Funny Friday

Happy Friday! :)

Leftover Thursday

One night we went to church early to set up for bible study. Peaches was running around the sanctuary when I saw her trip and fall into a pew. She started screaming and ran to me holding her ear. At first I was not sympathetic since she does the same thing multiple times a day, but I was having a really hard time getting her calmed down. I finally pulled her back from me to get a look at what she was screaming about and her ear was swelled up to twice it's size, already turning purple, and sticking out from her head!

I laid a bag of ice on my chest so she could rest her head against me and after about twenty minutes the swelling went down. This is what it looked like. OUCH! 

 

And by the next day it was really purple! And still sticking out from the side of her head. And of course this was 48 hours before the dance recital, but I don't think anyone noticed. It stayed like this for over a week and even weeks later still had a line of purple through it.

Lou loves oatmeal!

The black dots are chia seeds. I got a big bag and try to sprinkle them on whatever I can because they are "nutritional powerhouses" according to several of the nutrition bloggers I follow on Instagram.

Peanut's self portrait. She couldn't find any brown paper so she used black and two of the eyelashes fell off before I took this picture.

Sad face!

These picture got lost in the shuffle...Auntie N sent two adorable outfits for Lou's birthday!

"Doin' my schoo-wal!"

Happy Thursday! :)

Wordless Wednesday

"Knock Knock" - Part 3

February 19th

E: "Ina go to Chuck E. Cheese! Ina go to Chuck E. Cheese!" Me: We went to Chuck E. Cheese for your birthday. That was really fun, wasn't it!" E: "I want some mo-wah!"

February 21st

Talking to Noni. Noni explains that she is Mommy's mother and Mommy was a baby once. Noni says, "Let's go see Mama. She's my mommy when I was a baby!" E: "Umm, I don't think so. My sister a baby. You not a baby, Noni." 

February 22nd

She came back from spending the night at Noni's and walked in the door so happy and excited, "Sisters! You are so happy to see me!" 

March 2nd

 She was on the potty. "What's that sme-wull?" Me: "That's you. Your poopy." E: "Dats me?? I don't like it! It tastes icky!" 

March 14th

Playing pretend. "Mommy you got some matoes and some chickens and some leav-es and some cheeses!" 

March 19th

Peaches put a flowered headband on my head while we we were home playing. She was calling me her "Pwin-cess Mommy!" I totally forgot about it and walked into the grocery store with it on! 

March 27th

She was pointing and telling me, "It's dok." Me: "Dok?" Her: "Outside. It's dok." Me: "Oh dark...it's dark." Her: "Yes. You are right. It's dok."

April 7th 

 Boo put on her dance costume. It was bright red, sparkly, and swishy. Peaches gasped when she saw it. "Wow! You like a fire!"

 

:)

Double Digits!!!

I can't believe our beautiful Boo is in double digits! These girls are just growing up way too fast for this Mama! 

Boo is SO grown up and responsible...and sweet and thoughtful! Boo is always thinking of ways to help others. She is happy to do things for me, and looks for ways to help out around the house. She is our tidiness queen and always keeps her areas of the basement nice and clean. She also cleans the main areas regularly and is often times frustrated with her messy sisters. She definitely takes after me in that way. Haha.

Boo is very independent with her schoolwork. She hardly needs any help at all and I have to force myself to remember to check on her and make sure things are going well because she is so self-sufficient I often forget. She continues to score at the top of the charts in her standardized tests, and was student of the month in her class in December!

Boo is very athletic and does very well in everything she tries...she is like her daddy in that area! She decided to play basketball this year and is doing so well. What she lacks in experience she makes up for in hustle. She is always the first one back down the court and plays her heart out. We just have to work on learning to basic rules and patterns and she will be a star player in no time! We are very proud of her for trying something new and not being afraid to go out there and learn new things. 

