Pancake traditions!

  

 

Anna Kate always makes us laugh!

 

Definitely a lesson girls of all ages need to understand and embrace!  I wish I had been stronger/more confident during my pre-teen years.  I would have been granted a lot less heart-ache and second guessing myself.  Hopefully my girls can learn from my mistakes.  In psychology, it’s called our “internal locus of control.”  I wish I had fully understood what this meant going into junior high!  Noelle and I already have lots of these types of conversations.  She gets it. 

 

Noelle did this really cool braid the other night.  She called it the pull-through, and I’m impressed!  Anna Kate got a huge bruise on her cheek one night after she fell out of the bed.  Boo!  She was sleeping with Rara in our guest bedroom on the bed I slept on as a child.  It’s high and I’ll put foam and pillows down next time.  Accidents can always happen and you can’t be too careful, but when we took Anna Kate to the ER as a baby after she fell out of a bouncy swing, the pediatric ER doctor there told us, “If a child is seriously injured and the parent says they fell out of the bed, that’s when we get suspicious because kids usually don’t get seriously injured by falling out of the bed.”  That helps me sleep better at night.  But if anyone is going to fall, it’s going to be Anna Kate.  Bless her heart, she has been falling all of her life, but she’s not clumsy at all.  She’s just our roller and spinner, I guess.

 

Bekah kidnapped Noelle!

After art camp, Madeline and Noelle moved on to cooking camp with yours truly! 

 

One thing I do right, is a summer pasta salad!  Rose made the creation to the right.  I asked her what the title of her picture was called and she said (I kid you not), “Big cookie jar that floats in the water and only Rara can get it first.” 

Concert night!

 

Prepped and ready to sleep to accomplish yet another attempt at the beach wave.

 

Noelle wants to conquer “the beach wave” so badly this summer!  I had it figured out last summer, but it was too hard on my back, so we’re trying all kinds of different ideas to see what we like best.  French braids and curling iron twists together are next on our to-do list.

Mommy/Daddy/Daughter date night!

 

Our little artist, teaching and creating! 

What’s so funny, Mikey? 

 

There’s nothing funny about these steaks.  Mike’s got them figured out!

And then this walks in the kitchen!  I don’t know what to do with her!

 

Noelle made sandwiches for her little sisters one day with picks in them that said, “Best sisters forever!”  She also figured out how to do pencil dangles with all different sorts of animal charms on them.

 

I caught a (little) snake in the yard this week!  I was gardening and had on my gardening gloves when I saw what I thought was a huge worm in the dirt.  I grabbed at it, and had to shuffle some more dirt to find it again, but once I got it in my hand, it’s tongue hissed out and it started wiggling from side to side, and I was like, “That is not a worm!”  I held onto it because I really wasn’t scared but even if I had been, I wouldn’t have dropped it because the kids were all over the yard!  That made for one exciting night playing outside!   

 

We had a blast with lots of friends at a concert in the park last week!  The girls were rocking out!

 

Rose and Eden and Noelle and Ava doing their thing!

Brevin, Jaalisa, Mo, Eden, Liv, Amy, Avery, Noelle and Ava so excited it’s summer, like really, sooo excited!

Ummm, so yeah!  I’m in LOVE with this baby!  Brevin rocks!

Groupie!

 

Brayden and Noelle and Anna Kate and Braxton are the cutest little buddies!

Anna Kate and Ava have a sweet friendship.  Ava loves to mother her, as she has two little sisters too, and is very aware of everyone’s feelings and how they’re doing.  I call her “Awesome Ava!” 

Two of my best friends’ babies meet!  Brevin and Liv were so adorable interacting!  This made the night complete! 

Our brown-eyed girl!

 

We had a blast celebrating the love of our sweet friends, Bill and Lisa!  It was a fantastic night!

 

Daddy/daughter moments

 

The groom, his mom, and his daughter cracking up watching the kids’ dance moves!  And then, Noelle and the bride had the sweetest sassiest little diva dance ever!

 

  

Here’s their son, DJ, with Noelle.  I love this picture!  As we were leaving, seeing these light-up steps reminded me of the steps Annie and Daddy Warbucks did their tap dance on at the end of Annie, which was my absolute favorite movie as a kid. 

