Pictures from NH!!

Sit back and be ready for some laughs! Out of the 270 or so pictures we took, you get to see a few of them on this post, but you can see the rest on the right hand link "Family Pictures Galore" !! These are a few of my favorites, so enjoy! Also, they are in no particular order, b/c I don't have time to put them all chronologically. :)

This one totally defines our family. One of my cousin's took it from my phone while we were all trying to get set to take a family picture. It reminds us of some magazine cover or something, probably for a magazine called "Crazy Weekly" or something along those lines :) I love them all though!

Aunt Kelly finally gave up playing all nicey nice with Eric, so she played his game and he loved it :)

The girls loved having so many people around to hang out with. Patrick, Kylie and KK had fun with them, too.

Aunt Kylie is one of the best aunt's in the world. The girls absolutely love hanging out with her getting to have sleepovers every night and piling on top of her! She takes it all so well!

Some of my favorite people in the world! Aunt Patty, G-Man and Gigi ready for some fun on one of the few beautiful afternoons.

We took this before heading down to do some jet skiing. I love him!

Colee loved having her hair braided by Aunt Kylie. We had finally gotten to hit up the beach.

We took some family pictures with everyone up on a hill where you could see the lake behind us. Beautiful. Refer back to the first picture to see another one at this site.

It took Aunt Kelly and I a good long time to get our standard self portrait on the hill. People kept wanting to be in the picture with us, however this is probably one of the funniest pictures with Uncle Ricky in it!

Family picture with my side of the family. It was a beautiful day after church. And Eric had already been out wakeboarding too!

I love this picture of my dad, sister and I.

Family picture out on G-Man and Gigi's deck overlooking Back Bay.

G-Man with some of his favorite girls!

G-Man's kiddos (plus Em) with his new OSU hardhat!

Probably one of the best pictures of the trip!!! You have to look carefully to see what's happening... Eric is throwing his new Facebook BFF, Aunt Kelly, off the jet ski. She knew better though and took him with her:)

Colee almost got up on the water skis. Hopefully next summer.

Eric enjoyed the water and many times was found doing stunts like this one. The girls loved watching it.

Colee trying out the water skis on land first. It was a little nicer on land since it was warmer and she was standing up.

Eric got to do lots of tricks on the water, but this shot was taken at a decent hour, not 0630! I was not into waking up that early to take pictures.

And now it's Aunt Kelly's turn to get in the picture with Eric and I.

As much of a pain as they can be sometimes, I love these girls! Life wouldn't be life without them!

Uncle Ricky is loved by the girls as well.

G-Man and Gigi took a quick pic with the girls at the Russ Bell Memorial Golf Tournament

Family pic at the golf tournament dinner

We took a day trip to Boston with this gang. We wanted to take an "after" shot as well, but I'm not sure you would have seen the same amount of smiles on our faces. All of us were wet from the rain we encountered all day. We had to re-teach Aunt Kylie the letter "C" like "Christy is cool, spelled with a "c" not a "k" in hopes they would make it to Chipotle to join us before heading back to Alton Bay, but no such luck. We enjoyed a yummy dinner from Chipotle nonetheless! This was all after Aunt Kylie ran into the blind man :)

Eric helped open a safe that was left in my grandparent's cottage and had been closed up in the early 80's but had stuff from much earlier than that in it.

So there's the pics you get. Check out the link up top for the rest of the pictures! We are just hanging out for the next few weeks of summer until we hit up Utah with Eric when he goes TDY in August just before the girls start school. He will miss their first day of school, but I'm sure Nichole will be more excited to hear we're going to visit our "blue house" and her friend Lexi than worrying about whether or not Eric is around for her first day of school.

Until then...

Backtrack... again.

