And Then There Was....

One more, which now makes 7!! Wow, still a bit overwhelming, but come September our fifth sweet baby will be joining our family. We are all so thrilled that God is blessing us with another little baby. I'm also glad that God gives us such a large amount of time to prepare our home and family for this new addition!

February So Far

Yes, I'm aware February is pretty much over, but life just seems crazy over here leaving me very little time for anything extra like blogging. I love the blog and I'm just not willing to let it go, so every now and then I have my very own blogging party to catch up on all the things I have been meaning to blog about.

February started out freezing cold, literally. We had two weeks in a row with freezing rain and sleet, which if you know anything about Houston, you know how rare that is. The girls ran outside to feel it and see how cold it was but they didn't last long. They are still California girls at heart!

We set up a store one day, while learning about money. That loved this and played over and over again.

We attended a Valentine Party at one of my sweet friends house. It was so fun and the kids all seemed to have a blast.

Then I had a little bit too much fun with the camera when we got home.

 Oh that number 3! If anyone out there has at least three kids, you know what I mean. That was the best I got.

All my girls love to paint and are always begging to paint, so one afternoon I broke out these canvases I had for awhile and let them just paint. We checked out a book about painting from the library, so they had fun looking through there and coming up with ideas of what to paint.

So it's been a good month, but there is one more thing that has kept our month rather interesting, but this deserves a blog post of it's own...

My oldest... she just makes me laugh!

Aubrey Claire... what can I say about this six year old girl of mine. She is really becoming her own little person more and more. She is my very sensitive girl. She has crazy emotions already, at six, it makes me a bit fearful for whats to come. She has a hard time controlling her emotions, no matter the emotion. We tend to butt heads over this little fact pretty often!  But she is so great at being a friend, being a big sister, being a helper. She loves to be around people and friends, even though she still is a bit shy.   She is not very independent (which I always assumed the oldest would be), and often fights with Adalyn if Adalyn decides she doesn't want to play with her anymore. You know those out of control emotions I mentioned earlier, yep those come into play a lot during those times! She is learning more and more, the older she gets, what it means to be brave, to be confident, and to really strive hard to accomplish goals she is working towards.

Her reading has just taken off like crazy in the last month. She really seemed to struggle there for a bit but she finally realized the more she practiced the better she would get. A few weeks ago she kept picking book off the shelf in the playroom and started reading the first few sentences, but was completely surprising herself. She kept telling me "I just read that!". It really gave her confidence in herself and since then she has realized she can read. In our curriculum we have a Bible Reader that we just began, but we only read two or three pages a week. Well she carries it around with her all the time and I always find her reading it. She has just breezed through the first 20 pages, without me asking her at all to read it. The other day she came and told me a few things she had read about King Solomon. Kind of made me a tab proud of her!

A few months ago, back in the fall, she learned to ride her bike without training wheels. It took her a long time to convince herself to try it. She was so scared, but once she finally decided (with Daddy pushing her along) that she would be brave and try, she took off within a few minutes. Seriously the girl never fell or anything. It took her no time at all and now it is her absolute favorite thing to do. Jeff told her once she learned he would take her out on a special date and buy her a new bike (everyone has been out growing bikes over here). So that's just what she did. She picked out a super bright colorful bike, and now when she has any spare time she runs outside to ride her bike. Every weekend she begs Jeff to take her on a bike ride. She got the hang of it quickly and really taught herself what you can accomplish when you decide to push fear aside and choose to be brave. A pretty good lesson!

Soon after she learned to ride. Off for a family walk/bike ride to the park. 
 
 Her brand new bikes. It looks so big! All this growing up makes me teary. Did you notice the missing front teeth. See... too much growing up.

 
 And they are off on their first (with her new bike) Daddy daughter bike ride! How cute is that.

Now the other thing that makes me crack is the child's love of dressing up. It has always been a passion of hers, since she was just a tiny girl. But it never gets old watching her come up with new ensembles. It keeps Jeff and I giggling constantly. So here are a few or her recent ones. These days I have to sneak pictures of her dressed up, she won't pose anymore. 

This one I love. It was right before we started school. One of our family rules is that we makes our beds, brush our teeth and get dressed before we begin our school lessons for the day. I came upstairs to make sure everyone was doing what they were supposed to and found Aubrey like this, brushing her teeth. Oh my!

This one is a completely different day, but she came down for school like this. I had to snap a picture while she was working. I have no idea how she was able to do her work with her sunglasses on but it didn't seem to phase her.

And another day, playing outside. The swinging cracked me up. In a tutu, necklaces and a helmet. She will love these pictures one day, I'm sure of it!

I love this sweet girl of mine. She is precious, she's eager to learn, and I love cuddling up with her and listening to all the sweet things she has to tell me. I'm beyond grateful that God gave me this little girl to love, nurture and teach her about His never ending love for her.

The Jumping Castle

The company we rent the jumping castle through is really just a great company. They rent this to us for an extremely reasonable price, plus they let us have it for nearly two whole days. So we had it on Saturday for the party and then they didn't pick it up til Sunday night. We had all of Sunday to play and spent a lot of the day out there as a family playing together. I didn't do much productive at all that day, but I just played with my kids and it was so fun. Oh and took lots of pictures of course.

