited. Canning season here we come. We also see some fruit starting to grow on our pear tree, yea. Unfortunately our peach tree blossomed while it was still too cold for the bees and we are not seeing any fruit, oh well. The last funny thing, is we are so sick of dandelions and weeds in our grass. Last year, Tory had to take care of the yard by himself and we were so busy with Michelle and all her appointments our poor lawn got rather neglected. Yes, we tried Weed and Feed, but it just didn't work (and yes we followed the instructions on the back of the package). So this year you will find us outside manually digging up the weeds out of our lawn. It looks like we either have some weird mole infestation or some golfer practicing on our lawn. We just like to joke that we aerating the yard. But it so nice to drive up to our house and not see tons of yellow dandelion heads. The next step is clover annihilation, we are learning some tricks from our neighbors and have high hopes it will work. (If anyone has some great tips or ideas to keep the weeds away, we are totally ready- that is beside the manually digging up method, we have found it to be effective, but our backs are really starting to hurt.) What can we say, we want a beautiful yard some day. We do have a landscaper in our family, we are hoping to entice her to come next spring, and maybe this fall, to design our front yard so it will be something that we can be totally proud of. We will just have to save all our pennies and hope she thinks our yard is worth saving. Well, that is whats up with our crazy family.

Happy Mother's Day!!!!!!!

So this post is a little late, but I hope the women we are celebrating forgive me. So here is Tory's and my tribute to our Mothers. These wonderful women are two of the greatest people ever. Since they raised each of us they have earned their pass to heaven. The fact that Tory and I are still alive is a definite tribute to how amazing and wonderful these two women are. We are just so grateful that we got you as our mothers. We don't know what we would do without you. As we like to say in our home, if something goes wrong we just call in the calvary and they come to the rescue. That is what these two amazing people are to us, our calvary, our rescue.

I don't have any super amazing photos of them, but I think the photos I have below show how super amazing they really are. Plus it shows what we like to think they enjoy doing the most, loving on a grandbaby.

To both of you, we love you and appreciate all you do for us. Thanks for always being the ear that would listen, the shoulder we could cry on, the one that would we could laugh with, the example for us to emulate, the voice to remind of what is right, and once again-the calvary we can call in when we can't go anymore and need rescue. Once again, thank you for everything and we love you.