94

On Saturday, my Grandma turned 94!!! 94 people!! She wanted a birthday party and so we obliged. Some of our family met at Hermans & Son Steakhouse in Hondo. When you are 94 with 6 children, you accumulate a HUGE family. I think Hadleigh and KK are her 21st and 22nd great-grandchild and she even has 2 great-great grandchildren!! This is a pic of some of our fam!!

I thought this turned out to be a cute pic of our fam!! (well, Rocco's finger in the mouth is typical)

It was HOT!! 90 degrees already!! All the boys in the orange looked soooooooo cute!!!

The restaurant had this huge area to play!!

Jillian was sharing her cake with Poppy!!

Here was the best part. Look at this old oak tree. Isn't it gorgeous???

When you look a little closer, there was something in that tree. What is it???

Three baby squirrels!!!!! Aren't they precious?? They were so cute that we kept debating if they were real!!!

Such a great day and my Grandma was so happy!!!!

Let's Put it to a Vote!!

Ok, Summer and I put our heads together and put together two sets of the cutest outfits you have ever seen!!!! It works because I want my girls to look "Oh so cute" and Summer has to worry with making her boys look "Oh so handsome." So everybody wins!!! We have a set for Palm Sunday and a set for Easter but the question is which to wear for each day???

Set 1 - The girls will be wearing these outfits from Jelly the Pug. I am IN LOVE with all things Jelly the Pug. Seriously, look at that bubble. Isn't that the cutest thing EVER?? I had to show ya'll the back. Rocco, KK and Gavin will be wearing a variation of this outfit from Crazy 8. Rocco and KK have already worn their outfits so you have seen this already. (Roy is now of an age that he has no interest in wearing anything nice. Gotta love middle school boys!! So Sum did not want to waste money on clothes he would only wear once to church so he will be wearing a white polo with khakis for each set. BUT what Roy does not know is that we have a TON of cute matching outfits planned for Disney and he has NO choice but to wear his designated matching outfit!!!)


Set 2 - This entire set is from Orient Expressed. I love me some Orient Expressed and the color of the clothes is even more beautiful in person!!! Hadleigh and KK are wearing the clothes on top and Jillian is wearing the dress and Gavin and Rocco are wearing the button-down and depending on the weather with shorts or pants.



What do ya'll think???

I think I will do another post about the clothes and the companies that I love to buy from. You know talking about clothes makes me "Oh so happy!!!!"

Decorations for Easter

This year I decided to decorate our house for Easter. Last year, I did not put a thing out because I just had a baby and R was only 2 and that would have just been crazy. But this year, I have some energy and some new stuff that I wanted to show off!!

This door hanger I got for $5!! Isn't it cute???

I cannot tell you how old this is. Really old. The whiskers are starting to fall off but I still like it.

This is a "bunny village" that my Mom was going to give to Goodwill and I snatched it!!!

Look how cute it is. Hadleigh is not tall enough to grab the pieces and we have already had to get onto R about touching it so it might need to find a higher home but for now, this little table will have to do.

This is our mantle. Again, I scored this sign for $6!!!! It is so cute!!!

Here is a close-up...

Here is our Easter "tree" on our piano that has definitely seen a better day but it still works!!! Ha ha!!

Finally I set one of our old baskets out on our kitchen table. My mom made the table runner and I think it kind of looks like grass and ties it all together!!!

With 80+ degree days down here, spring has definitely sprung!!!

A Hop on the Easter Season

On Saturday, the kids got a jump start on the Easter season with two egg hunts. The first was a MOPS-sponsered egg hunt at a friend's house. It was an early start to our day so some of the kids were still wearing their pajamas. I love how you can see in the picture that one of the little boys is already stealing another little girl's eggs out of her basket. Ha ha!!


When you take three kids out of the house by yourself and one of them is not walking yet, poor thing gets strapped into a stroller and just has to enjoy herself in the stroller. She did not seem to mind too much!!!

The egg hunt started. They tag-teamed and got lots of eggs.

The hunt was at 9:00 and it was misting and foggy and cool. After this picture, Jillian said, "Mommy, I do not like this weather. I am getting all wet and I am cold. I want to sit in the car." Such an awesome attitude. Rocco was not far behind so we left quickly.

BUT then on to egg hunt #2 at this awesome place!!!! (and the weather was MUCH better!)

Oh my goodness, does this employer know how to put on a show. There were train rides......

There was face-painting! This was their first time and both kids LOVED the face-painting. They wanted to get more and more!!!

Jillian picked a pink rose.

Rocco picked a blue dinosaur.

There was a great big slide.

There were lots of jump houses.

There was a petting zoo. This girl went NUTS over the baby chicks.

This boy was of course, more timid but he really liked petting the rabbits.

Then it was time to hunt for eggs!!! This was a serious hunt with several hidden tickets in the eggs for a "grand" prize. At the starting line.....

Daddy helping Roc look through his eggs.

No grand prize winner but each egg was filled with candy, stickers, bracelets, crayons so they were very happy!!!!

We had so much fun!!! We have more egg hunts scheduled for the next two weekends!! I am tired just thinking about it!!

Surviving a Year with 3

I have been meaning to do a post about what I have learned in the one year I have mothered 3 children.

