Turning 5

It happened. My baby turned 5 on me. She is so excited about being five and getting to go to kindergarden next year. But she was even more excited to celebrate her birthday with a party. We had our small family celebration on her actual birthday. Then she had her friends party the following Saturday. She wanted to have it at the gym where she does gymnastics. So of course she got what she wanted.

Her family birthday cake picture.

About to blow out the candles. And trying to hide her smile from us.

Playing with some of ther friends in the gym.

The birthday girl gets to paint her hands on the wall and they stay up for the entire year.


All her friends gathered around for cake and presents.

And another cake. I think turning 5 deserves two cakes...at least.

Start of soccer season

We finally agreed to let A. play a little soccer this season. We had been holding out just for our own sake of not having to commit to another team. But she's been begging and she finally got her chance.



She loved it and if I'm being honest she did pretty good out there most the time. She can really handle the ball better than the other kids when they first started and she has a really strong kick. And at her age, it's all about fun and you can just sit back and enjoy the kids having fun.

Normally it would be me and the the three youngest since Hubs and Z. always were at baseball. So naturally a lot of time was spent at the park area as well. This provided lots of opportunity to get pictures of my monkeys hanging out.

My silly girl hanging upside down.

She's showing off her missing front tooth to me.

My big boy just perched up high where he can see everything going on.

A Snapshot into the Sillyness of Everyday Life

Such typical behaviour for these two.

Another year blows by

Time is moving to fast. I blink my eyes and it seems like months have passed by in a blur. So I am going to try and catch my breath a bit and recollect a bit of what has been going on.

We celebrated my baby turning 4. Hard to believe it but she is. Unfortunately her birthday also happens to fall in April which is smack dab in the middle of baseball season and soccer season. Makes for planning a birthday party for her a little difficult. We celebrated with a small family birthday dinner like we always do. I mentioned it in a previous post. Finally, a month later we finally found a free time where we could have her "friend" party.

She picked none other than Chuck E. Cheese. It's not my favorite place but she really loved it and having her friends there to play with. She met Chuckie himself and seemed a bit impressed.

Then she went into the ticket wind tunnel with Zach to help her. She liked that, but she loves anything that her big brother Zach does with her. It was a fun time for her and her friends and that's what really matters.


So after celebrating Anna's birthday a month late, it literally was a blink of an eye until we celebrated my big boy turning 12. I can't believe I have a 12 year old. Seems like yesterday he was still a small baby. He also had a small family party and got his desired and highly coveted PS3. Instead of our normal chocolate cake, he made his own dessert. He spent the day at Grandmama's and Pappy's house and decided that he wanted Peanut Butter Rice Crispy treats. So not only did he turn 12 on me, he made his own "cake" so to speak. See what I mean by growing up so fast. And they were good too. I think I'll let him keep on making those. But I was keeping with the lack of birthday planning and forgot to take my camera out. So I didn't get my picture of my birthday boy on his actual birthday.

Two weeks later we celebrated Kate turning 6 years old. She turned 6 the day before we headed out to Omaha for the College World Series tournament Zach's team was playing in. So naturally we had another small family birthday dinner to celebrate.


And yes, the chocolate cake was there. Although Kate had been at grandmama's house and helped to frost it. I've never seen such a brightly colored cake before. She went to town with it. She enjoyed her pink DS she got and got to use it plenty over the summer. But in keeping with this awful habit I started with Anna this year, her friend party was about 5 weeks late.

She decided she wanted her first ever slumber party. So she picked a few friends from her summer camp and invited them over. It was a small group to begin with but it ended up being just three girls at the party. All the other kids were sleeping over at friends houses or grandmama's. So we went to the movies Friday night and swimming Sat. morning before all the fun finally ended. She loved it and wants to have another slumber party soon. Anna is begging to be included in the next one though. And again, I never took out my camera. Truly, I'm lacking in my pictures here aren't I?

So there we have another year flying past in a blink of an eye. For the time being, I am allowed to say I have a 12 year old, 7 year old, 6 year old and a 4 year old. It will change in a month's time when Michael finally turns 8 but until then I'm allowed. Hopefully his party won't be so late in arriving as the girls.

My baby turns 4

Hard to believe it but my sweet baby girl turned 4 on me. She got to wear her birthday crown all day at school and was spoiled by all who saw her. Grandmama picked her up a little early from school and took her out for lunch. After that she got to go to the post office with grandmama. When she walked in they actually stopped and sang Happy Birthday to her. Not your typical postal group there.

