Katie turns 5!!!

Katie turned 5 on November 22nd. She was sooo excited to have a glow-in-the-dark party at Pump It Up! Katie is such a sweet girl and a GREAT big sister. She loves her friends and any chance to do anything social. Preschool is her favorite times of the week and when she is not there, she likes to pretend to be at preschool, doing art projects, writing her name and making grocery lists for me.

Lauren, Katie, Brooklyn

There was even wall climbing!

Ava (Katie's first preschool friend from age 2!)

Uncle Mike, who Katie announced she was going to marry!

Lauren, Chantelle, Sharon, Sienna & Amber

Cute Kaylie and Caleb.

Bam Bam -cheeeeeeese

Adyson & Savannah waiting patiently while Kelsi helps me gather all the "goods!"

Even the big boys had fun!

Kevin, Blake, Mike & Chris

The birthday cake for our Monkey-themed birthday party! What an adorable cake!!!! Danielle made this especially for Katie. Even the palm tree chocolate suckers on top were hand made!

And here is Katie's personal cake! Just adorable!

Getting ready to eat

All the gang

The birthday girl on her thrown

Katie on her new pillow pet with all her presents. She was so happy on her special day!!

We just love having her in our family. I feel certain the she was meant to come first and has a great talent in caring for her 2 little sisters. She has a huge imagination and a really big heart. Next comes kindergarten.......if her Mom will let her go!

Stockings for Santa

For the past 4 years, I have been involved with a project which we named "Stockings for Santa." Each year the Salvation Army tries to have 4,000 stockings filled for children in the middle TN area. That may sound like a lot, but the need is actually 8,000!

A few years ago my wonderful friend, Holly Fisher, invited me to be a part of this. It since has grown immensely and this year we had our church Ward, her Methodist Sunday School Class, and a local organization called "Ordinary Hero" all involved. We filled 700 stockings, a personal best for our group as well as the largest single donation for this cause. :)

The afternoon of the event we met at the church with all our pre-counted and sorted items to form stocking filling lines and get everything organized.
When volunteers started arriving we were given instructions.

Then we began filling!

Christie and Mike were two of the several "end of the line" people who collected the filled stockings and staples the Santa topper in place.

Here is Holly! I am so grateful that she invited me to be a part of all this and to see what it has grown to be. In the background on the wall is a picture of Mary Owen Herbert. She passed away at an early age of 17 months and her family (who is a part of Holly's Sunday School Class) wanted a way to remember her by. What an amazing way to do that!

Art tables for the kiddos

Jenna & Mark Bell

Amanda & Andy Rigby

2 of my favorite boys......Tyler & Matt Hissong

Cute little Katie LOVED filling the stockings. Lauren & Brooklyn were convinced that they were filling a stocking for themselves! :)

After all the work was done we had a huge potluck dinner with socializing and a live band. It was a great experience....a lot of work.....and I hope to continue in the years to come and help make some great serviceable memories for my kids, and all the families involved.

IRONMAN 2010

The girls were so excited when we went to the airport to get Papa!

Can you tell they love him?
Papa came all the way from Oregon to help watch the girls for the weekend while I went to watch Chris compete in Ironman Florida, in Panama City.

Ironman weekend, November 6, 2010

6 weeks prior to this Chris decided to do the Ironman for the 3rd time, in the spot of a friend who was unable to compete. If you are like me.....and normal....you are probably thinking "WHY?"

I don't really know the "why" other than Chris has a mental toughness, competitive drive and natural ability like I have never seen. Oh, and the social aspect helps. If friends are doing it, then you might as well hang out with them while doing 100 mile bike rides, right? :) I was being a bit sarcastic, but in reality I could never imagine training for something like this without a group of friends!

This year I decided to watch from our hotel balcony. I had wanted to see the view from up high as all those wet suits got in the freezing cold water.

The gun goes off! The swimmers have to swim a 1.2 mile square twice. In the middle they come out of the water, through the timer to get their split and then back out to do it again for a total of 2.4 miles.

After the initial start, we got coats on and went down to the beach to see it all up close.

Here he is. 1 hour 6 minutes.

Swim down....there he goes!

He made it! 112 miles just under 6 hours.

Somewhere around mile 55 they are given their lunch bags that they made prior to the start of the race. This can be filled with whatever food or energy they need. When Chris got to this point, they could not find his bag and he had to go on without it. LUCKILY our dear friend David Watson had come down to the race with his Harley in tow, and took it out on the bike route. When he found Chris he had just hit the wall and was starving. David sped off to Subway and got him lunch. Chris says it totally saved him!

Here he comes! After I saw him come in on the bike I ran past the transition point to where the marathon run starts. I got his attention and he stopped and chatted for a second. I was by myself as all us wives (spectators) were at different points waiting to see our boys. After he left ALL the people around me were in shock and said "that was the happiest person I have ever seen come off a bike!" HaHa I told them it was because he was a pretty good runner and he was relieved to only have to run 26 miles!

Halfway through the marathon the athletes get another one of their pre-packed "special needs" bags. Chris always puts in an extra pair of socks and changes them at this point.

Halfway through the marathon.

Chris Duncan.....(aka Greg Maples) you are an IRON MAN!

I cannot imagine completing such an amazing feat, but coming in as a close second is being a spectator! Being just as (or in my case MORE) nervous than your competitor, watching hundreds of faces in the hopes that you will pick them out of the crowd for a split second, sprinting through transition points with a camera in hand for the next split second when you have a photo opp, waiting for hours while they ride a bike and then cheering into the darkness as you wait for everyone you know....and don't know.....to finish the race before the 17 hour cut-off time.

And.....here we are! Look at all that energy! Kim and her green "CLAPPER" helped many.....many athletes get across that finish line! Christine and I were just her helpers. In this picture I was privileged to hold the clapper, but only for a moment. :)

And here we are........at midnight. Tired, sore throats, leaving all the cheering we could out there at the finish line for the athletes.

NOTE***a nice lady in the elevator took this picture for us as we tried to capture the energy-less moment. Clearly Kim had a hard time following instructions.

Is this picture just amazing? Kim took this while playing around with the camera! I love this picture! It completely represents Ironman weekend.....lots of great things happening by chance.

I was SO thankful for this weekend. I had more fun and laughed harder than I have in a long time. My sweet Dad was such a trooper to hang with the girls, and I was so at ease knowing that he was there with them and I could just relax. I don't get to have my family around as much as I would like and I really appreciated it!

Another SUPER JOB by Daddy Chris!

Happy Halloween

This Halloween was really fun. The girls loved their Halloween outfits. Except the babies didn't like their pants.....they said they didn't fit. Funny.......I made the pants. I was SO proud of them and thought they were so cute! I bribed them and they wore them. :)
Lauren & Brooklyn were Genies this year and Katie was princess Jasmine. Towards the end of Halloween season the little girls would say "I not a Genie, I'm princess Jasmine too!" Close enough.

Mickey even came to our trunk-or-treat! I wished I had a camera that night. Katie came running up to Chris and I and with the most excited look on her face and with 2 hands in the air screams "Its MICKEYYYYYY!"
Lauren & Brooklyn wanted nothing to do with him and started shaking when we got close to him. Later that night Katie whispered in my ear "Mickey is really Caleb's Grandpa today but don't tell sissy's!

I just had to add this picture. How cute is she? She was soooo happy to pretend to be her favorite princess. At this age, everything is so fun!