Landon was not to sure about it at all at first. He screamed when I put him in, then he had a death grip on me. Jeff finally got him to relax a bit and he liked it as long as nobody bounced him too much and he had a ball to play with.

There was lots of jumping (obviously), lots of tricks, and we played a lot of duck duck goose, or as Avery liked to call it "goose goose goose."

 I'm sure Jeff will love that I posted this, but he is such a kid! He had just as much fun as the kids.

 She was flipping over and over and over again.

Her Ariel Party

As I mentioned in the previous post, Avery requested a jumping castle for her birthday. It's really all she asked for, and for her friend Tessa to be at her house, so we had to make it happen. We threw a small little party for her and we all really enjoyed her day. As I was looking back through pictures I realized I hardly took any, but I sure did enjoy being with the birthday girl

The cute birthday girl, ready for her party.

 She wasted no time getting into the jumping castle!

This was taken just minutes before that other top tooth was knocked out. Luckily someone found the tooth bouncing around inside.


My cookie lady never ceases to amaze me. Aren't these so adorable?!? And they are delicious too.

 Her friend Tessa came!

She was not too excited about everyone singing to her...

Or everyone staring at her while opening presents.

But she loved every minute of jumping! She has a lot of energy so she can last all day just jumping away. Happy birthday Avery! We all had a blast celebrating your day.

Happy Birthday to Avery

How did our little Avery Brenna turn THREE years old already? I don't know, but nonetheless it came and went and now we have a spunky little three year old girl full of her very own personality! What can I say about this third girl of mine? Well, she definitely walks to the beat of her own drum! She is a spirited little thing, full of cute things to say, full of really great songs to sing, full of the sweetest little dances all the time, full of really loud screams like "That's mine!!", full of doing things in her time rather than mommy and daddy's (usually not a good result for her with that one), yet full of the sweetest hugs and kisses that are just my little treasures every day. I always tell Jeff, "how can she make me so mad in one second, yet the next second she melts my heart." She has a way of doing that, probably every day of her little life. She has a really hard time sitting still, and her little attention span is pretty much nonexistent , yet the girl can watch t.v. like a champ (not too proud of that one, however the big girls can actually get a good start on their school work in the morning if I can get a show on for Avery!). She loves to play outside, ride her bike and her little car, she loves to go on walks and go to the park, she loves to eat at Chick fil a, she absolutely loves going to church and Super Friday, she loves to sing and dance and she's actually really good at it. She carries around cd's with her constantly asking me to put one on (usually they end up scratched). Her favorites are her "Avery" cd and the Frozen cd. We usually have christian music (from our local station) playing in our house most days, and very often I hear her singing along with so many of the songs. It's so very precious! All that she wanted for her birthday was a jumping castle at her house (which we ended up doing for her party), and her friend Tessa to be there. Pretty easy request!

Her birthday ended up being a great day. She asked for cinnamon rolls for breakfast (although I think Aubrey told her to).

 It was on a Tuesday and on occasional Tuesdays, we meet some friends at Wendy's for story time and lunch. Even one of our sweet friends made her some cupcakes to celebrate!

 Avery and her cute friend Tessa, enjoying their cupcakes.

Her other request for the day was some time at the inside park which is at a nearby church. We haven't been in awhile and this time it was just us so it was perfect. Even Landon got to climb around which he loved!

 Aubrey sure loves to "help" her baby brother...

This is where I kind of dropped the ball. I was supposed to make dinner, but I didn't plan it out well. All she kept requesting for dinner was sausage, and I wasn't sure how I was going to incorporate that into dinner. So just before it was time to start figuring it out I asked her if she would like to go out for pizza. Of course she said yes, and we did and it was fine, but when we go out to eat it takes us forever and we end up getting home late and don't get to spend quite as much time together. We got home just before bed time, but still had to do presents and cake! And at bed time, I'm kind of done with every one, but I managed to muster the energy for my birthday girl!

Out for pizza!

 The big girls helped pick out this doll for Avery. She was so excited and literally was surprised it was for her.

 Nana and Papaw got her Anna from Frozen for Christmas and then Elsa for her birthday. Aubrey cracks me up in this picture. All three of them were so excited about this! Good job Nana and Papaw, I think that was the favorite gift!

 She got lots of cute clothes from Granny and Papaw.

 




 The girl loves frogs!

So here is the very sad Ariel cake I made. I think I may need to take lessons. My kids are soon going to start recognizing that I can't decorate cakes. As of now, they think I am so talented. Ha!

I wish I could edit this photo and clear the background, aka my super messy kitchen, however that's my life right now, and this picture was too cute of my girl!

 We love you so much Avery Brenna. I love that I can still hold you and pick you up and get the greatest hugs from you. Because I know all too well, that those precious moments are fleeting and I won't be able to do that for too much longer. You melt my heart sweet girl, and I just can't get enough of your beautiful smile and precious little giggle. Happy 3rd birthday to our beauty! May you learn to love God and follow Him with all of your heart!