A Memorable Weekend

The first reason that made this particular weekend memorable was that Jeff and I attended a wedding of two dear friends of ours from college. It was a sweet wedding and I am so glad that we had the opportunity to attend, enjoy an afternoon without a bunch of children to chase, and catch up with a bunch of our college friends that we hadn't seen in years, and of course getting to see and spend a little bit of time with my very best friend whom I very rarely get to see.

Not the best picture, but the only picture!

The next reason this same weekend was memorable was because we got to spend some time with family, but most importantly it was Landon's very first time to swim. Oh and he LOVED it. He was so cute splashing and kicking. It was the girls first swim of the season as well, and they all had a blast and smiles on their faces the whole time.

And the last reason that this particular weekend was very memorable is kind of a long story! So as we pulled into Arlington on Friday night our AC quit working. We had such a busy Saturday that we didn't have time to mess with it or even think much about it until later that evening. We had mentioned that maybe we should leave and head home that night after dinner so as not to travel during the heat of the day. So at 9:00 we pulled out of my sister-in-laws drive way. My immediate thought was, "Wow, it's really late to be driving home to Houston. I hope we made a good decision". Well everything was fine. It was a bit warm in the van but all four kids were fast asleep quickly. Then we had to make a stop at Buccees which is an hour and a half away from home. All kids woke up when we turned the van off of course. Landon screamed immediately. That poor boy was drenched in sweat. We loaded back up, started the van and heard something weird. Jeff and I looked at each other wondering what was going on. He looked under the hood but nothing seemed alarming, so we went on our way. About 20 minutes later we began smelling something burning. Okay at this point it is nearly midnight and I begin praying to "please just get us home God!". Well, apparently he had other plans. At 12:15, in Conroe, 45 minutes from home, our belt blew and we heard all this stuff hit the road under our car. Jeff pulled over, on the left hand shoulder. Scary! We both decided we needed to get off 45 immediately, so Jeff managed to pull of the highway and into a Shell parking lot about 3 miles down the frontage road, til we literally could go no farther. Jeff called Honda Care to send a tow, but after sitting on hold for 45 minutes with them we realized "Honda Don't Care". So he called Nationwide ( who ended up not really being on our side). At this point it's 1:00 am ish. Remember, a car full of hot, tired, sweaty kids. Ugh! Nationwide answered right away and said they would send a tow, but it would only fit two passengers. We sat and stared at each other. What in the world are we supposed to do at 1:15 in the morning with a van full of kids that need to get home! So we called our dear friend Cary, who lived about 30 min from where we were, to see if he could come get the kids and I while Jeff waited for the tow. So nice that at 1:30 in the morning, he got out of bed to rescue us. He lives an hour from us. So he had to drive 30 minutes to pick us up, take us home which was a 45 minute drive, then drive back to his house an hour away! I felt horrible but we were stuck! After awhile Jeff decided to call Nationwide back because our truck should have been there. Of course when someone finally answered they said they had NO RECORD OF OUR CALL! What? Oh my poor husband. Not only that but they now said we weren't covered for a 100 mile tow, only a 15 mile tow. Seriously my poor husband! He lost it on that poor lady. He was flailing all around the parking lot and now when I think about it makes me laugh. Anyways, it all worked out in the end, we made it home in Cary's van, and Jeff and the van eventually made it home as well. It was 3:45 by the time I finally got all the kids to bed. Avery honestly started crying "No night night, no night night". Ha! Oh two year olds. And I think it was around 4:30 by the time Jeff and I crawled in bed. What a night! One to remember for sure! It could have been so much worse though, and I know God was just protecting us the whole time.

Our Little Bird Friends

You may remember this post from few months ago. We made these bird feeders and hung them on a couple of our windows. Well, not one single bird came to visit them. I kept meaning to take them down, but I am so glad I waited. Just last week they finally started to come use them. And now every day, we see several birds coming to eat out of our feeders. It's so neat since they are right on our window. We all huddle around and watch. It's been a really fun project for the whole family.

