That's a wrap!

And that's a wrap, another school year down! This year was crazy and it flew by. It's hard to believe I started this year newly pregnant and am ending it with an adorable little four year old!

The end of the year is always super busy, with a million different events for all the kids. We kicked it off with an email from L's school counselor telling me he was receiving a character award. Basically the school has six "characteristics" that they want the kids to strive for. (Accountably, caring, and trustworthiness are the three I remember off the top of my head!) Anyone, six different kids "win" from each class, each for one of the characteristics they exemplify. I had no idea which one L was getting and was a little confused when we reached the end of the ceremony and his name still hadn't been called. Then they announced the child who won from the entire grade for consistently showing all six characteristics and it was L! My mama heart nearly bust with pride, and we are just so proud of this kid!

Next we had L2 graduating from Kindergarten! It's hard to believe he's going to be in first grade next year, and we are so incredibly proud of the progress he has made this year. He has amazing teachers and we love his school.

And finally we had R's end of the year party for preschool. He also ended up with a great teacher, and we are excited to head into his final year of preschool next year!

 And C didn't have any graduations or parties, but she got to tag along to everything!

And I'll end this with our first day of school vs. last day of school pictures! These boys are growing so fast!

Four Months

Guess who's four months old?

Yep, this little blue eyed beauty! She's seriously the best, and I can't believe she is four months. And I know I say that exact same thing every month. I'll probably be saying it when she turns forty (and holy crap, when she turns forty I'll be SEVENTY THREE!!!)

OK, enough of that kind of talk. Let's talk about this sweet little babe.

She is still a really mellow baby, but when she gets mad, she is mad. he tends to go with the flow though, and really only gets super mad when tired and hungry. She is still exclusively breastfed and we are still pretty much feeding on demand. During the first part of the day I just let her eat whenever she is showing hunger clues, but we do try to keep to a little more of a schedule as the day goes on, just so she can get to bed by around 9:30 every night. And make no mistake.... girlfriend is well fed. We just had her well check and she is 15 lbs and 9 oz..... so double her birth weight! She is the 78% for weight and something like 84% for height. She is a beautiful little chunker!

She loves giving people big smiles and is starting to laugh along with those smiles. She's started rolling over from back to front, although she doesn't do it every time yet. She's propping herself up great with tummy time and it's taking longer for her to get tired and frustrated with it. She still will not take a binky, which this mama is not thrilled about, but she likes to hold her stuffed giraffe binky and suck on the stuffed animal party. She's also starting to enjoy toys more and we just recently put her in the bouncer and she likes that too, although she still needs a pillow under her feet because she doesn't reach the floor.

Her brothers still absolutely adore her and often fight over who gets to calm her down if she is upset. She still wants to be hold all the time, but she also likes to sit in bumpo and watch us do stuff in the kitchen. She loves sucking on her hands and if you're holding her she will most likely suck on your shoulder.  Sleep is getting better, she will often go all the way until 2am, and sometimes 3am. We still start with her in the snuggle nest in our bed and then co sleep once she wakes up for the first feeding. After she eats at around 2 she'll usually wake up between 5 and 6 and just dream eat for a bit.

Basically, she's a dream and we love her more everyday. 

Mother's Day 2018

Coming in late for Mother's Day. It was low key and wonderful, and I got to spend it with the people who mean the most in the world to me.

I love my people.

I hope all the mommy's had an amazing day!

Undefeated!

Undefeated!!!!

Yes friends, that is what we are this season!

It's amazing how much I love these games now, and how much they stress me out! Don't get me wrong, I love watching the little ones try to hit the ball of the tee and run the bases in the wrong direction, but it's a whole new ball game (pun intended!) when the game becomes serious and the kids become good!

We've been with these boys since L first started tball, around 4 or 5. We watched as they were those little kids on the tee, and then when they were the youngest team that all moved up to coach pitch together. They were awful. Like, we literally lost every game. But over the last few seasons these boys have worked so hard and grown so much.

