Two little love dogs

Yep, it's official, the dog has a girlfriend! He went MIA the other day. He was nowhere in the house. Eli was helping me make mini-meatloaves so you would expect a dog to be right there at his feet praying for a bit of meat to fall. Nope. He wasn't there. So I put my head out the back door to call the dog and glance over to the neighbors yard. Yep, you guessed right, that is where he was! Dust had been kicked up from him obviously running and coming to a screeching halt! So we fix the fence and figure it would be all taken care of. Then this morning, again gone for quite some time. He's over there again! Oh geez I hope this dog is fixed because Mal is not! Those would be some ugly puppies! And as a side note, the vet isn't keen on doing it at this point because of Mal's age. Anyways, I send Eli out there to get the dog and Mal just hops over the broken part of the fence like it's nothing! The kids and I had a few errands to run so we were gone for about 4 hrs or so. When we get home, I go to let the dog out and this is what I am greeted by......

That's the dog from next door! Apparently she got tired of waiting for Mal to go over there so she decided to come to our backyard! I can only imagine their conversation through the door while we were gone. Who knows how long she was back there! She really is a cute and sweet dog! It is a very weird feeling to open your door to find an animal that doesn't belong there. It took me a minute to process what I was seeing!

He is saying "Puhleeeease let me go out and play"

I kid you not, this dog was licking the door and nosing it. I think it's puppy love....

The good news is that I did find out this evening that she is fixed. We never really see the people that live in that house because we all keep different schedules. But one of them happened to be home and outside and were able to confirm that she is not able to have puppies! Phew!

Happy 2nd Birthday Emma!

Today was Emma's 2nd birthday! I cannot believe it has been 2 yrs already! At times it seems like she has always been here and at times she seems so new! I have loved watching all of her growth over this last year. Really developing a rather large vocabulary for one. I don't know that there is a word out there that she can't say! The funny thing is how soft spoken she can be. You would think that being in such a large family you would learn to speak up to be heard but instead she goes the other direction. And sometimes, when you ask her what she said, she will say it even lower the next time! She does know how to get what she wants though! She is one tough cookie and isn't afraid to fight her poor brother for anything! She very much looks up to Kayla and would be fine spending every waking hour with her. And Hailey, she does love her and wants to hold her alot but is also ok with Hailey sleeping and Emma getting all the attention. When she wants to hold Hailey she will ask "Can I hoed her?". She can't say hold so it comes out hoed. And whenever she says something like spoon or snake it comes out as sa-poon or sa-nake. Love it! Of course, we have to be aware of not talking like her so she can learn how to say the word the right way. And more importantly, so we don't walk around talking like Emma at work or school!


So for her birthday we decided not to have a party and we would just have family over. Well geez, when there are 4 sets of grandparents plus aunts and uncles....that ends up being a party! We ended up having 5 grandparents, 1 surrogate grandma (my step-sister and step-brothers mom Rhonda), an aunt, and an uncle here. Plus my giant family! A couple of the grandparents weren't able to come because of already scheduled plans. So we had cake and ice cream and let Emma open her presents. Emma is so shy that it is kind of funny. She was hiding behind this little half wall when my dad was coming to the door and then wouldn't look at anyone but Rhonda. She sat on her lap for quite some time before it was time to open presents. She did finally decide it would be ok to hug everyone though by the time they were leaving.


We gave her one of her presents in the morning, then she went to Nana's house and got more presents there, then she had the ones everyone brought to her. But she still enjoyed opening every last one of them! And now imagine how confusing it must be for her to wake up on the 26th and there are no presents and people aren't telling you happy birthday (whatever that means) and treating you special! 1 of the big gifts we got for her was a Dora bed set for her "big girl" bed so that she can transition from her crib to a twin daybed. Wish us luck with that one!

Before the madness.....

You can't see Emma but it sums up the evening!

After presents we sang Happy Birthday and ate cake. She was too cute while we were singing to her. She was facing away from everybody because of where her chair was (and no I didn't think to move it!). When everyone started to sing, a smile very slowly crept up on her face until it was full blown and she was looking around at everyone. Her expression kind of said "hey...this is cool that they are all singing to ME!".