Our Little Two Year Old

Sweet Avery Brenna is just growing and growing too fast these days. She is ready to drop everything baby and I'm trying my hardest to help her move on! That's hard for a mommy to do you know! Well a big milestone happened last week and that was when Avery moved out of a crib and into a big girl bed. I will admit, I may have shed a tear or two, but this girl was beyond excited! I made her a new blanket and pillowcase from material she picked out. She kept pointing to it saying "dis mine?". Here she is on her first night in her big girl bed!

Her sisters of course had to jump in and get a picture with her as well!

My sweet little girl is growing fast. In the next couple of weeks, we are going to start potty training and getting rid of the paci. She is ready to be a big girl like her sisters! She is full of new words pretty much every day and she always keeps us laughing. She LOVES to dance and if there is music that is what you will most definitely find her doing . When she dances, she always points at the bed or the couch and says "mommy", which means she wants me to watch. She pulls out a chair for herself that she likes to dance on top of. Yes, you read that right, she likes to dance ON the chair. Then she jumps off midway through the song, dances some more and then does a cute little bow. And you MUST clap for her and say "yay" when she is done, she waits for it! She cracks me up. Here she is the other day in one of her dress up outfits that she was dancing in.

For awhile now Avery has loved Elmo and for some reason always called him "Ice". But lately she has not been that big of a fan anymore. If you ask her if she wants to watch a show, she says "yay!", then immediately says "no Ice", meaning "please not Elmo." If you ask her what she wants to watch she will say "Beast Belle". Yep, Beauty and the Beast. Haha! Of course we very rarely watch movies so I make her choose something different, but she still says this every time.

She is slowly learning not to throw fits for everything, but to use her words and her manners. It's a long process for a two year old to learn that but we are getting there. She loves Landon to pieces. If  she is playing with him by herself and one of her sisters comes to see him, she stands up, crosses her arms, stomps her little foot and says "my bubby!". Oh dear!

I love this little one and I love her ever blooming, feisty little personality. She makes me smile, and her hugs and kisses (which she gives away very often), just seem to brighten my day every time!

7 Months Old

Our little guy is now seven months old! Hard to believe, but here we are. He is as sweet as ever, full of smiles and giggles and just such a happy boy. Just before turning seven months he finally figured out how to roll from his back to his tummy. He loves his new found freedom and Aubrey now calls him our little rolly polly. Haha! He has been officially sleeping 11-12 hours now for about a month and wow I feel better! This baby took the longest, but only because I never wanted him to cry it out. I finally tried it one night (or morning I should say) and that was all it took. He is an excellent napper which is a really good thing. We try and squeeze as much school in as we can during his morning nap.

This boy loves his solid foods! He has had apples, bananas, sweet potatoes, squash, zuchinni and oatmeal and he loves them all! He has been babbling so much lately. He especially loves to blow raspberries and he always cracks us all up when he does that.

I just love him so!

Rolling around.

The Rourk Family

We had the privilege of spending the day with the Rourk family last week. Jana and I have known each other since we were 12 and hadn't seen each other in about 5 years. Last time we saw each other, I had one baby and pregnant with my second and she had just had her twin boys. Now fast forward five years and between the two of us we have eight! Goodness right! We really enjoyed our visit and catching up on life. She has three boys and one girl, so her sweet girl was in heaven with all the girl stuff galore we have here. Here are a few pictures from our day.

Here are all the kiddos. We have three five year olds, a four year old, a three year old, a two year old, a one year old and a six month old!

Jana and I and our babies.

Mothers Day

I had such a great Mothers Day this year. I really had the whole weekend to celebrate and it was perfect! Saturday morning Jeff got all the kiddos breakfast going and told me to go get ready for the day. Hmm... Well, then he gave me a gift card for a manicure and a pedicure and told me to take the whole day to myself. Shopping, lunch and using my gift card (although I ended meeting up with them for lunch which was just enough time to realize I still needed a break). It was so glorious. Alone! That night we put everyone to bed a little early, and Jeff grilled me a fillet with some veggies and potatoes. Yum!! We have been working really hard on loosing weight around here so we haven't red meat in a really long time. We split a very small piece but it was so delicious. I'm pretty lucky to be married to a man who knows how to make a phenomenal steak!

