Memorial weekend and backyard fun

After church, I took the kids to the store to pick out a pool for the backyard. They, of course, wanted the huge pool that cost over $200, but I talked them into a little $25 pool that was a little closer to the size that I was looking for. FYI- the Sunday of a very hot Memorial day weekend is not the time to go looking for a pool. Apparently many other people had the same idea of pool fun before me. They were very picked over. We decided on the one we got simply because there was really no other choice, but when you take your kids to the store promising them a pool.....you CAN NOT come home empty handed. Owen did not swim last summer because he was to little, so this would be Owen's fist back yard pool experience. And it was Grace and Ethan's first back yard swim this year. They were all just bubbling with excitement!




Owen is sporting Grace's goggles. He lost patience with us shortly after this picture. Can you tell from his expression that he is getting annoyed with us? He is just so darned cute!

Owen is discovering the sprinkler. He wasn't sure at first what he thought of that cold water, but very quickly....it became lots and lots of fun.

Ethan had tons of fun on the slip and slide. There was a little bit of a learning curve for him, but he soon had it down and could slide down the whole thing into the little pool of water at the end.
I love how his tongue is sticking out as he is concentrating on something.

Owen did not really play on the slip and slide in the conventional way. He loved splashing in the puddle of water at the end of it. It was just the right sized little puddle for our little man.

Grace is chillin in the pool. I just love this girl. Her freckles are so adorable (in my opinion.)

My boys in their matching dinosaur swim trunks. Yes, Ethan is holding a play gun. He spent some time in the tower of the swing set hunting deer, dinosaurs, dragons, bears, and much much more. He has such a great imagination. Owen was "digging" in the water with his pink shovel.

If it looks like she is about to say something....that's because she is. It is hard to get this girl to stop talking for any amount of time. Which strikes me as funny now because we were so worried with her hearing loss that she was quite slow to learn to talk. She certainly has made up for that!

Here's a picture of Ethan hunting from the swing set tower. According to him....it was a very successful hunt.

Grace loved the pool yesterday. As you can probably tell, because all my pictures of her from yesterday, she is in the pool.

We spent the entire afternoon in the backyard. We went through quite a bit of sunscreen. The kids had tons and tons of fun. We let them eat supper on the patio, and then we roasted some marshmallows. Aunt Lori even provided some sparklers for the older kids to enjoy. All in all, it was a great family day spent in the sunshine in the backyard!

Love,

Katie

A little bit of randomness

I am not feeling creative today so I just decided to put up some random pictures from yesterday. So here goes....


Ethan came in last night yelling...."Mom, I picked some flowers for the dinner table!" So our table last night was graced with some beautiful hand picked "flowers" in a quite beautiful vase don't you think!!??



I took a picture of this because it made me laugh. For those of you that don't have a dog...that ladies and gentlemen is a "pooper scooper." It is not the actual scooper that made me laugh. It is where my dear husband decided to keep it that made me chuckle.

This is my feeble attempt at "photography." I was attempting to be creative and just see what happened, but I was soon summoned by Owen on the baby monitor. Maybe I will try again another day.

The kids and I were so excited the other day to discover we have a robin's nest in one of our trees. Let me explain our excitement.....We have lived in 2 new homes so far in our marriage.....so for those of you that have lived in a new home know.....there is usually no trees or shade. So I was very excited for the nest (of course), but also because we actually have a tree big enough that a bird would actually consider making a home in it!! Yeah for trees!

This is the gorgeous patio table that my husband built. Isn't it pretty!!?? The only problem is....we still don't have any chairs to sit around it. All the chairs I seem to like are pretty expensive, especially after you buy 6 of them....so I guess for now we will just sit around our pretty table in our lawn chairs.

Ethan is checking out the plants growing in our garden. The garden is going fairly well. We (and when I say we, I mean TJ) had to replant the green beans. Plus the spinach didn't come up....I think we planted them to early. The kids are having a lot of fun watching the plants grow. And Ethan even helped pull weeds last night.

I was trying to get a cute picture of Ethan, with the beautiful sky behind him. Ethan wasn't really cooperating though. He just wanted to look away or close his eyes. The whole time he was saying, "Mom, can we go play now?" This was the best picture out of the bunch that I took.

And there you have it.....my very random day in pictures. I also spent several hours cleaning little rocks out of the kids' playhouse. While doing that I discovered several "mouse homes" that were behind their little kitchen set. I decided to take all their little furniture items out to sweep out the whole playhouse. In doing so, I also was horrified to discover a HUGE wasp nest in there. I found a bug fogger that said it killed wasps, and immediately set if off and closed the playhouse door. I will take a picture of it when I am brave enough to go back in there.

Have a great day everyone!

Love,

Katie

Thank you God that it was a near miss

So we had a near miss (as they would call it at the hospital) here last night. I am having a little trouble processing my emotions on this one......
TJ was mowing the back yard, I was inside picking up toys after putting Owen to bed, and the "big kids" were playing happily in the backyard. All seems well and good right???? That is what I thought also until I brought the kids inside to get them cleaned up for bed. I had Ethan in the shower washing off when he pointed to his neck and said "look at my ouchie mom." It looked kinda like a rope burn.....(A little back ground info here.....TJ had probably a 10 ft length of rope in the garage that Ethan claimed as his own. He is usually tying the wagon, or the stroller, or many other things to his bike or gator so he can pull things. Now he has it in the back yard tied to the top railing of the swing set, and he tries to swing like a monkey from it while he is on the ground. I have watched him do this several times and it is really pretty comical, and he has a great time.) .......So I investigated and soon drug out of him that he had wrapped the extra length of rope around his neck while swinging like a monkey on it (so it wouldn't drag on the ground and slow him down while he was swinging.) I think the rest of this story is fairly obvious....he let go or fell maybe and the extra slack that he had wrapped around his neck pulled tight......

