Sweet boy!

Taylor's first day!

Taylor had her first day of pre-k today. She was very excited to go and has been asking me all summer when it would be fall so she could go to school. Today was a "gradual entry" day so the parents got to hang out in the class for a bit and then have a parent meeting before picking the kids back up and having an early dismissal. So, we were only there for an hour and a half but I know that she will really enjoy it this year!

They also just started a MDO program at her school so Jacob may get to start going once a week, too!

Happy Birthday Jacob!

Bedtime stories

Realized that I haven't posted anything on this blog in many months since I've been posting everything over at my 365 blog. http://sweettea365.blogspot.com So here's one of the kiddos getting ready to read Peter Pan for their bedtime story. I love how they'll just sit and listen to a story, even without pictures :)

Favorite January Face

This is my favorite face photo out of my 365 project for January. Enjoy!

365 Project

I may be a little more delinquent in posting here (as Becky likes to say :) ) this year. I am going to attempt...or should I just say, "I am going to DO," a 365 project. This basically involves me taking pictures every day of the year and posting at least one. I started the blog sweettea365.blogspot.com to post these pictures to. I wanted a clean slate to start with and a place that I know needs a blog post every.single.day.

Okay, I am scaring myself now. But I really want to do this and I know that it could tremendously improve my photography skills just by being behind the camera every day. I'm also interested to see just what I capture each day and what ridiculously high percentage of them are my children. So, tune in to the 365 blog and hopefully you will get more frequent updates from our family than you would over here.

I will still be blogging here by the way, to give more in depth updates on the Magnolia Alarids. Here's to a great year!!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours! We had a wonderful Christmas with some of our family at our house this year. Santa was really good to us all! The kids received a swingset (courtesy of LOTS of help from a couple of elves!), a firetruck for Jacob, and a play kitchen for Taylor. Of course, Taylor woke up before dawn so she had to wait a couple of hours to see what Santa had left outside. She was pretty surprised when she finally was able to see it and I was thrilled that Santa managed to get it here and assembled in time for Christmas and without the kids knowing!

After the excitement of Santa and unwrapping gifts, Eric's grandparents, mom, brother and sister in law, niece, and aunt and uncle came over. We all got to spend some good time together visiting and had a big dinner that night. I decided to try a new recipe and made 9 Cornish hens from the Southern Living 2010 Christmas book. They turned out great as did everything else that was made and brought by everyone!

I'm looking forward to more picture taking and editing this year, too! I now have a new 60 mm macro lens and the newest version of photoshop to work with!! I'm also learning to use my Bamboo Fun tablet which should be a big help with PS5 and I'm loving the new camera bag/purse that Eric gave me.

One of the more exciting things to look forward to for us is that we are upgrading our internet service next week. We didn't realize just how slow ours was until we started shopping around. That's one of the reasons I'm so slow to post on the blog. The pictures take forever to upload! So, with our new faster service, I should be able to share more with you:)

I hope you all have a Happy New Year!



Taylor climbing on the new playground from Santa.




"Junior", our elf, keeping watch. I'm sad to see him go, and can't wait for his return next year!


Boo Bear in his new firetruck from Santa. (He's also wearing Jaxon's fireman's hat!) He loves anything with wheels and buttons!