Vacation???

I had to start off with a very cute picture of the boys doing what my boys love most . . playing/digging/running on the beach. This is a reminder of why we endure things like the night before. It was so eventful it is pretty much comical - thus I thought it was blog-worthy :)

8 pm: All 5 big boys go to bed peacefully and quietly with any complications - babies go right to sleep too, in their respective pack-n-plays of course. Wow that was easy!! (stupid mommy)

8 pm - 2 am: Watch a totally lame movie with Liss and then proceed to play Scrabble with each other on our phones until 2 am (WHAT was I thinking . . . . . )

2:15 am: Troy comes out with a look on his face that you can certainly picture if you know him - it is a combination of WHAT the screw are you two doing and at this hour and why am I the ONLY one who hears Grayson screaming his head off. (Oops sorry Troy - thought you could sleep through a hurricane and G cries for an hour every night - yes people - it is true)

2:15 am - 3 am: Do everything I can think of to try to get G to go back to sleep without letting him cry and disturb everyone else - this is the worst. You don't even want to know what I tried.

3 am: Grayson starts coughing really hard - it looks like he is going to gag from the coughing - he starts vomiting his entire dinner and multiple cups of milk all over me - AWESOME. Clean him up - clean the bathroom up - bag all the nasty clothes - change Gray.

3:30 am: Gray is just finally getting settled from the episode and finally falling asleep in my arms. Enter Davis who needs to pee.

3:35 am: Re-enter Davis who now needs to go #2 and be wiped and YES I'm still holding a baby who is finally.almost.asleep - aaahhhhh. Bummer. Now Gray is back up.

4:00: Gray is finally settled and back in bed. Does it sound like I hear something? Yes it is Eli and Davis sitting up talking. I walk in and Davis just casually looks up and says, "Um, Eli says that I can go to High School next year even though I'm five, will that work?". WHAT?!?!?! It is the middle of the night. Pull Davis out of the slumber party room. Set him up to sleep on the couch. Tell E to go back to sleep. Finally I fall asleep on the couch for about and hour and a half.

5:45 am: Enter Logan. Just casually walking around the family room. Checking it out. "What are you doing Loges?". I send him in to find my sister but Davis is already awake and now wants to stay up. I try to convince Davis to try to go back to sleep.

6:15 am: Do I hear something again? Yes, Melissa fell asleep and Loges thought she was boring so he headed back in the room with the boys and woke up Parker and TJ. I'm guessing Eli was sleeping through this since he was up chatting at 4 :)

And with that, the day officially begins. Vacation? I learned my lesson. Do not stay up and play iphone scrabble all night!!!! Even running on no sleep - I loved seeing the boys enjoy the beach today. More fun pictures coming. Good times.

For Jenn :)

I can't believe that it has been a month since I posted anything to my blog. Sad, I'm sure I have failed to write down things that came to mind. I haven't been able to find my camera cord until I committed to finding it for California so I have a lot of catch up to do. Until Jenn brought it to my attention, I had no idea it had been so long. While I start to work on the back posts, here are a couple "Parker-isms" that have made me smile:

Picking Parker up from Sunday school:

Me: What did you learn in your story tonight?

P: Ummm, mostly it was about Uncle Matt.

Me: Huh?

P: Yeah, they just kept saying Matthew. (Sure enough the take home paper said the story came from Matthew Chapter 27 - guess the first few seconds really made an impression:)

While I am getting ready to go out:

P: Here mom, here, here . . (forcing something toward me)

Hands me a funky object.

P: It is my booger. It came from my nose.

Parker LOVES all things super heros. It is kind of his thing. His personal favorites are Supergirl and Superman. He hauls them around everywhere!! I particularly love that he says, "my super-herios" (said like Cheerios)

The other day he was bringing me a shirt and asking me insistently to change the shirt he had on (which is sometimes an hourly occurrence) so I was not wanting to change it. He kept telling me the same thing over and over to justify his need of a new shirt but I couldn't understand what he was saying. Finally I said, "what is it you are saying?" and I realized that he was saying, "I have ahh-choo on my shirt". He had sneezed on himself and that was the only word he could think of to describe his snot. Made me laugh :)

Out of their mouths . . .

I just remembered two more things that I meant to right down on the last post:

My dad taught the boys the I'm Down by the Beatles. They loved it (for some reason) and sing it in the car all the time. This cracks me up in general since I grew up listening to lots of oldies in the car. It also makes me chuckle because Parker will use the phrase from the song almost every time that he uses the word "down". He will say, "Mommy, can you help me get down, down baby down from this chair". I try not to laugh :)

We were talking about dinosaurs in our Children's Encyclopedia the other day and we were talking about what extinction means. They were trying to understand why there used to be dinosaurs and now there aren't any dinosaurs. The book gave several explanations for why they might have become extinct, one of which was the flood of the Bible. I was asking Davis, "can you think of anything that you know definitely happened because it is in the Bible that would have been BIG BIG enough to kill all those huge dinosaurs??" He thought about it for a while and then said, "Ummmm, Goliath?" Oh, it still makes me laugh a little.

Today Parker got a shot at the doctor and he keeps telling me his arm hurts but he keeps saying, "the shot really made my feelings hurt" while pointing to his arm :(

Valentine's Day

This is "my valentine" :) Sadly I had to go back to November to find a picture that was just the two of us . . note to self . . more photos with less children! We aren't usually big "valentine's day" celebraters but since the kids celebrated at a party, thought it was fitting to include a picture of MY valentine!

The boys and I are at a fun Valentine's Day party at Aunt Lissa's house. She went all out! They had a festive lunch, decorated cards for each other, decorated cookies, exchanged valentines and ate yummy treats.

My pretty momma with Evie Grace

My little sugar!

