This week was Giant Night at Awana and the kids were supposed to wear their parents’ clothes like they were a shrunken down giant.

Most kids probably don’t have a dad who is 6’2″, so Nathan looked extra awesome.

Ha! We were dying.

This picture is super dark and I still need to get the trim finished in there, but remember that weird closet thing off our family room? We originally thought we would make it a playroom, but it just didn’t work and we decided to make the big front living room a play area. So, we had this weird tiny room that would just gather junk and one day I was sitting there staring at it and a light bulb just came on.

A school room!

Nathan’s school has us do home days twice a week, so we definitely needed a place to have the kids be able to spread out and do their work. And as much as I loved doing it at the kitchen table, it was a big pain if Nathan was in the middle of something and it was also lunchtime.

I found these desks right at the end of the summer from a school nearby for two dollars each, so I figured we could probably swing it. 😉 A little paint on the chairs and sides, a little bit of a chalkboard finish on the top, our old chalkboard from our kitchen and my mom’s old whiteboard she was giving away and we had ourselves a school room!

It is perfect! When we are doing school, we pull the desks out and I can use the boards and when we are done, we just push the desks back up to the wall. The closet in there is absolutely perfect for all our school supplies and I moved the cubby bookshelf in there to hold the Bob Books and curriculum. So the space I really hated has become one of the spaces I love the most! 😉 I’ll do it justice and take some decent pictures when everything is done! We are still (obviously) painting some trim but the remodel is coming along!

Caleb was in one of his best friend’s weddings this week and it just happened to time out perfectly for him to be here for Gammy’s birthday! It was such a fun visit and I’m so glad he could come! Happy birthday, Mom! We are all counting down the days until the whole family is together again at Christmas. 🙂

Sometimes I don’t realize how much my kids look like each other until I look back at pictures. On this particular day, Facebook brought up a memory of me and Nathan right as our dear friend Sarah posted the pictures she’d taken of us on Facebook as well. And I just had to laugh – sometimes Eisley looks exactly like Parker to me, but she looks JUST like Nathan right here. There is no denying that they are siblings!!

Not only is she already ten months old, but with her birthday falling three days before Christmas, I’ve already started planning her party for about two weeks before she actually turns one just so we can have a party for her without it turning into a Christmas party. I usually end up curled into the fetal position clutching her newborn pictures every time I work on the party stuff.

How did it go so fast?? It goes faster and faster with each child!

Oh my sweet girl! She is such a joy. And she is EVERYWHERE.

Eisley girl is crawling everywhere, pulling up on anything that stands still for longer than .04 seconds (this includes her brothers and Kody) and eating anything that she can find (needless to say, I am constantly swiping choking hazards out of those cheeks).

She says “Dad” all day long. Yells it, actually. “DAAAAD! DAAAD!” Ha! She says “Nennon” occasionally, will blow kisses for “night-night” and saves “Mama” for 2AM. She baby talks and babbles all day long!

She wants to be held all day long and does not appreciate when she is set down if I need to do something like chop dinner. 😉 She needs to be right in the middle of the action and hates to feel like she is missing out. She loves shoes. She loves her brothers. She will hear Jon knock when he gets home and start crawling as fast as she can down the hall so she can be the first to give him a hug.

Oh how we love our sweet girl! I just could not love her more.

Days are just FLYING. I don’t know what happened to normal time! We had Nathan and things moved faster, we had Parker and things sped up even more and now, I’m trying my hardest not to blink because the second I do, I know Eisley will be in Kindergarten. 🙁

Precious sugar. I nurse her to sleep at night and I often will just rock her for several minutes (or you know, half an hour 😉 ) after she’s fallen asleep just because I know she won’t be tiny forever. It’s the wisdom of being not a first time parent, I think. The saying is true: the days are so long but the years are so, so, so short. Snuggle your babies!

Nathan NEVER naps, so when he curled up on the couch in the blanket and fell asleep on this afternoon, I immediately went into attack mode and started canceling our plans for the week because I was sure he had scurvy or something. 😉 But he woke up feeling fine. Our fall has just been a little crazy for all of us, it would seem.

Pretty little miss in her fall clothes. We are so thankful to have dear friends passing their girls’ clothes down to us!!

Oh this night was so sad! Kaitlin, Eitan and Asaf had to leave the next morning. We absolutely LOVED our time with them. Praying that they get to come back soon! Parker is still asking to see his little buddy Asaf. So thankful for dear friends and the fact that we get to raise our kids together!

