Get to know us!

Name: James Owen Thompson
Birthday: 1-07-76
Favorite color: blue
Favorite toy: Xbox 360
Favorite food: mexican
Favorite thing to do: Friday night video games, goof off.

Name: Jodi Elizabeth Thompson
Birthday: 4-14-81
Favorite color: blue
Favorite toy: Nikon
Favorite food: Steak, baked potato and a salad in the summer
Favorite thing to do: photography

Name: Kaylee Yvonne Thompson
Birthday: 6-12-99
Favorite color: pink
Favorite toy: pet shop
Favorite food: pizza
Favorite thing to do: play Zelda on the DS

Name: Nathan James Thompson
Birthday: 7-16-01
Favorite color: red
Favorite toy: Mario
Favorite food: pizza
Favorite thing to do: Play Mario on the Wii

Name: Emily Ila Thompson
Birthday:9-17-07
Favorite color: pink
Favorite toy: anything she can chew on
Favorite food: milk
Favorite thing to do: Play helicopter with her daddy

Stuff about us:
What we do on the weekends: We usually spend our weekends hanging out and having some family time. Sometimes the kids go to my mom's house and then Jimmy and I get some time alone. If the weather is warmer we spend a lot of time outside on the weekends. We also go to South Haven a lot to visit family.
Favorite places to go: The kids just love to go to school...HA! As a family we like to watch a movie. We also like to go out for dinner. The kids love to go to Nana's and Papa's house and Crazy bounce has always been a favorite.
Favorite stores: I love Hobby Lobby, Bath and Body Works, Gap, New York and Company, and Kohls. Kaylee likes Pet stores, places she can find earrings, toy stores, and candy stores. Nathan likes toys stores, candy stores and would love it if there was a Mario store. Jimmy likes Best Buy, Best Buy and Best Buy. Emily doesn't care as long as she's fed and happy.
Favorite things to do in the spring: On warm spring days we like to go on bike rides and maybe take a walk or go to the park. I like to go out and find my favorite flower daffodil's and smell the fresh spring air.
Favorite things to do in the summer: We love to go swim and Nana's pool. We love cookouts and fireworks and going to the beach. We love going to pick strawberries, cherries and peaches and then eating them. We love catching fireflies and looking for shooting stars. Summer is our favorite.
Favorite things to do in the fall: We love to rake piles of leaves and jump in them (the kids do most of the jumping). We like to go apple picking and on walks. We like to send the kids back to school (that would be me). We love Thanksgiving and eating a big dinner at Grandma's house.
Favorite things to do in the winter: The kids love to go out and play in the snow. I like to watch them from in the house. They love it when their daddy builds hills of snow that they can sled down. Our favorite holiday is in winter, CHRISTMAS!! Nathan loves hot chocolate and asks for it every time he even walks outside.
Favorite treats: Kaylee loves sour candy. Nathan loves gummi bears. Jodi loves Jelly belly's. Jimmy loves Jr. Mints. Mmm... and we all love Ice Cream!
What Jimmy and I like to do when we have together time: After getting over the shock of not having any children with us we usually go out for dinner or see a movie. If it's actually warm out (happens three months out of the year) we'll go walk the pier or maybe a bike ride.
What the kids like to do when they're without mommy and daddy: They love to play at Nana's and Papa's and sometimes Grams and Grandpa's house. They talk their grandparents into spoiling them ROTTEN! Sometimes they get to go to the movies and sometimes out for dinner and sometimes sleepovers.
Favorite Holidays: We all love Christmas. I love it because people usually seem happier around the holidays, I love the memories from the past, I love family time and getting the house all snazzy, I love the lights on the tree. Kaylee loves making Christmas cards for everyone. Nathan loves decorating the house and actually remembers where I put everything each year. Jimmy loves being Mr. Santa.
What we love: We love each other! We love spending time with family, goofing of, playing games and having fun. We love watching the kids have fun and watching them grow. Time goes by so fast sometimes it seems like it was just yesterday when Kaylee was a toddler and Nathan a baby. We enjoy the time we have with each other.

Emily and mommy:

Pictures Pictures Pictures!

I can not believe it's one already! Today has flown by. I've been busy with my little pumpkin princess all day today, we've been taking some pictures. Now she's napping and I just finished editing a few of my favorites. I'm going to post them all on her blog page and in my family album on flickr. I've been on a mission to get her five month pictures done today and then I'll be trying to get past pictures ready so I can get an order together. She did pretty good taking pictures today even though she was ready for a nap. I put her in a cute little sun dress because we both want it to warm up outside!! Now that I've got her pictures done I need to hustle my butt downstairs and work out!! Jimmy has been working on giving my website a face lift and also I'm working on a flier to send out. I'm really excited about that!! What we've got done so far looks really nice. Even though it's snowing AGAIN out I know spring isn't far away and then starts busy busy times. I must admit I do enjoy having winter be slower. I've really really love the time I've had with Emily. This spring I'm going to have to figure out some sort of babysitter situation for the weekdays. I try to take most appointments Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Guess we will see how this spring and summer work out. I've got a cute video today, Emily in the tub again but this time by herself. She does a great job just hanging out on her back splashing around. She's starting to sit up by herself now but I don't trust her to do that in the tub yet. Here's the video:

Snowy winter day.

