Another birthday celebration

Sunday morning after church, we headed to Zach’s parents’ house to celebrate birthdays with his side of the family. Almost everyone on that side has a fall birthday so we just lump them all together in one big party.

Reed was Joe Cool with his sunglass on during our trip there.  

Grant enjoyed sitting with Zach’s grandma!

Cousins eating lunch together!

They all enjoyed getting to blow out their candles!  

Reed sitting by Grandma Peggy! 

Then it was time for everyone’s favorite part – presents!

After opening presents, the kids had fun running around outside playing with their toys.  

Grant and his Grandma!

Our kids with their grandparents 

Reed ready to start the ride home! 

This baby boy cried for an hour of the two-ish hour drive home. It was not fun.  

We had a great time and the kids love spreading the birthday fun out over a few weeks!

Five Months Old!

How in the world is my baby closing in on half a year old? Seriously? Where is time going? I can’t believe he is five months old today. Let’s see what he’s up to!

• You are a JOY baby. You are so happy and love hamming it up!
• You nurse in the morning before school and before bed. Sometimes you are hungry when you come home and nurse then, too. You moved up to 6 oz bottles during the days at school, but then you reverted back to 5 oz and have started going longer between feedings, too. On the weekends, you nurse pretty much just on demand, but usually about five times a day.
• You still love to sleep and take two several hour naps on the weekend.
• You are wearing mostly six months clothes. The weather is still warm so I’m still squeezing you in some three months stuff.
• You are in size 2 diapers.
• You probably weigh around 16/17 lbs I’m guessing? You were 15lbs 7oz at your 4 month check up. I’m sure you’ve chunked up a little more since then.
• You have the chubbiest legs – your knees have fat rolls that I love!
• You have really started showing interest in toys and you grab and bat at them, and at other things.
• You are cooing all the time. Your daddy thinks you will be a talker because you “talk” a lot right now.
• You LOVE to put your feet in your mouth and play with them. 
• You go to sleep around 7:00-7:30 and sleep until around 6:30 because that’s when we have to get up to get you fed and ready for school.
• You are slowly working on sitting up. You aren’t close yet but you are working on getting strong enough to do so.
• You are playing for longer periods of time before getting fussy.
• You stopped sleeping in your swaddle this month. For a few nights you slept in your sleep sack on your back. 
• Now you’ve stopped sleeping in anything altogether and are officially a tummy sleeper!
• Your brother and sister love you so much, and the feeling is mutual.

You are growing so much, and so fast, sweet boy. I love watching you accomplish new things and know we have such a fun road ahead of us with you. I pray that you always adore me as much as you do right now and I pray that you have a life filled with happiness and so many blessings. You bring us so much joy and happiness and it’s hard to remember our family without you! We’re so grateful for you, sweet boy!

Candid moments

These are just some random moments from last week that I wanted to share.

I love this kid’s big blue eyes! They are so gorgeous!

Grant has found his feet in the last few weeks and is obsessed with them. He loves putting his toes in his mouth ;)

A new American Girl catalog came in the mail last week. Ava was in heaven – the catalog is almost as good and provides as much entertainment as the actual items do! 

These two love each other. Ava has to hold him at least every day, sometimes in the morning and at night. She loves it when he sits with her.  Also, could he be any cuter with those dimples????  

Thursday evening I went out to dinner with my friend and when I got home, all the kids were asleep. I didn’t hate that I got to miss bedtime one night! ;) Love our life full of these happy days!

Happy birthday to Caroline!

Happy 2nd birthday to sweet little Caroline! We were so excited to meet you two years ago!  

You are such a sassy little girl, and we love you so! You are not my baby girl, but I love you as much as I love my own babies. I could never take the place of your momma, nor would I try, but I want to record a few things for you because I’m not sure your daddy will think about these things!