 

After fun on the light-up stairs, we went outside and the ball was all lit up and so close!  Mike proposed to me inside this sparkly ball in the Dallas skyline 12 years ago, so dancing in the street just felt right!  It was a fun night of celebrating!  Congrats, Mr. and Mrs. Eubanks!  We love you!

 

  

 

  

 

Noelle got to be the honorary flower girl at the reception of our friends, Bill and Lisa!  It was a special night to remember and one we’ve looked forward to for a long long time!  Lots more on our special night to come!

Since this is technically a “mommy blog,” I’ll throw my mommy two cents in here!  Every little girl should have a magical night out on the town with their Mommy and Daddy all to themselves, so you know our other two beauties will get a special turn when they are 8!  It’s so fun to start family traditions as life plays out.  Anna Kate is getting the craziest surprise of her life when school starts (speaking of traditions… we make so good on our promises), and we can’t wait to surprise her with something that will make her scream at the top of her lungs.  Stay tuned for that one!

I always tell them fair does not mean the same, but it means equal.  Anna Kate always hated naps and thought it wasn’t fair that Noelle got to stay up.  I would tell Anna Kate, “When you’re Noelle’s age, you won’t have to take naps and when Noelle was 4 (when Anna Kate was still napping), she had to take naps too!”  It works in the reverse too.  When the littles went to the water park and got snow cones while Noelle was at school one day this spring, of course Noelle heard about it and got super sad.  I told Noelle, “When you were 5, you got to go to water parks and have snow cones with Mommy too and when Anna Kate is 8, she will be in school while Rose goes to water parks and gets snow cones.”  Everyone gets a turn, whether you’re too big or too small to do something fun or get a privilege, it all evens out… that’s the small stuff!  Mike is a little more philosophical about it all.  He says, “Define fair?” and “It’s a paradox, nothing is fair and everything is fair.” or even “There is no such thing as fair.” Things are pretty fair when you have parents that adore you and try their best to give you every opportunity in the world they possibly can, but nothing is fair in bigger picture problems that are way less trivial, like poverty or the 27 million people that are trapped in present-day slavery (20% women, 50% kids, 200,000 in the US).  Those things are truly not fair.  For us, fair means doing the right thing in each situation. We try our very best, because at the end of the day, we love each one as if they are the only one.  Forever and ever!

 

  

When I told Rose her outfit didn’t match (after she asked, lol), she gave me this face!  Anna Kate decided she was cold one summer afternoon, and Noelle tucked her tank into her elastic-banded skirt as her summer fashion statement.  These kids always make me smile!

 

Anna Kate dressed up as a zoo keeper one lazy afternoon and Rose got caught messing around in Mike’s office (which is a huge no-no).  In this pic, she looks like another master plan of hers just got foiled.  Oh, to be in her head!

Another day, another story. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While the cat’s away, the mice will play!!!  Noelle left her caboodle out last week in her bathroom and while she was at art camp, the littles went to town with her make-up (costume, dress-up type kid make-up… the stickiest, smeariest stuff).  They usually play just fine upstairs in their play kitchen or doll house, but after not hearing their normal sounds, I went to check on them.  I walked in and they were wearing these fancy dresses with full-out zombie make-up!  I think my heart skipped a beat when I first laid eyes on them!  Some messes are so bad, you’ve just got to document.  I don’t think they will ever live this down.  And you know who was the ring leader?  Of course, baby Rose!  Anna Kate would’ve never done this without some serious peer pressure!  The story Anna Kate told me about how it all went down was quite hilarious! 

We all learned a few lessons right off the bat starting our first week of summer!  I had to scrub their little faces with a wash cloth and soap forever to get it all off.  They were not happy campers!  I don’t think, no, I know they will never do this again (after the fun wore off, they seriously got grossed out), and someday, we will all get a good laugh out of it… just not today, for me anyway.

 

Noelle and Georgia October 2012 & 2013

 

Noelle and Georgia May 2013

Noelle and Georgia May 2014

  

Anna Kate and Malia September 2010 and October 2011

  

Anna Kate and Malia October 2012 and March 2014

Berkley and Rose October 2011

Rose and Berkley June 2013

Rose and Berkley June 2014

Love watching our girls and all their sweet friends growing up… here are just a few I found today!