We are starting to feel a little more at home in this house and the boxes are slowly disappearing one by one. 🙂 I was nursing Eisley the other day and laughing at Kody – he found a new hideout in my closet. 😉

On this particular morning, the boys were watching a Leapfrog episode after breakfast and it was all about doing math while running a lemonade stand. Well, that was about the coolest thing EVER, so they immediately got to work making signs and helping me measure out lemonade ingredients into my only nice pitcher I have that I got when we got married because all the plastic pitchers were MIA. 😉

I mean, who could resist these little faces?

Not too many people, it turns out. Nathan is officially “RICH”. 😉

I was laughing so hard because this is totally what I did all growing up – I think we had a lemonade sale about once a week all summer long. We milked our poor neighbors dry. 😉

Little sister has no interest in lemonade sales but is doing her best to start crawling. I can’t handle this girl and her cuteness.

Bright and early the next day and back at it again. On this day, Nathan was yelling, “LEMONADE! NATHAN AND PARKER’S TWO-POINT-OH LEMONADE SALE!” Ha! I was laughing so hard! We pulled in some construction workers and Gammy and Pops drove over to buy some too. 🙂

By the end of the day, Nathan decided he needed to find a partner who wasn’t going to drink all the inventory. 😉

I opened the door to get her out of the car one day when Parker and Nathan had been extraordinarily loud while we were driving and found this sleeping frown. She did not approve of the volume, apparently. 😉

Playing in the tent. Eisley was very excited to be included!

About once a year, I have a pretty decent hair day, where everything dries perfectly and curls exactly how I want it to and stays right where I want it. And my day this year was a day that we were home the entire day. #ofcourse So, I took a picture purely so I could prove to myself someday many years down the road that I did fix my hair occasionally during these Little Kid Days. 😉

I feel like things are starting to settle into a nice little summer time rhythm – which means that school is about to start. 😉 I can’t believe my baby is already going into kindergarten. Cue the sobbing mama for the next couple of weeks.

Our week was insane. SO much going on and we’re still unpacking! We took the kids to Jon’s softball game and the boys ran the bases afterward. It’s one of our favorite things about summer.

We went to the uptown area with Aunt Cayce and Parker found a sign he connected with. “IT SAYS TWO!!!”

Once Upon Eliza is here!!! I so hope you guys enjoy this book!

Nathan starts school in about ten days, so it’s time for Mama to start looking through all the baby pictures and crying. Where did the time go? When I was 54 weeks pregnant during the hottest July we’d had in over a decade, I definitely did not believe people when they told me how fast time would fly, but now I do. Hold on to your babies, friends. It goes by in a blink.

Parker had his first “real” dentist appointment and did FANTASTIC. We were so pleased with him! And “Dr. Jan” as we call our hygienist is so good with the boys.

This kid always does great. 🙂 He’s a pro now, especially with Uncle Caleb’s influence. 😉

Happiness is being given a balloon at Chick-fil-a! 😉 Sometimes I think that a good majority of what is wrong with our world these days is that we don’t hold on to the childlike joy in the simple things that we all start with.

So, we bought a farm. 😉 We found out that we have grapes, apples, plums and some sort of cherry tree in the backyard. We also apparently are raising squirrels (pretty rare in ABQ) lots of other fun little critters and insects in our backyard jungle. It’s fun to pick the fruit but watching it all rot and get eaten by little friends on the ground is making us think this might be our only year of owning these particular trees. 😉

Nathan got the Star Wars DVDs for his birthday and we finally had a free night where we could put Parker down early and watch A New Hope with him. We fast-forwarded through the scarier parts, but he LOVED it. We ended up breaking up the movie into two nights. I know he felt so big. We popped popcorn and made hot chocolate and buried under blankets and he loved every single second of it. 🙂

Zoo time!! We went with Miss Eryn and her kids and a few extras we dragged along with us! Ha! Parker LOVES the zoo!

Insert joke about all the men trying to figure out the directions… 😉 Ha! The girls were already off down the path, looking at the flamingos, or the “mangoes” like Parker calls them.

