Charlotte Beth Gardner

Well, now it's Miss Charlotte's turn!  Charlotte has had a fantastic summer, she's such a happy baby.  She weighs 22 pounds now, but she's on the short side.  She's running, climbing, saying a ton of words, and is an all-around character.  She sleeps through the night most nights but has a few here and there where she wakes up and wants to snuggle with Mom.  We sure do love our crazy kid!

 

 

 

Char had a birthday in May and we threw her a rainbow party!  Mom and I had fun decorating and making all the goodies. We had mostly family and a few friends and had a great time.

 

Char had a power nap before the festivities

 

 

Char loved the museum and loved watching the big kids run around.

 

She also got to do more things at the fair this year.  She rode the boats, cars, little ferris wheel, and the merry-go-round, which she didn't like haha.

 

This was at Zoey's birthday party, Tanna gave her the spatula to lick :) She was a happy girl!

 

Enjoying a sucker!



This is where we find her often, she loves the doggy cage!

 

 

Well, that gets me mostly caught up with Charlotte, we should be back on schedule.  We are enjoying a relaxing weekend, getting caught up on laundry and things before the week starts.  Hope everyone else is too!

Zoey Grace Gardner

Today's post is going to be all about Miss Zoey!  I've got to catch up on what we've missed over the summer so I figure I better post about the girls seperately or it will be a picture overload.  Here's what we missed:

Zoey had a birthday in April, she turned 6!  I can't believe how fast she is growing up. 

Here's a pic from last year on her birthday, she's changed so much!

 

We had a slumber party with the cousins on the day of her birthday and then a couple weeks after that we had a joint party with my uncle, who has the same birthday as Zoey, and my aunt who also has a birthday in April. 

Escuse the clown make-up haha, they were playing dress-up.

One of all the cousins!  They had a great time!

 

 

Here she is all ready for the big Spring Program at school!

We also took all of the kids to the Hays Sternburg Museum.  They had a great time looking and touching everything.  The big dinosaur exhibit left the week after we were there, so we made it just in time. 



Zoey by a real live dino thigh bone. 

 Zoey had a great time at the fair this year, she even rode the bullet for the first time.  I think I rode it when I was 12 or something, she was brave!  Beau about took her and didn't care for it at all haha, I think we're getting old!

Zoey waiting in the wagon for the Fair Parade to start.

 Zoey started 1st grade this year, it's hard to believe.  We're about 2 weeks in and she's doing so good.  She has really matured over the summer and is doing great in school.  She has been acing her spelling tests and can read very well.  She loves school, I hope it continues!

 

Well, that's it for my Zoey catch-up, I'll tackle Charlotte's next.  Hope everyone is having a nice cool week!

 

Changes

Sigh... The last time I updated my blog was March!  Yikes!  I've been toying around in my mind what I want for the future of my blog.  I mostly kept up with it so family back home could see pictures and know what was happening in our lives since we were so far away from home.  I also like having it because you forget SO MUCH especially the little day to day things and I love looking back and seeing what happened a month, a year, a week ago. 

Now I'm home and I need to keep in touch with friends that are far away and I love looking at their blogs and seeing what they have been up to.  So here's the thing... Do I start from now?  Do I go back and add the stuff I've missed?  Seems so overwhelming.  I also haven't been taking as many pictures so that kind of tied hand in hand with blogging.  I would say to myself, "Oh take some pics, this would be a great blog post!" 

My job is mostly spent on the computer at the office and the LAST thing I want to do when I get home is get on another one.  Since I have a laptop I mostly did my blogging sitting on the couch and that is pretty much a no go these days.  See, I have this little miniature person named Charlotte running around thinking all the buttons are made for her to push, haha.  I finally found a good spot to put my laptop out of the way so I'm hoping I'll be able to update it more often. 

Ok, that's the end of my "I'm sorry I haven't blogged, I'll try to better" speech.  Here's some pic updates!  My friend from high school takes pictures now and she took some for us a couple weeks ago.  She does a fantastic job!

 

Thanks for being patient with me guys, I'll be posting some more things soon!

We're Still Here!

Oh my gosh! It has been a whirlwind of a month, let me tell you!  We made it here to Kansas and we are pretty well settled.  I still have a few more boxes to look through and I JUST got Zoey's room unpacked this weekend.  She's so excited to have a kid room again!  The lady that packed our boxes didn't label anything correctly so it's like Christmas every time I open one up haha.  I had one box that was labeled tupperware and it had my Kitchen Aid mixer, 3 bottles of spices, a couple towels, and some other random things.  I found the sensor for our outdoor clock wrapped up in our comforter, just weird stuff like that.  At least we are making progress and it feels like home!  We couldn't be more excited to be here with everybody and as long as Beau quits throwing away/moving everything around they are excited we are here!

Here's some picture updates:



Zoey on the way here, she was a fantastic traveler like always.

I had Zoey snap a pic of the baby for me, she did a great job traveling the whole way as well.

Zoey found her a hat!

Of course sister had to try it on haha!

Here's the huge semi full of our stuff.  Thankfully it came in the night before because the day it was delivered there was blizzard conditions with blowing snow and winds, the poor guys had to unload it on the worst day.  The guy that was supposed to help backed out so Beau ended up helping the driver with everything.  It was freezing!

