Birthday Play Date

For Carli's birthday, we took her to the Great Wolf Lodge at the end of September.  But we also promised her a birthday playdate with two of her friends.  We had our play date earlier in the month.  Her friends Branson and Shiloh were able to come over and I took them all to a pottery painting shop.  They had a lot of fun, acted like silly 5, 6 & 7 year olds and made some pretty interesting creations!

Ava and Shiloh both painted pumpkins.  Carli painted the owl mug and Branson the Frankenstein mug.

After we were all done painting, we headed to TCBY for a little treat and to open a couple of presents.  I think it is safe to say they had a great time.  I listened to some pretty interesting conversations ranging from who was a girly girl and who was a tom boy to how gross really long fingernails were and if you had long fingernails it would hurt if you tried to wipe your tush in the bathroom...seriously.  :/

Branson actually was suppose to be on a family camping trip but his mom made sure he could come b/c none of the kids ended up in the same class this year and they all kind of missed each other!  We were all thankful for her making sure he could be there!  After we met up with Branson's mom, the rest of us stopped by Lowe's to grab some things for Keith before we headed home.

The girls needed to see who was taller, the 7 or 6 year old...Shiloh won!  :)

 

The pottery got cooked and we finally were able to pick up the final products this week.  They turned out pretty cute...and interesting!

 

Ava and Carli's

I helped Ava go over her pumpkin.  She basically painted it the first time and I did the second and third coats so it would show up after being cooked.  

 

Ava added a spider to the inside of her pumpkin and in case you can't tell, that's an eye ball painted in the bottom of Carli's mug.

 

Here is Shiloh's pumpkin covered with spider webs.

 

Branson's mug which he proudly painted most of it with a toothbrush!  

 

We had a lot of fun on our birthday play date.  It was a little more intimate and Carli had a blast with her two best friends.  They did a good job of including Ava in their fun as well! 

Open Wide!

Drew is starting to grab for things and talk, a lot!  He starting to have a really hard time staying quiet in church.  Plus, he is teething so if he can get his hands on a toy, it will likely end up in his mouth.  That is, unless it is a ball, then he tries really hard and gets frustrated when it won't cooperate!

Pumpkin Patch 2015

After we finished with our Christmas pictures and had an awesome big family lunch at Little Mexico, we piled back into the car to head to the pumpkin patch.  Carli spent the time reading and finishing her first chapter book, The Magic Treehouse.  She read half of it outloud but when Ava started playing on her kindle and not listening, Carli punished her by not reading for her to hear what happened next!  Meanwhile, Drew actually slept in the car...it a day full of first!  :)

This year we opted to visit a new pumpkin patch in Latexo, Tx - just outside of Crocket called Covered C Farm.  It was free, and small but the kids had a great time and we had the place mostly to ourselves!

 This was Drew's first trip to the pumpkin patch.  What's fun is that Keith and I could easily make excuses not to go out to a pumpkin patch but the girls expect it now and I guess we've created a bit of a family tradition.  Plus, Uncle Tone has been carving pumpkins for them for going on four years now I think, and we can't let that tradition die either!

 

 The girls convinced Uncle Tone to ride with them on the wagon around the Christmas trees...he was a great sport and took the ride with his knees up to his ears.  He has a great way of making the girls feel special.  :)

 While the girls and Uncle Tone were riding around the farm, Drew was checking out big pumpkins and stealing his Daddy's hat to keep the sun out of his eyes!

 The girls jumped hay bales and even convinced Aunt Lolli to climb on top! 

 

Christmas pictures, Little Mexico and Pumpkin Patch all in one day - we were worn out but Ava wasn't done yet...she came home determined to learn to ride her bike with no training wheels.  She needs a bit more practice but she's got the gear down!  :)

 



Annual Cousin Pictures

We were on the ball this year and Michelle & I got the kids coordinating outfits from Lolly Wolly Doodle, then arranged to get their pictures taken before Christmas!  Yeah, it was a miracle to us too but hey they do exist!  :)  The kids all did awesome, and we are pretty sure that Brianne Campos got some really good pictures!  We can't wait to see them!

In the meantime, here are a few pics I snapped with my camera while we were patiently waiting our turn in front of the camera!

 I am pretty proud of these pictures, because like me, Grammy rarely makes it front of the camera!  I don't have nearly enough pictures of my kids with their grandparents, so these are some of my favorites!

Hardest Part of the Day

The hardest part of our day is about 3 pm when Drew is snoozing away and I have to go wake him up to go get the sisters from school. 

He more times than not retaliates by screaming at me all the way to the school and back...fair is fair.  Thankfully, once he is out of his car seat, he is pretty happy to see his sisters and get some extra snuggles from them!

Ecoland Field Trip

On Wednesday I got to go with Ava on her first field trip to Ecoland in Kilgore.  I am thankful for my family and the help they are to us all.  Grammy is back teaching school temporarily for another teacher who is on maternity leave, Pa had his hands full with the farm and I was thinking it might just not be meant to be for me to go with Ava, but then I thought, I'll ask Aunt Carolyn!  Aunt Carolyn lives an hour and a half away but she agreed without hesitation to come watch Drew for me so that I could go with Ava.  Wow.  She got to our house by 7:30 am and she and Drew had a pretty good day!  He didn't really want to take a nap for her, but can you blame him?  His Great-Aunt Carolyn had come a long ways to play, why waste the day on napping?!  :)

With Drew in good hands, I set off to meet Ava and her school bus in Kilgore.  Ecoland was a pretty cool place.  The science teacher in Grammy would have been in heaven!  Another mom and I were in charge of 10 kiddos and we spent 30 minutes in three different rooms.

The Energy room was full of batteries and these really cool little bikes that when pedaled the kids could watch a light go up and down depending on how hard they worked.  They also watched a video on energy, and then got to listen to their heartbeats and try to use batteries to operate different toys.

The Wind room was a bit noisy but probably the most fun for the kids.  They played with a wind tunnels, read books on wind and made cars with sails to catch the wind for races. 

The Solar room had a dome in the middle of it that we watched the stars and solar system on.  Then they got to play with lights that mimicked solar energy, did puzzles on the solar system and may have played kick ball with the sun....

Our last room was a big classroom where they went more in depth on wind.  It was a cute demonstration on blowing balls and how when the balls weighed more it took more wind to move them.

Unlike her sister, Ava wanted to ride back to school on the bus instead of with me.  I enjoyed my nice quiet ride to and from Kilgore.  We all had a great time and are so grateful for our Aunt Carolyn for making it possible for me to no miss Ava's field trip!

A Little Teamwork

Carli insisted on getting a blanket before school this morning to cuddle up in while she waited for time to head out.  I in turn insisted she fold it up and put it back where it goes before she left for school.  Thank goodness for little sister and a rare moment of team work to get the job done and avoid a meltdown!  :)

 

Our Little Jack-Jack

Our little man is not a fan of his car seat. When we think about it, we can't really blame him. He faces backwards, can't see anyone and is hot! We were having to pull his canopy to keep the sun out of his eyes, but doing that restricted air flow and made him hot and mad!

So, I set about fixing him a window curtain and we set up a DVD player so he could have something to look at while in the car.  It works about half the time...

But if you expect the boy to be in his car seat for longer than 10 minutes, be prepared to listen to his objections!