And it was finally time for…

The LAST nights in all of their current beds! Nathan’s last night on the bottom bunk, Parker’s last night in the crib and Eisley’s last night in the pack and play. I may or may not have been extra emotional that night. I can’t BELIEVE how quickly they are all growing up! I feel like I just tucked Nathan into the bottom bunk for his first night in his big boy bed.

The next night, they were all asking to go to bed early. Ha!

One biggest boy.

One big boy.

And one tiny girl who wasn’t really down for pictures in her new bed. Ha!

They all slept so good! We were so worried about Parker and his new freedom, but he did really well. Really hoping that having his best buddy in there will help out when it comes to wandering the house after bedtime. 😉

And Eisley was a fan of all of the new room in bed. 😉

#ootd 😉

 

We did our family pictures this weekend! This is why I love our sweet friend Sarah – she told the boys that as soon as we were done, she would race them to the big trees so they smiled extra big so they could go play. Ha!

It was dinner time when we finished, so we dug out the gift card we’d been saving and treated the kids to California Pizza Kitchen. 🙂 Such a fun night! We sat on the patio and people watched and talked and the boys were so well behaved and so sweet.

A big perk of the patio is that a certain two people can speak in their interpreted form of “inside voices” and no one really cares. 😉

Little Miss slept through most of our restaurant experience and then woke up just in time to help the kids eat a few of their noodles. 😉 Such a fun day!

Little sunshine. 🙂 This month is always crazy and adding school and three kids into the mix doesn’t help, but we are loving the cooler weather and all the fun activities!

 

We met Kaitlin and Asaf at the aquarium this week and it was so gorgeous in the little pavilion outside and they had everything decorated beautifully, so obviously, we had to get a few pictures!

My little baby doll. I just adore her.

Sweet little love!

Middle man had to be bribed to sit for a picture. 😉

And the big. Even as a tiny, tiny baby he was great at smiling at the camera. It hasn’t changed. 😉 Ha!

No words for how much I love these three little pumpkin heads. They are crazy, silly, creative, feisty and never cease to make things fun.

And with our sweet Asaf!! Note that it is impossible to get a picture of four children all looking at the camera but I figured three out of four wasn’t bad. 😉

It’s Balloon Fiesta season!! I love, love, LOVE fall and all the fun there is to do here!

Nonnie surprised the boys and flew into town to visit! 🙂 Papa O was driving, so he got here that afternoon. I told the kids we’d accidentally left a suitcase at the airport after our visit to see Nama, so we had to go get it and the entire way there, Nathan kept saying, “But I counted and we had them all!” Ha! He was SO shocked to see Nonnie!

We went to the Balloon Fiesta that night for the Balloon Glow!

This was little miss Eisley’s first Balloon Fiesta and she LOVED it. Girl after her mama’s heart. 😉

All of us!! It was beautiful weather which means it was completely PACKED. The crowds never used to bother me but with three small kids, they start to get to me after a bit.

I think by this point, the excitement over Nonnie and Papa O being here and the crowd and everything else had made the boys both reach levels of exhaustion that they rarely reach, so even Nathan was getting freaked out by the loud propane tanks with the balloons. Parker pretty much started out upset by them. 😉 Eisley though LOVED it. She loved the warmth, she loved the balloons, she loved the sights. She was just a happy girl.

We decided to just skip the fireworks and head home so we could get the kids in bed at a decent time since morale was quickly plummeting. 😉 It ended up being a really good decision, even though I was sad to skip the fireworks!

The next morning, Jon and I got up early, saw the balloons were taking off, so we got the kids up and dressed and we took Nonnie and Papa O to do our favorite Balloon Fiesta activity – our Helping Balloon Fiesta Day, like the kids call it. 😉 We found the BEST park this year! They got to help put three balloons away and we had the most beautiful view!

Nathan got thrown on top of the Yoda balloon to help pack it down into the bag. Ha! He thought it was hilarious.

Looking at balloons with Dad. Love this picture!

The pilots and crews are always SO kind but this particular pilot went way above and beyond! He gave them cards, he answered all of Nathan’s 283 questions about how the balloons work and he even dug out little foam airplane guys for the boys to have. They were so excited. He was so sweet.