Of course she continues to excel at dance. I love watching her joyful face when she is dancing. She is so good at it and is just fun to watch. She loves dance days and getting to see her friends. :)

Sometimes people ask me how the girls personalities are different or what their various strengths are. I always respond that Boo is our worker-bee. She is SUCH a hard-worker! She is always the first to volunteer to do a job and she doesn't shirk any responsibility. She sticks with a task until it is done even if it takes all day. We are proud of her hard work ethic.

Boo is such a sweet sister. She is great with the baby and the go-to when Mommy is unavailable. She plays well with each of her sisters and is often times a peace maker. She has my gene of Type-A, organization and tries to direct people down the right path when they aren't making good choices. ;) She has been helping babysit the little ones on bible study nights and does a great job with them. She is also an introvert like me and needs quiet, alone time to recharge.

Awana is another area where Boo excels. She studies hard all week and even holds "study club" to try to get her sisters to study their verses as well. ;) She memorizes every verse plus any extra credit verses in her book. She also does all her Sunday School homework and gets full points every week for doing all the steps. 

Here is her birthday interview:

 

1. Favorite color: yellow
2. Favorite toy: Calico Critters
3. Favorite fruit: lemons
4. Favorite TV show: Aladdin
5. Favorite lunch: Mac and cheese
6. Favorite outfit: I don't know
7. Favorite game: The Farming Game
8. Favorite snack:  Dried mangoes
9. Favorite animal: Owl
10. Favorite song: Never Too Far Gone
11. Favorite book: Mrs. Piggle Wiggle 
12. Your best friend: Rebecca and Jesus
13. Favorite Cereal: Multi grain Cheerios 
14. Favorite thing to do outside: Have a mudball fight
15. Favorite drink: Lemonade
16. Favorite holiday: Christmas
17. Favorite breakfast: Donuts from Krispy Kreme 
18. What do you like to take to bed: Ruff Ruff and purple blankee
19. What do you want to be when you grow up: an archeologist
20. What do you want for your birthday dinner? Golden Corral 

 

Happy 10th Birthday Boo,

Ten years old! You are so amazing. Daddy and I are so incredibly proud of you. You are sweet, responsible, thoughtful, and just so much fun! I can't imagine like without you. You are such a beautiful ray of sunshine in our lives. 

It is so fun watching you grow into the wonderful young lady God is helping you become. I love coming to kiss you every night and finding you reading your bible. You do such a wonderful job of hiding God's word in your heart and that will serve you all your life! I can't wait to see what He has in store for you. I know it will be as amazing as you are! 

I can't believe we have already had ten wonderful years with you! They are going by too quickly. So many sweet, sweet memories and so many more to come! I hope this is your best year ever! 

Thank you for all you do. You are such a helper and Daddy and I are so proud of how hard you work. We so appreciate you and all you've done to help with the house. We love you so incredibly much. 

Happy Birthday sweet girl! I can't wait for all the memories we are going to make with you this year! The year of TEN!

Love, Mommy

FOUR!

 Look who's four!?!

This silly monkey! 

This girl is such a hoot! Thankfully the hurricane has passed and compared to last year we are smooth sailing. Compared to the other girls at this age we are still at tropical storm levels, but I'll take it. ;) 

Peaches is still a flurry of highs and lows. She is a happy, silly, crazy, swirling dervish of fun that, multiple times a day, randomly spins into a crying, clingy, screaming puddle of tears. But give her five minutes and she's back to a spinning bundle of giggles. :P

She has matured so much in the last year though and has finally settled into the Farmhouse and all that comes with country life. She loves to play outside with her sisters and especially loved jumping on the trampoline this summer. She spent many an hour bounce, bounce, bouncing away. 

The biggest change for this sweet girl is that she's going to preschool this year and she LOVES it! It's actually kind of a miracle that she does because while she isn't as much of a Mommy-shadow as she was at this time last year she doesn't love being away from me for very long. Preschool is the exception. She loves going to preschool and is so excited when I tell her it is a school morning! 

