March 2015 - Spring Break

Last year Brad travelled to New York for his Global Studies trip (and I was sneaky enough to go with him!) This year, it was London for 9 days, and well, that is just too long of a trip to pay for a baby sitter!

He was excited to go. We have both been to London at least twice and we love it. However, this time he was taking his boss and his wife, so he wanted it to go really smooth. It did, of course. :)

Here he is all packed up and ready to go!

Bye Daddy! We'll miss you!

So, with 3 kids and 9 days without daddy I kept us super busy with loads of play dates!

We went to see Jillian and Harry and Sydney. We ate at their favorite pizza place and Harry got to ride in our van. He was mesmerized!

Then we headed back to their house for some fun board games. Jill is literally one of my favorite people on the earth. Time with her is rare, precious, and always a blast!

The weather is getting better which means more sunset watching. Sure, London is nice, but few things can beat an Oklahoma sunset!

Carrie and I took ALL SIX kids to the capitol one day. It was Main Street day and all the different towns were there showing off how they had improved their downtowns. Lots of freebies and lots of fun even if our little tornados almost tore the dome off of the building. :)

Just a sidenote...I wasn't lying about GG and the pink dress. It was EVERY DAY for months.

The kids and I watched lots of movies and ate lots of popcorn and I decided it would be fun to set up the tent in the living room. Anything to keep them happy and busy while Daddy was away! I ended up keeping the tent up the whole week!

Then we had Ash and her THREE boys over for a day to play. That was super fun...until the newspaper editor called and told me that he heard on the police scanner that an armed man was loose on our land. Then it was panic mode because my parents were in California and it was just me, a friend, and 6 kids here to defend the farm!

So, we decided to load up and head to Ash's house to stay the night. I certainly didn't want to be here all alone if they didn't catch the guy. The McCaslins were hosting Life Group at their house that night so there were even more kiddos to play with and then my babies and I all very uncomfortably slept on an air mattress together. The next morning we were off to Mimi's house!

We watched an OSU game and cuddled on Mimi's couch. She pampered us and played with us. We worried about the armed man but later heard it may have only been some sort of drill. Ugh.

 Then we were back to our house to wait for Daddy to get home. Spring Break always mean NCAA tournament time for us basketball fans. With Papa and Gaga in California, we had to sneak over and watch some games on their tv. The boys did their lucky dance and we ate all their junk food.

 As the week was passing, I was running out of things to keep the kids busy, so of course I dug this reliable old friend out of the garage. It's been well-loved to put it lightly!

We also managed to get 20 baby chicks, clean up the yard, climb the rock wall, go to yoga, and all sleep together in my big bed every night!!! Happy Spring Break!

March 2015

Oh March, one of our very favorites! Everything comes to life and gets rollin' here on the farm! Our month was filled with adventure. Ben was back on the baseball diamond with the Bullfrogs and Des got to start his baseball career as a Dirtbag! Brad was off to London, we got 21 cows and 20 chickens, celebrated Spring Break with lots of friend fun and played hard everyday. Here is an overview of some of the day to day fun we had.

GG had to go to the doctor. I think she had Strep throat. I wanted a hearing test done. Gaga and I think that she lip reads and that we are mistaking hearing loss for shyness. The doctor says her vocabulary is too good for a kid with hearing loss and blows me off. Says she probably has allergies and needs to be on medicine for the constant snotty nose. I disagree but whatever. She gets special lovin' from me for being such a good patient! :)

The DIRTBAGS. How cute is that name? And better yet, it's all of Desi's favorite people (and ours too!) on the same team! This is his very first baseball practice ever. I couldn't tell if he was more excited to get to be like big brother and play baseball or if it was just a sunny day with his best friends. :)

It just melts me when my hubbie is out there coaching his boys. Puddle on the floor.

This was the month of FULL PRINCESS MODE with this girl. Anna wig, dresses, jewelry. On this particular day she told me, "But mama, I'm not a girl. I'm a princess." My goodness. It's pretty darn fun to go from baseball practice to princess mode and back again over and over. Two completely different worlds. She loves having her picture taken, and taking selfies, and looking in the mirror and showing off her outfits to her daddy. It's all so confident and I am constantly praying that she never stops feeling pretty.

The accessories have launched this month in that she usually has about 14 necklaces and 4 bracelets and 2 rings and 8 or 9 headbands on before she is "ready."

Oh, how could I forget? And the crown...