Now, they are the team to beat. They run plays like it's nothing, they are amazing hitters and they can catch the ball mid-air.

Next season a handful of us, L included, are aging up so this team won't be together. Hopefully we can come back together in the spring, but we are moving into kid pitch and it's going to be completely new territory. But we are so grateful for these amazing coaches and this amazing team!

And the best is these four boys, who have been friends since kindergarten (and before for L and his friend J!). I love their friendship and I love their mama's!

Ten years!

It's been fourteen years since I fell in love with my best friend, and last week we celebrated our TEN YEAR wedding anniversary.  TEN YEARS!!! That's seems so crazy, because so much has happened in the last ten years, but also because I don't feel old enough to have been married ten years! It seems like last year we were 21 and hanging out in the lobby of our Greek Life dorm before a sorority social!

S and I got together the summer before our Junior year of college, and have been together ever since. We got married relatively young, at 24, and had L when we were 25.

Within six years we had three kids under the age of 6. It was wild and crazy and we truly leaned on each other so much as we navigated figuring out how to be adults and parents and good partners to each other.

And then this last year we got the ultimate surprise when we found out we pregnant with baby #4. We found out literally days after we had closed on buying our dream house, were figuring out renovations for that, and still trying to sell our old house. So, now we are, celebrating ten years. We've bought and sold our first home, and then bought and renovated our "forever" home. S has made huge strides in his career, and I made the transition from working to a full time stay at home mom. We have weathered celebrations and tragedies together.  A month ago we said goodbye to Charlie, our first baby together. We have four gorgeous kids. And most of all, we've loved each other through all of it. We've grown together and supported each other. Even when we drive each other crazy (and it happens, trust me!) We are truly each others "other halves".

Truthfully I wasn't expecting much for our anniversary, even though it was ten years. Between buying our new house and welcoming a new baby into our home recently, I figured it would just be low key.  Our anniversary fell on a Thursday and S had told me he planned on taking Friday off and that we would just order takeout and have some nice wine and rent a movie on Thursday night. On that Wednesday he decided to take Thursday off too so we could spend our actual anniversary day together. We ended up having L, R, and C with us because of a teacher walkout (that's a whole other story!) that was happening, but we went and did some shopping and then had a nice lunch.

(The tequila that we bought on our honeymoon!) 

Later that day S went to go pick the boys up pizza for dinner and our doorbell rang. I opened it, and to my surprise, there stood my Father-in-law. L, who was apparently in on the whole thing, excitedly told me to go pack a bag for the night. To say I was surprise would be an understatement, but S had arranged a night away at the hotel we had our wedding night in. We had an amazing and huge suite on our wedding night and have always talked about what a waste it was that we literally only spent like 8 hours there before we left for our honeymoon. So S got us the same style of suite, and arranged for his dad to watch he boys for us. We took C with us (nursing baby!) but went out and got dinner at my favorite bruschetta place before heading to the hotel..

The suite was amazing! Like, seriously even nicer than I remembered. It was huge and had a fireplace and an awesome balcony where we got to watch the sunset.

Obviously we had the baby with us, so it's not like we could hit the town or anything, but we walked down to one of the pool and hung out there for awhile and then came back and rented a movie. It was basically the low key night we had planned, but with less kids and an amazing "wow" element added!

The next day we got up and went to my favorite breakfast place, and then headed back to the hotel to hang out at the pool for awhile. First, is there anything then a baby in a baby bathing suite? I don't think so. S's dad told us not to rush coming home so after checkout we decided to stop and see a movie. We saw "A quiet place" which was really good, and thankfully C was an angel and slept through the whole thing!

I don't think I could have asked for a better way to spend our ten year anniversary! Truthfully, even if it had just been takeout at home I would have been happy, because I am so lucky to have this amazing and wonderful family, but a night away at a resort was good too!