At two you years old:

• You love to say NO!
• Your vocabulary has taken off in the last two months.
• You LOVE Mickey Mouse.
• You don’t like it when Nana or Hamaw hold Ainsley. Anyone else and you could care less, but you pitch a fit when those two have your sister.
• You think you are as big as your older cousins and it’s cute to watch you play with them.
• You love to eat and will try almost anything.
• You enjoy running across your couch and it drives your daddy crazy!
• You love being outside.
• Your daddy told me this story about you last week: At your daycare, when they don’t want you to do something they tell you they don’t like that. It was naptime and you were bouncing on a horse and they said, “Caroline, we don’t like that.” And you said “Caroline likes that!” Love your spunky, sister!

Sweet angel girl, we have so many prayers for you, and hope that we can somehow shield you from the pain we all feel now missing your momma. We are always going to be here for you and can’t wait to see you grow this next year!

Another busy weekend

Well, we are about halfway through our marathon of busy weekends! We have a few more to go! I’ll be ready for a weekend with nothing planned where we can just be lazy!

Friday night, Ava wanted to read the bedtime story to Reed. He loves to give me the side-eye.

Grant is still such an easy to please baby. He ate saturday morning and then promptly fell asleep for a three hour nap! 

Later that afternoon, he was ready to cheer on the Hogs. Too bad they let him down! 

Sunday morning we got up and left the house by 7:00 to head up to Stephen’s. He had Ainsley baptized Sunday morning and we wanted to be there for them. Precious girl. It was sad listening to their pastor announce Stephen and Leslie as her parents and that Leslie had been gone for two months. It made me cry when he said that and watching Stephen up there all alone.  

Caroline was funny and didn’t want to take pictures with Stephen and Ainsley.  

The last time all the grandkids were together since Grant was born was at Leslie’s funeral and we didn’t get to take a picture of them. Trying to get seven little kids to look – ain’t happening! This is as good as it gets!

We stayed for lunch to celebrate AInsley, and we also celebrated little Caroline’s 2nd birthday with Leslie’s family.

All the kids really had a great time playing together!

Caroline was excited to open her birthday presents. She had fun getting some new toys and getting to open her packages. Almost everything she opened, she asked “Open?” because she wanted to play with it! 

She also loooooooved her birthday cake! After it was set in front of her, she kept eating icing off it. We sang and she went right back to the icing! :)   Singing happy birthday to her was very sad. I just kept thinking of her momma and how it was surreal that she wasn’t there. I posted a picture of Cee on instagram and a couple people mentioned they were happy to see Stephen moving ahead with life even though he probably felt like not. And that’s just it – life is going on and moving on. Without her. And it still hurts. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about her or miss her. It’s only been a little over two months but it feels like it’s been an eternity. I was nursing Grant upstairs in Ainsley’s room and there’s a photo in there of Leslie and Ainsley from Mother’s Day when Leslie was in the hospital and it was just so hard sitting there looking at her photo. I could see the toll her illness had taken on her physically and it was just hard to see. I’ve been sad lately thinking of what Ainsley and Caroline are gonig to be missing in life. My sister said it so perfectly when she said  that Caroline doesn’t realize what she doesn’t have in life right now. But my heart aches for the day that she will realize. And Ainsley, too. Wow. Totally didn’t see this going here but it is what it is.

Me and the almost birthday girl! She was saying cheese but no smile was showing! ha!

It was an absolutely beautiful day and the kids had so much fun playing outside together. They were just running and laughing and being carefree. We are going to a cabin at a lake in Missouri in two weeks and they will have a couple days to play together non-stop and we are excited for that!

Our niece, Katie, is an absolutely doll! She’s so sweet and OH so spunky! 

These girlies love Uncle Zach. Caroline has grown to love him and pretends she’s scared of him, but when no one’s looking, she is his buddy! ;) 

Sweet Ainsley bug. This girl doesn’t like to sit still and she is busy, busy, busy!

These sweet cousins are only a couple weeks a part in age and are so cute together. They both like to say no a lot and I have a feeling they will be big time friends as they get older!

It was a hard weekend, but a sweet weekend. It was great to see my siblings and their families since we are all spread out. We still have much to be thankful for, and I think Leslie was there today – we felt her presence. It was nice visiting with her parents, and brother and SIL, and all being there for Stephen and the girls. Those three are very loved and I know that we will see beauty from their sad story. God is good!