Sam is Seven

My kids are growing up too too fast.

 

Sam turned 7 and it was a very full day for our family.  Per Sam's request Dad/Stephen signed up to be the "watch dog" and spent the day with the kids at school.  This he did even though he was sick with a cold and was missing work when he had a lot of pressing issues--he's a GREAT dad!  We also enjoyed Kaitlyn's Rise and Shine.

 

Lunch was fun.  He'd requested Raising Canes chicken fingers and when I told the restaurant that it was his birthday meal of choice they gave it to us for FREE!  M&M cookies for his class per request too.

That afternoon he enjoyed some soccer with his team as a make up for all the rained out practices and dinner that night was Hawaiian Haystacks--YUM!  Grandma and Grandpa Lewis joined us (YAY!)

 After cupcakes.....

We headed upstairs to watch the original Star Wars movie on the big screen.  It was our first time allowing Kaitlyn and Sam to watch it.  It was a tad intense for them but they enjoyed it.  It was also sentimental for grandma and grandpa as they enjoyed the movie when it first came out as a dating/engaged couple in Provo Utah so they were really excited that Sam invited them to come.

We have a 9 year old!

April is busy birthday time for our family.  Busy busy busy.  Kaitlyn is #2 of 4 pretty consecutive birthdays an here she is on her way to school on her 9th birthday!

She had a great day!  I met her at school with her fast food lunch of choice, and in & out hamburger and chocolate milk shake.  She requested snickerdoodle cookies to share with her class. 

And she asked dad to grill hamburgers for her birthday dinner and we ate on some borrowed patio furniture that we're taking care of for our friends.

She was really excited about her presents, that American Girl movie became the entertainment for a movie night with friends later that week.  

We are so grateful Katilyn is in our family, she is a brilliant musician, always tries to help lighten my load, she's smart, and a true friend!

Happy Easter 2013

Just wanted to capture my kids on Easter Morning 2013.  I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE the first shot of them giving a big squeeze!

Easter morning's "Bunny Run breakfast" was thwarted by an unexpected sprinkler system watering so it got moved indoors.

We LOVE Easter and all that it gives us time to reflect upon, we're grateful for our Savior Jesus Christ and His gift of the Atonement for us.

Easter Egg Ant Attack!

My mom's work schedule has changed recently to have Fridays off.  These are GREAT days to have off especially when thy coincide with the kids having a day off the weekend of Easter.  And they get just a tad GREATER when Stephen is gone all weekend at the Aaronic Priesthood encampment and I'm flying solo and Grandparents Lewis invite us over for lunch and an Easter Egg Hunt.

We enjoyed having grandpa draw favorite characters free hand on brown paper sacks to hold the eggs in--Sam wanted Yoshi, Matthew wanted Super Mario, Kaitlyn wanted a Littlest Petshop and Lindsey had a mermaid Hello Kitty.  It's really cool to have a grandpa who is an artist, I'm just saying....

 

So we headed out to collect about 40 eggs.  The FIRST one out was Matthew and he got his egg.  With great excitement he opened his egg only to FREAK OUT and drop everything, the two egg parts, and the candy...

If you look closely you'll see that in the time the eggs had been placed outside, ANTS had found about a forth of our eggs and decided they wanted some candy too.  So thus began the checking of each egg that was found and the ant filled ones were put in the watering barrel used to grow strawberries, it definitely made this hunt memorable!

 

 Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for a great adventure!

Matthew turns 3!!

Matthew had mastered telling everyone he was "2 half" but he was VERY excited to turn 3!

The morning dawned with a trip for donuts with Grandparents Lewis 

 who had given him a new cowboy hat to match his hand-me-down red cowboy boots.  He gets all the attention when he dresses like this, what a looker! 

 

He enjoyed an indoor picnic lunch of McDonalds while watching Thomas the Train, playtime with Mom and Lindsey, and then that evening were the rest of the festivities.

Dinner of choice: Hot Dogs and "Mack-cheese" on the "You are Special" plate,

 

Mom kind of blew it and didn't notice that the gifts she ordered online wouldn't arrive until later that week and despite my prayers that they'd somehow arrive earlier than expected, they didn't.  It's a good thing I did have a couple things for you like Spiderman sunglasses....