She had grandmama make her cake for her. It was her favorite chocolate of course.

I had to get a picture of my big 4 year old with her mom and dad and grandparents.






Then she got down to the business of presents. With her brothers and sister encouraging her, it didn't take to long for her to get through them. She loved them all of course. That's just how she is. But she really likes her big girl Hello Kitty scooter alot.


She is such a sweet little girl and such a blessing. I am so proud to have her for my daughter.

Penny for your thoughts

I often wonder what my kids are thinking at random moments when I stop to watch what they are doing. Are they happy, sad or just content to be where they are and with what they are doing. In the photo below, she was sitting there in the goal, surrounded by soccer balls and she was happily picking flowers.


I love this one of my girls. I don't know what they were looking at but whatever it is, it's got both their attentions. Since they were so far away I couldn't ask them what they were looking at. So now I'm left to just wonder.

Dare I say it?

I am afraid to say it out loud. So maybe if I just type it I won't jinx myself. I'm sure by now you have guessed it. My youngest and most stubborn daughter, A. has been in big girl panties for over a week now with out an accident. I can hardly believe it's finally happened. I think I now officially have all my children potty trained. Considering I have been changing someone's diaper non stop for the last six years and eight months (but whose counting)I think I have a right to be excited.

Can you feel my excitement!! Can you really?? Because I am.

All things mermaid

I am surrounded by all things mermaid lately. I have made it through the first three children without the mermaid fascination. But my youngest A., has other ideas.

She plays mermaid in the tub.
She plays mermaid on the rug.
She plays mermaid on the stairs.
She plays mermaid with her hair.

You get the idea, it's all mermaid all the time. And silly mom that I am dug out the Little Mermaid dvd to see if she would like it. She does, so it's on constantly. At this time, my A. would very possibly answer to the name of Ariel. I should try it out and see what happens. I didn't expect this latest craze and it's been pretty fun to watch and enjoy so far. Well except for the constant DVD running on the TV. It just goes to show you how even after four kids, you can still be surprised by the little things if you notice them.

Wait, what's IT?

Since I'm on a roll this week about being mom of the year. I did after all let my oldest daughter get bit by spiders multiple times. I thought I'd share the latest casulaty report from our house. It was time for baths and Hubs had taken A. upstairs to get her ready (I love how he helps out like that) and I was left to clean up the rest of the dishes.

I hear what to me sounds like a slamming door. So much so that I automatically say stop slamming doors before you hurt someone. Then there is a lot of screaming. So as I head upstairs I ask Hubs what is going on. He replies she was running towards me and tripped and banged into the wall with her head and cracked it? Wait...what's it? Is it her head or is it the wall? Is there blood involved because if there is then I can pretty much count Hubs out on any help since he's not good around blood. No, her head isn't cracked he said, it's the wall. She cracked the wall with her head. Oh well then everything's okay, I think. You can patch a wall no problem. But I didn't want to deal with a cracked head.

Call me crazy but a cracked wall is so much easier to handle. But this does just prove to me that my youngest daughter is a very hard headed, stubborn and determinned little girl. And she wasn't going to let the wall get the best of her, no she was laughing and back to herself after a few minutes.

More alike than I realized

Out of all my kids Hoss and A. are more alike than I realized. They both love being outside regardless of the weather. They both play with the dog more than any of the others. They both can't seem to stay away from water or puddles no matter how much they are told. They both have very selective hearing when they want to. They both have a stubborn streak you would never guess was there. They both challenge me more than the others did. They both have a hard time staying in their beds at night. And they both surprise me on a daily basis with what they can come up with. Yes, these two are more alike than I ever realized. It's not a bad thing, it's just funny how two little people so different in so many ways can be so alike in so many others.

The Mother of All Days

Wow today was hard. Hubs had to be on a plane to Finland for a business trip by noon. Hoss had his last football game in one town at 11:45 where the girls would be with me. And Z. had a baseball tournament in a town about 45 minutes away that started at 11 and didn't end until 8:30. I was lucky enough that one of his team mates was able to get him to that tournament so that I only missed 1 and 1/2 of his 3 games he played.

But I made it through and so did the kids. Hoss kept his football record as a perfect score of 0 wins but had fun anyways. K. had one scrapped knee to show for this game and was quite upset about it. A. survived football okay.