Ok so it takes me a while to get things updated, but eventually I get there. We just got back from a trip to New Hampshire and it was a ton of fun, as it always is. The girls had a blast playing with everyone even though we had half our trip filled with rainy days! Before we left, Eric had two other shows with the band and it's always fun to see him play. Not sure when the next show will be since the guys are starting back up on their busy TDY schedule. Over the next few months, we will be putting in the list of places we'd like to move next and shortly after that, finding out where we will be heading to next with the AF. I'm excited to find out where our journey will be taking us.

Back to New Hampshire since that's the big event from the past few weeks. I will throw a few of the pics on here, but obviously it's easier to keep up on the pictures side of things if you are on Facebook. Yea, I know, I'm lame, but it's SO much easier to upload the photos to there :) Anyway. We got to NH with a few delays but made it nonetheless and began 10 days of family filled fun! I have learned to cherish each moment you have with family and it is such a blessing to be a part of a family, even as crazy as we are! Once you see the pics, you'll understand what I mean. We had an "Internet Cafe" going at "Hornsby Haven" (my parents cottage in NH), a day trip to Boston where my little sister ran into a blind man in the pouring rain so the day trip was cut short, fireworks on the boat, kettle corn, playing cards late into the evening, jet ski rides, watched Eric wakeboard, tried to get Nichole to waterski, got Aunt Kelly to waterski, family dinners, more jet skiing after purchasing wet suits b/c the water was so cold and it kept raining, celebrated Eric's 30th!! birthday, broke into an old safe in the basement at my grandparents, had Eric fix the family boat, beach time down at Back Bay, ice cream at Uncle Bill's, Russ Bell Memorial Golf Tournament and dinner, Johnsons for family dinner, putt putt and many more great laughs as we shared time and sat around with family. This is a time I look forward to each year and although G-Man and Gigi may not be able to make it up there next summer due to G-Man (hopefully) having a lung transplant by then, we are hoping to still make a trip there and meet up with the rest of the family, as long as we're in country as we say. I wish the weather would have been better, but all in all it was a great time of relaxing and enjoying each other's company. Now that we're back to reality, it really stinks! I'll put pics in another post just to save myself some headache. Look for those soon. Off to get a P90X workout in before naptime ends!

Double Down!!

Eric's squadron has a band they put together about a year ago or so called Double Down and Eric has talked about wanting to play guitar for a while. Well, this gave him the perfect excuse to really practice up! The band practiced a few times all together and I got the joy of listening to Eric practice constantly. They had their first show that included a new drummer and Eric this past Friday night. He had a blast and I had fun watching him. They have a few more shows coming up where hopefully he'll get to the point that he can look up from his guitar and not be concentrating so much though :) Now to come to terms with being married to not only a fighter pilot, but a rock star too! HAHA!

Nothing like a picture mid song with the guitarist ;)

Before the show..his guitar strap matches the band perfectly! Good on ya G-Man! :)

Eric and our neighbor

Half of the band. I'm not sure Eric ever looked up from his guitar he was too busy concentrating.

After his first show! :)

Kamp Kunf

After a long few weeks, we decided that over Memorial Day weekend we'd head to Atlanta to visit Aunt Sarah and Uncle Frank. It was so nice to just sit and relax without having to worry about the hustle and bustle of day to day life. Even though it was only for 2 nights, it was a great distraction and the kids love going to visit Frankie, Micah and Baby Ruthie :) The kids enjoyed playing Wii (of course), jumping on the trampoline, staying up late and just plain hanging out!

We spent a little while walking on the river, well, Mommy and Baby Ruthie stayed on the shore while everyone else as least dipped their feet in. Nichole and all the boys had fun.

The girls had a blast having company in the bath with them. Baby Ruthie is too cute!

Daddy had me a little worried about how low that trampoline was going. All the kiddos! They got along great and they all love getting to spend time together! Thank you Kunf gang for letting us come crash for a few days and escape reality :) We love you guys and hope it's not another few months before we see you again!

Making the best with what life deals us...