Davis putting his valentines in his cousins' mailboxes. They had so much fun with this. It was so cute to me to watch him find each person's bag and put in their card. He looked so big!

Alaska Cousins Visit!!!!

I apologize for the FLOOD of pictures, but a visit from our Alaska family is a highlight of the year. You can not even imagine how much my kids anticipate this visit. They love their cousins so much. It has always been my priority that my kids would really esteem and value the relationships they have with one another, as brothers, and then also with their cousins and extended family. While they don't see them nearly as often as we would like, they are really best buddies and I love that! The ten days seemed to fly by, as usual, but we jammed as much as possible into them. The week was filled with park play dates, a Valentine's party, a sleep over, playing at our house, hiking together, celebrating birthdays, more playing, and even some adult time (imagine that!). While we jam a lot of random fun stuff in that we would never normally do, my favorite part is just having them around for the day-to-day stuff like church together, Sunday night dinners, watching our fave reality shows together . . that type of stuff. I wish that was a reality more often :( I think we even did more together as adults that we usually do and it was so, so fun. Here are some of the highlights.

Park play date - Kara and Parker

Kara and Hugh

Clay Clay and TJ

Pretty Kara at the Valentine's party - cute Evie in the background :)

Clayton beating down Logan with a bat - he was laughing hysterically and for the record he hit Clayton first!

Clayton and Hugh - check out the aviators on that pilot . . hahaha

April and Eli

The kids together in dress up clothes the morning they stayed the night at our house

Eli and Clay

Clay, Kara, and Davis

All the cousins together - man I love that group of kids!

Davis loves his cousin Kara in a big way!

Sweet girl - love her!

Parker and April at dinner after church

Out of their mouths . . .

Parker has said some things lately that have really made me laugh.

I had to go to the bank the other day and asked which boy wanted to come with me. Parker got to come. When we are walking inside, he said "Where are we now? I thought you said we were going to the piggy bank??" Made me laugh.

A new thing for our house is playing on a mat for a period of time. When we started a couple weeks ago Parker asked what he was supposed to do. I told him he had to stay on his 'play mat'. Now when ever it is time for that activity he tell his brother, "Don't forget to stay on your placemat".

Parker asks to pray for most of our meals (Parker actually wants everyone to pray with him even if he is sitting down with a couple of crackers). Everyday for months he prays, among other things, "Thank you Jesus for hiking, thank you Jesus for sleeping at Aunt Lissa's". For New Year's Eve we let the boys sleep there until we went home . . . made QUITE the impression I guess.

I was reading them a story out of their Bible book and Parker said, "Was Eve a girl? Does that mean she had boobs?" Well, I would guess so. I suppose he wouldn't be a boy if that distinction wasn't important to him :)

Parker's Birthday

Parker got a big boy bike for his birthday. He was so excited. It didn't occur to me that he would have to learn how to ride it (a first in our family and yes it has training wheels) but after ten days on it he is doing really well!

After a hike in the morning, we all went to Jason's Deli for birthday lunch and ice cream! Parker was thrilled to have ALL his cousins around for his birthday lunch.

Parker got this knight costume for his birthday and he absolutely loved it (above). He also got this quilt from Aunt Amy (below) another hit of the day!

Parker is a very, very special gift to this family. There are certain things that were on my heart when I prayed for my kids as babies. When Parker was a newborn, I happened to be reading a lot in Psalms. The great love David had for God was on my mind a lot. I prayed over and over that Parker would grow up to love Jesus the way that David did and that he would have a soft, loving heart. Not that I have seen this come to completion or anything, but I tell you this is the sweetest little boy. He has a very compassionate little attitude and he is such an encouragement to me. He speaks very sweetly most of the time. It is very common for him to see me sitting on the floor and to come over and snuggle me or just sit down next to me and start to rub my back. He is also quick to say encouraging, sweet things to his brothers. "Good job G! . . You look so nice today Davis . . . ect" Three years in and this kid still doesn't love to eat . . good food that is. A bowl of ice cream or some other kind of treat goes down in abundance but dinner time continues to be a battle for him. This hasn't hindered his growth however. He is the biggest (on the scale) of all the boys. He hasn't been to his dr. appointment just yet but the last time they checked he was still off the charts for height and weight and looks to be almost the same size as Davis. His very favorite things to do are dress up (pretty much anything, but the two current favorites are a cowboy outfit and a knight outfit - both bday gifts). He dresses up everyday! He also like clothes in general. He wants out of his pj's and into his clothes for the day within minutes of getting up in the morning (trust me this is not modeled for him by me:) It is also common for him to want to change clothes throughout the day - not mommy's favorite. He loves super heros. He plays in a much more imaginative way that his brothers. He will play for a long time with his figures, imaging some kind of an story with them. Parker has a characteristically deep voice. Almost everyone that talks to him is surprised at first how low his voice is. I can't imagine what it will be like after puberty! However, when he says "I love you Mama" it is always higher - like he is being gentler with me or something. He does the same thing when he talks to Evie and Hugh - this is just sweet to me for some reason. Most of the time Parker seems so much older to me than he is (probably because he talks like a six year old) but sometimes he will do something that makes me realize that he is still just barely three years old. He still wants to be snuggled when I read to him, (he still uses a nuk - don't tell my dr:), and he still wants me to help him eat. Parker loves to sing together. Again - this is something more particular to him. Davis loves songs, but Parker actually want to sing along. I love his little - very out of tune - voice. His very favorite song is "Nothing but the Blood of Jesus" but he also regularly asks for "Lord I Lift Your Name on High", "If You Are Happy and You Know It", "Holy, Holy, Holy" and whatever the current car CD has on it. I really need to record his voice - it is precious. I love this little boy so much. He is a great, great joy to me. Happy 3rd Birthday Parker.