This little girl is just sunshine.

I love this kid. He’s become such a sweet helper and such a great big brother! I tell people this a lot – six is the reward for making it through the twos and threes. 😉

Eryn and I were both completely flashing back to Nathan and Evie at this age when Parker and Junie were doing this at the zoo. They were so cute. Love this of the two friends.

All smiles, all day long. This girl loves life and we love her!

We ran into our friends Shannon, Violet and Deklan on our way to get lunch, so we all trekked through the zoo together! Look at all these kids!! We stopped for ice cream on our way out to go home for showers and naps. 😉

The playroom closet wasn’t working for me – it got trashed on an hourly basis, so I pulled everything out and we turned the front room into the playroom since we didn’t have any furniture in there anyway. Thanks, Jen, for the idea!! I think it’s pretty great. Plus, since there’s so much space, we have lots of room for cubbies to hide everything away. 🙂

Love watching them play together. It’s the best part of having brothers!

We have been busy, busy over here! I finally started painting the banister! It needs a few more coats, but I love how it’s turning out!

Twas the night before the countertops were delivered – I was SO excited and ready for them to come and to have a fully functioning kitchen! As much as I thought I’d be able to cook with just the appliances, it’s so hard to prepare food without a counter to set things on.

They’re in!! I love how it looks!!! It took no time at all for them to put them in – just amazing how it transforms the space.

First celebratory PB&J on our new kitchen counters. Insert praise hands! So so thankful!! I went back and forth on granite or not and ended up deciding that it would be better in the long run for the value to do granite. I love the colors – and bonus! This one was not only the cheapest, it was also on sale. 😉

Still need to touch up paint along caulk lines, but I am so excited for my new coffee station!!

The breakfast bar!! This was the only thing on my wish list for our future house. 😉 And I love that we can fit three barstools there. I am seeing lots of cookie baking days on that bar!

Cayce’s back for a visit!! I love my sister.

Right after Cayce left, Caleb, Nicole and Hudson came for a visit. I love this shot – all three of the womb buddies hanging out. 😉

Nicole was telling Nathan about triathalons for some reason while they were here and Nathan was so excited and said, “I’m going to do that!” So he ran and asked Jon to take off his training wheels and just took off on his bike. No problems at all. Ha! We were laughing so hard! He’s totally my kid who we can push and push and it never does anything but as soon as he decides he’s ready for something, it just goes flawlessly. I couldn’t even get a picture of him because he was riding so fast. 😉

“Hi Mom. I’m a BIKING.”

Aunt Heather made Nathan a shirt for his Lego birthday party that didn’t happen thanks to sick siblings and overwhelmed parents, but he LOVES the shirt anyway. 😉 He looks gigantic to me!

So fun to see this house starting to come together. 🙂

Guys.

I haven’t slept more than three straight hours in about two months. And we haven’t gotten to bed before 2AM in I don’t even remember how long.

Oy.

Middle of the night painting trim before the floors are installed the next day. I got a little bit of paint on the floor. 😉

Breakfast of Champions in the family room while Dad starts installing the floors. Pop-Tarts for the win. 😉

In they go!! These floors are so cool – it’s a vinyl plank floor, but it’s totally waterproof and kid proof and they weren’t expensive. They fit in the budget and they look decent. If we can get even five years out of them, we will be happy. 🙂

It’s exhausting to be a Little Miss with all this work happening around you. 😉

Dining room is done!! It looks gorgeous!!

Once he got the hang of it, it went so quickly!

Killing time at the splash park while Dad was working at home. Sometimes our big helpers were a little TOO helpful. 😉

Jon took a break for a couple of days and instead of actually breaking, he hit the trail with his brother, Allen. They had a great time!

Our favorite girls came to keep us company while Dad was gone and between me and Miss Eryn and having the kids occupied with each other and unpacking toy boxes, we got about 90% of the Dance Party Room cleared of boxes and most of them unpacked. YAY. So thankful for these friends!!

Once Upon Eliza officially went on the market! The countdown to release day is on!

