Friday, August 23, 2013

Fall Soccer '13

The kids had a great soccer season. It was Anna's first time playing and she really loved it! She had a smile the entire time she played!

She was quite the scoring machine too and scored countless goals.

I loved her pointed toes/extended dancer legs!

Goal! (again)

Great first game!

Dave does such a great job coaching!

Our newest soccer player!

Next was Benjamin's turn!


Benjamin still loves playing too!



Goal!


Another great game!

Our sweet soccer players at the start of their season!

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

2013/2014 School Year Beginnings

Well, I had every best intention to catch up on the blog. But that's hard to do without the internet. We have been without it for several weeks and have it back now, but not wireless. As you can imagine, taking care of four kids (including homeschool) doesn't allow me a lot of time to sneak down to the basement for blogging. I'm going to give it a go tonight though. :) Here goes.....(again)....

Collin LOVES the lawn mower and all things power tool. He sneaks over to it any chance he gets to try and push it or start it (both of which he isn't quite strong enough for yet, thank goodness!). Dave made his day here when he let him help cut grass!

Our school year has begun and we are having so much fun! Not to brag, but I thought this was a fitting first day shirt. ;)

Big Benjamin is in 2nd grade!!!

Anna is in kindergarten!!! She is doing so great!

Collin is growing up so fast and is loving preschool!

We bought all new curriculum for Benjamin this year and we are both really enjoying it.

Anna is quite the smart cookie and is breezing through all of her work.

We redid our school room for this year and it is such a great change. I love listening in on the conversations these two big kids of mine have as they work.

While we work, Eva (aka The Climber) is everywhere....on her toy box, on the kids' desks, on my chair....everywhere! She also spends a lot of time squealing as she looks out the window.

Collin really loves when its his turn to do school. He wants to be big so bad! He is doing great too....tracing and cutting/pasting and answering questions.

Working hard.

Eva only has a few words and "Whoa!" is one of them. Its pretty stinkin' cute!

Look at that hair grow! (She's saying "Whoa" here too)

With the start of school we also had all of our activities start up too, including dance. Anna was very excited to wear her new leotard and tutu.

Monday, August 5, 2013

Eva's 1 Year/Family Pictures

I ordered these adorable coordinating outfits for the kids for Eva's one year pictures and waited not so patiently for them to be made. It was worth the wait, they looked adorable!! The kids did so wonderful for the pictures too. We did these all by ourselves with a tri-pod and they did so good smiling! Eva thought the timer light was hilarious!!



Our adorable one year old!

Four precious kiddos, how blessed are we?!?




Evie-bee is a wonderful one year old! She is crawling all over the place, makes lots of little sing-song noises but doesn't really talk other than ah-oh and a few mommas and dadas. She has two little teeth in the bottom of her sweet smile. Laughs when she likes what you are going to do, give her (her blankie, time to eat/nurse, show her an animal, etc.). She LOVES her blankie so very much! Does the sweetest side-to-side wave (Dave calls it a beauty pageant wave) especially when you ask her if she wants to go night-night. She waves night-night to each of her siblings at nap time every day with the sweetest little wave and sweetest little smile. When she waves bye-bye she waves with both hands. She continues to climb on everything:  her toys, the couches, the kids' desks, everything. She could care less about walking, just wants to climb! She continues to climb in the bumbo seat and her newborn cushion and yells at her siblings if they sit in them. She also yells at them if they are on my lap or I'm tickling them, she wants me to herself! Her eyes seem to get bluer and bluer and her hair is growing so fast and is so blond! She is quite long, she was 31 inches at her check up (over 95%) and 22 1/2 pounds (~70%). She is growing and learning and just so much fun!



Standing on her own for one of the first times.

Clapping

Laughing at her siblings.

Momma's sweet, sweet girl!

Saturday, August 3, 2013

10th Anniversary Trip

It has been full force busy around here with the school year starting and I have let the blog get way too far behind. Hopefully, I can recover! :) Here goes......

Dave took a couple of days off for our 10th anniversary and we spent a long weekend in Lafayette, where our marriage started. It was a wonderful way to celebrate and we had a great time! First up, we went to the bridge where Dave proposed and he surprised me with a new ring!


Eva's own sunglasses!

Then we enjoyed the fun little (and free!) zoo. Dave and Benjamin playing with the water globe.

Anna and Collin loved all these animal statues.

Eva loved this little elephant that shot water out of his trunk...



We got to pet an armadillo!

Our monkey loved watching the real monkeys.



An eagle's wingspan is a little bigger than our big Benjamin.

Two eagles!

We had a fun time at the zoo!

Pretty Anna with some pretty flowers.

We were shocked to see that they had torn down the hospital I worked at and that Benjamin was born!

We picked a hotel that had its own water park and had a great time swimming, sliding, and splashing.




Collin was so funny....he would hold his nose as he began coming down the slide and then let go before he hit the water.



Anna got her brothers with this water-shooting crocodile and you should have heard her gleeful laughs. It was perfect! (she deserves to get them every once in awhile!)

Good job, Anna! You got them good!



Eva loved this!



There was a huge bucket hanging from the ceiling that would slowly fill with water. Once it was full, an alarm would buzz to tell you it was going to dump out so the kids could run under the platform and let it soak them (or us adults could move away and not get splashed). It would mist Eva a little bit sometimes and she got to where she knew what the buzzer meant and she would look up with this very discerning look. It was hilarious!!

Ahoy, matey!


Anna loved the tunnel that went under the ship and was often hidden away in there.


We had dinner our first night with our friends from college, Mike and Lindsay and their two kids Ruby and Burke. We spent the next day with them at the dairy farm and the kids hit it off big time! They LOVED each other!!

Merry-go-round, cow style.

Racing to set the cow up for milking as fast as the professionals do.

They loved this big bouncy trampoline thing!

On the bus to go see the cows.

Waiting for their grilled cheese lunch.

Train ride.

It was adorable how good of buddies Collin and Burke became! They were two peas in a pod, for sure.


Rock wall climbing on a milk jug.


Benjamin was the only one to make it to the top and did it with no trouble. Here he is ringing the bell.

JUMP!


Later that evening, our friends were so kind and kept all four kids so Dave and I could have an evening just the two of us to celebrate our 10 wonderful years of marriage. We did some shopping and got new Purdue clothes, drove all around campus, and enjoyed a wonderful Thai (my favorite!) dinner together.


Here they are standing under the bucket that I mentioned earlier that would dump on them. It took Anna a day to become brave enough to try it and once she did, she loved it...just like her wild brothers!

I forgot my camera when we visited campus (hard to believe, I know!) so we had to go with the good ole camera phone. We let the kids run through the fountain (it was super hot, so we knew their clothes would dry quickly). It was quite the fun sight to watch them get so soaked so quickly. We were slightly envious as we suffered the heat without the cool water.





Anna looked so beautiful posing for me on the hills by the Union. I can remember spending lots of time here in college studying and she looked so grown up, I can envision her doing the same there one day.


The boys being silly at dinner.


We took the kids to the popular restaurant Triple X that's famous for their root beer and got them their first root beer floats.

They were a hit!

It was a wonderful anniversary trip!


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