We celebrated Anna Kate on her 6th birthday at one of our favorite restaurants, Babe’s!  We had a super fun evening!

This kid makes me laugh every single day.  She’s unpredictable and totally hilarious!

After dinner, it was Anna Kate’s turn to wear the chicken hat and do the birthday chicken dance, topped off by blowing out the candle on top of her delicious banana pudding! 

Kay Kay celebrated with us, and the girls loved showing her the hokey pokey!  So much fun!

Our sweet little brown-eyed girl.  Love her soooooo much!

We love our babies so much, but they are growing up way too fast!  It’s so bittersweet.  They are good girls, and we are so proud of the little ladies they are becoming.  I’m enjoying every single day being their Mommy!

Texas sunsets are the best, especially when you are holding hands and enjoying them with the ones you love.  Happy 6th birthday, Cutie Kate!  Can’t wait to share pictures of your jelly bean birthday bash!  Love you, angel baby! 

Katie and Rose found each other and sat together during the show, which was a huge blessing for all of us!

The Lions did such a great job at the school talent show!  Emily and Noelle always have a blast together, and we are so thankful for their sweet friendship!

Love Fridays with this kid!

The big girls had lots of fun seeing lots of crazy critters with their friends one afternoon over spring break!  We had the best, laid back, chill spring break ever!  We rested, crafted, cuddled, played games, jumped on the trampoline, read books, saw the movie Paddington, and just hung out.  We all truly needed a break, so that’s what we got, and it was fantastic!    

We had a blast at the arcade celebrating our buddy, Braxton! 

Happy birthday to you… happy birthday, Dear Braxton, happy birthday to you!

Ummm, can I keep you, baby Brevin!?!

The girls loved this game!

Loved seeing all of the Banks men focusing on their game.  Handsome fellas!

Don’t mess with the Pond girls!

Took Roro about 10 minutes before she finally gave up on pushing the pedal and seeing over the steering wheel at the same time!

Oh my!

So fun watching our big girls play air hockey!  Anna Kate got the jumping thing down!

Snapping at her friends while riding the motorcycle! “She can’t keep her wild eyes on the road!”

So much going on with our buddies in the arcade! Love them!

Rose and her little dance friends got their tap costumes in super early for the recital this year.  It was so exciting and their awesome teacher let them try them on, play ring around the rosie, and show the moms their dance in it!  The pictures speak for themselves, but this costume is amazing!  Can’t wait for recital to get here!  Rose and Anna Kate have been working really hard on their tap and ballet dances this spring!

Our fearless ring leader!

I mean…

Winking and snapping just about sums it up for our Rose blossom!  What a mess!

We’ve got a sweet sweet girl right here!

Crazy we were 5 days into March in Texas and building a snowgirl!  We’ve had a blast during snow days with outdoor fun, extra cuddles, hot chocolate by the fire, all of that good stuff.  Excited for spring but totally enjoyed all the weather excitement late winter brought our way!

Anna Kate was the most excited about the snow.  She worked hard helping us roll snowballs.  We had to work quickly because it was melting quickly!

PondFam5+1!

Rose was all over the place, and it was adorable watching her play in her first real snow.  Anna Kate tried to pick up this snowball that she had made, but it was too heavy.  She’s so funny!

Malia came over to join in the fun!

These girls are so lucky to have each other as neighbors and friends.  I say that often, but it’s just the sweetest thing to watch their friendship grow each year.  

Malia’s mommy, Susie, and I took a snowgirl picture too!  We’ve been talking about adoption in our house lately.  Not for our family, but just the concept in general.  Anna Kate found out last summer that Malia was adopted.  She was asking questions about her cousin, Hudson, and trying to understand what it all meant to be adopted.  We were in Florida at the time, and I vividly remember our conversation.  To help her understand Hudson’s story, I used Malia’s story as an example.  I said, “Hudson was adopted, just like Malia.”  Her mouth fell open and she exclaimed, “Malia is adopted!?!”  I just assumed that she knew.  She was 5 years old at the time and they’ve lived across the street from each other all of their lives.  I said, “Right.  You know how she looks different than her parents?  Her mom and dad had a home and love to share and Malia’s birth mom needed help, so they adopted Malia to come be a part of their family.”  It took me so aback that it never struck her as anything different than anyone else’s family.  I can honestly say skin color means nothing to our children, and this brings me so much joy.  We are simply all unique and beautiful and that’s it, end of story. 

