Happy Birthday Baby

I'm pretty irritated with myself! I wrote this birthday post over two months ago and never actually posted it! So here it is.....

One year. One year ago our lives changed in the best way possible. One year ago we met the piece of our family we didn't even know we were missing and can not imagine our life without anymore. One year ago our baby girl, Sweet Adeline, was born.

She had an interesting birthday party. We were so grateful that Gramma Lisa and Auntie Kaley could fly out for a visit. Unfortunately, most of us ended up with a stomach bug and her party was plagued with vomit and diarrhea! At least it was a party to be remembered!

Thanks for the visit!!!!

Adeline truly is a blessing to our family. I thought it would be a huge adjustment to being outnumbered and having three kids, but honestly, she just fits right in and I can't even remember what it was like to only have two. Now, don't mistake me. She wasn't/isn't an easy baby by any means. I've said this before but can't think of a better way to describe her; she is "high needs." She knows what she wants and needs and we all function better when she gets those things. She communicates those things well but I'm looking forward to when that communication includes actual words instead of high pitched squeals! She has started to say simple things like Mama and Dada and I swear I hear little phrases like thank you and all done too, but that could be my imagination.

 She is a happy, healthy little girl! At her one year check up she was 17 lbs 3 oz and 29 inches long. She has 11 teeth (including 3 molars). She has started pulling herself up on the furniture and her favorite thing to do is grab our hands and take us for a walk. It's only a matter of time before she's taking off on her own. She loves playing Peek-a-boo with her blanket. She just giggles and giggles every time. She also loves crawling around after her sisters and wants to do everything they do. She still gives daily snuggles to Mom and has recently decided to be a Daddy's girl as well. She enjoys greeting him at the door and will squawk at him until he picks her up and gives her hugs and kisses. We love her so much! Happy first birthday Baby Girl!

I'm pretty sure she didn't eat a bite of cake, but managed to eat most of the cherries off the top ! 

2017 Holiday Season

Wow, is it really 2017 already!?!? We've had another great year and especially enjoyed our holiday season. We were able to fly to Seattle for Thanksgiving to spend a week with Nathan's parents. This trip was different than most of our others in that it was just us and Stan and Lisa there. The rest of the family wasn't able to make it. While we definitely missed them all, we also really enjoyed spending uncontested, quality time with Grandma and Grandpa. The girls were so excited for our trip, but I think Gramma may have been even more excited! We had such a good time. Highlights included cutting down a Christmas tree, helping decorate for Christmas, baking cookies, riding the carousel, attending the snowflake parade, watching Christmas movies, and spending all day with Gramma and Papa! As always, the trip was over way too quickly and we already miss them. I especially miss that the girls like to wake up Grandma in the morning rather than Mama! This was Adeline's first flying experience, which feels strange since the twins were pro's by this age. The flight out there she was "that baby". You know the one on every flight who screams and cries? Yep, that was her. To be fair it wasn't her fault. We had woken up at 4:00 AM to catch our flight and she was so tired! She fell asleep right away which was great, but of course,10 minutes later the lady next me had to get up to use the restroom and jostled her awake. It was all down hill from there.  Fortunately, the way home went much better and we avoided tears on her part and mine!

The girls were very curious about this tree cutting business

Tree farm fun

Pictures with Santa in the mall

Can you tell Eden was excited?

Carousel with Gramma

Soon after we got home, my mom was able to come and visit! My brother, Ryan, moved to Stillwater, Oklahoma so she and my Dad came to help him with the move. Mom made the 3 hour drive over to Rogers while Dad stayed to help with construction. We loved having Mimi for a few days! We were able to ride a Christmas train while she was here. I've always wanted to ride the Polar Express, drink cocoa, eat cookies, see Santa, the works. Unfortunately, I started coming down with a stomach bug right about then and did not get to enjoy it very much. Luckily, the girls and Mimi had a great time! I spent the next day, lying in bed being miserable. I was so grateful my mom was here to take care of my family while I recouped. Once I was feeling better we were able to tie quilts for Eden and Lydia's beds. I made the quilt tops last summer when I was in Utah. We didn't have time to bind them, so I may put it off long enough that I have to take them with me to Utah this summer to finally finish them! The girls also had their first ballet recital. It was so stinking cute. I about started crying from amusement and pride!

Meeting Santa and the trainstation

Christmas train selfie

Our graceful ballerinas

Candyland with Mimi

Next, we were able to head to Stillwater for the weekend. Mom, Dad, and Shane were all there to help Ryan. His new house was a true fixer upper. Nate helped lay floor, paint, build fences, install appliances. The girls and I were of no help, but we didn't want to miss the party! We did talk my mom into taking a break from texturing walls to check out the Wondertorium which turned out to be a great Children's museum. The girls had a ball! We were sad to leave after only a weekend, but Shane was able to come back with us for a few days. I'm sure he was bored out of his mind just hanging out with me and girls all day, but he didn't complain. Eden and Lydia talked him into several rounds of hide and seek. He discovered that you can hide on the couch every time and never move and they still think its great! We went for a swim at the Community Center one evening and it was so nice to have an even ratio of adults to kids. Man, I miss that! We also stayed up late philosophizing, eating popcorn, and watching terrible Christmas movies. Good times!

"Dad, you're squeezing too tight!"

