This Summer

We've had a pretty great summer! With just enough down time, and just enough fun time!

After little miss graduated Kinder, we prepared for a BIG trip to KY to visit my best friend, and her parents (who are like second parents to me.)

Believe it or not, I wrote a whole long blog post about it, and then I deleted it.

There's really not much on earth more frustrating than that... so just believe me when I say we had a GREAT trip and we cant wait to go back!!!

-We rolled back into town the day of my sisters Rehearsal dinner, Probably not on the top of the list of things for the matron of honor to do, but I okayed it with the bride and, Praise God, we made it home right on time!!

It was quite a lovely wedding, I must say. 

We had a blast!!!

and these guys clean up pretty darn well. ;)

-We celebrated Fathers Day!

They really DO have the greatest Daddy ever.

-We've eaten entirely too many snow cones....

-We took a day trip to Abilene just for fun!

We went to the splash park

(hello San Angelo.. why don't we have one of these?!?!)

and of course, The Zoo... Our plan was to go to the museum, but it ended up being closed, so we whipped back over to the zoo. We only had about an hour and a half before they closed, so It was a sign of things a changin' that we made it through the zoo in that amount of time. It is a small zoo, but with little ones, it was always a half a day trip for us.

-My MIL wanted to take the kids to NM to visit her sister, so I planned a camping trip for Nat and I. I know, not the most relaxing thing to plan to do when you have no kids; but, we really have been wanting to go camping, so we saw it as an opportunity to trial such a thing with no kids. 

PLUS, 

I married the most fantastic fella who did everything in his power to make the trip fun and relaxing for me. 

He cooked every single meal over an open fire… and let me just say, he's hired! Seriously, I may or may not have tried everything in my power to figure out how to build an open pit for him to cook over a fire every night. 

Ha!

 Then reality kicked in and I remembered he works waaay too many hours in a day to come home and cook me dinner every night. ;) 

Really tho, he would. I would be the one to have to put a stop to it.

I am super glad we decided to do this first round without the kids.. we came away with lots of great ideas!!

we went on a lot of bike rides!

and a few hikes.

We fished.

We tubed down the llano river.

That was heavenly… It really was too hot to tent camp. The only way we could get relief was in the water.

 It was lovely!

…and I got little teaser photos as such. 

The kids had a great time on their little get away. Aunt Shirley "lives in a hotel" aka.. an apartment that has a really cool pool! 

On our last day before we headed home, we made a little detour and went to Fredericksburg.

We just walked around and enjoyed some time together.

-We celebrated the 4th of July with the Roses. We had a great bbq and a great time together! 

-My children have officially grown gills this summer! We have done SO much swimming and I am super excited that we have approximately 2.5 kids that are good swimmers! Payton has really gotten brave and is doing wonderful! Stetson is at a point of sometimes being brave and doing great.. sometimes still depending on his floatie. I think by next summer we will be outta the red zone, and swimming will be a little more enjoyable for this mama. ;)

-We celebrated Nat's 27th birthday! 

and… (I promise I'm almost done)

for the kids special birthday days: 

Madelynn invited her good friend over and wanted to go get their nails done.

For Stetson's birthday he wanted to go bowling… with just mommy and daddy. We all wore our super hero shirts to support the little man.

and excuse me while I show you the scoreboard… 

did ya'll notice who won??

Seriously, I can never beat him at anything, so I'm pretty dang proud I beat him at bowling.

Oops… did I just say that out loud??

:P

Our last little birthday lady wanted to go swimming with the whole fam. 

It was a slight disaster… lets just say we left after one of the children had tummy troubles 

in. the. pool.

Yea… I'm fairly certain that every time we have gone to the city pool, we have been utterly embarrassed by a child "losing control" in the pool.

That evening we had a little get together with our families to celebrate all 3! 

 It was perfect! 

They're so blessed with so many amazing people in their lives!

We are winding down our summer and getting ready to start school! 

I love our crazy summers.

But I love when life slows down a little too.

5

My last little babe has turned 5!

Payton, Payton, Payton.

Isn't she a beauty??

She has definitely been my most transformed child. She is quite the unique girl! The past 6 months she has bloomed into her own little self.

Payton is my little animal lover! We've recently taken in a little dog that was found, and on his way to the pound! He absolutely loves this kids… but he is pretty into Payton. 

She has created her own little fashion! I've had to let my pride down and my perfectly, put together, always looking nice mentality has been thrown out the window. Its been a mama lesson! A good one at that. I am now to where when she comes downstairs dressed for the day, I smile and think -thats my Payton. 

I have grown to love, and look forward to what she picks for the day.

Like this Angry Bird shirt for instance, It kinda irks me. I got it at JBF, it was attached to another shirt that I wanted and I had every intention of getting rid of it. Well, she found it, and now wears it every single day she possible can.

She picks the wildest combinations! The other day I picked out her dress for church. (something that i don't do often, but sometimes I just want my kids to wear other things.) I picked a simple, grey cotton dress. 

Nothing girly. Nothing frilly. Nothing poofy, and surprisingly, she was okay with it! 

She went upstairs to put on a pair of bloomer type shorts…. instead, she came down with purple jean shorts, front of the dress tucked into it.. and then proceeded to go pick out a red and black lady bug antenna head band. 

This is Payton! 

We went to the mall and I needed to get some make-up form Ulta, and of course my girls wanted to try some make up so I told them they could put on a little eye shadow.

