Summer?

This momma of 4 says "bring it on".

This thing was a beast to put together. Thanks babe! When I saw that the hardware alone took up an entire 8ft table, I had my doubts. But he had no problems at all (besides finding the time to work on it). Let's just say there were a few late nights spent reading directions in the dark.

The large black area is now all filled in with mulch and it looks so nice! Now we need to get to work making the rest of the yard look nice. Or maybe not. Time is a hot commodity right now and the yard is not at the top of that list.

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I've been thinking a lot about summer these days (Brennan's last day of school is Tuesday!). Last year I let summer run me over. This year I'd like to be in charge. I'm trying to get the toys organized inside, I've made chore charts, I'm working on a Job Jar and a Reward Jar. I've got big ideas, but we'll see what pans out {grin}.

What are you doing to prepare for summer? Do you feel the need to organize your house before it begins? Do your kids have organized activities or do you just chill at the pool all summer? Seriously, I'd love to hear how you all do things. I love hearing others' ideas, so leave a comment!

Mothers Day

And what a wonderful day it was.

When your children are all under the age of 7 and daddy works in a church, there is not breakfast in bed (I don't like crumbs in my bed anyway!). But there was lunch in a restaurant, homemade cards, sweet kisses and hugs, a husband who didn't have to go back into work, a nap, a great dinner and lots of lounging around.

A sweet day indeed.

I love being a mom. It is the hardest thing I have EVER done, but I do love it. There is nothing else I'd want to do right now. I'm not "putting my dreams on hold" in order to raise my babies. These are my dreams. I feel like I'm doing exactly what God created me to do. Someday there will be time for other things, but I will always be a mom.

(And just to keep things real, I wrote this after putting 3 kids to bed, 1 crying for daddy, 1 crying because he couldn't stay up later and 1 asking a million question about tomorrow. There's a mountain of laundry to fold, dirty floors, a baby to nurse, bathe and put back to sleep. Whew. I am WAY underpaid, but I still wouldn't want to be doing anything else...except for maybe sit on the couch and eat ice cream {grin}.)

2 months

Miss Margo Mae is two months old! In some ways it feels like she's been with us much longer. And then I think back on her birth (yes, eventualy I will post her birth story) and it seems like only a few days ago. Time is a funny thing.

She is pure JOY. A very happy baby indeed. People keep saying "of course she's easy, she's #4" and there is probably lots of truth to this. But I really think it's God's grace on our family. Life with 4 small children is CrAzY, Margo is a sweet cherry sitting happily on top.

A couple days ago she had her 2 month immunizations, and we found out that same day we have a lovely case of thrush. That night Tyler was out of town so it was just me and the kids. Well, Miss Margo's little legs must have been really hurting her (or maybe it was the thrush?) but she cried more that evening than in her whole 2 months of life. It was rough. You know how the continuous sound of crying can begin to frazzle your nerves? Well, I wasn't the only one frazzled, the other kids hated it!! Brennan kept asking "why did you give her shots today? Why did you have to do that to her?" Calvin and Charlotte kept walking in out of the room like they weren't sure what to do. We were all very ready for bed that night.

Some stats:

12lbs 13oz (up over 4 lbs from birth!)

23.5 inches

Focuses on faces

Smiles!

Sleeps 9 hours at night (thank you Jesus)

Moving into her 3-6 month clothing

Sweet Cheeks

What's that? You want to see more of those cheeks? Alrighty then....

She's Smiling!

But it's very hard to catch on camera....

(and check out those cheeks!)

Driving

This is Papa's "tractor". Brennan has been obsessed with this thing since birth. More than once we've found him out in the garage at Papa's house just sitting on the tractor quietly. When we stay at their house there's at least 1 tractor ride an hour requested. Papa is wonderful to oblige and he's taken the boys on countless tractor rides. And Brennan has been content with that.

But I think that's going to change now.....

He's actually a really good driver!

Still Alive

Yes, I'm still alive. It's been one month since my last post! Wow. Life is FULL. Full of children and housekeeping, school, preschool, VBS planning, wonderful friends, work, potty training, laundry, playing, changing diapers, discipline, cooking, and nursing, nursing and more nursing. It's been hard to squeeze blogging in there. But I'm going to try and do better as I really want a record of these days. At the end of the day I'm amazed at the number of things I've gotten done, yet at the same time, the number of things left undone. Whew, more on that later.

Here's a picture recap of the last few weeks. I'll do more of these this week.

In the couple weeks before Margo was born, getting Charlotte into bed used to take either A. a temper tantrum or B. lots of coaxing. Now it's quite easy. We just put Margo in her bed and she climbs in gladly!

A shout out to my good friend Katie (Happy Birthday TODAY!!). She drove all the way from South Dakota on the day Margo was born. She helped with our kids, cooked and was a peaceful presence. And she may or may not have seen me completely naked in the tub while in labor :).

Margo gets an audience for just about everything she does. This was one of her first sink baths.

Here is Margo cashed out. I had just changed her diaper and she went right back to sleep. She's a pretty relaxed baby!
Easter Sunday. After spending the morning worshiping at our own church, we drove out to Grandma and Papa's house. I made the boys keep their church clothes on until we got out there (oh the horror!). Two seconds after this picture was taken they had changed into shorts and t-shirts.

More to come.....