Afterward, we were all starving so Nonnie and Papa O treated us all to breakfast at Cracker Barrel. So sweet! We had the best time and Little Miss got to try pumpkin pancakes for the first time. She was quite the fan. 😉

We love Nonnie and Papa O so much!! So thankful they got to come stay with us! They always spoil us rotten and we all cried the whole way home from the the airport. 🙁 Can’t wait to see them at Christmas time!

Goodness. We have been BUSY.

This little miss is just getting more and more animated and it’s so fun to watching her personality start to come out! She was being so cute and funny playing with Pops at family dinner the other day. She was just trying to get him to laugh. 😉

And she’s officially outgrown the baby tub and is in the big girl bath! She was SO proud of herself! She loved playing around in there!

My dear, dear friend Kaitlin lives in Israel with her husband and precious son, Asaf, and they came to visit for a few weeks! They stayed with us for some of the time and we LOVED it. Parker and Asaf are like the best and worst of buddies. Ha!

Asaf is right smack in the middle of the two boys and it was so fun to watch the different dynamics over the week. We were so excited that they got to stay with us! One of the things we love best about our new house is that we have a little bit more room to host friends and family – we are so thankful for that!

Just a bunch of jammied blessings right there. Love those kids.

And this little squirt started pulling up in her bed! Bless her heart, she still doesn’t have her own room or her own real bed. 😉 I have to laugh when I think about the differences between the kids – with Nathan, we had his entire room – bedding, crib and all – done by the time I was about 24 weeks pregnant. With Parker, I was about 35 weeks pregnant before it was done. With Eisley, she’ll be about nine months old. Ha! Poor neglected third kid. We have Nonnie and Papa O coming soon, so they’ll stay in what will be her room. And then we need to get Parker transitioned to a big boy bed. And THEN she will have her own room and her own crib. 😉 Soon!

Oh this was such a happy day!

My beautiful grandmother is turning eighty this year and so for the first time in many years, we got almost all the family together and surprised her for a weekend! It is crazy how absolutely insane it is to get one grandma, four children, their spouses and twelve mostly adult grandchildren (and several of us are married with kids now) all free on the same weekend. 😉 So, I think we were missing three grandkids but we were so excited to get almost everyone there!

It was such an insanely fast trip! We flew out Friday, surprised Nama Friday night, spent Saturday hanging out with everyone and then flew back Sunday morning. Little Miss did so well on the plane! And the boys were SO excited that we were flying with Gammy, Pops, Uncle Bryant, Aunt Nicole and Gabriel!

When you consider how short our trip was, it makes the amount luggage we brought look RIDICULOUS. Little kids require so much stuff. It’s amazing. It was like a game of tetris to fit everything into the car.

It’s about a two hour drive from the airport to my grandmother’s small town, so we finally got there late that afternoon. We went to my aunt’s house and changed into nicer, non-airplane-smelling clothes and then drove to the restaurant to surprise Nama. Needless to say, there were lots of happy tears everywhere when she finally walked out and saw us on the restaurant balcony. 😉

Most of us at the super beautiful dinner!

Love this – Nicole and Hudson came too! Caleb couldn’t miss school, which was so sad, but I love that we still got to see the two of them. 🙂

My Eisley with her namesake – she loves her Nama. 🙂

This kid had a BLAST. We walked down to the river on Saturday and then went to my aunt’s house again. She lives in the house my mom grew up in and they have several acres with a wiffle ball field, a tennis court and woods and grass and a basement full of boxing equipment – Nathan totally thought he had died and gone to heaven. 😉 It was SO fun showing the kids some of the places that were such a huge part of my childhood!

My boys. Love these guys!! And I hope y’all are catching on to this – small town on the edge of the Mississippi River – sounds an awful lot like Carrington Springs, hmm? 😉

We loved loved loved loved seeing Auntie Cayce there!! I’m SO glad she came! She accepted a job right before this in New York City (!!!) working for the DA’s office out there, so she came to Nama’s birthday party on her way out to NYC. I’m so excited for her and so sad at the same time!! Still praying we end up in the same ten mile radius again one of these days. 😉

Goodness, I just love her. Praying for her so much!!!

I love this so much!!!