Outdoors time is in full swing. Man, it gets hard to not be outside with kids, but springtime makes up for it in a big way. Here the boys are watching the storm roll in so they can play in the rain!

Other than that we just spend our happy days singing songs, telling stories, playing ponies, counting down the minutes until the boys get home from school (Genevieve usually starts asking if it's time about 9:30 a.m.), feeding our chickens and cows, visiting our papa and gaga, and enjoying every day!

February - Desi's tooth

Pre-K is almost always fun. Every day filled with toys and books and crafts and recess and movies. But sometimes you and your friends are playing and you get pushed down onto a chair. You hit the chair just so perfectly that it knocks you smack dab in your frenulum and it shreds apart and your lip turns black. The impact causes your tooth to start to turn gray and the kids in the class are traumatized by the huge pool of blood on the floor. You scream and cry and the teacher can't get a hold of your dumb mama because she has her phone on silent from teaching yoga that morning. So your daddy comes to your rescue and you get to go home early. Those days of Pre-K aren't always the best but they are some of the most memorable!

Then when for 2 weeks straight you have headaches and cry for no apparent reason and fall asleep too easily at 4 in the afternoon for 3 days in a row, your worry wart of a mother starts thinking you have a concussion and rushes you to the 1st available pediatrician appointment.

And she says, "uh, I think he's fine and probably has a cold and yes, his tooth is gonna turn gray and he needs to see a dentist anyway because he is 5 and hasn't been to one since he was 2, but a concussion? Really? No." So then you get to go get ice cream because Mama feels happy and relieved and sorry all at once.

And your big brother is so worried about you that he sits by the window for an hour waiting for you to get home because he loves you so much. Not the best days, but ones worth remembering for sure!

February - Restorative Yoga

February was all about Restorative Yoga apparently. I started a new teacher training program in OKC with a group of my favorite girls. We will meet once a month for the next several months and learn how to incorporate restorative yoga poses into our classes. Also, my friend Jill and I attended a full-day immersion on Restorative Yoga with the one and only Judith Lasater in Dallas!

The trip to Dallas was crazy. We drove down together, had an amazing night together with Mexican food and girl talk at the hotel. Then we woke up super early, headed to Whole Foods for breakfast and as we headed to the conference it started to snow. It snowed all darn day and by lunch they decided to cancel the rest of the conference. Dallas is NOT set up to handle 6+ inches of snow and it took us ELEVEN hours to get home. At one point we truly thought we would run out of gas just sitting on the highway and not able to exit to find a station! Although it was super stressful, and SUPER long (with 5 semi trucks crashed on the side of the highway) we did have a ton of time to chat and catch up which is always special.

GG loves pulling out her yoga mat and showing me her moves or doing yoga along side me. Here she is practicing her savasana. :)

 

The boys wanted to try it out too. Here they are fully propped and relaxing...

February 2015

It's crazy to me how you start a new year...and life just keeps getting BUSIER!? January was fantastic...February was FABULOUS.

The boys were still in basketball, I started a restorative yoga training, we continued to trip up to see OSU basketball games, spring SPRUNG which meant the farm chores did too, we had a super special Valentines Day, we had several play dates and GG fell FULLY in love with Princesses, we went to the Children's museum with Desi's class, we got our basketball hoop up, had one last blizzard, went for cold walks in the woods, and got a NEW VAN!

Whew!

Here are all the random photos from the month. More to come!

Aunt Lis got the kiddos these adorable monogrammed hoodie towels for Christmas. The boys are baseball players...GG's is a sparkly zebra!

GG and I love to play ponies. We brush their hair, line them up, and have pony parades. She likes to assign each one a mama. :)

KK brought us a bunch of hand-me-downs and I am NOT exaggerating that she wore this pink dress for 49 days straight. It is Princess Anna's coronation ("ora-ration") dress in case you were wondering.

We had a few play dates. Here GG is with Megan having a tea party!

Here's Desi showing off his new haircut (and ninja moves!)

 See? Weeks later...still wearing the dress. Always with an outfit or jammies underneath. I would get her dress and think, "Oh she looks so cute" and sure enough she would bring that dress to me and say "Mama! You forgot my ora-ration dress!"

She is still napping on the couch. :)

We watched or listened to all the OSU basketball games and the boys called this their good luck dance. It cracks me up! They would do it continually during games to cheer on their Cowboys.

This is GG "getting ready" while Brad is in the shower. She is so sweet. She loves to put on my deodorant and perfume and lipstick.