They loved pretending to give the babies checkups at the children's museum

The girls got to meet Mrs. Clause and decorate cupcakes at the Wondertorium

Making treats with Uncle Shane

A few day before Christmas, Shane flew home. We haven't stayed home for Christmas for probably 5 years. I was really excited to avoid the stress of travel and enjoy a quiet Christmas at home. (Who was I kidding? With our three girls, quiet is not a word used to describe our home!) Christmas Eve did not really go according to plan and was a bit of a bust with weeping and wailing maybe even nashing of teeth throughout the day. But we had a delicious lasagna dinner, told the story of Jesus Christ's birth, put on new pajamas, and spent time together so it was still a win. Christmas morning my cinnamon rolls were also a bit of a bust (my yeast was bad and they didn't raise as much as they should have.) but with all that butter and sugar and yummy cream cheese frosting, they still were gobbled up. Our plan was to open Santa gifts, eat breakfast, go to church, and then open the rest of the gifts. The morning went mostly according to plan except Lydia refused to even look at her gifts from Santa and was in tears because she was hungry. "My body hurts! I need to eat some breakfast!!!" So we rearranged and ate breakfast first and then opened Santa gifts. Eden and Lydia both got new strollers for their baby dolls and were in heaven! Adeline mostly just loved the wrapping paper. After all the gifts, we had a delicious baby back rib dinner made in my new Instant Pot I got for Christmas. This thing is magical! If you don't have one, put it on your wish list for next Christmas. My ribs were fall off the bone tender in just over 20 minutes!

New jammies for Christmas Eve

I made Nate a new pajama shirt with this quote from his favorite Christmas movie

Oh how I love making Mommy and me outfits!

New books for all to read

For New Years, we were able to go back to Ryan and Courtney's place. The kids enjoyed playing with cousin Carter, and Nate was able to help with some more construction. We had quite the feast for our New Year's Eve party with eggnog milk shakes, crepes with a variety of toppings, chips and dip, and fried mini corn dogs. But we're old and boring and didn't even make it to midnight. We tried but ended up going to bed instead. Somehow I managed to not get any pictures of our weekend. We're so excited to have more family living close by and hope to see them often! 

Other Christmas time fun included ice skating, taking the kids to see the movie Moana, and having a fondue party. We had a busy holiday season, and feel extremely blessed that we were able to spend so much of our time with our family. 

Enjoying the new tea set from Gramma

Did I mention we loved having a 65 degree Christmas?

We took the girls "ice dancing"

Spring Time Round Up

I was afraid that having a newborn would cause us to miss out on adventures, but she hasn't slowed us down one bit. Adeline is really easy going and adaptable so we've been able to have a great spring.

We've had visits from both sets of grandparents. Our parents are so good to come to Arkansas and our kids absolutely love it! I'm always grateful to have extra hands to play with the girls and we all shed some tears when they have to go back home.

We loved having Nate's parents in town for Easter

With the beautiful weather, comes the itch to be outside as much as possible. We decided to brave a camping trip. We figured bedtime is a nightmare at home so how much worse could it be in the woods? We were pleased to find out it was actually so much better! The girls were super excited to sleep in a tent so they actually put themselves to bed. And by some miracle Adeline seemed to like sleeping in a tent as well and didn't wake up once in the night! We're considering sleeping in a tent every night at home...... We chose a perfect place to camp and had the entire campground all to ourselves, which was good since between us and our Shepherd and Pendleton cousins we had 6 adults, 8 kids, and 3 dogs. Nate got a new tent for his birthday. We went with the "instant tent" which was awesome! I'm all about the 2 minute set up! We also got one that was plenty big so we could fit our air mattress, the girls' cots, and Adeline's pack and play, plus space for Ollie and our stuff. It was perfect. Our girls had a grand time and I was relieved nobody fell in the fire or the pond.

Adeline spent much of the camping trip cuddled up with mom in the carrier

We are frequent attendees of story time at the local libraries. Yes that's plural. We hit up the Bentonville and Rogers library a couple of times a week.  The girls enjoy the fun songs and stories and there is usually a little craft at the end. I love that they get to be creative and I don't have to come up with a craft or gather the supplies!

Stringing beads at the library

Speaking of me not having to gather supplies, I love the Amazeum! It's a children's museum full of hands on activities. We have a family membership and it has been well worth the cost! The girls have a blast every time we go and I love that I don't have to clean up the mess!

Last weekend we were supposed to go to Branson with some friends but they had a medical emergency and we had to cancel just a few minutes before we were scheduled to leave. We were bummed to miss the trip but didn't want to let a perfectly good Saturday go to waste so we came up with a plan B. We headed out to the Gentry Wilderness Safari! The girls loved feeding and petting the animals. Well, Eden loved feeding and petting. Lydia is a bit more cautious and loved looking at the animals from a distance. Eden did get bit once by a little pony but after a few tears she declared, "I like to try again!" 

They both said the "Mama" (llama) was their favorite

The girls were very excited to see "Daniel Tiger" 

After a day with the animals, we decided to go to the drive-in movie theater and watch the new Jungle Book movie. We met up with Bryson and Alyssa. The girls thought it was pretty neat to get to watch a movie outside and of course any time spent with their cousins is a good time. The movie didn't start until about 9:00 PM so Lydia actually ended up falling asleep by the end in Nate's lap and Adeline slept in my arms, but Eden held strong until the ride home. 

It's easy to get caught up in the tasks of every day life so I'm so grateful that we've been able to take the time to do these fun things with our children and create such fun memories. Speaking of fun memories (or funny ones) Eden has an aversion to clothes so let me just leave you with this picture.....