What a big girl! She's been getting on her hands and knees already!






Today is just another normal/average day. Lets see I woke up and fed Emily around eight then she rolled around the floor for awhile. I started a load of laundry and put a roast in the crock pot. Then at nine I played with Emily for about and half hour and then put her down in her crib for a nap and headed downstairs for a good hour of cardio + weights, ew. Afterwards I crawled back upstairs and saw that Jimmy had wrote me so I wrote him back and then headed outside to take some winter pictures because it's beautiful out after all that snow! Don't get me wrong, I still want winter to come to a quick end but snow sure is pretty. Now I've just downloaded the pictures onto my computer and writing my blog. I'll probably spend the rest of the day folding some laundry, taking care of my Emily monster and having a nice chat with my good friend Nicole and if I have some extra time before I have to get the kids from school I'll read a little. AHhh.. sounds nice and relaxing maybe I'll even make myself a cup of hot cocoa and really top things off. Oh Oh Oh! I almost forgot!! Jimmy came home with a bunch of flower yesterday. Tulips and daisies, I have them in vases all around the house. It really reminds me of spring and they sure are cheerful! Thanks honey!! I swear roses are nice to get every once in awhile but my FAVORITE is pretty spring flowers and I love them even more when winter starts to feel long and drawn out. Enjoy some pictures I took of all the snow:
Front of our house:











Front of house from the side:














Black and white of a tree:



















Snow covered branches:




















Close up of a branch:



















A little unrelated but here's a video of Nathan reading I took last night:

Finishing touches

So this weekend was spent finishing up a few house projects. We have someone coming out to appraise the house today so Mr. House needs to be looking it's best. My parents came up on Saturday. My Dad was a big help getting trim and such up and finished. My mom and I ran to Kohl's and did a little shopping. It feels odd going places without the baby. I always feel like I'm missing something... like a baby. Anyhow, I got a couple pairs of pants that don't fall off my butt. Feels strange not to be pulling up my pants all the time. My mom brought her home made spaghetti sauce so we had spaghetti for lunch, very yummy. Emily actually ate some baby food on Saturday night, she usually spits it out or gags on it. I swear she was just showing off for my parents, trying to make a liar out of her mommy or something. Stinker...lets see if she eats any today. Sunday was spent doing some touch up painting, filling in nail holes and cleaning up the house. Fun stuff, everyone is jealous!! Jimmy made Enchiladas for dinner, now you know you're jealous of that. Well C.J. isn't jealous because he doesn't like anything except candy and pizza. Anyhow, thanks honey they were yummy! I'm heading to the store to do some grocery shopping, yippee. I HATE grocery shopping in the winter. It's too cold.

Anyhow here's some video of the honey at work:

Trim:



















Aw.. he's got his tongue out it's cute:



















What Emily was doing while daddy was working:

Great Wolf Lodge Part Three

The kids loved the water park!! Kaylee and Nathan did such a good job being brave and going on everything! Emily cracked us all up by squealing the whole time she was in the park. She loved the water spraying up from the ground.
I was surprised that she was so good, I thought for sure she'd be cranky but really she was happy almost the whole time. Jimmy and I took turns taking the kids down the bigger tube water slides but the kids were big enough to go down the regular water slides by themselves. They liked going in the hot tub and playing in the lazy river but they both really loved going down the big slides. I was shocked that Nathan actually went down them and even more shocked that he kept wanting to go down them again and again. He wasn't quite brave enough to go under the bucket but I think at some point Jimmy got him to do it. Kaylee would run over under the bucket every time she heard the bell ring. Jimmy did a good job taking some pictures and video of the park so check them out below.

Video of the day:
Bucket drop:

Lazy River:

Splashing around in the little pool:

Pictures of the Water park:
Emily squealing at the water:



















Nathan sliding:



















Emily loved it!!



















