Happy Birthday Dallas!

It's amazing how fast four years go by. It seems like just yesterday little Dallie was born, especially when I go through pictures of him as a baby.

It's also amazing how long some days seem when he is being particularly ornery. But I love this kid.

He really does keep us smiling and laughing, when we aren't yelling that is. Even when he is bad he is so darn cute! 

We celebrated his birthday this past weekend. He loves Paw Patrol and wanted some cupcakes "with the things ticking out the top"...and that's exactly what he got.

He also got a lot of cool presents and has been riding his new "cooter" all over the house.

We celebrated his birthday today by going to the candy store. This kid loves candy, especially jelly beans. He was able to get some root beer flavored jelly beans! We also rode the train around the mall.

We were lucky Aunt Kelly had a doctors appointment and could spend the morning with us. She always makes things fun. We love hanging out with her. 

We ate some yummy burgers at Red Robin.

And I was even able to get some snuggle time in with my big 4 year old.

He ended the night playing with friends at growth group. A great birthday indeed!

Dallas has grown so much this past year. He is so smart and doing well with his school. He loves candy, root beer, Paw Patrol, trucks, four wheelers, hats, break dancing, his Papaw, candy, socks, pop tarts, playing outside, running super fast, the color green, playing the matching game and puzzles. 

He doesn't like eating his dinner, drinking water, people messing up his room, green beans, cutting his finger nails. He is a particular little boy.

Happy Birthday Dallas! We love you to the moon and back.

Nine

Nine...9...NINE!!! It seems like yesterday we were bringing a 7 pound 15 ounce baby girl home from the hospital. 

Now she's a 70 pound big girl with such a gentle joyful heart. I am extremely blessed to be her mother, but also blessed to get to spend my days with this awesome child. 

We celebrated her birthday with a small party this past weekend. I made her an Ever After High Raven cake. That's her favorite. Madeline Hatter is mine. 

She got lots of great presents. Here is a picture of her with her new bike and shooting her pink BB gun. 

We started the day with a birthday waffle and sang happy birthday to our sweet girl. 

She wanted to go to Monkey Joe's, so they spent the morning jumping, climbing and sliding down inflatables and playing games.

Meme and Papaw treated us to lunch at Friendly's and they ended the day getting to spend the afternoon and evening playing with their favorite cousins. It's been a very wonderful birthday. 

Kristen loves drawing, painting and just being creative. She is always doing little crafts with Dallas. She loves to pretend that she is the teacher with Dallas and Lauren as her students. She loves riding her bike and being outside. She loves playing Barbies and watching Jessie and K C Undercover. She is still obsessed with stuffed animals. Her favorite subject in school is reading and science. Her favorite foods are chicken (on the grill), tacos, yogurt, fruit and popcorn. She is such a helper and is always doing little things to try to make my day go smoother. 

She doesn't like going to bed, peanut butter and potatoes (whose child is she?), wearing jeans or tie up tennis shoes, waking up (yeah..I know), and having to share her bedroom. 

Daughters hold our hands for a little while, but hold our hearts forever.

Happy Birthday Kristen. We love you so very much. 

Another Month Bites the Dust

I swear these days it seems as if life is moving super fast. I can't believe November is gone and December is already here. Christmas will be here in the blink of an eye and my kids are excited about the upcoming festivities, but mostly just the presents. They're kids...what do you expect?

Because we had so much to do this month, I wasn't able to complete the thanksgiving lesson I had planned. We got some of it done. I guess I have it for next year, so one less thing I will need to plan.  We did learn about turkeys and read some funny turkey stories. 

We also did some fun turkey writing activities and math activities and made some thankful turkeys. 

We've had a good month homeschooling with a few breaks for trips and Thanksgiving. We took the kids to see my grandmother and to also see the Santa Train. This is a tradition that has been in my parents home town for 70+ years and I am so glad my kids got to experience it. 

Santa rides in on a train and throws candy and stuffed animals out to the kids. There are people also handing out wrapping paper, backpacks with toys in them and bags of snacks to people too. It was a fun time.