I once again have been reminded just how blessed I am over the past month. It has been a very trying month for us both as an immediate family and as an extended family. We were already working through some things when I got word of my cousin's passing and I was starting to wonder how much God really thought I could handle. I kept reminding myself of Jeremiah 29:11 and telling myself that God has a reason for us going through everything. I may not understand it now and over the past few days even though things have settled down, I still try find myself trying to figure it all out. I'm not sure I ever will, but I know that God is in control and I need to be at peace with that. I have a family that loves me and I have a family that I love. Distance is never an excuse and while family members or loved ones may let you down, that's no excuse not to continue loving them and wanting the best for them. There is always someone you can find with a heartache worse than yours. So as a favorite quote of mine says "Dance like no one is watching, love like you'll never be hurt, sing like no one is listening and live like it's Heaven on Earth".

G-Man with two of his favorite girls. Being uncle to quite a few girls, having 2 daughters and 2 granddaughters.. he's got a lot of favorite girls! :)

The "Hornsby Family" at breakfast one morning.

Those left behind... All the cousins on the Hornsby side, minus Dani :(

The older generations of cousins, again, minus Dani :(

May: Dance/Friends, Mom's Muffins, Mother's Day, end of preschool, etc

Ok, so I got ahead on work and have a few minutes to update a few things on here. May found us saying goodbye to friends (and a family member), enjoying Mom's Muffins at Nichole's school, ending Nichole's preschool days and many other things that will be blogged about separately. To start the month, we headed Mommy and Nichole had a mother/daughter day while we spent the afternoon with our best friends. Nichole and Kaity were in class together this past year and Kaity's Mommy and I were great friends, except on the crud table ;) We were sad to hear that Kaity's Daddy would be spending a year in Korea, thus taking Kaitlyn and her Mommy (ok and lil man Ryan too) away from us at the school year's end. Nichole had a blast watching Kaity's dance recital and lucky for me, never really said anything about dying to be up on stage herself! (whew!) I'm just a sports girl, not so much into the dance and cheerleading bit :) Anyway, we got to spend the afternoon watching, having slumber parties and got to celebrate Kaity's birthday (a little early) with her before she left town. We miss you Kaity Mac!

Nichole had gotten a shot one day to update her shots at the doctor and while I got the child (Em) who as long as I talked to her while they were doing her shots, Daddy got to go in with Nichole who is most definitely her mother's daughter and he had to promise lots of things, one being that Mommy would straighten her hair the next day. Thanks Daddy! Anyway, this was Mom's Muffins at Nichole's school where I learned that she likes it when Mommy wears dresses. I think she has that backwards and is really talking about herself since I honestly can't remember the last time Nichole wore shorts! It was just before Mom's Muffins that I found out I would be going home to FL to say goodbye to my little cousin Danielle, but more on that again in another blog.

Mother's Day 2009 before church.

Nichole's "end of the year party" for preschool was at Swan Lake. All these pictures were "pre duck attack". Swan Lake is evil if you ask me :) This is another one of Nichole's best friends named Scott. We're glad that even though they found out Scott's Daddy will also be going to Korea, we think they've decided to stay here and we are super excited about that. Nichole would be a mess losing 2 best friends in such a short time! And so would Mommy!

Nichole with a few of her classmates, Jordan and Hayden.

Playing on the playground at Swan Lake

Colee was always excited when she would get to school and see Mrs. Shannon, her teacher. This was the night of "graduation" and to this day, Nichole talks about wanting to go back and see Mrs. Shannon. We LOVED Mrs. Shannon. She was an AWESOME preschool teacher!

Sisterly love on Nichole's last day in her preschool

8 year anniversary!!

