We ended up being kind of busy the end of this month! I keep waiting for things to settle down, but maybe we are just in that stage of life where they just don’t. 😉

Parker has discovered how to open up the front facing camera on my phone. So, I regularly have about 93 pictures that just randomly show up just like this in my camera roll. Ha!

We started online guitar lessons with Nathan, so all day long, all I hear is him plucking away. He LIVES with this guitar on. It’s so cute.

Parker loves to talk all. the. time. but he ESPECIALLY loves to talk in the car. The whole time. It doesn’t matter if we are driving five minutes away or forty-five minutes away, he will talk the entire trip. I hear people talk about how when the kids are napping or away how they’ll turn on the TV or listen to music or something, but for me, I turn everything off and just listen to the quiet. 😉

LOVE this. Shannon was asking me about jaundice and I sent her a picture of Parker sunbathing as a tiny newborn (side note: HOW was he EVER that SMALL??!) and she sent back one of little James! SO fun! Love having another mama friend to share life with! This stage of small kids is so worth it and wonderful but can also be so lonely and draining. It’s so important to have each other.

Told ya. 😉 Also, I did NOT give that child permission to look that old. He is killing me. I swear he is six going on fifteen.

Jon was holding an open house and the boys were doing rest time and Eisley woke up like less than an hour into her nap. So, I pulled her out of bed and we just napped on the couch together. Such a sweet time. I have to remind myself that it goes so quickly. She won’t be a baby for too much longer. 🙁

Aunt Nicole’s birthday is the week after mine and it’s just so much fun. Mom made homemade pasta and it was amazing! Love celebrating my sweet sister-in-law!

The next day, Nathan was the “Star of the Week” at school, something he had been DYING to be since August. Ha! He was SO excited to make his poster and do his presentation. He got to take in his favorite buddy MeMo (yes! He still sleeps with Mickey Mouse every night – it’s the only thing that reassures me that he’s not completely grown up yet) and he brought in owl-shaped marble squares for the class. He was so happy this day. 🙂

Baby girl loves herself some pizza! It is hands down her favorite meal. So funny!

We had a relatively warmer day and the boys spent about four hours out there building a “fort” out of some of the random sticks in our junk pile that we have piled up on the side of the yard. Somedays, I walk about there and just get tired looking at all the work we have to do. It’s good to see the yard through the boys’ perspective and realize that they love it just how it is. 🙂

32 started off calm enough but then turned into kind of a crazy day.

I’ve been getting up super, super early every morning so I can get at least a little bit of time with Jesus and a cup of coffee in before I need to start working. I work for a while and then the kids get up. On this day, I read my all time favorite Psalm (Psalm 121) like I do every year and it was just a sweet time.

We had my party with my family the weekend before and Mom decorated the party with pictures of me. We were all just amazed at this one – little Eisley is apparently a lot like her mama. 🙂

The day was totally one of those “another day in Paradise” days like the song goes. Lost credit card, teething baby, car issues, toddler tantrums… Birthdays are just a different animal when you’re a parent. But we went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner, the kids behaved very well and the day ended on a good note. 🙂

Our church started a new Women’s Bible Study this week and I have been building up “Bible Study School” to Parker for weeks. He was SO excited to start his own school, just like Nathan. He marched straight into his class and was so excited to tell me about everything when I picked him up. Eisley was a different story. She pretty much just screamed through the entire thing. Poor baby is in a very attached to mama stage.

The Wild Kratts were hard at work plotting out where they were going next. So cute. I love seeing their imaginations!

And then – such a happy day!! My precious friend Shannon’s baby boy was born! James is beautiful and perfect and I was just so overjoyed to hold him. There is just something so sweet about holding a lifelong friend’s baby.

Adorable little mister! Shannon is a ROCK STAR. She was induced thanks to some blood pressure issues and delivered this kid withOUT an epidural. I pretty much walked in to that hospital room bowing at the waist. 😉 So SO fun to see her and Eric become parents. Little James is so blessed to have them!

