Pretty!

Look at what Emma let me do! I was so excited because I have wanted to do this for quite some time. As you all know, the girl has no shortage of hair on that head of hers! She sat still long enough for me to paint her toenails and the braid her hair. Guess I got her at a rare mellow time.

Soccer

Eli decided he wanted to play soccer this spring so we put him on the cities Park and Rec team to get a good start. We aren't ready to go club level until we know he really does like it and it planning on sticking with it for quite a while. He had his first practice on Tue the 25th. I got a couple of pictures of that. His first game is on the 8th. Naturally I will keep you posted on how that goes! So far he is catching on to the game quickly. Nobody in this family has any kind of experience with soccer so we are all learning as we go. For those of you that do know soccer, you will see our lack of knowledge with the first picture! :)

OK so here is what we did wrong...the shin guards are supposed to be UNDER the socks...learned that when the coach was talking about uniform rules! Oops! :)

Here is he is stretching (the kid in the gray shirt and black shorts). I couldn't really get any other pictures of him practicing because that sun was killer at that time of day! Hopefully I will be facing east for the games!

So sweet

Emma took a nap late this afternoon. We try not to let her sleep more than an hour when she does this so she won't have any problems going to bed that night. This is what I saw when I went to wake her up. This is my girl for sure!

Happy Easter!

We had a pretty laid back day today. Poor Eli was up at 5:30 (possibly sooner but that is the only confirmed time) this morning, ready to see what the Easter bunny brought to him. But of course we made him wait until everyone was awake. So he stayed in his room, in bed until 7:30!

We got a couple of inches of snow overnight (it had been snowing on and off all day just not sticking to anything) so that ruled out hiding and hunting eggs outside. Which really isn't unusual for us here in CO. JR hid eggs for the big kids and I hid some for Emma. He did such a good job that for the last few eggs he had to play hot/cold with the kids just so they could find them! Emma found hers pretty quick because they were all in plain sight. But then she decided that she wanted to add more eggs to her basket so she started taking them out of Kayla and Eli's baskets! There were a couple of times that we saw Emma in a full blown run hoping that nobody would catch her!

Then JR and I cooked a turkey ham for dinner. This was the first time in at least 12 years that we didn't go see my mom on Easter. She and my step-dad are out of town for a few days but Emma and I did get to talk to Nana on the phone.

Eggs!

We did our Easter Egg coloring last night and let Emma join in the fun for the first time. We started out with 24 eggs but lost one so we colored a total of 23. Who knows how many we will color when there are 4 kids?! It was lots of fun and there are some stained fingers in the house today.

Eli dipping his first egg

Emma dipping her first egg....now here is the funny part....she knows about dipping foods into sauces and stuff so naturally her instinct was to dip and taste....and did so before we could stop her but I wasn't fast enough with the camera to capture the look on her face with her first taste of vinegar!

Kayla dipping her first egg...and I am guessing she is smiling at Emma.....

The finished product! So pretty!

Multi-tasking

Oh if this isn't a sign of the times I don't know what is! Kayla's friend called her to have her get online......and this is what happens.

Always the Joker

Eli's school had a skate night at Skate City and it was Pirate Night. The kids could dress up in any pirate stuff they have and then they got free mustaches to make themselves look more pirate. Eli doesn't own anything pirate because that isn't his (or the ours for that matter) thing. So he got a hold of the mustaches and of course couldn't do anything serious with them!

And when he went to sleep, JR had to go in and do some removal before they were permanently stuck!

Slumber Party!

Kayla had her birthday party on Saturday. She had 6 of her friends over for lunch and then it was off to see Alvin and the Chipmunks at the dollar theater (yep we ARE that cheap!). This was Kayla's first time doing anything like that without an adult being with her. But it was a nice pleasant surprise to see my friends husband walk in with his 3 children to see the very same movie the girls were going to! :) It was truly coincidental that they showed up. But nice for JR and I to know that they were there. We ended up with one of the girls going home after the movie because she wasn't feeling well. But this house was crazy for over 12 hours with these giggly, screaming girls running around. They did finally get quiet around 11 last night...but a couple of them didn't fall asleep until 2ish. Emma made a couple of friends along the way. She really wanted to be in the middle of it all whenever the girls were hanging out upstairs. And Eli spent part of the day with Darlin (JR's mom) so he wasn't subjected to girls ALL day! Here are a couple pictures from last night.

From top left: Janae, Kayla, Katy (aunt), Sarah, Jayde and Kadejah

Here comes the cake.....

The girls watching a movie for some "quiet" time

Happy 12th Birthday Kayla!

Wednesday the 12th was Kayla's "Golden Birthday"....12 on the 12th. I am still processing the fact that I have a 12 yr old.....and will soon have a newborn! :)

Kayla had the joy of CSAP's for her birthday this year! And then we took her to dinner at Fargo's Pizza (the same place we took Eli) which was her choice. Then we came home and had ice cream cake. Yummy! We got her a gift card for her favorite store Aeropostale so I took her shopping too.

These three pictures are all in the arcade....the kids playing a driving game.

The really exciting stuff will be happening this weekend. She will have 6 girls coming over tomorrow and we will be taking them to the movies. This is a big step for Kayla because it's the first time she will do anything without JR or I being there with her! She is super excited for that. Then all of those giggly girls will be spending the night here. Yes we are aware that there are only 3 candles on the cake....we didn't have 12 on hand so we improvised....1 and 2 to make the number 12!

No!

Believe it or not "no" was NOT one of Emma's first words. Thank goodness! Well over the past few days she has decided to add it to her every day vocabulary. And the girl knows how to use it! She will tell you no if she doesn't want something you are offering her. She will tell you no if she doesn't want to do something you want her to do. And she will assert herself when she says it. For example she was standing in front of the chair I wanted to sit in and I politely said "excuse me Emma" and she said "no" and proceeded to move me! That is also a somewhat new thing with her. If she wants you to go somewhere she will grab your pant leg and pull you to wherever she needs you. If you are holding her, she will grab on to the back of your neck and "steer" you in the direction you should be moving. I guess that is all part of being the baby of the family....you have to figure out a way to get what you need! :)

It's a girl!

We had our big ultrasound this morning and found out we are having a girl! We are all excited now that we are over the initial shock of ANOTHER female in this house. Poor JR and Eli are really out numbered now! But that also makes Eli that much more special since he is the only boy in the family. I only got a couple of pictures of her because she wasn't in the mood to show her face apparently. But each picture is labeled for those of you who don't understand what they are seeing! :) And to those of you that are wondering, no we don't have a name picked out yet! We had put the discussion on hold until we found out what we were having so we knew which way to focus. But Kayla and Eli did have plenty of suggestions tonight at dinner!

Otherwise everything is looking good. The baby is measuring a little small in the belly area which just means more ultrasounds to make sure she is growing OK. The doctor isn't really concerned with it at this point but worse case scenario is that they may have to induce me early because my placenta isn't allowing enough nutrition to the baby.