Tons of pics!!

Happy early Halloween!!!

Ok, there are a ton of pics here, lots to catch up on so bear with me. We're going to go all over the place, chronologically and geographically so hold on :)

Let's start with some precious bath-time pictures from yesterday (in our kitchen) - Tag loves the bath. He's started grabbing the wet washcloth and sucking the water off of it like his sister used to do. And he loves to reach over and turn off the water every time I turn it on :-). Kinsey loves to help - here she is washing his hair.Pops and Nana's neighbor gave Tag an absolutely adorable horse towel, which he cuddles in quite nicely - We went out to Pops and Nana's house a couple of weeks ago. They got Kinsey a way-cute golf set, which was a huge hit.We went over there to hang out, but also for our annual pictures in front of the beautiful purple flowers in their backyard. Lately taking good pictures of Kinsey takes a while - her focus is a bit chaotic :-). So out of a ton of pics, we actually got quite a few cute ones. Here's a quick slideshow of some of the best followed by a couple where half of the picture was good and the other half had someone making a weird face or something:


Here are a few other fun shots from recent days:

Kale turned 2 a couple of months ago and I completely forgot to take my camera with us to his party. Luckily, Barie gave me some of her pics.More recently, we celebrated Keirah's birthday with the Fergusons and Shocks. Here are all the kiddos having some lunch...And here Kamden very sweetly shared his chair with Kinsey for the cake time...And of course, the youngest ones of the brood with their Mommys...Last weekend Taggart was dedicated to the Lord in a small ceremony at church with just a few of his closest baby friends :). It was a really sweet time of sharing with the church about how we pray for our little boy. Here are a few pics (again courtesy of Barie)...So the main news is that last week we spent 3 days in Atlanta with Keith, Barie, Nick & Jada. It's a conference for church leaders and us wives got to tag along with the youngest ones of our clan and our hubbies. Douglas and I had an absolutely awesome time getting to hang out with some of our closest friends and spending some fun time together with Tag. I can't get over how well-behaved the babies were on the trip. Emry (Nick & Jada's baby) is the youngest, she's only 2 weeks old, and then Brynlee (Keith & Barie's girl), who is 3 months, and of course Tag rounds out the bench as the oldest (and pudgiest).
Tag was so excited on the way to the airport...We left the San Antonio airport on Wednesday afternoon - here we are getting ready for Tag's first flight. We were a little concerned because right off the bat there was a 45 minute delay on the tarmac due to weather in Atlanta. The kids did awesome on the flight and we finally made it to Georgia. The conference was amazing. It was in a huge stadium in Atlanta - approximately 12,000 in attendance including these awesome folks... There were great speakers with some really sharp insights and challenges for us. I'm still kind of processing (to use a Keith word) all of what we heard. There were so many good take-aways. I think my favorite is that I need to create a "Stop-Doing List". We all have To-Do Lists, but seldom do we remember that in order to add new things, we must remove something since our time isn't infinite and our work is never done. One of our new favorite voices of wisdom, Dave Ramsey, was there. He has a show on Fox Business Channel and on the radio (shockingly enough called The Dave Ramsey Show) and he's got really sound thoughts on finances and Godly use of money. Anyway, Dave was there and gave a great talk on Unity in the Workplace. For all of our fellow fans, here's a shot of Dave: I think the biggest surprise of the conference was this guy:Yep, that's Jeff Foxworthy. He attends the church of one of the main guys who organizes the conference and has done some work lately with kids from Africa. The kids were there singing for us and Jeff talked for a while about how his trips for Africa have affected him.

On the lighter side, they gave us all kinds of goofy stuff to play with and do while we were there. We each got a small rectangle of "Floam" in our bags. It's kind of like playdoh, but it's all these tiny little balls the size of a pinhead and they are sticky and can be formed into different shapes. Anyway, we took the Floam from the person behind us and stuck it to ours and then passed it down. So we ended up with a giant Floam blob - this is it about 1/10 of the way finished:
The kids were all so great during the sessions. Most of the time Tag slept:But when he was awake, he had a great time. Here he is watching one of the speakers...
He got lots of good family time...And some fun bonding time with Brynlee...We made some time for the really important things on the trip. Here we all are at dinner - who knew Atlanta had such yummy Mexican food? And of course we made time for Douglas' favorite, Krispy Kreme :-). When we drove by, the hot sign was on and we were so excited, especially when Keith remembered it was the season for the Pumpkin Donuts (mmmmmmmmm good!). There's pretty much nothing Douglas likes better than a hot Krispy Kreme donut. Anyway, as we arrived at the order window, the sign went off. It was pretty funny. Luckily there were still plenty of hot donuts inside so we got to have some sugary yummy-ness before bed on our last night.After a long last day at the conference, we practically ran into the Atlanta airport and got on our plane. We were cutting it pretty close to flight time, but we all got on the flight and got settled. The pilot came on after a few minutes and said there would be a delay because of a problem with an oxygen mask. After a little while, that problem was fixed but then the pilot came back on and said that something on the jetway had damaged the plane's door, so we all had to get off and they would "try" to find another plane for us. We were a tiny bit panicky, but the babies were handling it well and we were pretty optimistic. Here we are in the waiting area, hoping for a new flight, looking pitiful. I think this was around 9pm. Actually I think Barie looks less pitiful and more like a rapper in this pic...I think Douglas and Nick used the time to plan their revenge on Delta. Douglas is talking about dropping the hammer on them and Nick's practicing squishing them like little bugs. After a pretty good-sized wait, they found another plane for us and we made it back to Texas. But we were still like 2 hours from home. Here we are at around midnight in the San Antonio baggage claim area.Brynlee was out...and Tag was raring to go...And Jada had to take care of some business...It felt so good to get home and be back in our own bed and get some rest. We had such a great time and we were so blessed by our time at the conference.

While we were gone, Kinsey got to have some special grandparent time. First, Grammy came out and spent a couple of days. Her first night here, I put her and Kinsey to work digging out toys from underneath the couch. It was quite a sight...Grammy and Kinsey spent quite a bit of time at the local Pumpkin Patch while we were gone. Here are some pics of Kinsey and Grammy from their adventures at the Pumpkin Patch near us.
And they somehow found time to throw a birthday party for Shamu with some friends :)We came home to a house full of pumpkins - Kinsey was very eager to show them to us and teach us how to play with them.Good night everyone!