Sorry, I still haven't downloaded birthday pics, but I had something silly to share.

We went to Quizno's last night. Abbi picked a sesame seed off her sub and said, "I'm going to take this home so I can plant a bread tree!"

Hee hee! :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, EVI!!

Today is Evi's first birthday! It hardly seems possible that a year has passed.

We are super busy (as usual!) today. The girls have Kids' College classes, then we go to church, so Evi's birthday celebration will probably be a late night one! I hope to post pictures tomorrow. Check back then! Until then... here's a couple of oldies but goodies.

Flood, the IRS and Skin!

Water, water everywhere!

I was pretty angry late Monday night to find a big puddle under our table. I was sure that the dog had peed (again!). I opened the garage door to put her to bed, and was quite shocked to find a small pond where I had left the garage! It was storming, and we have just had so much rain over the last month, the ground can't take any more. Every corner of our 2 car garage was wet. The puddle under the table inside the house was the result of the water seeping under the threshold and the laminate flooring. It then came up through the seams & caused the puddle.

I used the ShopVac to suck up 40 gallons of water. :P Josh got our girls' little swimming pool, and started bailing water into it to keep it from going into the garage. We were up until about 3:30AM trying to deal with it. Tuesday, we ended up renting a storage unit, and moving all the stuff we stored in the garage. (well... the salvagable stuff.) I'm not sure how well the floor will dry out.

Then, today I opened a piece of mail that literally upset my stomach. The IRS. Aaaagghh! It was a letter to inform me that there was an error on my income tax return, and that we owed an additional $2500! I panicked and called right away. After 1 hour and 40 minutes on the phone (with 3 different representatives), we got it straightened out, I think. They told me that there wasn't an error, that I didn't owe more money, and that they'd put it in the system. We'll see if they send another bill next month.

On a happier note, I bought Ted Dekker's latest, Skin at Sam's Club today for $12.88!

Too late to be up! Going to bed now.

As you can see, I've been messing around with my layout. Let me know what you think. I'm not sure if I'll keep this one or not....

Happy 4th of July!!

An actual blog entry!

I've been reading a lot of blogs lately, mostly blogs of moms across the US who I don't even know. It has kinda inspired me to actually blog more regularly, but I don't have much confidence in my ablity to keep up with that! :P

Anyway, I wanted to share a funny story from the other day. Abbi came running in to tattle. She said that Kezzi had bitten her, so I went to investigate.

"Kezzi, did you bite Abbi?"

"Not with my sharp teeth..."

Oh, boy!

I put a couple hundred photos on my picassaweb page tonight. They're from our trip to IL in May... long overdue (thanks, Aunt Marge, for the reminder!). They are spread out in 3 folders, and are arranged chronologically, so skip back past the ballet pictures, and Evi's.

I'm hoping to post again within the week.... then again... don't hold your breath!

All of us girls with Grandma Betty

Easter Sunday!

Easter was a great day. We had two really good services at church, then spent the afternoon at the house of some friends. We ate lots of good food, and the girls got to hunt Easter eggs. There are lots more pictures at my picassa web (link over on the right of this page). Hope you enjoy them!

By the time I got any pictures, the girls were already chomping their Easter chocolate!


You can't tell very well in these pictures, but the 4 older girls all got their hair cut this week.

More pictures soon, since Kezzi's birthday is tomorrow!!

The Zoo!

While we were in Louisiana for Christmas, we spent a day at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans. It was great weather, and we all enjoyed ourselves. Poppa, Nana and Uncle Jesse were all there. I've uploaded 79 pictures of the day, so if you'd like to browse them, go to http://picasaweb.google.com/hollene. There are some you won't want to miss, including a couple of pouty pictures.

I especially like Kezzi's hand in this picture...


Kezzi wanted to see the elephants more than anything else.



Here's the whole crew (minus the photographer, of course).


Well, head on over to my web album, cause there are just too many cute ones to post!!


Love to you all! 

I love Google!

I was posting Halloween pictures on here today (since tomorrow is December!) and discovered Picasa Web albums. Hopefully now you will all be able to see more of my photos. I will still post a select few photos with detailed captions here on this blog, just as often as I always do.... once every two months or so!

On my Picasa Web Albums, I will post unedited, mostly uncaptioned photos. Most of them will be my family, but there will probably be a lot of church/youth group photos there, too.

You can go there by clicking here http://picasaweb.google.com/hollene

To make up for the extreme lack of photos lately, I've posted hundreds of pictures today from the last three months. I hope you enjoy them!

Halloween Pictures at Last!

Here's my crazy bunch of trick-or-treaters. For those of you not well familiar with me and my family... No, these are not the children who came trick-or-treating to my door... these are my children, before we set out trick-or-treating!


I didn't get a very good picture of Evi, our little carrot. Who knew carrots suck their thumbs?

 

Kezzi's inflatable chicken costume was the absolute cutest and funniest I saw all Halloween! People were commenting about it everywhere we went.


Emmi's was the most original costume I saw. :) She saw the idea on a website, and knew that was what she wanted. Here she is as a baby on the back of a hunched-over old lady!


Abbi was a cute little Tigger. She had lots of fun trick-or-treating.


Tori was a stealthy ninja. Well, not really so stealthy, and pretty cold before the night was over. Here's her crazy ninja pose...

 

I know, it's surprising that I am already posting again... Many of you probably won't even check my blog for another month, based on my past record. :)

After her bath today, Evi wore her bathrobe for the first time. I took pictures, and they were just too cute not to post! I even got a smiling one!

Here's my youngest 3, just hanging out...
That's all for now!

Finally... More Photos!

Okay, I won't even start off with the usual apologies and excuses... You all know them, and know that I've been a little busy. ;) It is sad, though, that this first picture is from way back when Evi was only a week old. Here she is on her bili-bed. (She was on it for one day for her high bilirubin count.) She looked like a little alien... you can't really tell, but the lights glowed through the blanket, and it looked really strange. August 9th we went with the teens to the Zoo. I think Kezzi was with Josh when these pictures were taken.


It was Evi's first zoo trip. She slept through most of it, and we spent a lot of time in the air conditioning! It was over 100 degrees out!!!

Evi helps me wake up her sisters sometimes. Then she laughs at their wild hairdos.We started school on August 24th. It sure is wild, trying to entertain 1, feed & diaper 1 and teach 3 all at the same time. (Interesting 2 year "stairsteps," don't you think?)

 

Nice white tounge in this one:
These are the most recent pictures I have of Evi right now. These were taken Saturday after her bath. In this one, I think she's trying to hypnotize Queequeg....

See her wild after-bath hair? She had lost patience with me and my camera by this shot... :)