Soaked :)

This one got a haircut this week. Finally. I swear, this kid can grow hair like it’s his super power. We joke that he’s our little Chia pet. 😉

We have spent almost every single day outside this week. We poured our life and heart into this yard, so we are spending as much time as possible out there before the big move!!

The boys asked if they could play with the water table after rest time and I at first said no, because it’s still not super warm out but then I changed my mind. Better use the yard while we can. 😉

I think they were shivering before they had hardly even been out there for three minutes.
Parker’s lips are blue by this point. I kept offering for them to come in and they kept turning me down while shaking uncontrollably. They looked so cute (and dorky – ha!) that I let them stay out just a few minutes longer. Then we hit the showers amidst screaming and gnashing of teeth. 😉
This little love. Bless her heart. We packed all the baby toys when we were preparing the house to sell and put them in a storage unit. We are so thankful that our dear friend Leigh Ann sent this little bunny to Eisley! Eisley LOVES her bunny and gets so excited when we pull it out. 😉 My girl is the master spitter-upper (she makes Nathan and Parker look like the minor leagues), so note the rag that my other dear friend Eryn made for Parker between her and the newly cleaned carpet. Thankful for friends. 😉

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The one where we all breathed into paper sacks

After the whirlwind of getting the house listed and selling it so quickly, we were a tiny bit in panic mode. So, I did what most mature adults who are on a tight deadline with three small children who just found out they were moving in forty-five days does…

We left it all behind and went to the zoo for the day. 🙂

These two were so thankful for it. They needed a fun day after the chaos that was their last week. We cleaned the floor right out from under them, so it was much needed to just walk around and look at the animals and sit in all the “secret hideouts” our little zoo has to offer.

Gammy came with us too!

Me and my babies. I never get a picture of myself with the kids where I’m not the one taking it! 😉 These three are troopers. So blessed to be their mama.

We got home and this little stinker was just SO excited for her bath and wanted it to come during rest time so badly that she just busted right out of her diaper so she could get it and some snuggle time with mama. 😉 I love snuggling with this girl any time of the day, but when she’s all clean and fuzzy-haired and smells like lavender and vanilla, I just could eat her up.

This little girl. Every single one of her pants fits her like this. Her legs are so short that the only “pants” that fit like they are supposed to are capris. 😉 At least pants keep her socks on! #shortgirlproblems

Time to start packing up!

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So it begins

This little pumpkin head is such a good sleeper. Especially in this season of insanity, we just absolutely are SO thankful for that!!!

I mean, I just could not love her more.

She convinced me to stop packing long enough to take a short nap with her one afternoon. I blame the cheeks for putting me slightly behind schedule. 😉

It POURED down rain at one of Nathan’s baseball games and the umpires decided that our little t-ballers were probably training for the major leagues and kept the game going. You can probably guess how all the mothers felt about this decision. 😉 Parker, Eisley and I camped out in the car during this game and I just poked my head out and cheered for Nathan whenever he came up to bat.

She was pretty content to just sleep and not get all wet.

Later that day, we went to a birthday party for this sweet girl who keeps getting older even though we as the Lunch Bunch Moms voted against all these kids growing up. Happy birthday, Julia! We love you much!

Eisley helped me make some wreaths to replace the pictures I had hanging around our house before we officially listed it. The first of what I hope are many days of crafting with my girl.

And then… The Day was here. And I cried.

It was time. It was beyond time. But oh, how I love this little house.

At 9AM, we had our first call from a realtor. I cleaned, vacuumed and dusted. Our house was pristine. We got two more calls that morning and by the evening, we had five different people come to look at it.

We did a lot of this that day. Driving around with Kody and all our laundry and personal items and kids and Sonic drinks.

And we did this. Because baseball season doesn’t care if you just listed your house. 😉

At 9PM that night, exactly twelve hours after we listed it, we got our fifth offer. And accepted one. Which meant…

Time to move. Insert the sad, happy, panicked tears!!

