Ohio

My sister in law had a baby a couple of weeks ago and I just couldn't wait to get my hands on her so we hopped in the car and drove up to meet this little sweetie last Friday!

It was a nice distraction for the kids while daddy is away.  We had 4 kids under 4 in the house, though, and it did get a little crazy.  (3, 2, 1 and new...whew!)

The kids L-O-V-E-D the front porch swing.  I think we could have spent the entire trip out there and they would have had 0 complaints.

Nana, Papa and Aunt Kim drove out, too, so that we could all spend some time together.  

There was a lot of story time...

Nana and Papa had a pool at their hotel and we took full advantage of it while they were in town.        

Logan loves the pool, but Brody isn't quite as sure.  He spent a lot of time cuddling Nana while the others swam.

Though, he did want to check it out after a while.

The boys bonded over video games.

We had fun dressing them all up in matching outfits and taking pictures.  I'm sure one day they'll all mock us for this.

Getting them all to look at the camera was impossible.

Memorial day was spent outside in the pools.  The kids ran back and forth from the pools to the house, where they "painted" the side of it with water.  

 They took amazing naps that day.

Here is a rare moment where all three older kids were happily playing together, quietly:

Sweet Abby Mae just took it all in.  She seemed perfectly used to the chaos.

We also spent some time in IKEA.  I think I could move in there and be happy.  Logan could, too, as long as she had free reign over all of the toys/tents/tunnels.

The drive was long, but the kids did FANTASTIC.  We stopped only once on each leg of the trip (a 9 hour journey).  It was fun to get away!

Beauty and the Beast

Leading up to his time away Mike wanted to make sure the kiddos got some good one on one time.  With Brody it was just hanging out and playing while I took Logan out.  But when he heard that the Carolina Ballet was performing Beauty and the Beast he knew he had to get them some tickets.  One of his former employees is actually in the ballet and scored them a set on opening night for free!  What a blessing and wonderful memory for them!

Here they are getting ready to go:

Waiting for the show to start:

And fast asleep after it finished (if you notice, she's actually sleeping with her ticket):

Of course, none of this would be complete without tired snuggles the day after:

Last MOPS

It's been several weeks now since it's been done, but we finished off our year at MOPS earlier this month.  I took a couple of pictures but none are very good.  The kids were in matching seersucker outfits (which I love).

The kids really love each other, but seem to want to love on each other at totally opposite times.  If one wants a hug, the other doesn't...it creates tension.  :)

And this is incredibly blurry because I didn't have anyone around to take it, but here we are on our last day of MOPS and right under it is our first.

Girls Night

Our local CFA hosted a Girls Night Out tonight.  Logan and I have been looking so forward to it!

We made reservations a couple weeks back and have been talking about it non stop.  She was thrilled when we got there and they actually seated us like we were at a sit down restaurant.  She felt like such a big girl!

We got two full sized meals, two desserts and two drinks.  On top of that we got special treasure boxes, she got a manicure and I got a chair massage they were offering from a local spa.  It was SO nice!

The manicurists (is that word?) kept commenting on how nice Logan's nails are.  It's probably because I'm too lazy to keep them trimmed-ha!  She finished her mani before I was finished with my massage so the manager came and took her back to our table and brought her dessert out and sat and had a good chat with her.  

I promise, she was more thrilled to be there than this picture documents.  She just was more interested in her chocolate chip cookie sundae than in taking more pictures.  We got to talk about all kinds of things and I look forward to doing more things like this with her in the future.  I so appreciate that Chick-fil-a really seems to have the family at heart by offering so many opportunities for parents and kiddos to connect.  They've had daddy/daughter date night, mommy/son date nights and this was the first mommy/daughter that I've seen them do but it's so necessary!  Usually the reservations go really quickly but I was lucky and randomly saw the reservations open up and got one of the first slots.

She wanted to  make sure everyone got to see her sparkly pink nails and her new ring.  They had a big jewelry table out with all kinds of costume jewelry and we both got to pick one out.  She picked both so we could "share."  Or so she could have two.  

Thank you, CFA Wake Forest, for such a great night with my girl!

Happy Mother's Day!

I'm enjoying a quiet, uneventful, mother's day with the two sweet kiddos who made me a mommy!  What a special way to celebrate.

Dentist

Logan had her first "real" dentist appointment this week.  We took her last year but it was a very basic, preliminary look at her teeth.  This time she got a full cleaning and had a big visit with the dentist.

We love the dentist we've got here!  Dr. Buddy is so fantastic with kids.  If you're in the WF/Raleigh area, I would send you to Triangle Pediatric Dentistry in a heartbeat.  They had me fill out a questionnaire prior to coming about her interests.  So, while he was checking her teeth he kept describing different princesses that he was finding in her teeth and having her guess which ones he was talking about.  They were protecting her teeth against the cavity monsters.  :)  It was fantastic and put her so at ease.  At the end of his visit with her he painted crowns (fluoride) on for the princesses and all she could talk about for days were the crowns that were on her teeth.  

At the end of the appointment they gave her a big girl token and let her go put it in a prize machine of her choice.  Of course, she beelined for the princess one.  When she turned the nob an got the ring out she looked at me and said, "I love this, but I'd like to have my money back, please."  Maybe we need to start a piggy bank for her.

She came home with a great report, no cavities, super clean teeth!  We'll head back in about 6 months for another checkup.

P.S. We didn't do any pre-schooling this week.  Mike was home a little more than normal this week and since he's leaving next week we spent a little extra time with him.  We'll study the letter I in the coming week and she's itching to get started!

Preschooling: Week 2, Letter E

Week 2 is almost complete.  We will finish up with our letter for the ABC book this afternoon.  This week we had a few new, fun activities.  Logan's favorite was the color by number we did:

We've tried color by numbers in the past and they've always flopped.  The concept was a little over her head so we put them away for several months and I was a little nervous when I saw this one on the lesson plan.  But, something clicked and she knew just what to do!  She was so proud of the finished product she hung it on the refrigerator herself to show anyone who comes over.

We made a fun purchase this week for preschool, too!  We've been looking for an alphabet mat of some sort and we've also been looking for a replacement foam mat for our porch and when we saw this one, it fit both qualifications.  It's fantastic, Brody can play outside without scratching up his knees and Logan and I can work on identifying letters.  She likes to jump on random letters that are called out and then say their sound as she hops on them.

We also hit a big milestone this week!  Logan has had the ability to write her own name for a while, but usually she can only do it after several, several promptings to practice.  I also usually need to be around to remind her what the letter shapes are to help her out.  BUT, I walked out on the porch yesterday and found she had done this all on her own:

 (we'll ignore the fact that it's on two different lines--she's still having a hard time making the letter L small enough to fit the rest)

She is getting too big, too fast!  She continues to love preschooling and asks to do it all the time.  She can't wait to get Brody down for his morning naps so that she can get to work.  I'm so glad she's developing a healthy love for learning!

This week I found that independent activities were what worked best for Logan.  The activities where I had to stand over her and help her were not her favorites.  She loved the ones that I explained and then left her to do, I think she really liked being able to show me that she had gotten things done on her own.  

We did not make it to the library again this week.  But we did work to find books that had the letter E in the title (not hard) and also found letter E on the words on the pages. I wish I had made it out to get the book list, but we had bad colds at the beginning of the week and it threw everything off.  Thankfully, we have almost all of the books here on the list for this coming week so I don't even have to bother with it!