This pleased a Little Miss. I’m not sure her smile can get any squintier. 😉

Swinging and sleeping in the disaster while Mama keeps on working. 😉

I told myself I would NOT do this… but Eisley has been ending up in our bed almost every night. She has not been sleeping well at ALL and sometimes, this is the only way we can both get some sleep. Such a bad habit we are probably getting ourselves into.

Jon is back and he went right back to finishing the floors. Ha! No rest for the weary! 😉

Done!! I LOVE them!!!

First family Pizza Movie Night in the new house! We panicked a little about the new carpet and then realized, we have to be able to live here. 😉 I love this.

I found some clips in the clearance section and came home and scrapped together all six of Eisley’s hairs and it stayed for about three whole minutes! It made me so happy! I cannot wait for all the fun hairstyles we can do! And at the same time, I can wait. I do not want her to get big quite yet. 🙂

Speaking of getting big, she got this little Belle doll in Disney World and she’s been so excited about her in the car. She weaves her little fingers into Belle’s hair and usually goes right to sleep. 😉 Ha!

On this day, I was making lunch and I asked the boys what they wanted to be when they grew up. Nathan was very quick to tell me he was going to be a firefighter or a policeman. And Parker said, “When I grow up, I’m going to be Tigger.” I wouldn’t put it past him. 😉

Had to pose with baby sister. Still need to paint the banister. 😉

No countertops means we are still eating out pretty frequently – this was the first time Eisley sat in the high chair like a big girl! She’s so big and so sweet. It just kills me how fast time is flying with her!

Countertops come in a few days and I CANNOT WAIT. 😉

The months are seriously just FLYING and I feel like I just get used to her being a certain age and then, next thing I know, she’s three months older.

Our precious girl is seven months old!! She is just the smiliest, giggliest, sweetest little thing!

She is still super tiny – she’s in the seventh percentile, which still just shocks us after her giant brothers. She officially stopped sleeping through the night, which is extra helpful considering everything going on. 😉 She is not the biggest fan of solid food and would happily be exclusively nursed for the rest of her life, I think, if I let her call the shots. 😉

She wrinkles her nose when she laughs, she is extra happy to be in the middle of EVERYTHING and everyone and she is extra mad when she is not. 😉 She loves to be tickled, loves to make us laugh and is rolling everywhere. We just could not love our Little Miss more and I am just praying for time to slow down!!

On the day we moved in, we’d been homeless for exactly seven weeks. We are SO excited to actually live in our own house! We are so thankful for Gammy and Pops putting up with all of us in their house for so long!

So, we may have jumped the gun on moving in but everything will work out. 😉 After all, as long as we have a coffeemaker and a couple of mattresses, we can live anywhere!

Moving Day was CRAZY. We were packing up the few things we got out at Gammy and Pops’ house and trying to prioritize what went first. I took barely any pictures, but Nathan got a hold of my phone and so, here is Moving Day from Nathan’s perspective. 😉 (Which, by the way, I LOVE.)

Couch in the middle of the room, washer in the kitchen, no appliances. Check, check, check. I like the random Swiffer popping out from behind the couch too.

Kitchen floors haven’t come in yet. Should be here tomorrow!

 

Love this of Jon pausing to hug Parker. Parker is not a fan of change, so Moving Days are hard. But there was a lot of excitement about this moving day!

Eisley while I was trying to figure out a good temporary spot for our dining room furniture that we were given from my parents. I am so thankful for it! We were given my grandparents’ china cabinet, table and chairs and they are gorgeous and I love that something that my grandmother prized so much is now mine. 🙂

In our last house, we had our first dinner there, but we worked right through dinner and ended up just getting Firehouse Subs really quick. So, we decided our first meal in this new house was going to be breakfast. 😉 It’s fun to have new traditions for a new house!

Three sweet babies sleeping at HOME:

Our tired photographer. 😉 He was such a big help today. Nathan loves nothing more than to be right in the middle of things, helping out. I love his heart.

