It's About That Time Again!

Time for us to add another little peanut to the family that is! We are thrilled and can't wait for October to get here.

A New Venture

For years I have been wanting to plant a garden, but I am so bad with plants. I seriously can't keep anything alive! But I love being outside, and I love pretty plants and flowers and I really enjoy working in my yard when the weather is nice. So this year I decided I would give it a go. I figured I mine as well give it a try and see what happens. With starting our home school journey I wanted to have a little learning spot in the back yard that the girls and I could work on together. We headed to Lowes, picked out a few veggie seeds to plant, and I let them pick out a packet of flower seeds. I also bought some Azaleas because they are supposed to attract butterflies. We planted it last week and everyday the girls go out and check to see if they see anything yet. I can't wait for something to grow. I will keep you posted and hopefully it's with a cute garden!

Here is what we planted.



Planting the seeds. They thought this was so great.



And the best way to finish planting a garden is definitely with a popsicle.



We also made these cute flower hands as we talked about what seeds need to grow. I thought they turned out cute and thought it might give other mommies a fun idea.

14 Months Old

This sweet girl turned 14 months old last week. She is full of personality and learning up a storm right now. She makes us laugh all day! She is trying to say a few words lately so we are getting somewhere. Sometimes I think she calls Jeff "Dada", but not too sure yet. She loves balls and tries really hard to say ball but it usually comes out "Da!". She knows what a puppy, a kitty and a fish says and anytime she sees any animal she starts saying "oof oof" over and over again. Her big sisters are ridiculously terrified of dogs so I think she is going to be the one to show them they are being silly. She gets so excited when she sees dogs! My favorite new thing she does is when we ask her a question, like "was that good?", or "did you take a good nap?", she always answers "mmm hmm". I find myself asking her questions just to hear her say that. It is just cute! This girl would live on crackers alone if I let her. She loves them and is really good at begging for them! She loves to dance when she hears music. She always tilts her head to the side and walks around in a circle. That's her dance and it is adorable! She loves loves loves to be outside. She is always bringing me her shoes and pointing to the door. And when it's time to come in she throws quite a fit. She is definitely getting better at those too. I don't think we are too far away from time out. She is always taking stuff from her sisters and running from them as fast as she can. She takes their play silverware and hits the walls or the furniture with them. I tell her no and she laughs and keeps doing it! Nice, I know! I take it away and tell her no hitting. When I give it back to her she does the same thing over again. So she is banned from play silverware, for now at least!She is still not to fond of when I have to leave her, either at church or with a sitter. She grabs hold of me so tight and I literally have to pry her off of me. It's kind of sad and I am hoping she out grows this soon! She loves to climb the stairs, she loves her Daddy, she loves her big sisters and she loves to bring me books to read to her only to close it after I finish the first page. We love this cute cute girl and are having a blast watching her change from baby to toddler!

Here she is doing one of her favorite things, playing at the park and in our backyard.

A Night of Bad Mommy Moments!

Do you ever have those moments as a mommy that you are tempted to make the selfish choice rather than the choice that is best for your child or children. And then do you ever have those moments where you actually go with the selfish choice knowing full well it could be disastrous but you feel like sticking to your selfish guns anyways? Well that is what happened to me today. I am not proud of what happened and I feel pretty guilty about it, but it was one of those stories that in the midst of it all you feel like all you can do is either laugh or cry. I laughed and maybe my eyes got sort of watery and then I definitely prayed REALLY hard!

