Rosie Snuggles

Hide and Seek

Andy decided to take hide and seek to a new level. He was hiding this little figurine for the kids outside and thought it would be funny to tape it to Sam's back. I love the look on Andy's face. I see it often. It was nice to finally capture it in a photo.

Bald Headed Baby Bully

Rosie smiles so much, I hardly ever get a picture of her with such a serious face. I just love this first photo. She looks like a baby bully.

Park with Kim

Praying Mantis

For living in the city we really do get our fair share of wildlife. I am always amazed at how creative God is when you look at a creature like this.

Birthday Beads

Something that I just love about our boys is that as rough and rugged as they are, they absolutely love doing girlie things as well. Annabelle got a bead set for her birthday. I got them out for her one night to get into and the boys came running. They were so into it. They made necklaces and bracelets for each of us. They love making ladies feel beautiful. It's quite adorable.

Joe (our in house reminder of good photo ops) wanted me to take a close up of all of the colorful beads.

Snacktime with Daddy

Rosemary is such a ham. She is filled with so much character. But, no one can make her smile as much as her daddy.

Tea Time with Daddy

Floor Time

Now that Rosemary is older and can hold her own a bit better against the bigger kids, she's allowed more time on the floor. She is thrilled about this. As you can tell, she loves it!

Daddy's Hat

Each of our children needs a picture in daddy's ridiculous hat!

Sam's Pig Pop Party

Sports Camp

The last night of sports camp they gave out awards and the spirit stick to the team with the most spirit. Their team won it! It was the highlight of their lives thus far!!! They were on cloud 9. Then there was a carnival.

Annabelle walked right up to the guy painting and asked if she could have a lion face. Here's our little lion.

Happy 7th Birthday, Samuel!

It's crazy how much I love this kid! He is just like his daddy, which is probably why! He is turning into such a young man. I look at these pictures and I have a hard time imagining him when he was a toddler.

Andy went to get some Carpe Donuts for him for breakfast. A company that makes donuts with organic ingredients. They were fantastic! The birthday boy was quite pleased with daddy's choice.

He couldn't decide between a Spiderman party and a pig party. I think it just goes to show this phase he's at in life. Still one foot in the young kid world and one foot in the big kid world. I decided to give him one of both. Spiderman on his actually birthday and then wait to have his pig party with Gigi and GranRan when they came to visit a couple days later.

Same shot, just cropped.

We got him a bow and arrow.

All ready to pop his birthday balloons.

Playing on his new slip and slide he got from Oma and Papa Bear.

I have messed up more times that I could possibly count raising this boy, but he is so forgiving and gracious to me. First borns really take one for the team. Despite my failures, he is thriving, loves deeply, has a joyful spirit an awesome sense of humor and most importantly yearns to know God deeper each day. I could not ask for more. My heart overflows!

Cowboots

Each day this week the boys went to our church's sports camp. So the girls and I had the evenings to ourselves. It was so nice. I was cleaning my room and Annabelle came across my boots. She had a blast walking around in them.

Rosemary - 7 Months Old

 

We are still amazed at this little angel from above. She is such a content little girl. She loves her family so much. She just burst with joy when one of us looks at her! And if even she's completely exhausted, as long as she has her blanket, her first two fingers on her left hand are in her mouth. Take the blanket away and she takes her fingers away. She could be so tired, screaming her head off while you prepare her for bed, but the second you give her her blanket, she pops those fingers in her mouth and she immediately stops crying.

She's eating more and more foods now. She's had green beans, bananas, avocados, watermelon, oatmeal, and carrots. She'll eat anything you give her, but her favorite is sweet potatoes. Smart girl! She's still in her bassinet. She loves it. She's slept in Annabelle's crib a few times and she's done totally fine. We just need to get Annabelle a bed so we can make the switch for Rose.

Annabelle told me the other day when it was just the three of us girls... "Mama, we're going to be best friends forever." I asked her who she was referring to, and she said "You, me and Rose Puppy! We're going to be best friends forever, aren't we?" So precious.

Leopard Moth

We found this moth on the front of our house. God's creativity just amazes me!

Belated Birthday Delivery

Papa Bear and Oma sent Annabelle an edible arrangements for her birthday after we got home from New York. She was through the roof excited. Well, the whole family was really. This was the best idea ever! Such a fun way to celebrate and so healthy.

Chub Chub

Joe's top 3 reasons for not wanting Rosie to grow up:

1). Her hands will get bigger
2). No more baby talk
3). No more chub chub legs

I love how you can see her precious little dimple on the right side of her chin in this first picture.

Indoor Campfire

When I need to do something with just one of the boys for school the other does something with Ebba. Their recent form of entertainment is creating an indoor fire pit and sitting and roasting things over it. Haha!

I was reading a book by a woman who has 10 or so children and homeschooled them all who was commenting about how she looked out the window to see her kids playing "thin air football". She never realized they didn't have a football. She went out and bought one the next day for them. They never played "thin air football" again and in fact never played real football either. The fun was in the creativity.

I wholeheartedly believe that my kids have more fun creating things out of other things than when they actually have the specific object. I find such joy in watching my children use their imaginations to create.

Root Beer Float Day

We had another Root Beer Float Day with Miss Kim. We're not sure if we did one last year or not, so most likely this was Annabelle's first root beer float. She quickly fell in love with the tradition. We love summertime, because it means more time with Miss Kim!

July Birthday Board

Samuel is officially on the team for gymnastics! He made it through the developmental team season and this summer has been training 6 hours a week - Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8am to 11am. It has certainly been a test of his love for gymnastics, though. Having to wake up by 7:15 and be across town by 8am is tough for our sleep monster! Luckily, Andy is driving him and I am able to go and pick him up. That has made all the difference.

Come the fall it is going to 3 hours a practice, 3 days a week! This sport is so intense. Not sure if we'll be able to keep up with it, but we're taking it a week at at time. He so good at it and he loves it so much. It will definitely be a hard decision if/when we decide to stop.