Sweetest Baby in the World

Here's a little Ya for ya. :) We have been so blessed to have her as part of our family and are thankful that God hand-picked this sweet little thing for us. I can't imagine life without waking up to her precious smile (full of teeth!) every day.

Church Christmas Program

The look on Noa's face says, "Hey, everyone! Look at me! This is my debut!!" More on that in a minute...

What do you want to do on an abnormally hot day in December? Go outside in the front yard and stand by Mommy's car! Of course! It's the place to be!!

A rare moment, indeed.

Noa's into scarves lately.

And now back to the Christmas program. It was 5 minutes of pure bliss!

O.k. So I'm a little weird...

Why am I taking (and posting) these weird pictures? I thought of a great idea! I was trying to think of things to put in the girls stockings and I decided to do a photo shoot of their toys. Noa was SOOOOO into the idea! She got her babies all ready and started positioning them for the pics (albeit they were stuffed in the back of the couch, but that's how she wanted them). So, I picked up 2 little photo books at the dollar store ($2) and printed off all of these pictures, and I'm sure her and Ruthie will go crazy over them!

Here's Hooie changing his diaper (Ruthie's idea).

Noa, a proud mommy. When I showed her the pictures, she kept saying, "Awww. They're so cute. She looks gorgeous! Awww... sweet girls." Ha! :)

This is the weirdest one!! Look at those eyes!!

Here's some other pictures I found from when Mom & Abby were here. We went to the pumpkin patch with Noa's class (even though we really couldn't find them) and got some pumpkins!

Sweet little Ya!

A normal morning for Daddy. Wow. What do you do with all that l.o.v.e. ???!!!!

And I will leave you with this incredible picture of Babers. Any guesses on what she was eating?

M&Ms! How can anyone make M&Ms that messy and disgusting. Babers will find a way! And as we were carrying her to the bath, she proceeded to put her gross handprint all over the walls of the bathroom. She still talks about her M&Ms and is very sad that we wiped them off the wall.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Busy and Sick. Still Beautiful.

Sorry for being a little MIA lately. October slammed us right in the face and we haven't stopped going, going, going since then. I'm over it, if you want me to be honest. Had Dan's wedding, Mom & Abs in town, Russ had the Man Retreat, the whole family went on the youth retreat and we've been in and out of sickness the whole time. Everyone is over the coughing, snotty, congested mess except me and Lydie. Blaaaah!!!!! I just want my normal voice back! And Russ and I need a date! Bad! So bad! A good date though! Not one that is just like an hour and a half at a restaurant we've eaten at 30 times. I'm talking a really good date. We need to get out of Dodge! Our kids are very, very present all the time. I'm sure that's how everyone's kids are, but lately we've been feeling like they are every where we turn! And if they're not right there, we can hear them destroying something in the background, so we're hunting them down! Ah! Anyway. Been real bad with taking pictures lately. We did have these gorgeous photos taken by Sally. I love them. She was able to capture each girl's personality perfectly. I need to weed through them to print some off for our house... The to-do list just keeps growing. Anyway, here's a few of my favorite shots of our lovely little ladies. I heart them!!!

Noa wouldn't stop posing. Cute!!

Stop it Babers. You're killin' me.

I think Lydie thinks this is a smile. :)

Yes, Hooie is officially part of the family. Even made it into the family photo shoot!

Notice how Noa is stealing the cherry from Ruthie. Caught red handed!

Grammy & Abby Visit

We have a lot more pictures on a different camera, but I thought I would post a few pics I have from my camera. We loved having you, Grammy & Abs!

Just bein' sweet

Playing at the park

Reading the books Grammy bought them.

Someone thought she was such a big deal in her new wheels!

What an awesome Grammy. She let us run in the sprinkler when it was freezing outside!!! She's WAY better than Mom!

Come again soon!!!!!

Loins

Bee Cool at Bee City

Some of us moms decided to take the kids to Bee City - about an hours drive - for a little field trip! Ya-ya stayed home, which was perfect because there really wasn't any place for her to crawl around, which would've resulted in a major back ache for me. Anyway, the kids learned about bees, saw some bees, made a craft with bees wax, poured honey, and saw all kinds of animals at the petting zoo. The kids really enjoyed it and it ended up being a nice outing. Here's some of the group listening to the rules. I keep looking at this picture thinking that all of these kids are coming from like 7 families or something. That's a lot of kids! And a lot of kids PER FAMILY! Wow.

Look at how attentive they are! Honestly, there were so many rules, I couldn't keep them straight. I'm glad the kids were listening in this moment, but I'm sure we broke every rule mentioned, several times...

We had fun crawling on the fake animals too!

I'm sure Noa and Evie are talking about who gets to sit on the turtle and for how long.

Evie won!

This picture was taking right after one of Ruthie's major melt-downs. She looks so content here though. They were very interested in filling up their own honey bears with honey.

Here's the bee colony that the kids got to see. Noa was pretty fascinated with the whole thing, but afterwards she pulled me aside and said, "Mom, now I'm gonna show you the real bee..."

And here it is... the real bee. :)

Precious little Eden. This is Lydie's friend - born a week later - and she was a busy little bee herself! Crawling everywhere!

Last, but certainly not least (these two wouldn't stand for that), here's Ruthie and Lulu, two middle children living up to that stereotype quite nicely. No smiles even though we asked 100 times... They are definitely kindred spirits in their approach to life: physical, passionate (you could also insert "crazy" here. "Passionate" is our positive spin on what's really going on.), influential, beautiful, my-way-or-the-highway type girls...

Thanks Rhoda, for organizing all of this! We had a fun day and look forward to when we can BEE COOL at BEE CITY again... :)