Nature Walk

Several weeks ago, the kiddos and I headed out on a beautiful Saturday morning for a "nature walk."  I was scouting out some spots for some pictures I was taking the next afternoon and figured they would like running through the leaves and finding sticks:)  They loved it.  In fact, they still randomly talk about our nature walk.  So cute.  Guess we will have to do some more of this in the future!

 And of course I had to get some obligatory pictures of all four of my cuties:)  Gosh I love them!

Bath fun

Several weeks ago I decided I wanted to get some fun pictures of the kids in the bath tub with bubbles. I thought they would be cute to put in black and white and blow up to put in the bathroom.  We will see if that ever happens.  Anyways, I set out to get some goofy pictures.  

Bubble beards.  Gotta love them:)

She's mostly just cute, but we attempted crazy hair.  It didn't stay standing up long enough.  But look at that smile:)

 And here's my darling, very uncooperative child.  He refused to make a bubble beard for me.  Or maybe we were just totally out of bubbles.  Either way, this is what I would have gotten.  But man is this kid cute!

 And would you look at this kid's amazing rolls?  Seriously, they get me every time.  I don't think he would like these kind of rolls when he's older, but man I sure hope they stick around for a while longer.  And his cankles......gotta love em':)

9 Months

I know I've said it before.  Probably every time I talk about him, but my baby is 9 months old.  Seriously not sure how that happened.  He's getting so big!  And definitely looks less like a baby and much more like a little boy now.  He's so fun to watch grow.  I hate that he's getting so big, but at least he's cute while he does it:)  He might go down in the history books as being the fourth child with the most pictures of himself.  Seriously.....I can't get enough of this cutie and he's still willing to let me photograph him:)  So I take advantage of that whenever I can!

So, for your reading pleasure, here's some little facts you may or may not know about little man.

At 9 months he weighs right in around 22 pounds.  I should note that this is only about 2 lbs less than his 2 year old brother:)  If he keeps up his growth rate, he is very quickly going to surpass Parker!  He loves to feed himself puffs at meal times and also enjoys soaking himself with his water.  He eats lunch and dinner at the table like a big boy with us and I am very slowly (I can only let him grow up so fast!!) starting to try to introduce table food to him.  He crawls everywhere and is into EVERYTHING.  I mean it, this kid is fast.  And ornery.  He will find whatever it is in the room he isn't supposed to have and get it:)  He's quiet while he does it too.  He's got it figured out....fourth kid...if he stays quiet he can get away with more because the older three are distracting me and I don't realize he's getting into mischief.  I'm already starting to picture the trouble he and Parker are going to get into when they pair up.  Those two together will be very dangerous.  Mark my words!  He also pulls up on anything he can and is starting to walk around things.  Last week he started climbing up the stairs too.  So really, nothing is safe with this little one around.  Especially with his curiosity for life. True to fourth child syndrome, he is doing everything MUCH faster than his brothers and sister did.  I was definitely not prepared for that.  He's my last baby and I would like to keep him that way as long as possible.  But that little stinker is doing everything in his power to work against me and grow up so fast.  He's a true mama's boy.  He even said mama first.  WooHOO!!  The other three all said dada first, so I was so excited when mama is what came out of his mouth:)  And I tease Brian that since he said mama first, he likes me best.  Which may actually be true.  But probably only because I still feed him.  A lot.  There's some things I'm just not ready to give up.  And since I can control that, I most certainly do!:)  

So, here's our "littlest" man at 9 months.  Of course I decided I needed some pictures of him on his 9 month birthday, so we got some squeezed in between the weird weather on that day.  

Halloween

Halloween was a little crazy but a lot of fun this year.  It gets so much better as the kids get older.  It's still not my favorite holiday, but my cute kids parading around in costumes make is so much better.  Plus, we could get rid of most of the their candy the day after at their dentist office which was kind of fabulous.  So I haven't been fighting them on eating all their candy (or had to stay out of it myself!!).

Their day actually started off at school with Halloween parties.  I only got pictures on my phone because I apparently drained my camera battery and it ran out of juice after the "parade"  But that's ok.  Because while they loved their parties, I was literally running all over the place that morning.  I was running behind to get their because I stupidly over booked myself.  Then I was trying to run back and forth between both their class parties and keep an eye on the other two kids too.  Whew!  Makes me break out in a sweat just thinking about it!  But the kids had a blast at their school parties:)

That evening we got dressed up and headed to dinner at McCallisters.  My dad works there and told me if kids came dressed up in costume they could eat for free.  Works for me!  However, I should have been using my head more.....because Brian was gone (he had class....they did it early, but he still missed the first half of our evening) and I was trying to get myself, and help the other three, eat dinner, at a restaurant, without making a huge mess, by myself in a limited amount of time:)  Apparently over booking myself was a theme of the day!  After dinner we headed by granny and papa's house and then had to make a quick stop to great granny and great papa's house (where someone, won't name names......decided they had to use the bathroom.  Talk about annoying to get the costumes off after they are already on!)  Then we rushed over for the main festivities of the night.....trick or treating with the Lowreys, our family bff's:)  We have made it a yearly tradition of trick or treating with them for several years now.  I think this is the third year in a row we've hit up their neighborhood.  The kids think it's pretty awesome.  Me too.  Trick or treating is so much better if you do it with good friends:)  I think we were out for about an hour.  More than enough time for the kids to get plenty of candy!  And they were tired too.  Lots of walking.  But lots of fun.  

I'm only beginning to imagine the craziness that is going to be our crew next year when Sawyer is walking and joining in on the fun ( I type this with great sadness because I don't want my baby all grown up and walking!!!)  But he will sure look just as cute in costume as the others:)

Happy Halloween (on November 11;))!

Sawyer enjoyed himself too:)  Poor kid is always stuck in the stroller tagging along with the bigger kids.

Obligatory Train Museum Post

We did something totally out of the ordinary this year....we took our annual train museum trip when it wasn't 105 degrees outside.  Crazy sane idea, I know.  For some reason (probably because Brian is off of work so it's when I think of doing fun things), we always make our yearly trip when it's blazing hot this year.  After last summer, I decided we needed to quit that silliness and go in the fall when it was actually enjoyable to be outside on climbing on non-airconiditoned metal trains.  Smartest move ever.  It was actually a little chilly and so fabulous!  Nice to not be drenched in sweat when you leave the trains:)  And of course, the kids had  blast.  But Eli keeps asking when the big black engine is going to be working again and when  they are getting a new one.  Hmmmmm.....maybe he's finally getting tired of climbing on the same trains year after year.  Probably not:)  Enjoy!

 Sidenote: this little stroller is so hard to push on the gravel they have by all the trains.  It's much easier to just pull it along behind you.  So funny to watch Sawyer bumping along behind:)