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The one where we all made huge life decisions

It was Saturday, it was kind of cloudy outside, all three of these people were crowded with Jon and I in the rocking chair corner of our room and we both looked at each other and knew.

The time had come.

We had talked about moving off and on for a couple of years. We actually almost put the house on the market when we found out we were pregnant with Parker, but decided to wait until the market had bounced back a little more. Then we redid the backyard and hoped to stay for a while longer. When Eisley came, though, we realized very quickly that our little house that felt huge when we first bought it as just the two of us had become pretty tight pretty quick.

Thankfully, we knew a good realtor. 😉 So, we decided to start the process.

My oldest and Type-A child immediately got to work drawing diagrams of how we could move bookshelves and where we could store them. 😉

In the meantime, there was still much to do! And look who flew all the way from California to watch her oldest nephew play baseball? 😉 At least, this is how Nathan told the story. 😉

Nathan LOVES playing catcher. He could play catcher all day. He loves catching, he loves being right in the action and he LOVES throwing his helmet off to catch a fly ball or a toss from a teammate. Jon may have shown him one too many MLB clips but he definitely keeps the crowd entertained. 😉

Parker loves to be doing exactly what Nathan is doing. Sitting on the bleachers is akin to SLOW, PAINFULLY LOUD DEATH when Nathan is on the field and Parker is not, but when Nathan is sitting on the bleachers? It’s AMAZING and he could sit there ALL DAY.

Bald, blue-eyed beauty. She’s losing the small amount of hair she actually had. I think Parker got all our hair-growing genes. By this point, he had a small mohawk going on.

We paused packing to visit with Cayce and we invited her over to come sit in the mess. Parker decided to join her. 😉

Y’all. This kid has epic bedhead. #shouldhavetitledthispostAllAboutParkersHair

Guess who decided to move too? Gammy and Pops listed their house this week after getting an offer accepted the day before on a new house! They called the best realtor they knew! 😉

A little breakfast with the family at one of our most favorite local restaurants before Cayce had to go back to California. I had to take the opportunity for a picture with this one. Love my sister. 🙂

Eisley adores Gabriel. She gets so excited whenever he is around. Gabriel kind of tolerates Eisley. I see this happening for pretty much forever, or at least until Gabriel realizes that Eisley has cute friends. 😉

You know you have a good realtor when your house sells in less than 36 hours… Goodness! We were so excited for them! My parents know how to stage a house. 😉

So it begins!!!

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Easter 2016

Oh this Easter was SO fun!!

Three littles at church. This was the best we could do, but you know, that’s okay. 😉 It was early and we all wanted breakfast. Ha!

Every year, we give Easter baskets and every year, they get more and more simple. And there is no bunny taking credit for my work on these. Ha! We gave books and candy this year and the kids were ecstatic. 😉

Our favorite part of the day and what I hope is a new tradition!! We hosted an Easter brunch with my family and our dear friends. We LOVED it and it was just so much fun. We laughed, we ate, we visited and the weather was perfect.

The “big kid” table. Parker was super stoked to be there this year. 😉

Little Miss in her Easter finery. 😉 She was never put down the entire day.

Gabriel knows he’s a stud. 😉

The dads all hid the eggs and hid some on three different difficulty levels. 😉 Ha! The kids LOVED it. Loved it loved it. And I think the dads enjoyed hiding them almost more than the kids liked searching for them.

Even Gabriel got in on the Easter egg action. 😉

Love this. 🙂 So thankful for Jesus and His work on the cross and how He has richly blessed us! We love dressing up and eating well and having friends and family over but there would be no joy without Him.

Eisley Girl chilling afterward. Her toes. I just kiss her all day.

I tucked this one in bed at night and we went through our whole bedtime routine of tucking in every single buddy with him. Just makes me laugh.

Happy Easter!! 🙂

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The days are getting warmer!

We love love LOVE spring! As soon as the days start to get a little  bit warmer, we are outside all day long. On this particular day, I couldn’t even get the boys to come inside to eat. 😉

Teaching the kids the game I grew up playing – Cup Ball! Supposedly, it was named that because you use to use a wadded up paper cup for the ball, but we just used an actual ball. 😉 You hit the ball with your hand and then it’s like baseball. We used “ghost runners” in this game and Nathan thought that was just the most hilarious idea. Then he started naming them. Ha!