Honestly, I’m not going to lie. Aside from my birthday, I really can’t stand the months of January and February. It’s usually very cold, so we don’t get to play outside very much, or when we do, everyone freezes and spends the rest of the day sniffling, which means we are all just cooped up inside. I hate having to bring coats and hats and everything with us anytime we need to go anywhere and the boys are both in this Allergic to Coats phase, so that just means we spend a good part of every day arguing about the level of warmth they need to have on in order to go outside, freeze and come back in sniffling.

And that’s not even touching on how expensive fruit is this time of year or any of the other stuff that comes with it. So, I usually spend January frustrated and googling things like “can people still get scurvy”.

A lot changes with kids. I used to love winter the most of all of the seasons. Now, once Christmas is over, I am just pretty much over it.

All of that to say, I am counting down the days until spring.

It thawed enough one day for the boys to color on the basketball pad in the backyard. Parker was SO proud of this. “I drawed me!” Notice the lack of a coat. Goodness.

He is growing up so fast. Nathan was at school this day and he decided he wanted to build the “TALLEST TOWER I EVER HAVE SEEN”. I think we accomplished it. 😉

This kid is so funny and so stinking old I can’t even stand it. He is seriously the BEST big brother ever. Eisley has him completely wrapped. He will drop anything to go make sure she’s okay. And Parker basically lives for the days when Nathan is home and wants to do everything EXACTLY like Nathan. If Nathan is having cherry yogurt, Parker has to have cherry yogurt. If Nathan is wearing a sweatshirt and not a coat, Parker is only going to wear a sweatshirt. If Nathan decided to high dive into the river, I know two kids who would be right behind him. It’s a lot of pressure to carry and this kid just excels at it.

The kids had Awana one night and we had a couple of meals on a calendar card, so we opted to go to CFA for dinner. Jon gave Eisley her first chicken nugget dipped in the classic sauce.

I’d say she was a fan. 😉

I went in the playroom (which also functions as the first room people see when they walk in our house) after breakfast and the boys were so excited to tell me that they helped me decorate. Ha! Jon and I laughed for a long time about the placement of those guys directly beneath the “My grace is sufficient” sign. Sort of a “just in case it isn’t, here’s the backup”. 😉

Guess who took her first steps this week??!

Eisley’s walking! from Erynn Mangum on Vimeo.

She’s been trying so hard and getting a step in here and there, but this was definitely the turning point! I’m so proud of her! And so terrified of having another walker in this house full of choking hazards! Ha!

And it just seemed a good time to cut two teeth at the same time too. Bless her heart. It’s hard to be one.

We spent the first couple of days of 2017 just hibernating, basically. 😉 Ha! We played at home with all our new toys, we soaked in the last of Dad and Nathan home from school and tried to do a couple of small home projects. The remodel has been put on the back burner for awhile, so it was nice to get a few things done again. 🙂

The boys taught Eisley how to use her new tea sets from her aunties. It was hilarious, especially since neither of them have any experience with a tea set.

We got my Best of Times wall back up! Such a happy day! It made this house feel so much more like home.

On the first Friday back to regular schedules, we had a snowstorm and they canceled school because there was a layer of ice under the snow. Such a fun thing to have a surprise three day weekend the first weekend back to work! These two were basically up and dressed like this by 7:45.

This was baby girl’s first snow that she was aware of. 😉 She had the best time crawling around out there with the boys! Since we hadn’t had any snow up to this point, I realized that we had basically nothing snow related for the kids, so Nathan was wearing old rain boots and Eisley’s boots were about 4 sizes too big. Parker was the only one who was set. It’s good to have a big brother.

She was so curious about the cold, wet stuff. So adorable!

Tired, freezing cold boy warming up by the fire while his hot chocolate was cooking. Ha! He was exhausted. Naps were done well on this day. 😉

For Christmas, Aunt Nicole and Uncle Caleb gave Nathan a gift card to Chick-fil-A and you would have thought they’d given him the winning ticket to the lottery. He was SO excited to go use it and basically begged every single day after Christmas to go to Chick-fil-A to pay for his VERY OWN MEAL. Ha! We finally went Saturday after the ice melted and I had to sneak a picture of him ordering. He was so proud. Such a big kid gift!