Now for baseball, well that's another story. At some point before I got there Z. lost a tooth of his while he was at bat. And he was pretty upset that it never was found. He was so upset he hit a heck of a triple and brought in quite a few runs. By the time we got there to watch him he was on a roll. He had some great hits, some amazing slides where he was safe (and a scraped up arm also). But he was definitely on fire when he was the last pitcher of the game. He finished out the inning getting us 3 quick outs with his speed that they just couldn't hit. He plays on a 10U select team and they have been playing all fall in a league against 12U boys. They've lost a bunch but won a few here and there. But it was obvious today when they were playing against kids their own age that they have improved a lot.

So K, Hoss and A. got completely filthy at the baseball fields playing in the woods, dirt and with all those nasty horse apple thingies. (I wish I knew what they were really called) And Z. left alot of sweat, blood and body parts (teeth) on the field for all eternity. But he still made out pretty good. His coach gave him 3 bucks for his tooth which is more than the tooth fairy ever left him before. And on top of that they came in 1st place in their first ever tournament.

Now I am exhausted and ready to go to bed. And tomorrow for the first time in weeks we don't have a game on a Sunday afternoon. Can I tell you how excited I am for that?

Significance

Why is it that my dear sweet Hubs doesn't understand the significance of our very busy two year old when she is utterly quiet.

Shall I just say that now he does understand the significance of her quietness. It usually means that she is up to something. Something like pulling the sink stopper up and turning on the water in the boys bathroom and then leaving it on. It usually means that when mom gets back from her walk he is frantically trying to clean up the floor with towels before the water pools anymore and starts to leak through the ceiling.

Meanwhile mom is just glad it wasn't her this happened to.

My Budding Artist

A. is a budding artist. She loves to make things, whether it's crafts or just coloring. She is your typical two year old. This morning she was feeling very artistic. She found some stickers and decided to decorate herself with as many of them as she could. Unfortunately for mom, they weren't really stickers. Instead she had found my roll of forever stamps and had pulled them all off the roll and covered herself with them. I think she had enough postage on her to make it to China and back. Mom was not very happy and I did try to salvage as many of my stamps as I could. It wasn't very many.

After that I went upstairs to start gathering the laundry. It was then that I noticed her newest creation. It was a lovely red shade all over the wall in the game room. I thought it was just in the two spots that I found. When I scolded A. for coloring the walls, she them proudly proceeded to show me all her other artwork. There were four lovely A. originals, all on my walls. I don't know when she did these but it had to have been this weekend some time.

I guess she just wanted to draw me a beautiful Mothers Day card. At least that is what I'm telling myself otherwise I'm likely to let her re stamp herself and I'll drop her off in the mail and let her make it to China. I guess it's all in a day's work for a budding artist.

Two of a Kind

I know I promised pictures of A. and they are of course a day late. It is well worth the wait however, in my opinion anyways, and since I am her mama and this is my blog then it's settled and we all agree and I can continue on. (You can now catch your breath after that long run on sentence)

A. really enjoyed herself and her presents. I must admit to not being very sneaky when buying her presents this year. I figured she probably wouldn't remember and would still be surprised when she opened them. But I was wrong. She apparently has the memory of an elephant and did remember. She found one of her presents which had all her new beads and necklaces and before we were ready she had opened it up and was wearing them. But since it was her birthday and unless it's serious you never get into big trouble on your birthday (at least in our house) she just kept on wearing them and was completely ready for Mardi Gras just in case it should make a surprise appearance on the calender. (Wow, another run on) She got lots of pretty dress up things and a very pretty doll from her Grandmama. When she's wearing her dress she looks a bit like her doll so it's two of kind in the princess department. Now she has something to wear when big sister is playing dress up. She doesn't know it's just a nightgown and I'm not going to tell her. She can figure that out some other time. Then she proceeded to try and blow out her candle and lick as much icing off her pink cake as she could. She did have a bit of help in that department with the rest of the kids. I think I now have a big cake with all the icing licked off and nothing but white cake left. For most moms, this would mean throw the cake out but I know my kids and they will eventually want some cake even without icing and so it still remains in our kitchen.

Anyways that's how her day went and she loved every minute of it.

Turnin' Two Today

Today my baby turns two. We're planning on having a small family celebration this evening so I will post some pictures of Baby A. in the morning. Can I still call her Baby A if she is now two...I think so, since she is technically still my baby. I'm off to make a pink cake for my little princess.