Morgan Rae is FIVE!!

Morgan Rae, how can you be five already? You light up the room with your smile sweet girl. Everyone asks us if you smile all the time. Our response is usually something like, "well, not quite all the time, but usually for others!" You really are a happy girl overall and we have been extremely blessed by your easy going personality, but this year you are definitely expressing some strong personality traits and you definitely don't let your siblings walk all over you! You are an emotional one, especially when you get tired. I was bracing myself for lots of tears with the start of ALL day kindergarten, but you've actually handled the transition pretty well so far.

As I've blogged about many times before you have had your own sense of fashion since the age of two. You are great at matching things now, but you definitely have your own idea of what you want to wear. Skirts it is right now!

You love to be a "baker" as you call it. You love to help me in the kitchen and taste everything! This is your favorite recipe to make because you mix the cookies with your hands and then you get to lick them off:)

I sure do love spending time with you sweet girl. I'm sad that I don't get to hang out with you in the afternoon anymore now that you are at school all day. We miss having you around! You love to do everything with me. We went through a period this past year that you needed to be with me all the time. You would be completely distraught if you were left at home with daddy.

It has been fun watching your relationship with your cousin Annika develop over the years. You are only 5 months apart, and you two have a lot of fun together. You will now disappear upstairs at Nana and Papas to play with the beanie babies and dolls. Annika looks up to you quite a bit, I pray that you will always be a good example to her!

You embrace life girl. You get super excited to have special time with daddy or I but you really don't demand it. When you do get that time you are actually pretty quite. You will talk when you decide there is something you  need to share, but you are definitely ok with silence. I think there is a lot that goes on in that little head of yours. You are very imaginative and creative, so I often wonder what you are thinking about.

You do love your daddy time again. You love to wrestle with him when you can get him away from your brothers. I am looking forward to watching your relationship grow.

You and Brooky sure have fun together. I love that you have a little sister to be girly with. She looks up to you Morgan and I pray that you will be a good example of girl who loves Jesus for Brooklyn to see. You two now share a room...a very PINK room and I think you love being roommates!

This year you grew so much. You loved preschool and did really well meeting new people. You loved all the pretend play and the art projects that you got to do. In fact your biggest complaint about the first day of kindergarten was that you didn't get to play enough:) You also learned how to ride your bike without training wheels and now you love to ride your bike. You and Ethan head outside almost every morning lately to ride bike. You are doing awesome with a two wheeler!

You and Ethan....you are the imagination behind this guy. I think in some ways he would be lost without you. He loves to have you watch him bike, rollerblade etc and you usually gladly play along and give him an audience. I love that about you. You two sure know how to fight sometimes though. He has been a sweet brother these first few days of school and sits by you on the bus and walks you to your classroom in the morning.

You became an awesome independent swimmer this summer. You don't use floaties at all anymore, not even in the deep end. You can jump into the deep end and swim to the edge. You love it and have had a lot of fun swimming with your friends and cousins this summer.

Morgan, your daddy and I are so proud of the little lady you are becoming. Today you got your ears pierced and you looked so old sitting in that chair. I know that I will blink and you'll be in high school. I am doing my best to soak up all these moments with you and embrace you where you are at...good and bad;) I love you sweet girl and I am so glad that God made you perfect for our family.

Brooklyn is Three!!

Happy Birthday my little firecracker! You my girl are so much joy and sunshine and so much attitude all wrapped up in one. You keep Daddy and I on our toes that is for sure! You LOVE to sing. You are very good at carrying a tune and singing all the words to most songs you listen to often. Recently you love to blare the music in your room and sing and dance along with the music. I love it!

Your vocabulary has grown so much this past year. We are finally making progress with your big girl voice as well. You have quite the high pitched voice sometimes little one!

Like your brother you experienced some major milestones as well. You are potty trained, sleeping in a big girl bed and sleeping your first night without your binky! I am so proud of you! You are also so good at dressing and undressing yourself, which is super helpful sometimes, but not so much other times. Mommy loves how grown up you are getting, but I also know that means you won't be my baby girl much longer!

You have tons of fun with the other three in this picture! You guys can play so great together sometimes. Lately you love playing outside in the morning which I love too. You all love to wrestle and play pretend too. It brings me so much joy to see you playing well together and caring for each other too.

Brooklyn you are my best eater and my messiest eater. You can really pack the food away when you are hungry and you are my least pickiest eater. I hope that continues because I can get you to pretty much eat anything. You don't have as much of a sweet tooth as your siblings though and you have recently started turning down a donut when we get them for a special treat. Your sister and brothers think you're crazy!

You have so much courage and confidence little one. On this day some big boys came over to where you were squirting this water and you kept turning it on in their faces. Nothing much stands in your way when you  make up your mind to do something. That will serve you well in the future and continue to drive me crazy in the present.

You and your sister love to play together. You really get along well and love to retreat to your room to do girl things. Don't get my wrong, you definitely  have your moments, but over all you're pretty sweet to each other.

You and Huds have so much fun together. You really play well together and you don't fight that often. Now that big brother and big sister are in school full time it is really fun to watch you two in your relationship. I love listening to your little conversations.

What's not to love about that little face? You have a kind giving heart Brooklyn. You like to make sure others are ok and you are pretty good with sharing your things if it will make some one else happy. You love to color and draw and currently you love carrying things around in purses and bags and filling your bed with stuff!

You and Ethan have a blast together too. He loves to be the helpful big brother and most of the time you let him. He will often times try to come to your rescue when you are being a little stinker too!

Brooky mommy loves you so much. I am so glad God put you in our family, I can't imagine our house without you. I can't wait to see how God shapes and molds you as you continue to grow up.

Hudson Turns Three!!

