Sara's 1st professional hair cut

I cut the entire family's hair. I started 10 years ago cutting Lance's. He needed a hair cut desperately one time and he couldn't get to the barber for a cut, so we went out on our patio with some scissors and clippers and I was going to shave up his neck and trim over his ears. Well, all of a sudden, I started clipping his hair! He looked at me with a funny look and asked me what I was doing. :) I told him I was diving in. The worst thing that could happen was he went and got it fixed! Well, it wasn't that bad and with a little practice, I've gotten pretty good! He hasn't paid for a hair cut in 1o years!

And I've always cut Luke's and the girls'. I can't imagine the amount of money we save each year on hair cuts! I'm the only one in the family who gets it cut professionally, and I only pay $20. (I'm pretty low maintenance) :)

Now to Sara. She's been trying to grow her hair out for Locks of Love. We thought when we started it, that she needed to get to 8 inches. But we found out that it's actually 10. That's a lot of hair. We've gotten it pretty long, but 10 inches would make it go above her shoulders. She didn't want that. So we talked to my hair dresser and she suggested we donate to Beautiful Links. They only require 8 inches. It's for adults and not just kids like Locks of Love.

So we both went to get a hair cut today! Her first professional hair cut. :) She LOVED it! She loves anything girly and getting her hair done was heaven for her.

So excited!

As soon as we got home, she ran to my bathroom and got a pony tail holder and put her hair up to see how short her pony tail would be! :) She can't wait to get to school tomorrow and show her friends. What a sweet, sweet girl.

Organization-What is that???

I admit it. I am not an organized person. I would LOVE to be. I'm just not. I try. I really do. But it never seems to stick. I know that it would help me so much if I could get organized and stay organized. It just always runs amok after a few weeks.

So here we go again. I'm trying. I made a chore chart last year and the kids really liked it. But as time wore on, it lost it's allure. We revamped it and reimplemented it today. Once again, the kids are excited. And even Emma has 2 chores to do each week! :) Putting up some of her clothes and picking up her toys.


I made it using a magnetic dry erase board and then used sharpie markers for the grid and vinyl letters for the days and the kids names. The chore icons I printed out on magnetic sheets I got at WalMart. The pictures are easy for the kids to understand. And all they have to do is put a smiley face on the right day when they complete their chore. They get 10 cents for each smiley face. I have it on the door leading to the garage in our laundry room. I really, really wish we had a mud room, but this will have to do. :)

And now, for my newest bid at organization...My friend Christi blogged about this idea that she found on a blog yesterday. I'm a little nervous, but really excited. I bought 4 new laundry baskets today. Each kid has one and I put their names on them in vinyl.

So it works like this. Each child puts their dirty clothes in their own basket. Each person has their own laundry day. I will take Luke's basket and dump it into the washer. Without separating colors. Eeeek! That's the part that scares me. :) But, I have to admit, I mix clothes on accident all the time and haven't ever had any problems. And I've read that I can add a 1/2 cup of vinegar with my soap to help in case colors do bleed. I'm going to be careful to wash new red clothes or new dark wash denim separately for a while, but everything else just goes in! Then into the dryer and after I pull them out of the dryer, they go back into Luke's laundry basket and he folds them and puts them up.

And Tuesday is Sara's day, Wednesday: Hope, etc. Granted, Hope and Emma will need help, but they can do a lot of it! So, in theory, I should only have 1 load of laundry a day and no sorting of colors or sorting everyone's clothes after they are washed. (which is the part I hate the MOST!) Lance and I will have a day, too, and I will wash sheets and towels as needed, but I have to say, this sounds really awesome! I hope I can keep up with it!

Girls and Boys Night Out

Luke has been wanting to spend some time with one of his friends from Cub Scouts. So we planned it with his mom and he came over this afternoon for Lance to take them out to the land and do "guy stuff." :) Lance called his cousin and his wife brought their son over to join them.

Let me just say, I have the best husband in the whole world! And he's the best Dad!! He went to WalMart this afternoon and bought all kinds of prizes. (pocket knives, flashlights, lures, camping utensils) and he set up mountain man competitions! Awesome Dad of the Year Award!

The boys all did an archery competition, bb gun target shoot, hatchet throwing, and fire starting. Isn't that awesome?!?! Luke won the fire starting! (which thrilled his Daddy!)

The boys had a BLAST! Who wouldn't?!?!

Luke started his fire all by himself! Survivor, here he comes!

Waiting

Winner!

When the girls found out that the boys were doing something fun, they begged me to take them to see "Tangled." We've been telling them that we would try to take them, but it just hasn't happened. We went and we had so much fun! Cute, cute movie! We took suckers in, bought a coke and some pop corn, and the girls kept talking all afternoon about "girls night out." :) Then we went to Burger King for dinner and they got to get kids meals. That's a special treat!

It has been a really great weekend of making memories for the Faddises this weekend!

GREAT night!

We had the BEST night tonight! Lance had some farm work to do all day and I had a funeral to go to this afternoon, but when we got done, we loaded up the kids, called my parents, brother and sis in law (and they brought their best friends) and we all met at our land for a weenie roast!
It was in the low 70's today! Crazy considering exactly 7 days ago there was 24 inches of snow on the ground! I have Spring Fever!!! :) The kids has a blast running free and exploring in the woods, and all the adults had so much fun just relaxing around the fire. And everyone loved smores!

Getting ready to eat hot dogs. Mmmmm!

Sara and Emma

Mom and Dad

Making hot dogs!