Then on Sunday, after I slept in a tiny bit, we headed to church. After church we had a little snack, then headed downtown for lunch at a pizza restaurant that Jeff discovered a few months ago. Like I mentioned before we have been working on loosing weight, so pizza was what I wanted for Mothers Day. Am I weird? It was so delicious, my pizza and my glass of wine. I indulged and loved every bit of it!

 This cute girl of mine, goodness I love her so. This was the first year that she made me something without anyone showing her, or prompting her. She made me a bracelet all on her (you can kind of see it in the picture). She put MOM on it and then told me that she was sorry that it didn't say mommy but she couldn't find a y. It also had M.K.S which she told me stood for Mommy Kristy Skains. She then wrapped it up in a picture that she found of all four of my kiddos. It was so sweet and just meant so much to me.

 

This sweet girl made me a beautiful card all on her own also. She had been working all week on it and kept telling me to not look at what she was working on. She was so proud. Love my girl!

We then ended our day at the zoo. It was perfect outside and we discovered the best time to go to the zoo is at 4:00. There was hardly anyone there, and the weather had cooled off a bit. It was just a really fun day all around. I am blessed indeed to be the mommy of my four sweet and precious little munchkins!

Oh this blue eyed boy of mine... love him to pieces! He loves his little football by the way Nana!

 She was beyond proud of herself for petting this goat. It's the little things!

 No zoo trip is complete without feeding the ducks of course.

This precious two year old of mine is beyond cute. I love her so. I love her hugs, and her adorable little vocabulary that seems to emerge more and more everyday. She is just a sweet heart and I am so blessed to be her momma!

And of course this sweet little guy has my heart. His smile will melt you too pieces for sure! He is my answer to prayer and my very precious gift. I love him so very very much!

But most of all I am blessed to do life with this man! This man who loves God wholeheartedly, who puts his family above all else and who loves me unconditionally. My days are better when he is there. I love him and I love this life that we built, by the grace of God, together.

Self Portraits

These little self portraits that the big girls did just make me smile. I love every little detail about them!

Here is Adalyn's. At first she was going to write a bunch more but after writing "I am Adalyn" she decided she was done.

 So cute isn't it! And to go with her cute portrait is something cute she said at lunch today that I want to remember. We were eating outside and after she killed a bug on her leg accidentally she said "Oh man. I just died a bug on my leg". That has had me laughing all day.

Here is Aubrey's. She is really coming a long way with her reading and writing and I am so proud of her hard work.

Of course I must share something cute from this girl too! A few days ago we were getting ready for bed. It had been a really long day and they were also up late so I was trying my hardest to rush everyone a long to bed. While helping her brush her teeth she just kept trying to talk and look around and she was just taking her time. I told her to please focus. She said back "What does focus mean?". Oh dear right! I told her that it meant to pay attention to the one thing you are supposed to be doing so you could get it done the best way possible. She responded "Oh yeah, I'm not very good at doing that." I'm glad she realized that on her own!

Adalyn the Dancer

Oh how cute four year old dancers are! We just wrapped up Adalyn's second year of dance class. She loves to dance! Really, to say she loves to dance is kind of an understatement. She looks forward to Tuesday mornings all week long. She told me the other day "I'm never going to stop being a dancer mommy. I might want to be a dance teacher when I get bigger". Cute girl! She had her trophy ceremony a couple of weeks ago, then we had pictures, and then this past weekend was the recital. She was so sweet and so cute out there. We were both so proud of her and loved every part of watching her.

Here are a couple from the trophy ceremony. Unfortunately I forgot my camera so these were from my phone.

Here are her dance pictures.

Since the girls recitals were on different days I knew we weren't going to get pictures of them together in their costumes, so after picture day we snapped a few. Love these two!

Her recital was on Saturday and I can assure you, it was precious!

I know I've said it before, but I love four year old Adalyn. She is full of personality these days and I never want to forget! So proud of this beautiful dancer! (Saturday morning poor girl woke up with a little cold which is why her eyes are squinting.I was killing her with pictures outside!)

Adalyn Ella, you are one beautiful little girl and a beautiful dancer. We are so very proud of the spunky, full of life, lovable and creative young lady you are becoming. You always manage to put a smile on all of our faces. We love you dearly sweet girl and our family is more blessed because you are in it. We are so completely proud of you!