Haha my dad with the Beiber!  The house was so full of boxes I didn't know where to begin.  We have really come a long way we maybe have 5 boxes left.

Zoey and Papa fell asleep on the floor the other night, everybody was tired.

I think this was the first day of school for Zoey, everybody was all smiles!  She's doing so awesome in her school, it's a little more relaxed than the school in Texas and she can't believe she always has good days.  On another note, we got the letter from her old school saying she was accepted into the gifted program, ha!  They don't do the program here but I sure am proud of my smart girl!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  I can't believe how big Charlotte looks in this picture. I have a couple birthdays coming up, I can't wait!

I love these silly girls.

One of all of us, we all had our green on for St. Patty's Day. 

I started my job at the Health Office and I have to say I really like it.  It's kinda fun answering phones and scheduling and making receipts and stuff.  It's such a different job than I have ever had but I am really enjoying it so far, thank goodness!  Beau has been helping at the shop and the last couple weeks has been gone helping my cousin do some soil sampling.  I feel like we are definitely getting into the swing of things.  It's so nice seeing so many people that I've known my whole life and feel so welcomed.  Everywhere we go we hear how nice it is we moved back and Sharon Springs needs more young families.  We haven't really looked for anything to buy or rent yet, I've had 4 different people tell me I just need to wait for the right old person to die!  Haha!  Beau has been doing a ton of work on my parent's house and said he is content doing that for now.  I'm sure the perfect thing will come along one of these days! 

Well, that was a pretty huge re-cap, I'm going to update a lot more often I promise haha!

We've Started!

Well, it's finally begun! We are in the last week of being Texans and we are busy getting everything organized.  We are having those feelings of hurrying to get everything done, see everything, and visit everybody before we leave.  We went to our good friends, the Teague's, for a little Super Bowl get together, going out with a friend from work tonight, and then having a big going away supper tomorrow night.  Whew! 

Sunday morning we took all of the decorations off of the walls and filled the holes.  We were expecting it to be a more difficult project but it really took no time at all.  I went  a little ahead of Beau and took the stuff down and Zoey followed him with a jar so he could put the nails in.  Our house looks so bare and different! 

Daddy hard at work!

Charlotte didn't know what to think of all the commotion!

I love watching them play.  Charlotte is so amused with anything Zoey does and Zoey loves making her laugh.

Baby always has to give her dirty looks!

My big girl.  She is so excited to get to Kansas, I think she was a little hesitant at first and talked about how she will miss her friends and our house.  Now she talks about all the fun things she can't wait to do when she gets to Kansas.  I called the school to let them know her last day will be Friday and the lady went on and on about how they will miss her and she is such a good helper in the mornings getting the other kids their cards.  I'm so proud of her!  She's had some kind of bad days lately and it was nice to hear that even though she can be difficult at times they still appreciate her personality.  She is so excited to start school with her cousin Andrew and meet her new teacher.  I hope she does good!  I told her Nana Kriss will go sit with her at school and make her behave, at least that's what she always threatened me with haha!

I've been busy getting laundry ready and cleaning what we can clean before we take off on Saturday.  I'm taking the girls, the animals, and the things the movers won't take like fingernail polish and some other things.  I bet Beau will be happy to have a super quiet house for a couple of days haha!

What's Happening?

Well, things have been getting back to normal around these parts, just more preparations for the big move.  I can't believe it's going to be here in like 2 weeks.  Zoey's last day of school is February 10th and then we head out on the 11th.  I'm getting so excited the closer it comes, I am ready to be in Kansas and get settled in.  My mom asked me a couple weeks ago if I would want to help out the Health Office in Sharon and be the secretary, it's only 3 days a week and she knows the other lady that works there and says she's really nice.  I went ahead and applied and I'm going to do a phone interview the 31st.  I'm kind of excited!  It will be so nice I won't have to put Charlotte in daycare and have 4 day weekends every week, I hope I get it.

I set up Zoey's princess tent in the living room the other weekend and Charlotte absolutely loved it.  They had so much fun climbing in and out and playing peek-a-boo.  She's quite the character, between her and Zoey they keep us entertained.

Charlotte's new thing is to scrunch her nose up and give us dirty looks, I love it!  She does it when other people talk to her sometimes or when she's getting into something she's not supposed to.  She's been kinda sick the last couple of days, coughing and runny nose and a little bit of a fever.  She is not sleeping well at ALL and I felt like a zombie the last couple days.  Beau told me that he would take care of Zoey and Charlotte's breakfast and everything this morning and to go take a nap.  I slept until 11:30 and I feel so fantastic!  Got caught up with laundry and everything, it's amazing what a little sleep will do for you.  Even though Charlotte has not been feeling well she is still in such a good mood and eats pretty well, she's so mellow.  We are so lucky to have such sweet girls!

 Look at that face! She's so saucy sometimes.  The weather warmed up a few days this week and we took a trip to the park.  Zoey had fun playing and Charlotte loved watching from the wagon.

Ah! I love that face!

Don't you love when parents get homework too?  I got a note last week saying that to celebrate the 100th day of school we had to make a poster of 100 things .  Zoey and I had fun finding all the things and counting them out to glue them on.

I'm off to try to get this sweet baby to sleep, cross your fingers she sleeps more than an hour at a time tonight!