1. IT IS HARD!!!! Don't let anyone fool you!!! When I was pregnant, I heard things like "After having 2, 3 is no big deal." or "You have learned to split your attention between 2 so it will be easy to handle 3." WRONG!!!! This is just nonsense. Parenting 3 small children is hard. I thought going from 1 to 2 was difficult. We had lots of jealousy from Jillian. But then when Hadleigh came, we had jealousy from J and R.

2. There is a lot of chaos. There is always something going on. Someone is fighting over a toy, fighting over a chair, fighting over Mommy, fighting over a pillow, etc. There might be a shove, a kick, a poke, a pinch, a spit, a push, a pull of hair to fight over the prized object.

3. Keeping up with the laundry is a full time job!! I do at least 3 loads a day. I do at least 1 load of dishes a day.

4. Keeping up with everyone's socks, underwear and clothes is another full-time job. I know everybody laughs at my matching clothes but half of the reason I do it is because it is so much easier to track everyone's clothes (the other half is the cute factor)

5. I am not sure which is in worse need of attention right now - some couple time or my own personal time. It is very hard to carve out that much-needed "me" time and "me and Bryan" time.

6. Finances - The daycare situation was ridiculous. I wish Bryan and I had found a solution sooner about the daycare drain. I love our situation now but even that is only for a couple more weeks. At the beginning of April, B will start a new schedule working evening/nights. He will still be off to help with the kids during the day but we (well, mainly ME) will miss his help during the evening hours. BUT he will get most of the weekends off which he is really missing right now. We will see how this whole new situation works???

7. The constant need of something......the warm weather has started and the kids are wearing some new spring/summer clothes. I didn't forget that!!! Hadleigh got her new shoes. Luckily, I bought Jillian's summer shoes a little big last year so her shoes are still fitting. What did I forget??? Poor Rocco has outgrown all of his summer shoes. He is wearing his sandals and half his foot is falling off the back. He needs some summer shoes.

8. With all of the hard stuff, comes the really good stuff. I get so many I love yous and kisses during the day. I count my lucky stars all day that I have such sweet kids that seem to be growing up waaaaay too fast!!!

9. Taking pictures is impossibly hard, but they all seem to understand that we are going to sit there and take a lot so Mommy can be happy!!! Rocco and that silly finger!!!
Now he has a leaf and Hadleigh is really starting to fight wearing a bow!!!

Almost perfect!!!

When this whole Mommy thing got started, God blessed me with her. She is such a stereotypical firstborn daughter. She is soooooo smart, beautiful, very bossy, a little know-it-all, but has a heart of gold. I really couldn't imagine anything as better as this.

But then God threw me a curve ball and blessed me with him. LOOK at him in that bow-tie. I cannot tell you how sweet this boy is. He is my lover. He constantly wants to hug me or kiss me or cuddle with him. Now don't get me wrong - he is all boy and loves to cause mass destruction whereever he goes but then he'll give you a really big sorry and kiss all the worries away.

I kind of butchered his hair but he loves me anyways. He told me "Don't worry Mama. It will gow."

Now for this one.....I thought she would come out looking just like her sister. But as you can see, she looks very much like her brother. Most times she is very easy-going, but there can be a flash of a temper and flashes of stubborness. She cracks me up with those loooooooooong legs.

Parenting 3 is not for the faint of heart. BUT the rewards are so great that it makes the hard times feel less so. Actually, it makes me feel like a very lucky lady!!!

And really I know in my heart that this first year was probably the easiest one I am going to have!!! Such a scary thought!!!! The real "hard" years are still to come!!!

Sharing the Good News

Yesterday afternoon, my Mom and I took Hadleigh to the pediatric orthopaedic. Our appointment was at 1:30 and we waited and waited and waited. The Dr. came in and examined Hadleigh and then sent us off for x-rays. She was so good during the entire visit.

Then the x-ray tech set up the x-rays on the screen for the dr. to look at then she left the room. Why did she do that?? Mom and I were going over the x-ray with a fine tooth comb and we had Hadleigh diagnosed with all sorts of stuff when the dr. finally came in.

The dr. said everything looks NORMAL!!! SHE IS FINE!! RELAX!! GIVE HER TIME TO LEARN HOW TO WALK. The average baby walks around 14 months. He couldn't explain why Hadleigh is not using her left leg when crawling but as far as her hips are concerned, the hips look great!!! YAY!!! Such awesome news!! Hadleigh was happy about that!!

Today we went to the neighborhood park and it was crowded!! Definitely spring break around here!!! Rocco (who is usually my shy one) jumped right off the jungle gym and about scared me to death! He thought it was hilarious.

He was climbing all over the place.

Jillian was honing her skills on the monkey bars and can now successfully get all the way across!! Very impressive!!

Hadleigh-boo was trying VERY hard to climb up the slides.

But brother wanted her to go down the slide with him!!! She thought that was pretty cool!!!

They also think it is so cool to go up the slide (anything to break the rules, right???). They went up and down about 100x and just thought it was so funny.

I am so glad we are having a restful Spring Break. I am feeling better and less stressed!! Last night, I was cleaning out drawers and giving things to Goodwill and I like getting little projects like that done!!