Bucket Drop:



















Splish Splash:



















Water everywhere:



















Relaxing in the lazy river with Emily:



















The slides the kids went down by themselves:

Great Wolf Lodge Part two

Part two is all about the Magi Quest!! The kids loved it just as much as the water park. We took the kids to the Magi Quest store in the hotel, there they pick out a wand and have it registered in their name. Kaylee was Princess Kaylee and Nathan was Sir Nathan. Lot's of fun stuff. After that they headed downstairs for some training in the training room and then they went back up to the trees to pick a quest. The quests are basically finding different objects around the hotel. There was one quest where we had to find five different colored crystals. After you complete the quest you check back in and pick another, if you get lost you can stop at one of the stations and it will show you what you've found and what you have left to do. You can also use the wand to fight a Ogre and a Dragon and help a Fairy fix a crystal. There are different chests with treasure and animals and such you can talk to along the way. They really enjoyed playing. Jimmy even took them back out that first night to play from 10 to 12, what a fun dad! I think he was enjoying it too. So I've got some video and pictures from it posted below. Tomorrow I'll finish up our little adventure with the water park!! And yes I did enjoy using different colors for different words!

Videos of the Day:
Princess Kaylee getting her wand:

Choosing a quest:

Discovering treasure:


Pictures:
Dueling wands:














They zapped me!












Magic book:













Pixie house:



















Lighting the torch:



















Enchanted forest:


















Lighting the fairy crystal:














Outside the Dragon's Lair:



















Fighting the Dragon:



















Found a Crystal:



















Light up the Pixie Crystal:



















Shh.. he's sleeping:

Great Wolf Lodge Part One:

I've got a ton of video and pictures to share from our trip so I'm going to break it up into three parts and hopefully I can cover everything. Today I'm posting video of the kids in the room when we first arrived and then later that night we took them to the arcade so there is video from that. We got a package deal where the kids got 100 tokens for the arcade and then they got to go on the Magi quest (more about that later). So we arrived at the hotel around 3:00. Jimmy went in and got our room and then we headed upstairs to check it out. While poor Jimmy ran up and down the stairs 50 times to bring all our stuff up I took the kids on a little walk around the hotel. We checked out the magi quest game and then checked out the water park and then headed back to find Jimmy. Emily was so good, she looked around at everything and spent half the time squealing at everything and everyone. Silly baby. We went to the water park first, kids were so brave! They went on everything several times! Emily liked to sit in the toddler pool and squeal, she also liked going round the lazy river. After the water park we dried off and then headed over to the Magi Quest store so Kaylee and Nathan could get their wands. I'm going to put up pictures and video of the Magi Quest tomorrow and go into more detail about that then. After they tried out their wands we headed over to the arcade. I strapped Emily to the front of me and Jimmy had the cameras. Kaylee took after her mommy and liked the ski ball game. Nathan wanted to play any game that he could win a prize on. Jimmy ended up winning 90 tickets on a game, go Jimmy. Emily just watched and squealed and then at the end fell asleep, poor tired over stimulated baby. So we headed upstairs and got ready for bed after that. Everyone was worn out from the long trip up and all the stuff we did at the hotel. So here's the pictures and video's for part one:

Video of the day:
Kids in the room:

At the arcade:

Nathan the strong man:



Pictures:
In the room













Getting attacked by bears:













The story chair:













Huge fire place:













copying the suit of armor:



















Giant Bear:



















Giant Bear 2:



















Going up:



















Kaylee and Nathan:













Arcade:

We're back!

We're back from our mini vacation!! We all had a lot of fun and got to spend some much needed time together. We just got back this afternoon and luckily the weather behaved enough that the drive up and back were pleasant. No nasty roads or whiteouts. The kids had a blast and Emily was such a good girl, thank goodness I was nervous that she'd be harder to deal with.

Video of the day:
Here we our on the way up to the Lodge:

Waiting in the car for Daddy to check in:

Pictures:
The kids waiting for Daddy to check in:
The buffalo:













Kaylee waiting:












Emily waiting:













Nathan waiting:

Thompson Family is checking out!

Video of the Day:


Another older video from right after Emily was born. Aww.. her poor little cone head. This one is really short! Here are a few pictures from the first day home too:
Emily and Papa:


















Uncle Cory:


















Me trying to burp her:













So I won't be blogging for the next couple days because Jimmy decided to take us all up north for a little vacation!! We're taking the kids to the Great Wolf Lodge. We all need it after the last couple of months being so stressful. Now that we're over that junk we are on to a happier future and looking forward to some bonding time. We've been to the Great Wolf Lodge before a few years ago and had a lot of fun. Now everyone is bigger so we're hoping to have even more fun! I'm ready to sit in a hot tub... ahhh. We're bringing along Miss Emily of course. I got her some swimmer diapers and I'll bring her in the lazy river with me. I'm sure that will be interesting, she's pretty good in the bath so I think she'll be good in the water here as well. We are bring the camera so once I get back I'll be sure to post video and blog all about it!! Love everyone!! Talk to you soon!