This was a big night because this was the first night of the boys sharing a room!! They did fantastic! We were so thankful. We aren’t quite ready for Parker to be out of the crib, since this is a two story house and we just want to make sure he’s mastered the stairs before we unleash all the freedom. 😉 There is enough room in their bedroom for Nathan’s bed and the crib, so for now, they are getting used to sleeping together like this.

Sweet baby girl. She was spitting up like crazy and our washer isn’t hooked up yet, so we just flipped the mattress around. Sign of a third kid right there. 😉

Our first meal in our new house!! We stopped and picked up donuts and everyone was excited. I made coffee on the non-plugged-in dryer since we still don’t have countertops. Appliances were coming later that day!

They are here! We decided to go with a slate color for a few reasons: 1) We took the kids to Home Depot and set them lose in the appliance section (sorry Home Depot) and this color didn’t show any handprints or water spots or anything. 2) They were on sale! 😉

The dance party room has become the catch-all spot of the whole house. Oy. I try to avoid this area because I get SO overwhelmed right here. Our floors should be arriving soon and then we can start moving a lot of this stuff out of here. Right now, it’s all about sorting things out.

Our family room is a much nicer spot to be. 😉

The main reason we were so ready to get into this house is so we could be here working until 2AM and not have to worry about leaving the kids at Gammy and Pops’ or driving back that late. Maybe it’s a not necessarily a good thing, but it’s been so nice to be able to get a lot done without worrying about things!

Big things we have left: Floors come tomorrow (yay!), countertops should be here in the next week or so (no date yet – blegh), LOTS of painting that needs to happen in the meantime!

We are SO excited to be here!!!!

We got back in town and hit the ground running!

The day after we got home, the carpet guys came!

It’s already looking so different!

And we had our family birthday dinner to celebrate Nathan. 🙂 He picked a the Japanese Teppan Grill again since he had so much fun when we went after Eisley was born. It didn’t disappoint. 😉

The expressions just kill me every time! Ha!

Little Mister – he was so interested in everything!

Love this!

The whole crew!!

Afterward, we went back to Gammy and Pops’ to open presents and eat our cake. He looks so old to me right here!

Precious boy. I can’t believe he’s six! He’s just such a joy. God has blessed us so much!

The next day, we went to view the slab for our countertops – it was SO bright and the sun was just glaring off of all the other slabs in the lot, so the boys were having a hard time looking at the camera. Ha!

And we had to stop back by our house because we got the call from the carpet guys that they were done!! Yay!!!!

I LOVE this – the carpet totally changed the entire house and made it all so fresh and clean! We don’t have furniture for this front room and so the boys decided it was going to be “the dance party room”. Love it. We might just have to do that. 😉 They were adorable – they just ran from room to room, doing somersaults and flips all over the carpet.

And we decided that now that the carpet is in, we can probably move in and do the rest when we are living here! SO – tomorrow is moving day!!! We cannot wait to be in our own house and our own space. We are so thankful for Gammy and Pops letting us live with them for this long but we are so excited to finally have a place to call “home”!!

Oh my goodness, I will NEVER forget Nathan’s sixth birthday!

We left that morning from the cabin in Colorado and hugged our friends Clint, Leigh Ann and the girls goodbye. We’d told Nathan we were just driving back home. But, then we stopped for lunch at Chick-fil-a and who should open the door but this sweet friend:

Noah!!! 🙂 Our dear, dear friends Greg, Jen, Noah and Emma drove to meet us like two hours after Jen and Greg had gotten back in town from Hawaii. That’s the sign of a good friend!! 😉 We were SO excited to see them! Nathan went ballistic.

Then, because we figured one late night wouldn’t hurt, we stopped off by Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs. Nathan loves, loves, LOVES Adventures in Odyssey and when we turned the corner and saw the Whit’s End sign, he freaked out. Like, was jumping up and down and going crazy freaked out.

Yay for Whit’s End!!!

The boys in front of the soda shoppe. 😉 Parker was right smack in the middle of nap time and he still did fantastic. If we lived in the Springs, we would be here every single weekend.

Eugene is Nathan’s favorite character and so he was SO excited to be Eugene!

Little Miss in Whit’s End!