So here is what happened. Jeff had a work dinner tonight and wouldn't be home til late, and tomorrow he will be gone before we get up and won't be home til late again. So on days like this I have to leave the house and break up the time a little bit for my own sanity. The girls and I made plans tonight to go to the mall, but of course not the mall close to us (it's a pretty scary mall and we avoid it if at all possible), we were going to go to The Woodlands mall which is a 40 minute drive. I had been wanting to go get them some flip flops from the Disney Store. Plus they love that mall and it's always fun for all of us. About one in the afternoon Adalyn started running a fever. Avery had just been sick last week and I was hoping it would stop with her. I gave Adalyn some ibuprofen and put her down for a nap. After she woke up she told me she felt fine. She was running around and laughing and seemed to feel okay (or the ibuprofen was doing it's job). I asked her a few times if she still wanted to go to the mall or if she just wanted to stay home. Okay, so here is the first thing I would go back and change. She is three, of course she wants to go and get her princess flip flops because she feels okay right now. I knew the best choice for her was to stay home, but I really wanted to go. Bad mommy moment :( . We all got loaded up and made the trek over there. As we were about 5 minutes away from the mall I remember something. I took the stroller out of the van on Saturday and completely forgot to put it back. NOT a good idea to go to the mall with no stroller when you have a 14 month old. I thought I would just rent one when I got there, but of course they took cash only and I had none with me. SO frustrating. So I put a smile on my face and headed towards the food court so we could eat dinner. We made a potty stop first. Then once I got everyone situated with their food and I had a couple of bites of my own food, Adalyn said those dreaded words to me. "Mommy, I have to go poo poo". So I had two options here. Pack everyone's food up and try to carry it all and a baby and a bag and four drinks to the bathroom. Or ask her to wait til we are done. I went with the second which sort of back fired of course. We made it to the bathroom after we ate and she wasn't quite able to hold it all. I had no other undies with me so I had to resort to scrubbing the undies with some wipes and putting them back on her. Yuck I know! Remember I have no stroller so this whole time Avery is walking around in a gross public bathroom. The whole time I was yelling "Avery, stop. No touching! Aubrey will you hold her hands so she can't get away!". It was a mess. We finally made it to the Disney Store, made our purchases of flip flops and nightgowns (I seriously drove all the way over there with a sick child for flip flops??!?!). I then made one more bad choice and ran into Children's Place because I really really needed some knit shorts of the big girls and hadn't had a chance to get there yet, plus is was right next door to the Disney Store. Adalyn then starts whining while in there saying she is tired which really means you better get going. I made another purchase and we made the long haul back to the car. By this time my arm feels like its going to fall off from carrying Avery. Adalyn then starts really crying and saying her tummy hurts. This is when that praying came into handy. "Please Lord, do not let her vomit while we are in the mall!". He must have heard my prayer because we made it to the van, and then she started dry heaving. I got everyone buckled, I handed Adalyn the trashcan we keep in the van and told her to put her throw up in there. Somehow we managed to make it home with no throwing up. She feel asleep in the car, and once we got home I put her in bed and that is where this crazy store ends, for now at least! So if I had instead made the choice that would have been better for my sick child instead of what I wanted, my night would have been so much less stressful. I felt so bad for my poor girl. We can't always have the best moments and I know I am going to make lots of mistakes as a mom. I just have to learn from them and move on. Oh and ask my poor kids to forgive me!

Toilet Paper Fun

I never knew toilet paper could be so entertaining! I got this idea from a friend of mine and have been waiting to try it out on my girls. I told the girls to go wait for me in the office, I handed them each one roll of toilet paper and said "here you go", and then I just walked out of the room to see what they would do with it. Well I thought they would just jump right in and start making stuff with it, but they just sat at the table talking to each other about it for a really long time. Here is a little glimpse into their conversation.
Aubrey- "What do you think we are going to do with this? I think we are going to glue it together."
Adalyn- "I think we are going to have a toilet paper dance!" (this was said is a very excited tone)
Aubrey - "No, we are going to do a craft. Or maybe we are going to wrap our hands and legs and everything on us", this was followed with lots of cute giggles.

After a few minutes I realized my little rule followers weren't going to do anything with that toilet paper because for some reason they were waiting on me, so unfortunately I had to do a little prompting. I came back in and told them they could do whatever they wanted to do with it. They just stared at me like I was crazy. I said "Have fun, make a mess!" And the rest is history. Here is how they entertained themselves with two rolls of toilet paper!

"Here you go"



Starting to get the hang of it. Here they are starting to unroll it all.





It's snowing!


Adalyn had so much fun just throwing her roll in the air and watching all the toilet paper fly across the room.



Aubrey then tried to design her very own toilet paper dress.



"Let's make a pile and then see if we can jump over it!"




Now lets just roll all around in it! "Can you see me mommy?"



Avery woke up from her nap in the midst of it and she got to join in the fun.



And it was so easy to clean up. We grabbed a trash can and everyone participated in throwing it all away. They had a blast and now ask me everyday if they can play with toilet paper :)

Bubbles!

Last week we were at Toys R Us buying a birthday present for a friend. The girls saw some bubbles and I agreed that they were in need of some new ones with the weather being so nice. We got home and they immediately asked if they could blow their new bubbles. So I opened both of them and literally less than a minute later, Adalyn spilled basically ALL of hers. And then a few minutes later Aubrey spilled hers. Really?!?! I knew it would be awhile before I would remember to buy bubbles again so mommy came to the rescue and made homemade bubbles and refilled their bubble containers. Why did I never do this before now, I'm not sure? But it was so easy and they work great. And who cares if they spill some, because now I have a whole pitcher full of bubbles. We have had a fun week full of bubble blowing!

Here is the recipe I used:
8 cups of water
1 cups of liquid dish soap
1/4 light corn syrup





A couple days later Avery joined in the fun and has had a blast trying to catch bubbles and her sisters are pretty excited that she loves them so much.


I have been waiting for all three to play together outside and it looks like this is the start of it. They were so cute all sitting in their chairs.

Family Day

"I love being with all of my family!". This is what Aubrey says all the time and I have to agree with her. Family days are just the best and always what we need. We had a blast last Saturday at the Houston Children's Museum. We hadn't been there yet but always heard great things about it. It's definitely a place we need to go back to again to get it all in. There was so much to do there and all three girls had so much fun. It was definitely a successful family day.