Peaches started dance this year and is doing SO great! She loves going to dance class and at the recital she walked out there with complete confidence and rocked that stage! She practiced every day and often times was the one asking me if she could practice. 

Besides school and dance Peaches' other highlight of the week is AWANA. She loves it! She is always so happy to "go be a Cubbie!" and has so much fun with Noni and her friends! 

She talks perfectly now and only has a few words that are mispronounced. At the beginning of the year she called breakfast "gebbast" but now she has moved to "bresk-kiss". She calls baby carrots "bunny carrots" and mittens her "snow hands". For most of the year her sisters have been "my fwends" but now she always says "my sisters" and when addressing one or more she says, "Sisters! Listen to me!" "Oh my goodness" is a popular phrase. She loves to bounce on the "jump-o-line". She played "Jo-fus" in their little Christmas play, and every time she saw a candy cane this Christmas she happily yelled, "Look! A candy-land!" She also says she likes to get "lem-a-lade" but never actually drinks more than a sip of it. :)

She is at that awful stage of still needing a nap but not really. If she doesn't take one she gets crabby and hyper-sensitive by the end of the day. But if she does take one she won't go to sleep at night. :( If we go anywhere in the car at any time in the afternoon she falls asleep and then gets super cranky if we wake her up. It's not a good cycle, and I'll be glad when this stage has passed. 

She is starting to be able to play nicely with the big girls instead of just being the tornado to their little towns and play areas...not every time anyway.  :)  

She is definitely still a handful at times, but she is also such a source of sweet joy! She is so happy and fun. I love to listen to her stories. She gets so mixed up sometimes and it is always good for a laugh. She came home from school one day and told me "Araine's friend had a surgery and his head popped off and he died!" Thankfully I knew that she meant that her friend's uncle was having brain surgery the next week otherwise I probably would have been pretty concerned! Haha! I love the way she gets into details when she's telling me about something that happened.

Funny girl.

 Here is her birthday interview:

 

 

1. Favorite color: pink
2. Favorite toy: Calico Critters
3. Favorite fruit: strawberries and watermelon and oranges
4. Favorite TV show: PJ Masks
5. Favorite lunch: Hmm. Fruit and chicken nuggets
6. Favorite outfit: Jasmine costume
7. Favorite game: Sit Back Drawing (Backseat Drawing, but she's never played it, haha!)
8. Favorite snack: a cookie
9. Favorite animal: Do-Do
10. Favorite song: Jingle Bells and Mary Had A Little Lamb
11. Favorite book: George Pancakes
12. Your best friend: Audrey and Elias and Judah and Araine
13. Favorite Cereal: Charms 
14. Favorite thing to do outside: Splash in a puddle
15. Favorite drink: water
16. Favorite holiday: Silly! Christmas and my birthday!
17. Favorite breakfast: Cereal 
18. What do you like to take to bed: you close your eyes. (Do-do?) Uh-huh!
19. What do you want to be when you grow up: dance and be silly!
20. What do you want for your birthday dinner? Waffles

Happy Birthday Sweet Girl,

Peaches you are such a joy. You are a bundle of energy, impulsiveness, and love. There is nothing better than you're sweet hugs and declarations of "I love you Mommy! And you love me!" Yes I do sweet girl. More than you could ever know. 

You have grown up so much this year, and yet you are still so much of little one. I hope you never lose your sparkle and joy for life. You feel things so big and if we can just channel all that energy for good I know you will do great and amazing things! 

I hope that this will be your best year ever and that you will soon come to understand what God has done for you. I know you love Him and are learning more about Him every day. Daddy and I pray that you will soon claim all those promises for your very own! I know He will make Himself known at the perfect time for you.

We are so proud of you. You are a sweet friend and kind to others. You are so good about making sure the other little ones at church feel included and happy. I love watching you play with others. 

You love your sisters so much and are so happy when they play with you and include you in their games. You are sweet with the baby, and do your best to share with her even when she gets crabby. :) 

I love you sweet girl. What a wonderful four years we have had with you. I can't wait to make many, many more memories and I can't wait to see what four brings!

