Well, we are on our way to Flagstaff and so excited! Smackers, Gigi and Nelson are with us and we are headed to snow. Abbey, Baxter and Sarah are going to be here on Wednesday. I LOVE my family and am so blessed. Today was almost perfect as we had both sets of grandparents at church this morning to watch us dedicate our son to the Lord. We are surrounded with love and it is amazing to feel this much happiness and peace. Thank you God. I am also reminded of what this time of year is all about and how much my God loves me to send his only son to earth for me. Thank you God.

We will be in Flagstaff for a week and I am sure you will be able to hear us laughing wherever you are. I will try and get some pictures up ASAP. I hope everyone has a merry Christmas. By the way, iPhones are really useful when it comes to this sort of thing! MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Well, posting on the blog has fallen off. We had a busy November and it looks like it is going to be a busy December. I am sure everyone is feeling that as well. We had a great Thanksgiving here in Yuma. We were with the Yuma Alexanders(we missed you Deborah!) and had a wonderful dinner in Gran Gran and Daddy Steve's backyard. Since Thanksgiving we have been active with playgroup and then Matt and I were able to get away for a few days to Phoenix for some Christmas parties. We are so grateful to Kay and Steve for keeping the kids so we could get away for a few days/nights. We stayed at a resort in Phoenix and we were able to finish all of our Christmas shopping. We were also able to relax, sleep in and enjoy having thoughts that I can HEAR!

Now, we are getting ready for my family to come to Arizona for Christmas. We are so excited to see everyone and looking forward to having some time to relax and LAUGH....A LOT!!!! We also recently got a camera! Yay! Finally, I can take some pictures so that I can post some updated pictures! Hope all is well and everyone is remembering the reason for the season.

Pumpkins

It is finally feeling like fall around here. We are excited to pull out our long sleeves and pants! This week we went to the pumpkin patch and we also had our playgroup Halloween party. I don't have great pictures of the kids in their costumes but I will get some at the church festival tomorrow night. Hope everyone has a safe and fun weekend!
The petting zoo at the pumpkin patch

Cool Weather, Sewing and Giggles

We have been having a stretch of nice weather and it has been WONDERFUL! We have been able to open the doors and windows and turn the air conditioning off. Awesome. The kids especially love standing at the back door and wishing they could go swim (pool is closed for the season...hot tub to be fired up soon!)

On Friday I invited some ladies from the playgroup over to have a sewing party. It was a lot of fun and I think the ladies enjoyed making something for their little ones. They are all coming back in the morning to hopefully complete their garments. There was definitely a love of the turkey applique but we also did acorns, applique letters and pumpkins. I will try to get some pictures of the completed projects up here soon.

.Lauren (above) and Kaitlyn (below) were the only kids allowed in the sewing room ...they can't crawl yet. I wanted to take a picture of the rest of the house after the sewing because there were a total of 9 kids in the house for 3-5 hours. It looked like a toy bomb went off. Fortunately there were no injuries and no damage.

I also took some pictures of the kids and what they were up to during the Auburn game this weekend. If you watched the game then you will understand why Emma Kate was hiding under the sofa. hahaha. We will hope for better next time around. Hope every one's fall is going well and that you are settling into the cooler weather wherever you are.

Long 2 weeks!

I know I haven't been on here in A LONG TIME! I am so sorry. One of the main reasons is because my camera has been broken since July. Meaning I have no pictures to post! I need to post some of our family and friends pictures so that you can at least see the kids!

The last week and a half Matt has been in DC for training. Thus, we have been missing DADDY!!! COME HOME!!! I think he can hear us calling for him across the thousands of miles! We miss our daddy and our normal routine. It is still very hot here (110ish) and so we have mainly been inside or in the pool. Mason is now walking/running over the entire house. Which means I have two extremely busy children. So much so that I feel like I am just waiting to hear who is going to get hurt next. It is just a matter of minutes that I feel like we go from one boo-boo to the next. Joys of toddler hood. Mason has also been in the process of getting 4 teeth. They have all made their appearance and now we are waiting for them to descend. This will make 6 in total.

Emma Kate is her usual busy self. We are STILL potty training. She regressed when we were on our trip home. I have been using pull ups since she has been home and the move (3-4 weeks). She became very comfortable using pull-ups and so I switched her back to diapers. Since then she has been showing interest intermittently. It is so hard to have her pretty much trained and then have her go backwards! We will get there eventually. The Lord won't let her start high school without being potty trained!

We have also been busy with our playgroups and with Gran Gran and Daddy Steve in town. Gran Gran picks up Ela (my niece) 4 days a week from school. Since Gran Gran lives just down the street it allows for some opportunities for the girls to get together and play. They usually get to see each other twice a week and Emma Kate loves playing with her big girl cousin.

The only other thing I have been doing a lot of recently is cleaning and couponing. We look forward to Matt coming home on Friday and hopefully slightly cooler weather. I am going to include some pictures from the summer that a friend took!

Mason's 1st Birthday! (chocolate is wonderful!!!!!)

Emma Kate and her best friend Mikey

(Mikey's uncle Chris took this picture and all the ones below)

Birthday Week

We have a week of birthdays. Matt's birthday (29 again) was on Sunday and Mason's 1st birthday is Thursday. We celebrated Matt's with a low key dinner with friends. It was wonderful to be able to leave the kids with the grandparents and go to dinner! We are getting ready to have a jungle themed pool party for Mason on Thursday. Mason is also keeping us busy by WALKING!!! He has been taking steps for awhile now and then last night he started really walking for long stretches. We were clapping and cheering him on and all the while I was thinking in the back of my mind...No! sit down! I know what is coming now! Just kidding. I am so very proud of Mason and his accomplishment of walking. I just hope that I can keep up with my 1 year old and 2 year old. No more babies in this house.

Sorry, Sorry, Sorry

I don't normally let this much time pass between posts but...We moved! We have moved to a new house in Yuma as we sold our home to Gran Gran and Daddy Steve (Matt's parents). Steve now has a job in Yuma and so they have moved here. We couldn't be more excited to have them close and they have been more than gracious throughout this entire process. We look forward to all the fun memories to come!

So we are now in a new house and trying to get settled in. Before we moved we went to FL and AL to spend time with my family. Florida was A LOT of fun we were so happy to be a part of the Giesa/Georgeopolous wedding. Erin was a beautiful bride and everything was perfectly planned and orchestrated. They are a gorgeous couple and we are very thankful to have been included (thanks Erin and George!)

After the wedding in Tampa we drove (the entire McGough clan) to the lakehouse north of Birmingham. We stopped in Sandestin for a night for some shopping and good rest time. While we were there we were able to meet up with the Hanleys and meet their new baby girl Aine. Aine is adorable and Emma Kate and Leah took well to each other. Thanks for meeting us Hanleys!

Once at the lakehouse we relaxed and went boating. We had a blast and it was wonderful to get to spend so much time with Gigi, Grandaddy, Sada, Uncle Nelson, Uncle Warren , Aunt Abbey and Baxter. We miss them already.

I am going to try and get some pictures up here soon. We are still in boxes and trying to settle everything. Hope everyone is doing well!