Just typing this out is making my heart race. The what-ifs are really just horrible to think about. What if he had it tied tight or it had tangled and not come loose? If it was tied tight....what if we hadn't noticed right away? This could have ended so badly, but thanks be to God that he was watching out for our little dare devil. I tell myself that this could have happened to any parent....but I am still feeling very guilty. I didn't even realize what happened until after the fact. So as soon as I got the kids in bed....I immediately removed the rope from the swing set and threw it away. Today he still has the rope burn around his neck and it has started bruising also. So I am choosing today, not to dwell on the "what ifs." Instead, I am thanking God that he is still alive and well and bouncing around like a carefree little 4 and half year old. If you would add a "thank you for protecting my sweet Ethan" to your prayers today I would appreciate it.

Love,
Katie

Just because

Well, I wrote a post for both the other kids today, so I thought I should post something about Ethan....just because. I just adore this little boy. Most days he entertains me rather than me entertaining him. I think this post will be like MckMama's "Stream of Consciousness" posts. Just some random thought about my first born son.
He begs me daily to play Wii Super Mario Bros with him. So I have decided it is just easier to give him his video game time with Mommy, rather than put him off to get "chores" done. I have found since deciding that..... I look forward to this time with him. It is so fun to play games with him, and see his little 4 year old competitive side. My favorite part is just getting to act goofy with him, and that it is our special time together. He loves dinosaurs. He likes to watch "The dinosaur Train" on PBS. He is like a sponge when he watches that show. (He is like a sponge with many other things also.) He can now tell the correct scientific name of lots and lots of dinosaur and whether they are carnivores, omnivores or herbivores. He came running to me the other day all excited and tells me "Hey Mom, did you know that people are omnivores!?" What a smart boy he is! I think I hear the phrase from him "Hey Mom, you know what....?" at least a hundred times everyday. I am so glad we have chose to keep him home for another year before kindergarten. I have several reasons that I chose to keep him home, and I will not lie that a few of those reasons are pretty selfish in that I just want to keep him my baby with me at home for another year. But he is a big Mamma's boy, I think he would have really struggled going all day every day to school next year. Another year of maturity under his belt with help him tremendously I think.


I love his eyes in this picture. Again, I know I am biased, but isn't he gorgeous!!!? His eyes are a grayish, green color that I think are similar to mine. He looks so much like his Daddy that I don't get much credit. I am claiming that at least his eye color looks like me.

I just absolutely adore that mischievous little smile! Thank you God for letting me be this little boy's Mom!

A little dirt never hurt...right???

So it has taken having 3 kids but, I have come to the conclusion that dirt/mud does wash off so.....a little dirt never hurt. The other day after rain all day, I let the kids play outside when we had a brief clearing in the weather. That was when Owen discovered Mommies newly planted flower pots!

This was his first taste. (Taste of what you say.....)
He found this little stick. He would shove it down into the dirt in the flower pot. Then he would take it out and lick it clean. And judge if you must, but this Momma ran for the camera instead of stopping his first (but surely not his last) dirt eating experience.

Does it taste good Owen? I am guessing from the expression that answer is no. But the taste didn't stop him. Maybe it was curiosity...or maybe it was all the laughter from his older siblings that made him continue. He just kept it up and got dirtier and dirtier.

These pictures crack me up.

Dirt or no dirt......I LOVE this boy!

All I want for christmas is my 2 front teeth

Well, hopefully she gets her front teeth before Christmas. Grace's 2 front teeth have been loose for probably a month. They were finally loose enough that she was having trouble biting into things because her teeth were so wiggly. That was finally motivation she needed to start working on wiggling them more to try to get them out. She lost the first one when she let Daddy wiggle it....it majcally came out when just a very slight amount of force was used to wiggle it. The next one came out a couple days later in the van. She was shouting from the back seat that her other tooth just came out. Needless to say, it was a very entertaining car ride. She was very excited that the tooth fairy came to visit twice in one week! Now she has this very adorable toothless smile. I took this picture of her the other day before school. I am very biased being her mother and all, but I think she looks absolutely ADORABLE!




Now don't you all agree! Simply ADORABLE! The toothless smile, the pink glasses, the freckles, the strawberry blonde hair in piggy tails......LOVE IT! I love you Grace Ann! I thank God everyday for entrusting your care to your Daddy and I!

In my extra time....

So I enjoy a little craft project from time to time. However, I am by no means one of those really creative, and great at crafts kind of gals. I usually don't have a lot of extra time to spend on things of this nature, so I don't do it often. Usually I only do "crafty" things when the kids need help with some sort of project for school, and then I usually struggle with letting them do it themselves and not taking over so it is "perfect." What can I say....I am a work in progress. Any ways, I decided to do a little flower pot project for the garage sale. I thought I would make a few cute flower pots and see if people would buy them during our garage sale...since mother's day is the next day....I thought it might appeal to people like me that wait until the last minute to get things done. (In this case...a mother's day present.) And if no one wants to buy them....well then I guess I will just have some cute flower pots to find loving homes for ;-)