The boys ordered their ice cream sundaes and Nathan asked if Whit was in and told them it was his birthday. The staff was so cute. They told him Whit was working on the Imagination Station and gave him a special card that let him download whatever episode of the show he wanted. He was in heaven.

Like literally, heaven.

This dude was stoked to not be napping and eating ice cream instead. 😉

SIX!!!

 Us. Oh how I love this crazy, loud, obnoxious and adorable family of mine!!

Nathan was so cute. He said, “THANK YOU MOM” like 400 times that day. He was SO sweet. I think this was the best birthday ever. 😉

We left through the bookstore and I decided to check just out of curiosity and found the Maya and Paige books there! So, I signed them all. 😉 So much fun! It never gets old. 🙂

We got back on the highway with three very tired children and made great time and were looking at getting back to Gammy and Pops’ house by nine, if not earlier.

Then, at eight o’clock, about an hour or so outside Albuquerque, all of traffic just stopped. Dead, right in the middle of the road. There was absolutely nowhere to go, because we were stuck and the other direction was across a giant, wooded median. At first we thought it would only be a few minutes, but then people started turning their cars off and we started fearing the worst.

We had no cell signal, since we were in the middle of nowhere and it was now dark, so Jon got out and hiked a few miles up the road and finally got a signal and we found out there was a police standoff in the next town and they had closed the interstate.

Guys. We sat there until after 3AM.

The kids were AMAZING. I think I did worse than they did! I was so nervous, so anxious. And we were trying our hardest to conserve our phone batteries and gas, so we tried to keep everything off. It got so so so cold. And we didn’t have hardly anything to cover up with or eat. AND – I had to pee IN THE WOODS.

A part of me died that night. 😉

Jon finally fell asleep about 2AM, but I couldn’t sleep no matter how hard I tried. I just prayed the entire night. Right after 3, the headlights behind us all turned on and we went from kids and Jon being asleep to throwing kids in car seats and driving in about five minutes. We drove straight to Mom and Dad’s and both of us were so paranoid about falling asleep driving!

We finally got in about 4:30AM and the kids were up and ready to go at 6. 😉

So thankful God took care of us! We will be waiting awhile for another road trip. You never know what is going to happen when we get in the car. 😉 Ha!

My sweet son,

Today, you are six.

SIX.

I can’t believe you are old enough to need two hands to show your age!! I remember turning six, which just terrifies me because you cannot possibly be old enough to start remembering things. 😉

You have had a crazy year!! And you have grown up so much! Looking back at pictures always makes me so sad and so amazed and how quickly things are going – you have changed so much!

You LOVE to talk. You always have, you probably always will. 😉 You love to discuss things and ideas and debate. I can totally see this being a part of your career someday. You have a great mind for understanding things that are probably way out of your reach, and somehow, you still seem to comprehend it. You love to hear about everything and anything and how it all works. You still don’t have a ton of patience, but you have come so far this year! You will play with Legos or color or do a lot of things that you never had the attention span for for a long time now. 🙂

This year, you really started taking an interest in sports! You LOVED baseball and have been constantly telling me that you want to play football and basketball now too. You spend a lot of time playing outside and I love that you are so active. You could be outside all day long (and often are!). You NEVER sit still. Ever. The second you are still is the minute we are getting out the thermometer and canceling our plans for the week. 😉

You are the BEST big brother. Hands down, the best. You have your moments and you and Parker often squabble, but at the end of the day, you guys are best best best friends and I’m so thankful that God gave you each other. You are rarely apart! And when you aren’t together, you guys are constantly asking about the other person. 😉

You adore, adore, ADORE your baby sister. There is rarely an hour than goes by that you aren’t hugging her, kissing her or checking on her. You have been totally wrapped by Eisley and it’s so cute to see. I love watching you love on her and protect her – you tell her every single day (sometimes every single hour) how beautiful she is and how much you love her. I love that she’s going to grow up surrounded by boys who love her so well!!

You still love to help Dad and you’ve become such a huge helper! Especially this year with how much change we’ve had, we have so appreciated how much you have helped out! You have such a big heart and such willing hands. I’m so thankful for you!