Little Miss loves being outside just as much as her brothers!!

We had such a happy visitor come one afternoon!! Nicole’s family lives about an hour north of us and she was in town visiting them and so she drove down so we could get all the cousins together for a little bit! So fun! Love all these sweet babies so much!!

Sometimes, you just have to put the to-do list away and take a nap with your growing-way-too-fast baby girl. 🙂

Outside. Again. I think Nathan was trying to explain how to make sandcastles to Parker. Either way, this is how they live. Outside. Playing (or fighting) together. 😉

This is the face you make after you poop all over Mom’s bed, she decides to give you a bath and then you pee all over the bed in the process of getting disrobed for said bath. Little stinker.

I just cannot get enough of her. Or those cheeks. Or those eyes. Or those eyelashes. 🙂

Parker did not adjust to the Middle Child very happily. Actually, it was kind of the opposite. But I will remember this day forever. Eisley was playing on the floor and Parker was watching Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, which is a really cute little show that is by the Mister Roger’s Foundation. Daniel Tiger’s mom had a baby in the show and Parker came running in, looked at Eisley, looked and me and said, “MAMA. Daniel Tiger has a baby sister and I have a baby sister.” And from that point on, he has (mostly) loved Eisley and been sweet and protective of her. Thank you, Daniel Tiger. 😉

Baseball is back! We were so excited for the season to start again!

Two tired little boys after the first practice. Coach Jon told everyone to huddle up and Parker just listened to his dad and huddled up with the team. Ha! Could be an interesting season. 😉

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Parker’s 2nd Birthday Party

We celebrated Parker’s birthday with a Mickey Mouse party at one of the parks in town! And, true to form, it was freezing that morning!! Like completely FREEZING.

We were all bundled up – except for Uncle Bryant. 😉 Ha! Uncle Bryant can be a bit of an Eisley hog – love watching him love on his niece. 🙂

He had to take a break from playing on the play ground with his friends for some snuggling to warm up. Notice the freezing red nose. 😉 He was shivering! Poor little birthday boy.

Over the years, we’ve learned to just throw a whole wipes container in the car and we always pull it out for parties. Especially when they involve someone’s favorite – lots of fruit.

Some of the kids figured out that it was a lot warmer if they ran around in the sunny field. At one point, a man came walking through the park flying one of those little remote controlled helicopters and he was immediately the star of the show. 😉

 The wind took care of the hard part of blowing out the candle but Parker blew anyway just to be sure. 😉 I got basically zero pictures of him playing with his friends because it was just crazy there. And honestly, we were all having fun talking and hanging out and I pretty much kept my phone put away. 🙂

My loves. Happy birthday again, sweet boy!! We love celebrating you!!

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Thursday night happenings

Thursday nights are Awana nights! Nathan has been going since we were pregnant with Parker and he LOVES it. We love listening to all the verses he’s memorizing. And Parker loves it because Thursday nights are all about Parker Bear. 🙂

On this Thursday night, we took Parker to go get snow cones while Nathan was at Sparkies. 🙂

They always put an umbrella in the cup and Parker immediately pulled it out and held it over his head. We asked him what he was doing and he said, “It wooks wike wain!”

Oh boy. 😉

Little love with her daddy. 🙂

Nathan’s class dyed Easter eggs and he was SO excited. He came running in the house and told me, “MOM. We made these and they are REAL EGGS and you can’t even play basketball with it!”

I was thankful for the warning. 😉

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Parker’s 2nd Birthday :)

This day was one that I will probably never forget. 😉

Last night as a one year old! I can’t believe how little and big he looks here.

We had a bunch of balloons and streamers and we were singing “Happy Birthday” we he got up and out of his room. He was SO excited. We let him open one present, which was his birthday shirt. 🙂

All the presents and I think he was most excited about this – we turned his car seat around! He was SO happy to be like Nathan and facing forward! The whole way to get birthday donuts he kept yelling “I CAN SEE! I CAN SEE EVERYTHING!” Ha!

