Sophie is 1 year old!

Today we traveled to see Abby and her family to celebrate Sophia turning one year old this month! Wow how time flies! She is now taking steps around and inspects everthing, loves to play with babies the most, carrying them around. What a sweet little girl....

We got a group shot of the 5 cousins together, this is the best and of course not all of them will look up at the same time, what can you do :)


Grandma says hello Sophie :)Yummy. Unfortunately Sophie was scared of her cake, she wouldnt touch it, just screamed. Grandma said "good girl! ", ha ha

She enjoyed opening her gifts

All the cousins loved watching her open her gifts and wanted to help :)

Thanks for the party Abby and Steve, we loved coming to see you all and help celebrate Sophia turning One year old!

Thanksgiving and 90 years!!!

We had a wonderful thanksgiving meal with everyone on both sides of the family on thursday! I cooked the big 22 lb turkey and did stuffing and David did his delicious collard greens and everyone else brought other side dishes! This is some of us chowing down!



The babies sat at the table with their Great Grandma and Grandpa Suttles....

December 1st is my Grandpa's 90th birthday! Myra brought a cake and we decided to sing to him for his early birthday, it surprised him :)

Hope everyone had a great thanksgiving and happy birthday too Grandpa!!

Tooth!

Kalyn lost her first tooth which has been lose and just hanging there for weeks. Trying to get someone to smile showing the space is not an easy task. Here she is like "huh???"


ok a little better :)

Such a big girl, she has another lose one and the new one is already growing in.. she is getting big way too fast!

Christmas Festivities!!

We had a weekend full of xmas activites which was really enjoyable, we also wanted to get the xmas decorations up before thanksgiving to enjoy when family came thanksgiving day. Here is a cute photo of Noah in his train hat and Kalyns expression in the back is also too funny...

This is our decorative tree we have in the living room by the front window of the house. Noah wanted to help hang the star up..

The "kids tree" is by the fireplace and is where all their handmade ornaments go and other "kiddie" ornaments. They always love to decorate this tree and hmmmm lets just say play with the lights....

I worked the xmas show with my dad the weekend before thanksgiving so David took the kids to the annual Bazaar at his grandmothers church she went to years ago. Santa was there this year too!

The kids got face painting and then had to go show Santa their faces again!

David then brought the kids to the Christmas Show Sunday for the morning to see my parents store there, called Merchants of the Globe. They sell most items at black lions but had unique things at the show every year. This is the front of the store... oh and its next to the bakery too so we just HAVE to get a brownie there in the mornings....

The inside of the store is amazing.. and they got everything packed up in 5 hours after it closed, wow!

Perfume bottles among perfume bottles every shape and every color!

Noahs favorite part of the xmas show was the huge train on tracks next door to their booth, I think he went there at least 3 times that day!

Santa was even at the Christmas show too!

Noah starts school!

Noah is now going to school! He started November 19th 2008 and goes to the same elementary school Kalyn does, he is in their preschool class and goes m-thursday from 11:15 until 2. Then I pick Kalyn up on the other side of school at 2:30 so it works out so well. He was mad the first day he had to go, crying and screaming pretty much almost the whole way to school, however once we got there he had a ball and has loved every minute of it since!! Here he is mad, he wont look at me to take his picture that first day!

Remembering Grandma Kaufmann

My Grandma Kaufmann passed away on November 12th at 93 years of age. She was fortunate to have lived such a long life with many family members around her and is now reunited with Grandpa who passed away in 1999. We will miss her so much and have many great memories to keep with us forever.....

I flew to Iowa with Kalyn, my mother, Sara's family of 4 and Abby. Noah and Sophie stayed home with their daddies and after all the ordeals there and back on the planes it was good we did that, ha ha :) Here are all of grandmas GREAT grandbabies, except for Noah and Sophie....wow what a big group of cute kiddies!

Grandma was so admirable, she had donated her body for science so they had tables set up with many photos and photo albums along with another table with a quilt she had made, she had made so many over her lifetime and won many ribbons for them at the fairs as well!

Grandma had one brother left who is Uncle Al, here in white next to his wife to the right of him. The lady second from the left is the flower girl from my grandparents wedding, wow! She was 3 in their wedding she said.

Some of our friends from Iowa came to the visitation and it was great seeing them. Kasey is next to Sara and next to Abby is Tiffany. Tiffany and I were friends in 2nd grade when I moved there from Illinois and her sister Kasey was friends with Sara then too so that was neat! Thanks for coming girls!!

Mommy and her little sweetheart :)

Logan and cousin Kristin's son J.J were again fast friends while we were up there!

Lonnie, Sara and Kasey

After the visitation we went to eat pizza together and got all the kids together for another group shot...before they lost it

It was really nice seeing Grandmas house again in Muscatine. Mom and Kalyn sat on the porch.

The side of their house brings back so many memories of when we were kids and they had a swing on the tree which went so high...we swang out there for hours!

This is another favorite spot in their yard, this back corner is where we stood and could yell and everything we said echoed back to us, it was the neatest thing and our kids had fun doing the same thing when we were there!

This the the other corner of the yard and in the distance there are some barns where Grandpa used to work way back when he did farming. All that land was theirs and they had cows right in their backyard and corn they grew. David had fun several years back trying to catch a cow.. we just laughed as he ran around out there and the cows looked at him like he was crazy...

The kids had to try out Grandmas organ while were visted....

In the spare bedroom she has many of her ribbons to display from the quilts she had many over the years....

The service was monday morning and the kids noticed there was snow flakes coming down so they were so excited for that. Here they are out in it but you cant really see it in the photo.

Kalyn is showing me the snow on the leaf, hey there is about 8 flakes on there :)

We were sorry to have to travel to Iowa for a funeral, however so glad to see all our cousins and their beautiful kids and we had many happy memories to share. I am sure Grandma was looking down happy about us having fun together and celebrating her life, remembering the good times and memories which will always be with us! We love and miss you Grandma!

Halloween parties and a field trip too :)

We went to Logan and Caroline's Annual Halloween party at the end of October which is always such fun. The girls had similar shirts which was funny to them. Yes Caroline has white hair here for the party :)

Noah looked cute in the stich costume Logan wore years ago!



Hmmmm what should I eat first???

After the delicious chili and chips, etc etc.. the kids enjoyed finding gummy skeletons and they also did crafts. It was another fun night enjoyed by the whole family on both sides :)

Kalyn had a little halloween party at her school and I just went to take photos but then found myself helping out too. They had several stations the kids moved to every 15 min or so and they had a great time.

This was the bingo table....

Using a pumpkin to bowl. This is Kalyns friend Carsyn

Throwing ghosts into hula hoops for candy (of course)

Mrs Johnson at one station reading books about the fall...

This was the art table

At the beginning of November i went to the field trip with Kalyn to a farm.

Lets see how many ways the farm can use hay.... first they played in a little pigs house made of hay...

They drew on the pumpkins on the walls inside a barn with haystacks :)

They had a group picture sitting on hay....

They jumped on a trampoline made of hay....

We saw the horses and chickens and piggies....and fed the horse HAY

They had towers of hay for the kids to climb on....

Not photographed was a story we listened to sitting on HAY, then we had a HAY ride and had a HAY maze too.... hmmmm 101 ways to use hay, pretty cool :)