This woman has just been so instrumental in my life – she has poured herself out for her children and grandchildren and I am so blessed to call her my grandmother. There’s a reason we named our daughter after her. 😉

This was so cute. Parker bonded with Uncle David and they both sat like this for about two hours late Saturday afternoon. I think someone was a little bit overwhelmed with all the people. 😉

Such a fun, quick trip! So blessed so see our family! I hope we get to see them again very soon!

 

Things are finally starting to get in a little routine around here. 🙂 Love when we hit this part of fall and everything clicks together!!

Monday and Wednesday, Nathan is at school and then Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, we have homeschool days. I really am loving the “university model” concept. He is just excelling and it’s so fun to watch!

On this Monday, it was Krispy Kreme’s Pirate Day, so Parker, Eisley and I went and picked up donuts for Miss Eryn’s house. 😉 He was SO excited and got dressed up and was completely ready with his “ARG MATEY”….until we walked into the store. Then, he didn’t want to do anything except yell “NO” and hide behind my legs. Y’all, it is TOTALLY different parenting my introverted Parker than it is parenting my very extroverted Nathan. 😉 I finally got him to at least smile for the Pirate filter and we still got our free dozen.

He was much more willing to dress up when Nathan got home from school and Nathan was SO excited to go. 😉 Notice they came home with THREE boxes. It will be a long time before I want donuts again!

I walked in on Saturday morning and found them like this. Ha! I love how they have to dress up in their creature power suits to watch the Wild Kratts. 😉

Here she comes!! Baby girl is crawling all over the entire house and it’s KILLING me how fast she’s growing up. I feel like each child’s babyhood has gone faster and faster – time needs to slow down and NOW.

 

Little Miss Eisley is nine months old and I can’t even stand it.

Nine months is always a hard one for me because they’ve now spent just as much time out of the womb as they did in it. And how does the one go so much faster than the other? I will never understand.

Eisley is SO curious, SO silly, SO fun, SO into everything and is making her mama SO tired. Ha!

She now has two teeth!! She still doesn’t sleep and would be very content for me to just hold her or nurse her all night long. Makes for a very tired, very grouchy mama on some days. She is officially a big fan of finger foods and thinks she is extra big that she gets to feed herself. 😉

We spend our whole day racing her to the choking hazards and digging them out of those cheeks when we lose the race. 😉 She is pulling up on everything, crawling everywhere and generally just making life very interesting! Ha! We adore our precious girl and we cannot imagine life without her sweet little self!

Things are just moving full speed ahead. I’m throwing a baby shower for my dear, dear friend Shannon in a few weeks and so most of our weekends and free time are spent getting the house ready to host. 😉 I LOVE having this house and being able to host people! We are so blessed by that. I loved our old house with all my heart, but we couldn’t have more than one family over without it feeling just incredibly tight (and sometimes, even one family was overwhelming in that house!). Having the space to have people over is just been a blessing.

Little nap-protester. Her wrinkly nose smile is my favorite. And I worry because the girl can already work us like you wouldn’t believe. Makes me scared for her preteen years. 😉 I had mountains of writing to do on this day and decided to just do it later. She’s not going to be this tiny forever. <3

College football is back and we have a house full of happy people because it’s officially FALL!! I always get so excited for fall and then get so sad when winter comes and we can’t go outside anymore. Parker spent his entire Saturday dressed like this.

My curious Little Miss. With mobility has come a whole new world and oh my goodness. I know I panicked when Parker was crawling and we had all of Nathan’s toys around but it’s even WORSE with Eisley! Now there are two boys scattering the choking hazards all over the house and on top of that, we are still remodeling. It has been interesting, to say the least!!

Speaking of the boys and Eisley getting ahold their toys. 😉 Darth Vader is a favored chew toy around here. I really need to get this child some girl toys. Bless her heart.

I never ever get time with Nathan by himself anymore. I was going to run to the grocery store during Parker and Eisley’s naps on a Sunday afternoon and asked if he wanted to come with me and you would have thought I was offering him a trip to the moon. 😉 So, so sweet. He talked the entire time about school and friends and different things happening and it was just the sweetest time. We stopped and got a frappucino together and I just watched him and could not believe how quickly time is passing. He’s turning into a big kid before my eyes.

And this is what happens when you have an “Open Concept” pantry and a 2.5 year old. 😉 Things get rearranged about eight times a day. It makes me INSANE. But I just had to laugh because he was singing the books of the New Testament the whole time he was moving around all my cooking oils. Ha! I’m very ready for my pantry doors!!