So I'll backdate this to 4 June. 8 years ago was one of the happiest days of my life. Thus began our journey together and here we are 8 years later with two beautiful baby girls and our 4 legged wedding present to each other :) It was a small and intimate ceremony with like 35 people to include the wedding party, but I wouldn't change a thing about the day, well except to have had Grandma Hornsby there in person! Thanks to all those who shared in the day with us and those who later celebrated with us at our receptions at home in FL. Thank you to those who have been there for us the past 8 years as well as life has brought us across many different states and brought us into parenthood. I can't wait to spend the next 72 years with my hubby! Ok, so maybe not 72 b/c we'd be REALLY old by then. Either way, I love my 'True Companion'.

One of my favorite all time pictures of my baby sister, Kylie from our wedding day. Isn't she just too cute?:) Reminds me of Nichole and Emily.

The priest, Father McGee who flew out to Colorado Springs from Florida to marry us and he later baptized Nichole. Unfortunately, he passed away while Eric was deployed the first time before he could baptize Emily:( We were so grateful for him coming out to marry us though. He has wise words for us, and our parents;)

Father/Daughter dance to "She Walks with Me" by Michael W Smith

My first pic with "my two dads" :) Love these men!

Update?

Ok, be prepared. Sit back, grab a cup of coffee or whatever it is you think you'll need to make it through my novel of an update. My guess is most of you, if there are more than like 4 that look at this, are either on Facebook and have seen all the recent pictures of my two precious angels (I only call them that b/c they are now sleeping soundly:)) or are family and therefore, you know what's going on in our lives. Or maybe you don't. But either way, I can only take so much time to recap the last few months and add so many pictures so I'll do my best. Be sure to see my post below this one though so you don't miss out on the most recent events.

I'm just going to skip over Epcot, b/c let's be real here, the two princesses we took could have cared less about Epcot once the Princess Breakfast was over.

There's your one picture from Epcot. Others should be on the link (at the top right side of the main page) you are supposed to click on to see the pictures galore, but I have no idea at this point if they really are. If someone finds they aren't and wants to point that out to me, more power to you.

Somewhere in there, we made a trip back home to see G-Man and Gigi, guess it was the beginning of February which is well before Disney. Hmm... I'm way behind. Anyway, G-Man decided to walk in a 5K for Sheridan House Ministries and we wanted to show our support, so while we would have liked to surprise him, we went ahead and let him know to add us to his list of supporters that we would be walking with him. It was a quick weekend but the girls were great and had a blast hanging out!




Next, Aunt Leah Peah made a trip back to visit us and watch the girls for a much needed Mommy/Daddy get away! The girls always love it when Aunt Leah visits even though they generally know that means Mommy won't be home. Eric had already been TDY, so I decided to join him and got to see some good friends of ours while we were there. Too bad their baby spit up all over me. Doesn't she know I'm not a baby person?! HA, right. Thanks Gwen! I'll never forget being spit up on in Benihana:) You get two pictures of us from Vegas, b/c of course, what's a group of pictures without Eric sticking out his tongue?? I love this man! :) (And quite honestly, I love how my arms look buff, so why not show 2 pictures of it right? Just wish they were still that buff. In time.)


Apparently nothing fun happened in March, b/c I don't seem to have any pictures from that month worthy of making it on here. (Phew!) April, however, now that's a different story and I'm sure those aren't on that pictures galore, but one day, again, if someone mentions it to me and they haven't already seen them on Facebook, I'll get them on there. April brought a girls weekend for Mommy was super excited about. I was going with about 10 other gals from both here in town and other AF friends that came back to run the Cooper River Bridge Run.
It was a 10K and oh my word, was I ever scared. I had never run more than a 5K and I certainly wasn't training for it, but hey, it was really just to get a weekend away with some of my best friends! I ended up surprising myself and feeling pretty accomplished due to running it in 1:11:44! For not training for something like this, I was proud of myself and I can't wait to do it again next year. It was so cool to be running over the bridge even though I was running "by myself" with 30,000 of my closest friends as G-Man likes to always call them. Anyway, the girl time was awesome and I had a blast hanging with some great gals, even sitting on the floor in the produce section of Food Lion with our receipt for the bananas we purchased to eat before the race. And by the way, Amy's not here. Haha.