And these blow up swords that were a "hit".  Happy Birthday sweet "Kung-Fu", "Kungs", "Fu", "Kungafier".....

I have tooth twins!

Thankfully Sam didn't lag far behind Lindsey in losing his first tooth either....

 So now I have tooth twins!  Aren't they gorgeous?  These two are going to make the tooth fairy go broke....

And now Matthew tells everyone he's got a loose tooth too.  Poor kid, he's got awhile to wait.

Summer Break adventures

I'm not going to lie, I LOVE having my children HOME!  I enjoy the flexibility of schedule, how they are each others best buds and play (most of the time) very well together.  So I was really looking forward to Spring Break, and it didn't disappoint.

We enjoyed play dates with friends, my kids were super sports and let me drag them all over Dallas one day for a couple critical JustServe appointments.  One with the Salvation Army in Dallas (they stayed with Aunt Rachel and watched a movie) and we squeezed in a picnic at the Dallas Arboretum and checked out their new Explorer Houses (each house is about a famous World Explorer) and saw their beautiful tulips and spring flowers.  Then after lunch we jetted over to the DPA (Director of Public Affairs) in Rachel's Stake (in her ward) while my children played, she and I were on a conference call with another JustServe agency.  Sister Larsen was so gracious at letting my 4 kids invade her home and enjoy her playroom.  She even let them take home special "Gastro-lith" rocks that had been formed in dinosaur bellies!

We took a trip to the Dallas Zoo and had our friend Diego tag along...

Spring Break Camp Out

 The McKneelys are campers.  We spent the first weekend of Spring Break with our McKneely cousins and grandparents at Tyler State Park camping and helping our cousin Elisa celebrate her 4th birthday.

We had a few campfires, roasted hot dogs and marshmallows for s'mores, scared off an assertive raccoon, attended a knot tying demonstration, and rented paddle boats:

We knew the rain was coming, and it did come on Saturday night.  Sunday morning we were going to head to church but Laura was sick and the focus became breaking their camp and getting them home.  Our kids were DONE and just not staying out of the way so thankfully we'd brought two cars and I headed home a bit early.  But we ate well, had a really great time and still LOVE camping!

February in a post....

I am super busy with JustServe, it takes much more time than I imagined but I'm really enjoying the work.  My kids sometimes are enjoying a busy and distracted mom, see?

Despite putting "update the blog" on the "to-do" list each day, it has been rolled to the next day for WEEKS!  So here is an attempt to catch up the month of February in ONE post.  Here are the highlights:

Valentines Day Lindsey lost her FIRST TOOTH!
This was a REALLY big deal because her big brother Sam has still not lost any teeth.  I pulled it at bedtime and then we stayed up a bit late calling grandparents and taking this photo so that I could post it on Facebook so that her preschool teacher, Ms. Kim, could see it:

Breakfast in Bed:
One Saturday morning Stephen and I were treated to breakfast in bed made by this crew!

Sure Stephen's cereal was quite soggy by the time it got back to us, Lindsey came in to get his drink order and he asked for freshly squeezed orange juice.  She replied,"No, your choices are milk or water."  Funny girl.  Then after we were served, Sam informed us that we needed to relax that he and Kaitlyn would make sure the younger two got breakfast.  We really could get used to this!

Silly Dress-up episodes:
Lindsey was a tad over the top with her "H" day dress up:

Hat, Headband, Hearts on her wrist, shirt, pants, socks and shoes--she came up with this on her own and was THRILLED to go to school this way.

Imagine me, in my double wide blue jogging stroller with these two furry creatures on the walk to school.  They got a lot of smiles and attention, and I thought it was GREAT!

We'd taken a long weekend trip to Grandparents McKneely.  We helped them with yard work, got rained out trying to go St. Thomas, and of course DRESSED UP!

Morning Scripture Study:

This is something I'm rather proud of.  We're in a really good groove with our morning family scripture study.  Each morning before Stephen leaves for work we pull our groggy kids out of bed so we can read and teach them from the scriptures.  We're almost done with the Book of Mormon and are pretty proud of ourselves.  Another reason I love this shot is that each kid has their fleece blanket and it reminds me of my years of early morning seminary when kids would come in their pajamas and blankets.  I hear that's not allowed anymore so someday they'll have to break the habit!