Honey, you are so many things to me. I love your heart, I love your bravery, I love your mind. You love so big and try so hard. I love you with all my heart, precious boy!!

Happy birthday, sweet Nathan!! We love you so much!!

Now, I have to be honest. After the last road trip, we were VERY anxious/nervous/panicky/breathing-into-paper-sacks-y as this trip approached, but we were SO excited for this day to come!! We had planned this trip months and months ago before we even listed our house for sale, so we were not about to reschedule it even though life is insane right now! 😉

We packed up what little bags we could find between my parents’ house and the storage unit and hit the road for Colorado to see our dear friends Clint and Leigh Ann!

 Her “are we there yet?” face. The bottom lip. Kills me.

This picture!! Oh my goodness! We met them at a restaurant a few miles away from the cabin we rented with them. You could almost hear the music playing when they got there. Ha! Hayley and Nathan have missed each other so much!! We were SO happy to see them finally!!

The two buddies back at the cabin. 🙂

More buddies. These two took a few minutes to warm up to each other and then there was no going back.

Even more buddies back at the cabin. 😉 This place was GORGEOUS.

Hands down, one of the prettiest places we have ever seen!

Nathan got a little fishing pole a little while ago and he has been DYING to go fishing with it. So, we packed it and brought it with us since there were a few lakes around. He was out practicing in the tall grass by the cabin before I had even started drinking my coffee the first morning. 😉

We all got dressed and went on a little hike to see some incredibly gorgeous waterfalls! I love these four!!

My dear friend and precious Sylvie!! I was so excited for this day – this is the first time we’d ever even met Sylvie – so thankful for this trip. 🙂

Little Miss. Leigh Ann and I were basically wearing the babies the entire trip. 😉

Love this of the whole crew!! And the waterfalls! I mean, it was just BEAUTIFUL.

We kept hiking up past the waterfall and found this gorgeous basin. It was just incredible. The kids played, we took pictures, we all got eaten alive by mosquitos. 😉 We’d packed a picnic lunch, so we hiked back down into the little town and ate by a park.

Eisley’s first time in the swing! She LOVED it! I love this of the two girls – they were such troopers being dragged everywhere all weekend.

Little Miss wearing any clothes we could scrounge up for her during the mess. Ha! She didn’t match very well. 😉 It was SO windy and cold! We were not prepared for the cold since it’s July and it was in the high 90s at home.

 My sweet friend!! I just love her so much!

There is the cutest little ice cream shop in town and so we had to go and get some after lunch. Nathan was exactly two days away from his birthday, so he had to get birthday cake ice cream. 😉

They were SO cute just sitting there eating their ice cream and talking. Every person who walked by just started laughing at them. We went back to the cabin and made dinner and got our exhausted children in bed and had some much needed catch up time for the adults. 🙂

The next morning, we got up and drove to a lake so Nathan could finally go fishing. Ha! He was SO excited it was ridiculous. So he cast out there and then discovered the joy of fishing. Waiting. Ha!

Still waiting. By this point, the other kids were pretty much done watching nothing happen, so we had started walking around the lake on the little path.

We started hearing some commotion and I ran back just in time for this!! His face kills me!

His first fish!! He was SO excited!!! He couldn’t stop shaking! Ha!

Showing it off for the cameras. He didn’t want it to touch him, so he was keeping it at arm’s length the whole time. 😉

We let the poor fish go and walked around to the other side of the lake where there was a little beach so the kids could go wading for a little bit.

Needless to say, it turned into a big water adventure and we dug out the swimsuits we’d brought just in case. 😉

 The dads were catching some of the little minnows that were everywhere. It was FREEZING, so I have no idea how they could last so long in there. Ha!

That night, we had a little birthday party for Nathan since we were going to be on the road the next day on his actual birthday. 🙂

Sweet kids. 🙂 I am so thankful we’ve stayed in touch with these friends!!

The baby girls!!!

Oh these kids!!! I am just so overwhelmed by the little blessings they are and how much God has given us. So thankful for them, for these dear friends and for our precious time together!

Can’t wait for the next trip!!