People We Love

Of course I didn't get pictures of everyone despite the fact that I was taking pictures constantly! When I look at these faces it really makes me wish we weren't so far away!

Here's a glimpse of just a few of the Chattertons we love:

McKenna with her Chatterton cousins: L to R Brooklyn, Jack and Olivia
Aunt Angel and McKenna

Olivia with her grandmom, Aunt Sue!

Aunt Robin came a long way just to hold McKenna.

Look at how happy Zavier is with his Grampy Chatt!

The perfect picture of Gracey and Aunt Angel.

Grammy Chatt playing peek-a-boo with McKenna.

Uncle Bob is an incredible guy. He's always got a story to tell! The party starts when he arrives!

Zavier and Aunt Lindsey! We got to spend some great time with them! We were thrilled that Aunt Lindsey didn't have to work while we were there!

Illinois Favorites

Each of us left Illinois with a different favorite memory!

Ryan probably had the most fun riding the go-kart with Christian. The two of them flew around the farm, at speeds that made this mommy very nervous, for hours.


Christian loved this too of course and he sobbed when Grampy put the go-kart away! My two boys had such a great time with that go-kart!

Christian was really anticipating a pony ride the entire way to Illinois, but then he was a little nervous once he actually saw the pony. Ryan's Uncle Bob has a little farm of his own and he has several horses. This pony named Beauty is starting to become a Thanksgiving tradition for us. Christian originally didn't want to ride Beauty, but then he got to feed her and walk her around the barnyard and then he decided to have a little ride! He was delighted and quite proud of himself!

Christian's cousin Gracey has NO fear. She mounted Beauty right away.
And even did a few tricks!

My favorite thing about our trip to Illinois was getting to meet my precious nephew Zavier for the first time and getting to see McKenna interact with him. They were so cute together.

And this picture basically captured my favorite moment of our visit! That's Olivia giving McKenna a hug! You guys know all about Olivia, so I don't have to tell you how teary it makes me just to look in Olivia's beautiful brown eyes. My heart has pleaded with God so many times to heal this precious girl and it was such a delight to get to see her and love on her and watch her play and share her toys with McKenna. Olivia looks so good and is really doing well! Thank God my kids were healthy so we could get to be together!

On the FARM

Can you see why Christian loves to visit the farm? Grampy does a pretty good job of keeping Christian entertained.

There is so much to climb on and explore!

Don't even think for a second that Christian sat on every tractor, there were at least a dozen he didn't climb on!

And then there was the go kart! More on that later...

A Thank Filled Day

Thanksgiving Day at the Chatterton Farm

Our fun day started when cousin Gracey and Zavier arrived with Uncle Beez and Aunt Lindsey. This was our first time to meet Zavier since he's two months younger than McKenna. The kids had fun exchanging Christmas presents and Christian and Gracey played so well together!


That's cutie pie Zavier in the background!

Gracey showing off the dress she got for McKenna!

Aunt Lindsey and Zavier.

Gracey was excited to get her first Polly Pockets!


McKenna and Zavier checking each other out!

Mary Ellen was busy in the kitchen most of the day getting ready for our big family meal.

And then the rest of the relatives started pouring in. Grampy Chat, Uncle Bob and Uncle Beez with Zavier!

The children's table! Trust me, that's just a few of the children. Gracey, Ella and Emma (yup, we've got an Emma on both sides of the family) playing Polly Pockets. We've also got a Hannah on both sides of the family.

Hannah, Joe, Jake and Luke (all siblings)!

Missy and Evan (can you guess who Evan looks like?)

The house was full, just the way you want it on Thanksgiving. Tons of kids running around, adults catching up and telling stories and lots of yummy food!

Luke got a cool hotwheels toy in the gift exchange.

Christian and Gracey both got MP3 players. You wouldn't believe how excited those two three year olds were about their MP3 players that didn't even have music on them yet. Christian knew exactly what it was when he opened it!

We wrapped up the night with our annual fireworks display. It wasn't as great as it usually is because I didn't let Ryan bring any with us this year. I just have issues with a car packed with children and fireworks....hmmm...just doesn't sound like a good combination to me. So next year we're going to have to do better.

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It was a great day! We were thankful to finally make it to Illinois. Thankful to be back on the farm. Thankful to be able to visit with so many precious family members. Thankful for yummy food and early Christmas presents. Christian was definitely most thankful for the go-kart, but I'll save that for another post :)

This might help...only if you really want to know!

The Chatterton side of our family is huge! This is only for those of you who really want to know and understand who all those people are in our Thanksgiving pictures. Here's the breakdown.



Ryan has two siblings; Robert (Uncle Beez) married to Aunt Lindsey and Angel (Aunt Ang)



Robert and Lindsey have two children Gracey (two months older than Christian) and Zavier born two months after McKenna. Lindsey and I always seem to get pregnant at the same time :)



Ryan's parents are Dick and Mary Ellen Chatterton (Grampy and Grammy) and Ryan's mom Dixie went to be with Jesus when he was 14. Mary Ellen has three children Melissa, Becky and Bill. And they all have kids of their own too.



Ryan's Dad has one living sister; Aunt Robin married to Uncle Frank. He also has two brother's Uncle Bob (the guy with the horses) married to Aunt Karen, and Uncle Rod married to Aunt Sue. Rod and Sue are the parents of Zac (and Amy and Ty) and Zac is the daddy of Olivia (and Jack and Brooklyn). That's how we're related to Olivia.



Did you get all that?? I'm sure most of you don't care, but I thought I would put it in writing so it could sort of be understood.

Our NOT-SO-GREAT travel plans!