Love, Mommy

\

Good Boy Bad Boy

Jax really is a good dog. He only had accidents the first week to ten days, and he only made one big puppy mess. 

One day when we were working on the house I looked outside to find him doing exactly what he was brought here to do...

It was like he knew he was supposed to watch Peanut. Such a good boy! 

Here is his puppy mess. Right before Christmas we were all downstairs as the girls were getting ready for bed. I came up to find someone had left the wrapping paper out and he had a grand old time with it. Haha.

His expression was priceless. 

"What?" 

The only other "bad" thing he does is go in the garage and eat the cats' food...and then come inside and throw up. :{ I need to buy them a bowl so we can keep it up on the work bench. Silly boy.

Funny Friday

This is nothing...there are times when it is just a sea of white and you can't tell where anything stops, starts, end, or anything!

Happy Friday! :)

Leftover Thursday

Playing basketball in Daddy's office.

Playing dress up with Abbie.

Crying because Mommy wouldn't let her eat dog food...and fished the piece she had out of her mouth.

 

Boo's friend E, from Russia, was here briefly and we were able to meet them for lunch! E is actually 6 months younger than Boo (who is taller than all her friends) and a good deal taller! 

Boo is standing on her tiptoes here. Haha.

Peanut and Boo were playing "flying like Auntie Eve" the other day. Peanut made a panel and they flew off to Hawaii! :)

There they go!

Happy Thursday! :)

Wordless Wednesday

NYNY!

We hosted a NYNY (New York New Year) All-Church game night on New Year's Eve! Only a few people had told us they were coming so we were expecting a pretty low turn out. We were totally surprised to end up with 62 people! Now that we've discovered New York New Year I don't think we'll ever go back. It's perfect for celebrating with kids. You get to party and have fun and watch the ball drop in Times Square at 9 and be home and in bed before 10. Haha.

Auntie Nina had given Lou this outfit for her birthday and I thought it was perfect for New Year's with the gold! So cute!!

I lost count of how many games the girls played. They had so much fun with the friends who came!

 

This picture is too tiny to see much but you can see we had a good group!

There were enough players for a two table tournament of Pinochle. T got to play and had a lot of fun. 

This little cutie kept me pretty busy. 

Her: you're-not-doing-what-I-want-you-to-do face. :P

 

Me, M, and Peanut built literally dozens of towers for her to knock down. 

And about halfway through the night she started to try to stack them instead of just demolishing them. 

C asked Peanut to play Connect 4. :)

And the girls had a blast with this funny chicken game I had never seen before. 

 The kids lasted about two hours and then ran off to play hide and seek, race down the hall, and other loud and crazy games. We only had one incident where Peaches got her thumb slammed in a door.  :(

The girls and I had bought noise makers at the Dollar Store (first mistake). I naively thought they would blow them at midnight and that would be that. I wish you could hear the noise accompanying this picture. I put out the noisemakers about five minutes before midnight (second mistake) and they found them right away and we had about a 20 minute total symphony of noise. :P 

3...2...1...HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 All in all it was a great night though and I couldn't believe how well Lou did!! At home she nurses at 7:30, usually falls asleep and I lay her in her crib no later than 8. Every now and then if we have something going on we'll get home late, but she's never nursed past 8 and she's usually screaming if that happens. I figured I'd just wait and nurse her when she started getting fussy but she never did! 7:30 passed. 8 passed. 8:30. 9! She never made a peep! I guess there was just so much going on she was really distracted. I figured she would lose it at 9:20 (it took a while to clean up) when I put her in the car seat to go home (happens often), but she just sat there looking around. And again, I thought she would scream all the way home (also happens often), or fall asleep, but she just sat there not making a peep. We got home, she nursed, fell asleep, and I put her in bed! Such a nice surprise! I hope it's a foretelling of an easier yet to come. Haha!

We hope you all had a wonderful New Year too!