We also got to hear my uncle Pooch play bluegrass at Ma's and Pa's, a local restaurant that my parents hung out at when they were teenagers. 

Audrey, the Girl Scouts bear got to travel along with us. Kristen and my sister learned how to two step too. I'll only post a picture of Kristen though. 

And Lauren's Girl Scout troop got to open the Powhatan School Board meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance.

We finished off the month going to see Santa Claus and decorating for Christmas.

Also, Eric came back. Dallas had a few very bad days when Eric suddenly appeared. Eric had to leave him a very important message.

 

October

Well, I'm glad October is over. Not that I'm one to wish away time, but I hope November finds us healthier. With strep and stomach bugs and fevers plaguing our family, I hope it's all behind us.

We started off the month celebrating my mom, aka Meme, and all she means to us. I really do have the best mother and don't know what I would do without her. She is definitely loved very much by us all. 

We had a fun month learning all about pumpkins. 

We learned some interesting facts about pumpkins. Did you know that a smaller pumpkin can have more seeds than a bigger pumpkin? Seeds are determined by the number of lines on the pumpkin, not the size. So we started by counting the lines on our pumpkins and making predictions on how many seeds our pumpkins would have.  I already knew Lauren's would have more seeds.

Oh how I wish those pumpkins only had 8 seeds or even 200 seeds, since I was the one left counting them. 

We then measured our pumpkins with cubes. 

And put the pumpkins in water to see if they would float or sink. They did a little of both.

Then we had to cut open our pumpkins to count the seeds. This step should have been simple, but the pumpkin skin was like plastic, really, and wouldn't cut open. I seriously thought I had bought fake pumpkins because I was having so much trouble. So, when knives fail, get a hammer. 

Dallas really enjoyed this part and we finally got the pumpkins open. Kristen helped me count seeds for about 5 minutes. You don't realize how many seeds are in a pumpkin until you start counting them. And our final count was:

And yes I counted almost 1,000 pumpkin seeds. I couldn't throw them away after all of my hard work, so we roasted them. We couldn't figure out if we liked them or not. 

Some other fun facts we learned about pumpkins:

A pumpkin is a fruit.

Carving pumpkins (aka jack-o-lanterns) originated in Ireland, but they would also carve faces in root vegetables.

An average sized pumpkin weighs about 13 pounds.

The largest pumpkin ever grown was in Illinois, weighing in at 2,145 pounds. Glad I didn't have to count those seeds. 

My kids also got to do a little fishing at my aunt and uncle's house. They threw a harvest party and my kids had such a great time and were exhausted! The kids were catching fish left and right using live worms for bait. I lost count because there were so many caught.

Poor Paul was out in his boat using his fancy bait catching nothing, meanwhile the kids caught a fish pretty much every throw. It was probably the same fish who just wasn't smart enough to give up. 

Kristen was excited about carving her own pumpkin this year and kept telling me she was going to do it all by herself. Like I'm gonna argue with that. 

I ended up finishing it for her, because roasting marshmallows was a lot better than carving a pumpkin. But our joint effort turned out good. 

My sister was stuck helping Lauren carve her pumpkin. She did good concentrating and trying to make each dot perfect. Lauren, not my sister, although I'm sure her dots were perfect too.

Then Dallas found a wagon and it was a lot more fun being pulled in a wagon than carving a pumpkin.

My sister did a fabulous job carving Lauren's pumpkin. Lauren picked out the scary picture and was not going to change her mind either. 

Dallas didn't make a pumpkin. He didn't want to, so I made his for him. 

All Dallas wanted to do was drive the four wheeler. It was much nicer than his play one at home. 

We ended the month trick or treating as Raven from Ever After High, Ariel and Yoshi from Super Mario Brothers. Dallas kept saying he wasn't ready for Halloween because he didn't have green socks and was so distraught that he fell into the dish washer. Although he looks super happy in this pic, he was really crying and had tears in his eyes. 

And the most important news of the month....Dallas can write his name.