Luke

LOVE this pic of Hope

Enjoying the campfire

Me and My Man!

I am sooooo ready for spring! And camping, and horse back riding, and playing on the farm, and cookouts!

Sing a Song

All of my kids love to sing. I LOVE it! Luke goes around with his iPod in his ears singing off key at the top of his lungs! ha! And Sara and Hope have the sweetest ability to make up their own songs. :) And they are always praise songs. It's makes me smile and makes my heart happy. I've always said that when my kids are singing praise to the Lord, God and I are smiling at the same time.

And sweet little Emma. She has started singing songs now on her own. Just about every night when I put her to bed, she wants me to sing her a song. And it's either Jesus loves me, or Baby Jesus grew and grew. (a song she learned at Mother's Day Out) The cutest thing is, she combines the 2 songs. So we sing, "Yes, baby Jesus loves me!" hahaha! It makes me think about Taladega Nights! hahaha!!!

And she's learned "You're so beautiful." And it's sooooo stinkin' cute! "yuur so bootiful!!!" And she shakes her head like she's doing vibrato. Love her!

Snowpacolypse 2011

So the weather guys were calling for 2-4 inches last night. I didn't think the kids would be in school today simply because of all the old snow we still have on the ground from last week, so we let them stay up late.

Well, this is what we woke up to this morning...

Anywhere from 18-24 inches!!!!!! The craziest snow I've ever seen!

Lance had to go feed our horses at our property and then I had to pick up my brother and go help get Lance unstuck! Ha! His truck got stuck in the 20+ inches on our property. We actually had to get help from our neighbors. Thank goodness for great neighbors!

There's really not much else to say except we had a BLAST in the snow this afternoon, Lance's office is closed again tomorrow, and we are planning on doing it all of the following again tomorrow!

Emma didn't know what to think!

The sledding hill! (our front yard is FLAT!)

One end of our street

The Faddis Fam!

SNOW!!!!

The sledding hill before it became the snow cave!

Emma eating snow face first!

Lance in the snow cave! Ha!

Luke in the snow cave

Sara in the snow cave

Hope, Sara and our neighbor in the snow cave

More Snow Days! Arghhh!

So we're out of school again tomorrow. Ahhhh! We'll be in school til July at this rate! And they're calling for more snow Monday. 1 or so inches. I'm soooo praying it doesn't happen.

Today was warm enough for the kids and I to go outside for a while. Lance had to go back to work today. Bummer. But we were out for a couple hours. They had sooo much fun. Poppa and Mom came over to play and then Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Leah came over. And two sets of neighbors came out and played, so there were lots of snowball fights and sled rides! Here's some of our fun in the snow...

The finished snow fort. (Daddy did a GREAT job!)

Throwing snow balls at Momma!

Our poor, pititful snowman. The snow just wasn't sticky. :(

Having fun in the snow.

Exhausted from playing in the snow!

Poppa and Jack. :)

Sled rides

Recap of the Week

Because of the turmoil of last week, there were several things I didn't get to blog about that I want to remember. So this post is a miscellaneous assortment of the past few days. :)

The girls came running to me on Thursday laughing and yelling that Emma was in the bathroom. This is never good! Either she is filling up her little potty with water and dumping it in the toilet, or washing her hands up to her elbows in water, or in this case powdering herself. She informed me, "I stink Momma!" Hence the need for powder! Ha!

I got all the girls this shirt, and Luke one that says, Sister for Sale. :)

Friday was awards ceremony day at Luke and Sara's school. I found out Thursday that Sara was getting an award. She got Star Student. I was so proud! It's an award given to students who are role models for their class. I knew she'd take to school like a fish to water. She was born for it!

Showing off her award. So proud of it!

Hope wanted a picture with Sara. Love how they love each other!

The kids were out of school today. More on that in a second. I told them that if they got their rooms picked up, we would watch a movie. Surprisingly, Luke was the first one done. :) He was running around the house with lots of extra energy and generally driving me nuts! ha! So I told him to get a book and read until the girls were done. It took them a while, so he had to wait longer than he wanted. He went and got his book and came back into the living room where I was folding clothes. I looked over and saw him and had to take a picture.

That's the Bible. :) When he decided about 3 weeks ago he was going to read through the Bible, he was serious! He's in Exodus now. Makes me so proud!

Now to why the kids are out of school. We are experiencing "Snowpocalypse" or "Snowmaggedon!" Haha! That's what it's been dubbed. We got about 8 inches of snow today. And some places in our area got nearly a foot! We were actually under a blizzard watch! In Arkansas! Seriously?!?! It's been crazy! So this morning, I set a bowl out and caught a bunch of snow and made snow ice cream for us this afternoon. Something the kids have never had. :)

It's so easy!

And it tastes soooo good!

We weren't going to get out in it today, because it's been so cold. About 18 with really strong winds. But as the wind died down this evening, we decided to get out because it's only going to be 11 tomorrow! And Luke has been DYING to build a snow fort. He's wanted to since last year. The big snow we got last year happened when Lance was in Haiti and I couldn't get all four of them out in the snow by myself. Emma was only 1! So he got his wish today. :)

Luke and Sara making snow balls

Hope LOVED the snow this year! (she's HATED it the past 3 years!)

Emma asked all day, "Can we go outside and play in the no???" :)

Lance bringing out the big guns to build the snow fort!

The finished product! Just in time for it to get dark. :(

Obviously, we're out of school tomorrow. And I'm betting we'll be out Thursday as well. So hopefully it will be a little warmer Thursday and we can get out and play in the snow fort some more!