Two can only start off right if it includes a sprinkled donut. 😉

We dropped Jon off at work and went to the aquarium. And the good times started rolling. He was not in a very good mood when we got there and then he tripped and fell walking inside. Which just didn’t bode well. But thankfully we made it through most of the aquarium in one relative piece.

Then we got to the end of it. There’s a huge glass wall that looks into a giant tank and the boys were doing so well just watching the fish. I needed to feed Eisley and there was hardly anyone else there and it was dark, so I sat down on the bottom row of the theater-style benches and started nursing. Right then, this HUGE crowd of kids and parents came in, Parker got nervous and started playing on the benches by me and then promptly fell right off the top and tumbled to the floor. 🙁

He, of course, immediately started screaming,  I was still nursing, so I grabbed Parker as best as I could while holding Eisley, got her unlatched and me covered up and he kept on screaming and it was just a great fun mess.

Parker did NOT want to take a picture outside the aquarium. Pretty sure by this point most of the other parents there thought I was abducting him. 😉 I managed to get them all to sit there and kind of look like they were enjoying themselves by performing a crazy dance number.

There is no other place for a birthday lunch like Chick-fil-a! We announced to the restaurant we were there by Parker sliding down the slide, getting his hand stepped on by another kid and then screaming for the next ten minutes. We calmed down, ate our lunch, demanded to go back in the playroom and got hurt again. See the red mark by his forehead? One of the many this day.

Nap was a misfire and by dinner, we were a mess, but he LOVED his birthday ice cream and that two waitresses sang to him. By this point, I was just rolling with it and shrugging off the people looking at us at Olive Garden.  😉 Poor kid. He was having such a rough day and I just hated that for him!

It’s a MeMo cake!! This changed a lot for the better. 😉

Gammy and Pops came for dinner, presents and cake – Parker was pretty much all done with pictures at this point.

And it’s time for bed! Whew! I am thankful that you only turn two once because bless his heart, I don’t think he could survive another two year-old birthday. 😉 Too many bumps and bruises today!

Oh sweet boy. You are never boring and you keep us on our toes but I cannot imagine how our lives would look without you in it!! We are blessed with you!

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Back to life, back to reality

It’s always a little bit of a letdown after you get home from a trip. We spent the next week getting back to our time zone and doing laundry.

Parker basically existed with all these buddies in his hands at all times for the next week. 😉 It was SO cute.

Ha! This face!! Jon and I were laughing so hard at her! That lip was about six yards out and I just could not help it. We are in big trouble with that lip soon. 😉

My little office mate. 😉 She rests, I work.

This little love ADORES her big brothers. With all her heart and soul. She gets SO excited any time one of them is around or paying any sort of attention to her!

I love my friend Eryn Beechem. Parker and Junie were both throwing the absolute tantrums this week and so we would just take pictures of them and send it to the other person. This is why motherhood is a team sport, friends. We can’t do this alone!!

Any chance the boys get, they are outside on their playhouse. Some days, I’m not sure they even come inside beyond eating and rest time. #welovespring #ourneighborsmightnot

On the 15th, we celebrated EIGHT years of marriage at my favorite restaurant – The Cheesecake Factory!! So thankful for this guy and this fun night. 🙂 Date nights can be rare, so this was a treasured treat.

Speaking of treats… 😉 SO DELICIOUS.

We had the best waitress and she was just excellent! And our little third wheel slept the entire time. She’s just the easiest little thing. We were so excited for this night. I LOVE our boys and we so enjoy them and their stories and loudness, but sometimes, it’s very nice to have a dinner where we can talk and not be interrupted or have to tell someone to use their inside voice. 😉

Friday nights are Pizza and Movie Nights in this house. Always and forever. It’s the night my kids (and me too, honestly!) look forward to the most!! Such a fun way to bring in the weekend. 🙂

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