Happy Birthday Handsome! I can't believe you are THREE already! Where did the time go? You Hudson are 110% boy! You love all sports, trucks, cars and motorcycles. You love to wrestle and play with the big boys. You flash your little grin and you have mommy and most others wrapped around your little finger. You have charm that will either get you far in life or in lots of trouble...I'm hoping its the first one!

You adore your big brother. It is fun to watch you two play together. You do your best to keep up with him and soon you will be able to play soccer and basketball with him. That will be awesome because right now you both want nothing more than to have someone to play with. I'm praying you two become the best of buds.

Your big sis Morgan adores you as well. She loves to tell you what to play and she loves to help you. Morgan started kindergarten this year so I think you miss her a little, but you and Brooky sure have a lot of fun together!

You are absolutely crazy about golf right now. Whenever you see Nana you ask her if she is taking you golfing. You love to hit the wiffle balls around the yard and you were over the moon when you got to go to Peter Hay and hit "hard balls". You have quite a swing, I think you're a natural.

You love to be mommy and daddy's little helper. You love to pick weeds and work with daddy in the garage. You are also my number 1 egg cracker in the morning. I am impressed at how few shells you get in the bowl. Often times you ask me how I am or how my run was in the morning. You also went through a stage where you said "Good dinner mom" every time we ate. I loved that! I pray that your servant heart stays with you as you get older.

You embrace life my son. You enjoy everything there is to enjoy. I love the enthusiasm and joy with which you approach life. You're highs are high and your lows are low. You also feel deeply which can be quite dramatic sometimes. You can get a little obsessive about things as well. You get fixated on something and have a hard time moving past it.

You love your daddy little man. You love to play sports with him, work with him and wrestle with him.

Mr. Fix it.

You, Brooklyn and Morgan had a lot of fun this past year while Ethan was at school. You three played lots of pretend. It sure was fun for mommy to watch.

Mommy and Daddy's favorite moments are when you four are playing nicely together. You have 3 built in playmates with your sisters and brother. Right now you all love playing outside in the morning, riding scooters, bikes and plasma cars. I'm sure our neighbors love us with our 7 am chaos!

This past year has been big in the sense of how much easier it is for us to get around. We rarely take the stroller any more and you and Brooklyn do great job walking around. I don't think we quite as many stares from strangers either.

You reached some pretty big milestones this year little man. You moved to a big boy bed, got potty trained and currently you are trying your best to go to sleep without your binky. I love that you are growing up and gaining your independence, but I must admit I'm a little teary thinking about you losing all things baby. Your vocabulary also grew exponentially this year. You talk all the time...just like your big brother!

I can't imagine our home with out you Hudson Lee. I can't wait to see what God does with your life. Mommy loves you!

Soaking up the summer fun!

I was going through my phone pictures the other day and realized I have a few random summer fun pictures that I still want to add to our blog before birthday week hits in full force!

 Some dear friends of ours were visiting from Dubai so the whole gang got together for some food and fun. Here is Morgan with her friend Faith. We will miss Faith this year as she and Morgan will be at different schools:(

  Here are the ladies, most of these girls are girls that I run with. A pretty fun group at that! Lots of laughs this night. The kids all had a great time running all over the yard, biking, swimming, playing basketball and hitting golf balls in to the orchard. Hudson had all the big kids quite impressed by his golfing skills:)

A morning of painting. Once daddy went back to school I was on full time entertainer mode. Thankfully the  kids had awesome last few weeks of summer. They played outside a lot because the weather was beautiful and they really got along well.

We headed to the Children's Museum one day. We almost had the place to ourselves, it was great. Brooklyn's favorite place was the store.

Morgan loved the Veterinarian station, that's what she wants to be when she grows up!

Ethan and Mason loved this magnetic ramp and the Lego station.

 Morgan and Brooklyn also loved the art room of course!

And Hudson could have stayed here all day. Instead he just carried the golf club around the whole museum and I was a terrible mom and let him just because I didn't want to listen to him cry about it being taken away.

 Hudson and Brooklyn also had their first dentist appointments. They did great. Hudson was more apprehensive then I expected him to be. He did NOT want to have the chair lay down at all!

 Finally last week before school started we found this awesome little water park just 45 minutes away. There is one big slide you can see in the background for the big kids and then the play structure for the little ones. It was 2 1/2 feet deep at the deepest part and all gated so it felt really safe to just let our kids run around. We headed there with our good friends for one last hurrah!

First day of school!

Today was the first day of school! After a super fun, action packed summer we've had a couple down weeks which have gotten us ready for school. The kids have all had a great couple weeks. They have been doing an awesome job playing together, especially in the mornings and they were a little bummed this morning when they had to cut their play time short. I think they were excited to get into school though. Morgan especially and Ethan was, but he wouldn't admit it:)

 Morgan and Daddy. Both Kevin and I had a hard time letting our little girl go to kindergarten this morning. Our school just started all day everyday kindergarten, so there was no easing into it with half days:(

Morgan was all smiles all morning though:)

 All ready to go to SECOND grade! So hard to believe. He was really happy to see all his buddies this morning.

 Kevin's position changed a little again this year. He will be teaching 2 periods of 8th grade science and 3 periods of 6th and then doing some admin in between it all. He is looking forward to the challenge of 2 new curriculums. It will be a good year, but a busy one!

 Hudson and Brooklyn had to get in on a picture. I think they will be a little lost with out big brother and sister. Thankfully they have each other!

 How did these two get so big??

 We are excited for Ethan's year this year. He is growing up!

More smiles from little Miss. She had a great first day. Her biggest complaint was that they didn't get to play enough:( I figured that may be a problem for her. It will be a good year for her too though, she just has to get used to it. She has the same teacher Ethan did so she was excited for that.