This year we decided to get a head start on our way to Illinois for Thanksgiving and we left right after Ryan got home from work on Tuesday night. Our plan was to let the kids fall asleep in the car and drive at least five hours. That plan did not work. Here's how our night went:

6:15pm Left our house

6:40pm Christian asks if we're there yet :)

7:00pm We head over our first mountain and see black ice on the road

7:15pm The first snow flakes begin to fall

7:45pm The roads are starting to get bad

8:00pm It's like a blizzard outside. Traffic creeping. No visibility

8:15pm We realize that we've got to stop

So we only made it two hours the first night, leaving us 11 more hours to cover the next day :( We were still in Pennsylvania. We should have just stayed home and left the next morning!)

When we woke up in the morning there was 8-10inches on the ground. I took this picture from the hotel window of Ryan cleaning off our car.

Thankfully Christian is great in the car. He easily entertains himself. See the snow out the car window?

McKenna really did great too, although you have to be pretty involved with her. I was sitting in the backseat for most of the trip to Illinois and we played endless games of peek-a-boo. One DVD player is a bit of a problem when one child is facing forward and one child is facing backward, so believe it or not, McKenna got to watch the most TV. Christian had other stuff to entertain himself with!

We arrived in Illinois at 10:00pm on Wednesday night!

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Do you even want to hear about our trip home? Probably not! It was by far the worst trip of my life. Seriously, the worst. We left Illinois at 5pm on Saturday night and our plan was to drive all the way home through the night. We've done it before and traffic is horrible on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, so we were going to go for it! Once again, that plan quickly fell apart.

About two hours into the drive I started feeling bad. I thought that maybe I was just carsick from sitting in the back, so Ryan switched with me and I drove for awhile. Unfortunately, I had to stop about a half an hour later to get sick on the side of the road. This happened multiple times over the next three hours until I finally couldn't take it anymore. We got a hotel suite when we were almost to Ohio and I got the bedroom with the king sized bed all to myself because it was closest to the bathroom. I spent the entire night throwing up. Ryan and Christian slept on the pull out couch in the other room. I felt so bad that I had the comfy room, but they didn't seem to notice. They slept through the night, unlike me. Was it a stomach bug? Flu? Food poisoning? I have no idea. I just know it was terrible. I hardly slept all night and we had to hit the road the next morning because we had to get home because of the trial on Monday morning. I didn't want to sit in the back with the kids because we didn't want them to catch what I had, so I had to drive. And the trip home took almost 11 more hours.

This is McKenna on the last leg of the trip. She was over it by this point and her mommy and daddy were discussing flight plans for next years Thanksgiving trip.

Christian with his new binoculars from Cracker Barrel. They have a light on them, so they were perfect for nighttime driving!

When we pulled in the driveway Grandmom was already at our house. She had the thermostat turned back up, the dishwasher emptied and laundry going. What a relief to be home even if it was just for a few hours of sleep before hitting the road again for the trip to MD.

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So the bottom line is that our travel time was pretty rough! Thankfully we had a wonderful Thanksgiving! The Thanksgiving part was GREAT!! Christian cried his eyes out when we had to leave. He did not want to go home. We had such special time with all the Chattertons and were so blessed that so many of them took off work and drove out of their way to have special time with us! I have so fabulous pictures to share and wonderful stories! I'll get to it, but right now I'm heading to bed. Ahhh...to sleep in my own bed!

Where do I even begin?

It's been a week since I've been online (other than a little lurking by way of Ryan's blackberry). I just don't even know where to start, I have so much to share.

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I guess I should start by telling you that it took us 15 very, very long hours to get home from Illinois. And I might add that my son is the best car traveler ever! We got home around 10pm last night and I left at 5am this morning to head to Maryland to testify. It's been a long couple of days. I'm home now and so thankful to be here. Ready to get my kids back into their schedules. The cousins arrive bright and early tomorrow morning and I've got a lot to do before then!

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Thanks so much for thinking of me and praying for me today. I didn't get to read the depositions of those involved in this trial until early this morning (they were sent to my parent's house since I wasn't home at the end of last week). After reading the depositions and finding a few glaring inaccuracy's in the defendant's statements, and after driving over the accident scene three times, and after praying about my testimony for most of my drive to MD, I felt very confident about the statements I was going to make in court. The accident was almost two years ago and I wanted to make sure that I clearing spoke the truth and did not exaggerate anything or let anyone influence my words. I was definitely nervous especially once I realized that three lawyers were going to be questioning and cross examining me, but once I took the stand I was really calm. None of the lawyers really grilled me, they just asked straight forward questions that I was able to easily answer. The trial started at 9:30am and we finally got a verdict around 3:30pm. The person who hit my car was found guilty of being negligent, which was in my opinion the appropriate verdict. This doesn't benefit me in anyway, since I wasn't the one suing, but I do believe that I can finally put the accident to rest. Quite frankly I never want to hear about it again. Whew...talk about stressful! I'm glad it's over and I was pleased with how the day went. It was an amazing life experience (that hopefully I'll never repeat) and I got to spend the day with a dear friend!

Happy December!

Wow - December is already here! Our lives are a little crazy this morning. What else is new? We got back from our trip to Illinois yesterday and today I'm in Maryland. I have been court ordered to testify in a trial dealing with the accident I was in two years ago. Please, please pray for me. This is very nerve wracking and this has caused a lot of stress for our family. The jury trial starts at 9:30am and I will be testifying sometime this morning. So pray for me! I need it!

Ryan is heading out of town today for a business trip and my mom had to go to Pennsylvania to watch my kids. So my sweet friend Heather is my moral support today. I'm so thankful she'll be sitting in the court room with me! I'll let you guys know when it's over and I'm home! I hope that's soon!