Eight Years!

Man, I'm BLESSED!

Catch Up

I'm so behind on posting. We have been trying to get the house ready for Christmas, been out of town, the list goes on and on. Here are pics from Thanksgiving! For some reason, they loaded in a strange order, so they are kind of random.......like this one for instance! This is a pic of Emma on our ride home from Mississippi. She was zonked out! She had so much with our Mississippi family!

Emma played with my Aunt Tammie's puppy the entire time. She just loved him, she named him Peanut one day and then French Fries the next day. Both were pretty cute if you ask me :)

PawPaw (my mom's dad) built a bonfire to warm us up!

Like I said, random order....this is Sandra and Emma eating their Thanksgiving meal.....actually cake! Yum Yum!

Emma wanted Sandra to drink out of a straw too, so this is what she picked out for her!

On the way down to Mississippi, just goofing around :)

My brother, Brad, helping with the fire.

The guys (PawPaw, Spence, Brad, and Uncle Danny).

The fire!

It was a short visit, but it was so nice to see all of our family in Mississippi. We love you all!

Her Earrings

So, the story goes like this: Emma got her ears pierced back during the summer, the advice given us was to twist and clean them each day for six weeks then come back for a complimentary check up. So, we did and I treated Emma to her first set of big girl earrings. She picked these out, they're little heart dangly ones. Well, we get home and get ready to change the originals out for these. She would have NONE OF IT!!!!! In fact, we kept these earrings for about 2 months after that. Finally, I convinced her that putting these new earrings in would not feel as though her ears were getting pierced all over again. So, voila! Here is Emma wearing her first pair of 'big girl" earrings. Now that she knows it isn't painful, she has been changing them on an almost daily basis which adds a little time to getting dressed these days. But, comes with the territory I guess! Having 3 girls getting dressed each morning is sure to have it's ups and downs :)

But, isn't she a cutie?

Katka Vlnova

This past summer, Mike went to Slovakia for 2 weeks with our church to help teach English camps. This is his 2nd time to go. He's made some really close friends. One of them is Katka...... well, she came into town last Friday and visited with us til Tuesday. We had so much fun with her. She's really a special woman and the Lord is really using her to reach the youth in the Czech Republic. And, I should say speaks better English than I do! Emma had alot of fun asking her to say all sorts of words in Czech (which is where she is from). Her favorite was belly button which is pronounced "poopy check". She just giggled and giggled!

Katka has become my dear friend and I already miss the talks we had. Maybe someday soon, we can travel across the ocean to see her!

Katka had never seen cotton before and since Huntsville has tons of cotton fields we pulled over to let her "illegally" pick a cotton blossom.

She was soooo great with the girls! They just adored her!

We were being silly in Anthropologie and got into trouble! They asked us to put our camera away, it was against store policy. We felt like two little kids!

While she was here, we saw the new Bond movie. Pretty good!

We were glad Barika joined us! She's always alot of fun! Thanks for all the laughs Barika!

Mike, Micah, Me, Katka, and Barika

I want to stay with you.......

but since me and dad are pals and both have "n" shoes (new balance) then I need to go with him. ~Emma

She told me this today when she was leaving with Mike to run errands. :)

Galaxy of Lights

Last Saturday we took the kids to see the Christmas Lights at Huntsville's Botanical Gardens. It is called their "Galaxy of Lights". Emma enjoys seeing them every year, it has become a Cranston family tradition!

Emma got Rudolph painted on her face :)

It was REALLY REALLY COLD!!!!!

Emma and Chloe all bundled up! And loving the Christmas lights!

Christmas just gets more fun every year! It's always been my favorite time of the year.

It started to rain while we were looking at the lights. We were about half way through but we made the best of it. The girls shared an umbrella, they were sooo sweet. It didn't phase them a bit!

The two princesses standing in front of their castle!

Our friend Katka was visiting us from the Czech Republic. We had so much fun with her while she was here. We love you Katka!

Papa, Mimi, Johnathon, Michael, Me, Amanda, Dean,Chloe,Emma, Deuce, and Lili........all freezing our bums off!

Lili was really bundled up :) She looked like that kid in the Christmas story!

Glory Days!

This past weekend, Mike and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary.......of dating that is! Our first date was Auburn's homecoming, fall of "98......I remember when he knocked on the door of my apartment and said he needed to ask me a question. Well, we started talking and before I knew it, it was 11:00 (like 3 hours later) and he still hadn't asked me anything! (And I knew what it was going to be). So, finally I reminded him of the reason he came over in the first place.........and here we are ten years later!
We had so much fun last weekend, we hung out after the game with old friends and visited some of the guys in Mike's college SS class that are going to Auburn, hung out with them til 2:00 in the morning! This ole' girl ain't what she used to be! We still had SO much fun though. Went to church where we used to be members while we lived in Auburn and caught up with the pastor there that lead us through pre-marital counseling. It was great reliving our glory days. What sweet memories we've made!