neglecting the blog

so.. things have been so busy for me personally. between my brothers big move and my nieces illness i havent taken much time to blog about anything else. here.. or on my family blog. i hope that you are reading the updates about macy. and i thank you all for being so wonderful to us during this trying time in our lives. your prayer and understanding mean so much to me. im sorry i havent done a good job at keeping up with updates.. but the good news is that i have been taking just the same amount of pictures. so even tho they will be delayed.. i will get around to sending them out to you guys and posting them. november and december are well documented around here. just not published. ;) its my new years resolution to get back on top of things with this blog! thanks for your patience. i love you guys and your babies!!

half way thru november?

so, november has been the official month-of-the-runny-nose. yuk. it has taken me a little over 2 weeks to make it thru my first illness of the winter. maybe it will be my first and only.. it turns out that ive traded in contant tissue-ing of my own nose for constant tissue-ing of 4 or 5 little noses. grace, james and gracyn have dad the runniest noses ever. korb and maddie havent been so bad.. but they definitely dont like all the cleaning. it hasnt really slowed anyone down. our days have still been busy and messy and fun. we have named 10AM-11AM book time. and they love it. they take turns sitting in my lap. and they love reading books that are familiar. when we read a new book, we have to read it for a couple of days in a row. i dare you to ask them what happens if you give a mouse a cookie. kennedy broke out a few christmas books for korb last night..so he shared those with his friends today. its so cute to seem them excited about story time.

we have also been talking a lot about letters.. we play with the fridge phonics all the time. and we sing ABC's a lot. and lately we have been playing with an old favorite of gracyn and korb's {was that really june 07..} - wooden block letters!

we have been talking about table manners too. i know they are only toddlers. the oldest only 26 months. but we cant start too early right? nothing major.. just keeping our food on our tables. :)

and in baby news.. GRACE is crawling! and pulling up! babies grow up too fast! and JAMES.. well i think everyone has seen what he is up to. CLIMBING. i think ive told him to SIT DOWN in the rocking chair about 1000 times in the last two weeks. gracyn and maddie have actually taken over now.. they tell him all the time too. CUTE little mommies.

have a great weekend guys!!

happy halloween!

everyone looked SO cute this morning.. i had to get out the camera!

maddie and her mommy brought these sweet treats for us..

THANK YOU!!

and this sweet little girl was purr-fectly pretty in her halloween outfit. baby james wore his trick or treat shirt..korb spent most of the morning reading books with dada.. that did not make his bff very happy. these are the faces we saw most of the morning when we asked for a smile.eventually we talked her into a couple of sweet looks for the camera. :)

baby grace arrived after we put the camera away but she looks SO cute too. right down to her adorable pumpkin socks! hopefully i will be able to capture a sweet look when she wakes up from nap to add to this post. HAPPY HALLOWEEN littles! hope you have a fun evening with your families!

thank you!

just want to formally say thank you for letting me leave early on friday to be with my family! im very grateful to have such good 'families' in my life! you guys are awesome! our trip did not go exactly as planned.. but my brother and sister in law were still very glad to see us friday evening before bedtime. thanks!!

our favorite things..

this weekend did not lend any time to blogging.. but hey, isnt that what nap time is for? i just wanted to share a few of our favorite pass times from the past few weeks..

we have been spending more and more time reading lately. now that almost everyone is interested in a good story, its much easier to sit in the floor and spend time with books! every one's favorite book right now is a classic by the berensteins. titled he bear, she bear. i see her and she sees me. we see that we are he and she. its all about a brother and sister bear finding out that they can do or be anything they want.. whether they are he or she. L-O-V-E IT!

we also do quite a bit of singing around here.. all day. last weeks favorite kid song..

I like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananas

I like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananas

I like to ate, ate, ate ay-ples and ba-nay-nays

I like to ate, ate, ate ay-ples and ba-nay-nays

I like to eat, eat, eat ee-ples and bee-nee-nees

I like to eat, eat, eat ee-ples and bee-nee-nees

I like to ite, ite, ite i-ples and bi-ni-nis
I like to ite, ite, ite i-ples and bi-ni-nis

I like to ote, ote, ote oh-ples and bo-no-nos

I like to ote, ote, ote oh-ples and bo-no-nos

they pretty much think its hilarious. even the babies. and they love apples and bananas. so we might have eaten them for snack more than once last week! today we are having peaches. wonder if i can find a song about those...

just a couple of milestones to note.. everyone is getting much better at helping with clean up. and remembering which toys go where. very grown-up! and in baby-news, grace learned to get herself to a sitting position on her own! yay! i see crawling in her near future!

stay tuned for more random pictures of our days together.

fun with HATS!

i promise a post this weekend with some substance about what we did all week. including our favorite new old book. that ive read about 1000 times a day lately. :) but for now i want to share my favorite pictures of the day. this morning we played around with a bunch of hats. the boys were not interested. but the girls had fun!

its almost halloween..

this morning we had a little fun with kennedy and korb's old halloween costumes. everyone likes to play dress up. right? the kids had so much fun. i thought i might be able to get a few good pics. apparently, i was the only one who thought that part was fun. :) such cuties.. even if they wont smile for a camera!

playing with our food..

well.. not really our food. just our snack.. and not really playing. learning! last week we had gummy fruit snacks for our afternoon goody and we played a game! each baby had to tell me the color of the gummy before they could gobble it up. it was fun! madelyn and gracyn were so excited and proud of themselves when they would choose the correct color. and korb.. well, he really likes gummy fruit snacks. he will do anything for more!
ps.. speaking of food. ive added a LUNCH! column on the right. i will do my best to update it everyday so that you always know what we had for lunch!

catching up..

gotta start somewhere... and theres nothing like feeling behind the second you leave the blocks.. SO this post will be all of my favorite pics of the littles up until the birth of the blog. sound good?

{very few} from JUNE
getting outside in JULY!
random AUG
and finally SEPT

and finally SEPT!

here's what ive got for most of sept.. im out of funny captions today! sorry. :) but the pics are cute. and this just about catches us up! enjoy..

random AUGUST..

the babies!

hey.. could somebody get me out of here?
love this face off!
hey.. i thought toys went in that basket?

maddie joining the basket fun.

what? were just sitting. ;) thats a guilty face..
i love it when m laughs at korbs silly faces! the coolest skids in town..