We wish you a Merry Christmas!

We will have to post more pictures over the next few days...
but I wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a MERRY CHRISTMAS...

it has been crazy and fun... and i need sleep!!! but we will post more soon!

Pizza night!

Since Uncle Bug (aka Jon) has been here, we've had a well documented December. Bug is enjoying using my wonderful DSLR... and as long as he leaves it here when he flies away, I am glad to share... here's a great example... pizza night with the Clardy brothers!!!

Shredding cheese in our fabulous kitchenaide!!!

Uncle Thad.. cutting the sausage for the manly meat pizzas

Mr. Corbin... Uncle Thad's brother who moved here a few months ago!
We sure are glad he doesn't mind the chaos that is the Darden house!

Riley... making his pizza (the boys and I can't have real cheese... so we make our own pizzas!)

Daddy & Riley workin' on the pizzas!

General post-pizza-making-silliness!

Makin'.... COOKIES!

When it rains, it pours... and when i finally take time to blog, i might as well do as much as humanly possible!

This weekend we made and decorated sugar cookies...

Carter, Momma, & Riley cutting out cookies

Riley shows off one of his masterpieces

Brian and the "casualty"
He dropped this cookie on the plate and BROKE it!!!

The fam!

Uncle Bug joins in the fun!!!

Don't be fooled by the primary colors... those are CHRISTMAS cookies!

Daddy's 1st 5k!

Last weekend Brian ran his first 5k down in Fountain with a group of students from his school. The boys and I went to cheer him on!The boys bounced while we waited... if you know Carter, you know that he once broke both arms within 3 weeks... needless to say, my prayer for the day was "Please Lord, no broken bones"

Waiting for Daddy!

our RUNNER!!!!

it must be LOVE...

I recently took a course in deciphering kindergarten "love notes" and already it is paying off! (ok, not really... there is no such course ... it was supposed to be funny). For the last 2 days, Riley has come home with notes from Summer. Yes, the same Summer that wrote the super cute note I am supposed to keep until Riley gets married! But there are some significant differences between note #1 and the latest additions to Riley's "special things" box.


First, observe Note #2...

the outside... check out the extensive sticker decoration! Kindergarten girls do not part with their sticker collections easily (if I remember correctly - no jokes required - we all know it's been a long time since I was in kindergarten).


the inside... LARGE heart with both names... c'mon ladies we ALL know what that means.
And don't be fooled... I know I didn't crop these well... it's all for a purpose! If you look at this note, you will see that it is not folded to the perfection of the first note... which causes me to wonder... do Summer's parents even know about these letters??? or is she hiding out in her room writing letters to my son without the knowledge of her parents.... makes ya think, doesn't it???

So... the next note is the 3rd received but he received it just one day after the 2nd note... Summer is steppin' it up a notch and cornering the "Rily" market :)

Not so many stickers this time... what could this mean, you ask??
It is one of 2 things:
A) She is not so sure about how she is feeling about him at this point...
B) She used up every last sticker in her collection on the previous card and must ration her younger sister's few remaining stickers until she can restock at Christmas!

Don't be confused by this (as Brian was - until I helped him decipher the inside of this card)... it does NOT say "I love mom" as an untrained eye would believe. No, my friends, it says... "Rily, I love You"... and yes... those little stickers are lips... LIPS... what???? a five year old uses LIPS on a love note... that shouldn't be allowed until they are at least 25!!!
and now to the perplexing part... Summer, MOM, Rily... i'm out of ideas, i have nothin' left!

We hope you enjoy these cute notes as much as we have...
i can't make any promises but i think you will see more of these in the near future :)

ahhh... the Pilgrim girl

So... I found this among the papers that Riley brought home this week. If you are not a grandparent of Riley, you probably won't care... but this is for the grandparents... It's pretty darn cute!
The sentence is supposed to say "This is the face of a pilgrim girl"...
Grandad - please note that he writes "Riley Paul Darden" on most of his papers :)

A chip off the old block!

So, Gram & Grandad came to visit! They arrived the day after Thanksgiving and left this morning (Monday). I will post more pictures in a little bit but I thought these should be first! Grandad, being a retired engineer, has always wanted to share his knowledge of helicopters with the boys. In the past, they would enjoy it, but this time Riley really got into it!


I believe they were talking about the main rotor and the stabilizer (see, even I picked up some of the terminology).

and the test begins... Riley had to tell Grandad all the parts

There was also conversations about the importance of each of the parts... I don't remember details!



Thanks Grandad! We've known for a long time that we had a little engineer... once again it has been confirmed!