After running the race of my life, to date, we headed home for some much needed "leave" for Eric. He hadn't been home to FL since we moved to SC which was surprising considering we had said how great this assignment would be and we mentioned how we could even make trips home for long weekends. Ha, how wrong we were! Not with the schedule here! Anyway, we started the trip stopping by to see Daddy's side of the family and enjoyed hanging out with everyone. The girls had a blast dying Easter eggs for the first time ever, yea I'm a lame mom b/c I still wasn't' the one who initiated that event! :) Anywho, here is the good ol family picture from before Easter mass. I'm blessed to have girls that usually don't mind posing for the camera and a husband who plays the game for me :)
The girls also had fun playing around in the pool and Daddy was super excited to get them their first snorkel and mask set each. It now transfers from their pool at home to the bathtub each night.

After spending some time with Daddy's side of the family, we headed a little more south to see Mommy's side of the family and spend a few days with them. We of course got to see all the wildlife that runs around G-Man and Gigi's house yet again to include the millions of baby frogs. Talk about gross! Nichole didn't think so since she wanted to catch as many of them as she could and put them in her "Dollar Store" bug carrier thing. Gag me. In the pic below, all those things that look like little stones, yea, those would be baby frogs. Ugh, just thinking about it gets me all creeped out. Yuck. Moving along...

Daddy then took the girls and headed back to visit with Giga, Nana and Nana Alice some more while I stayed back and hung out with my family some more. We had my little cousin Lindsey's sweet 16 birthday party to attend and while it would have been fun to have Eric and the girls there, we needed the air conditioning in the car to be fixed more.

Kel, it's really too bad your eyes were closed for this one, but hey, that's you, the hot mess:)
Two of my favorite younger sibs! Well, one is my sib, the other is the birthday girl and my little cousin:)

Lindsey apparently wanted nothing more than a kitten for her birthday and Kelly made it happen! What a great big sister! Love you all!

This all brings us to the past few weeks. We've been back from vacation and life is busy as usual. We got a new car... er, mini van, so we have joined the mini van club that all my cool friends are in and don't tell Eric I said this, but he secretly likes it. I won't say "loves" it, b/c that'd just be a little over the top, but he likes how roomy it is. And no, we're not having more kids, but the extra room is sure still nice especially since I tend to find myself with at least one or two extra kids on a daily basis. It's all good.

And the final thing to update on... whew, I'm tired, are you? Nichole no longer has training wheels. Yea, it took us a while, she is our less daring child, whereas Emily, she got herself a "big girl bike" and wanted the training wheels off before she even got on the thing! Fear not, we are having her ride around with the training wheels for a bit, quite possibly b/c we're lazy, but my guess is by the end of the summer, neither one will have them.

Ok, well that brings us to my most recent post below this. I will be traveling home on Monday for my little cousin's funeral. Please pray for our family through this time that even though we don't know the reason behind it, God has plans.

See you in July or August;) School starts in August, maybe that will be my next post :)

RIP Dani

I realize I am way behind on posts and I have no excuse other than my life is completely fast paced and I live hour by hour lately. So, one day, you'll eventually see the pics from our last day at Disney and then maybe even an update or two since then, considering that was almost 3 months ago! My, how time does fly.

On a sadder note, my younger cousin Danielle passed away this past week. It's been tough on the family and I will travel home for a quick trip to be at the service and be with family, but will sadly have to leave Eric and the girls behind due to some things going on here in SC. This is the Dani I love and remember. These few pics were taken when we were in New Hampshire at Alton Bay when Nichole was about 8 months old back in July of 2004. Unfortunately, our lives have taken us in different directions the past few years, but that doesn't mean I won't miss her. I love you Dani and will see you again one day. Say hello to Grandma Hornsby for me!

This is the Danielle I will miss.

RIP Dani

Nov 12, 1983-May 8, 2009