Track update

Because my good camera broke and I haven't taken the time to get it fixed (like a dummy) I haven't been able to get good pictures of Kayla running. The track is too big and she always ends up running on the east side of the track and we sit on the west side of the track. They make all of us parents sit in the stands and cannot go out on the track....period. Even if your child is injured as I witnessed this week!

Anyways, track is going good for Kayla. Those coaches are really working these girls! Kayla has improved some of her race times this year which is awesome. I can see her pride when she tells me this too which I love. I'm glad she has found something that she likes as far as sports go. Since she always competes in relays she doesn't win on her own and quite honestly I don't know that her teams have won yet either. We don't stick around for the whole meet if we don't have to because of having to feed everyone dinner and homework and everything that goes along with 4 children! The meets start at 4:30 so the girls get out of their classes about 15 minutes early to load the bus and head over to the stadium their meets are at.

Here is the only picture I managed to get and Kayla is being a bit goofy in it. She had forgotten to bring her snack on Tues so that she would have it for the meet so she was rather hungry by the time I brought her this! That is her friend Kadejah with her.

Soccer

Here is a quick update on soccer.....

It is very quickly coming to an end already! Eli only has 3 or 4 more games left! This season has been a good one for the team. They average a win just about every other game. It's fun to watch these boys play though. And they seem to have fun for the most part. They did group pictures before the last game so I am looking forward to getting that.

I did figure out that it isn't a good idea to take Emma to the games. I can now see why they make kid leashes! :) She thinks it's fun and funny to take off running across the park. There is one particular park that they have games at that is quite large. She really enjoys taking off and running for the hill which is literally on the other side of the park than the soccer field we are on!

Scrapbook

A couple of the ladies at work are pretty avid scrapbookers and offered to scrapbook a couple of pages from my baby shower that they threw for me. With their schedules and what not they were finally able to get together to actually work on it a couple of weeks ago. These two are so creative that they got the whole idea just from seeing the gift bags at the shower! Here are pictures of each page.

The pictures are in order as they would be in a book. They had tied the pages together with little ribbons as you can see in a couple of the pictures. Well I turned my back for a second and Emma had all the pages out and all the ribbons pulled out! Geez! So I just need to get a book to put the pages in and there is my start of a Hailey scrapbook!

Sleeping

As I took all the pictures off my camera this evening I happened to notice there were several pictures of sleeping people. I guess I was just enjoying the quiet time so much I decided to snap pictures! Just kidding! Once you see these pictures you will see why I took them!

Emma with her baby Sarah sleeping on her chest. And only 2 blankets instead of the 5+ she was sleeping with every night during the summer!

My little snuggle bug Hailey. She still loves to be swaddled for sleeping at night.

Yep, she is sleeping like that. If she gets fussy all JR has to do is put her near his face and talk softly to her and it usually settles her right down. This time, it settled her so much she fell asleep!

Eli and Mal....the dog really thinks he is human. He was on his back and snuggling up in Eli's neck!

Eli rocked her to sleep this morning while I was in the shower. Big brothers rock! Oh and just look at how much she looks like him!

Hailey Smiling

So I have been trying very hard to get a picture of miss Hailey smiling. It is quite the challenge because as soon as the camera is in her face she just stares at it wondering what it is. Kayla and I had to get together and have one of us make her smile and the other take a picture!

She was "talking" to Kayla.

1st Soccer game

Eli had his first game of the season on Wed. His team tried real hard but they lost quite painfully! :) One of his teammates must have some experience with soccer because the kid stood up at half time and did a little of his own coaching for the boys! They had their 2nd game on Friday and this time they won 7-1!

All the players getting ready for the start of the game. This was before Eli realized just how cold it was. He eventually put a shirt on under his uniform.

Can you find him out there?!

Poor Kayla had to go straigt from track practice so she didn't have ANY warm clothes! Good thing I brought this blanket!

Emma found a seat on Hailey's stroller.

This was Emma's and now Hailey get's to wear it. Too cute! It even came with a little teddy bear in the pocket.