One other interesting conversation I had with Anna Kate this year was during her open house at school.  I saw she had colored a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. on the wall.  I asked her who he was (just to see what she knew) and she said, “He was a man that wrote a speech about not being judged by the color of our skin.”  I was very shocked my 5 year old could tell me that, for one, so I continued, “What does that mean?”  And she said, “Well, you know Malia and I are different colors, right?  But Susie still let’s her play with me.”  It brought tears to my eyes.  She has no historical context to the colors of their skin, so to her, the judgment was in the opposite direction, as in, Susie still let’s Malia play with her even though she’s white.  This is our world.  It’s crazy when you think about how relatively close in history to us such injustices were commonplace.  Not anymore.  It’s a non-issue to my kids.  Simply a history lesson and reminder that color of our skin doesn’t matter at all.  It’s just the science of the amount of UV ray exposure at the place of origin of our ancestors, how close or far away they were from the sun.  Kids are awesome and don’t come into the world with prejudices or hate.  Let’s keep it that way! 

*I didn’t plan on writing all of that in this post, but it has been a topic of conversation this year, and I hope it may enlighten you as it has me to see these subjects through the eyes of our healthy middle child. 

I love finding new hairstyles and playing with the girls’ hair!  They both loved this fun heart braid!  Donuts are so very horrible for us, we know this.  So a rule we’ve been holding to the past couple of years, is only on the morning of each girls’ birthdays (and special vacations) do we get donuts.  It helps us look forward to our favorite treat without being too unhealthy!  So, here was Rose’s birthday breakfast!  

Lots more beautiful sugary treats.  Good grief, birthdays and sugar sure do go hand-in-hand in our culture these days.  I recently read, the more sugar you eat, the more you crave it and the less sugar you eat, the less you crave it.  Silly that I’m talking against it as I’m showing you how pretty the culprit is!  Oh well, we try every day to have an overall healthy diet.   

This day of errands sure was interesting.  We saw a google maps car at Target and a parrot at Hobby Lobby! 

Kinder Kate!

My friend took me to the World Trade Center for the first time this month.  It was super fun!  There was a store named Simply Noelle.  I had to take a picture for her to see!

Flashback to Jaalisa’s amazing tea party!  Next pic: I love working in our flower beds outside.  It just feels good to get my hands in the soil.  Enjoyed planting a few pansies and cabbage this year.  It was a last minute decision.  We’ve enjoyed them so much that next year I will plant them earlier in the season.  They are still going strong today!

Lots of Valentine’s cards floating around our house this year!  I have a feeling the one from Nathan on the left, will be one of many as the girls get older! 

More dance morning memories with our friendsies!

Can she get any sweater? 

I’ve really enjoyed setting up an Instagram shop this school year, selling new and preloved girls’ clothes.  I’ve also had fun meeting new friends from all around the world on my personal account.  Here are 3 cuties from Australia sporting my custom made gold glitter initial tees I carried this winter in the shop.  We’ve been sending care packages back and forth too.  It’s been such a blast hanging out with this family on IG and working in my little store too!

Miss February sure is something else!  Rose and I have totally bonded this year with lots of quality one-on-one time.  She is my little side-kick, and we are connected at the hip!  I don’t know what we would do without this little stinker, who fills our lives with immeasurable joy!

More food art by Noelle.  Anna Kate requested oatmeal, and since Noelle was in the kitchen, she got it a little fancier than usual.  I had fun crafting for Rose’s birthday, but can barely remember those crafts, as new ones have filled our house as I’ve been getting ready for Anna Kate’s Jelly Bean Birthday Bash!

More adorable dance days, and Noelle helping with the laundry with a cheerful heart!

Who do you think made this?  Another Saturday breakfast made with love by our eldest.  When Monday rolled around, the best I could do was pancakes with sugar-free chocolate chips!  All I remember from this week was being exhausted.  I’m so thankful we have a February birthday and Valentine’s to look forward to, because every year, right about this time, winter really presses down on all of us, and we are just so cold and over it.  Currently, it’s mid-March, there are little buds on all of the trees, and a fresh start is in the air!  Couldn’t be more ready or thankful!

This is a little flashback gem I finally got printed on a canvas for our loft upstairs.  It makes me so happy to see it every day and remember what an incredible time it was in our lives when our last little love entered our family.  They are already so much bigger than they were in this picture, and this wasn’t that long ago.  We are entering the years we like to call the golden years where we have no toddlers or teenagers in the house.  It’s just simply fun, and we are so happy and goofy all the time.  The physical labor isn’t as much, so we get to enjoy everything more because we aren’t exhausted (as much).  I just want to freeze time every single day.  I truly believe my life has never felt better or more at peace over all, and I just want to be present and take it all in.  Hope you guys had a fun February and enjoyed a peak into ours!  Now here we go marching through March… treasuring each and every day!

It was sooo cold the next snow day, so we didn’t last long, but Rose’s friend, Katie, came down to play for a little bit.  The snow this day would not pack to build a snowman or even snow balls.  At this point, I didn’t think we’d get to build a snowman this year, but to my amazement, we had one last snow storm the week before spring break that was a winner!