 (btw, side story… the MOST embarrassing thing happened while we were there… there was a girl, maybe 17 or 18 putting on make up… Payton, who is bad about staring, was watching her, I quietly told her to stop staring. Well… the girl thought I was talking to her! She quietly told me -oh I was just looking because they're all so close…. 

I was horrified! 

I smiled, hoping that she would re-think what I just said and realize I was talking to my daughter, not her. 

She walked off. 

Aghh! 

Anyways! When I saw Payton's choice of make-up…. It was very much her!

bright and mis matched! 

She is also very into wearing mis-matched shoes. 

The girls have several pairs of Old Navy flip flops… We often have to go on the search when Madelynn wants to wear her shoes. ;)

and heres another fashion choice! 

Lovely, huh?

Nat calls her two-toned… for obvious reasons.

Aside from being a complete fashionista, she loves to be outside, she loves to rides bikes and loves to get dirty!

Oh, and we have been instructed not to call her Payton. She is pretty adamant that that is not her name. She wants us to call her Pooty. A nick name that I've called her since she was a wee thing. 

I adore her. She keeps me guessing, and keeps our home mellow and sweet!

Happy 5th birthday my pooty! Keep on being you!

Our school room

While doing my extensive research on homeschooling, I (me and my type A personality) was shocked by the amount of  moms that were against having a "school room".  A lot of them advising against it…. Regardless of their reasoning, I couldn't comprehend that… and I personally feel like to each their own; So I decided to toss that piece of advice out the window.

Lord knows I couldn't homeschool without LOTS of resources, and LOTS of organization and LOTS of planning. I don't feel like I could pull that off without having a specific space to do so. So, we decided what would be best for us, and that was to turn our 4th bedroom into a school room. I am SO happy we decided to do this. (and shout out to my main squeeze for supporting and helping and making all my crazy ideas come true) We've (me- the brains, him- the brawn) been working on this room for months! I am SO thrilled to have the finished product, and although we haven't officially even started "school" yet… we have spent hours in this room doing arts and crafts, puzzles, and having fun. I love to have a space where the kids have complete access to all their stuff!

Heres the before: We had already taken the bed out, but you get the picture.

My trusty put it together man. 

and the after:

The shelf  in the corner is filled with teacher stuff, and also some pretty great books for the kids as we learn about different things (I went a little crazy at the book fair) The kids desks are in the middle, with each having one of the a set of drawers.

this is the other corner… the black shelf  is filled with kid items. Crayons, markers, learning games, arts and crafts stuff, Playdough, paint. All the way across the room is our little white board, with the shelf under it (which you can't see too well.) It  is full of toys, blocks and puzzles ! I wanted to have a lot available downstairs for the little 2 as they will have a lot more down time.

Heres my little corner. Not totally, Nat does more work on the computer than I ever will. 

Through the french doors.

I know this is silly, but even the tiniest details were planned from the beginning. We've always called this the "school room" because Madelynn would sleep in here on school nights. I smile now when we call it the school room because its a totally new meaning! Also, that color… when we bought this house, I hated it. We went out and bought paint first thing…. but it never got painted. Now, a year and a half later, I am obsessing over the color and think its perfect for a school room. 

Its fun, Its cheery, its happy… and I love it!

4

Our little man turned 4 years old!

 If you'd have asked me when I had a newborn, and a 1 and 2 year old, if I ever thought I would see this day, I woulda told you you were crazy!

 I vividly remember a time being asked how old my kids were and replying with 3, 2 and 1… and I had this feeling like I would never be able to say anything differently when asked. Silly, like duh, of course they'll grow older, but I was in denial! I think it has to do with that -just staying afloat, I don't remember the last time I slept, have I taken a shower today??- good 'ol days of craziness.

Our life is still slightly crazy,  but we love it! Stetson has added just exactly what we needed in our life. Our life would be so boring without him. God knew what he was doin when we had that 3rd ginormous little surprise in our life. Isn't it funny how that works??

He is hilarious! He is his dad, reincarnated... (Except not as naughty as his daddy was ;) Silly, goofy, loves to make people laugh, happy all the time! Well, I shouldn't say all the time. The boy has a mean pouty face… 

He is a mans man, and loves to wrestle, loves loud cars, big trucks, loves to fart…. (its always a competition… and he loves to gross his mama and sisters out) loves anything superhero (his favorite is the Hulk.)

At the same time, he is the SWEETEST little man. He loves to compliment. He often tells me I look pretty, or I smell good. He loves to pick me flowers!

If he stays this way, he will be the PERFECT man when he gets older. ;) 

He loves both his sisters, but he and Payton are still extremely close. It has been funny this year, they both understand that they're both 4. The other day I over heard a conversation they were having… They had this epiphany that he was 4.. and she was still 4 and they got so thrilled when Stetson said "that means we're TWINS" 

Ha! Had to do a little explainin'. 

 He adores his Daddy, and they definitely have a "Stick together" mentality. They are best buds and love to do everything together when they can. I am grateful that Nat has a little buddy… better yet, a mini me. :)

BUT, he has a little place on his heart for his mama too. ;) I'll just leave it at this, He is definitely the baby… and he is definitely my only boy. 

He is still very much into his "Buhlie" (blanket) We have made the rule that he (yes, its a person) stays upstairs after Stetson comes downstairs for the day. Sometimes when I can't find him and its quiet, I need not fret, he is upstairs petting his blanket. 

He loves to dance, and oh he has some moves.. 

But… per the usual, the video won't upload… :( 

So basically, he is a sweetheart, who loves to dance, loves his blanket and his sisters and is FOUR years old!

Happy Bday little man, we adore you!