Shall we take a stroll down memory lane? In my efforts to turn our blog into our family photo album, I’ve been adding posts about some of our early days. If you’re interested in reading about our life a decade ago, click these links!
I sort of feel like I should retire from blogging after my last post. Every single one of my siblings commented which was unprecedented. If you know my Dad and haven’t read all the comments from my siblings for that post, you should go revisit it. Hilarious stuff.
Anyway, a couple of weeks ago the weather was so mild that we decided to take advantage and go explore Memory Grove Park. We left and realized we were driving into a rainstorm. I was a little nervous the rain would ruin our plans, but Dallas stayed the course and by the time we got to the park there were only a few rogue raindrops falling. We ended up having a great time hiking the trails.
Right off the bat Brooke caught a snake and he was our hiking companion the rest of the evening:
Madison was so bright-eyed looking around at everything and taking it all in:
Spencer was wearing his “gloves” during the hike. (They’re really socks that the kids use as gloves when they’re playing Frozen.) As we walked we frequently heard Spencer mumble, “Conceal it. Don’t feel it. Don’t let it show.”
As we were leaving a nice man said, “You guys look like you need a family picture.” How did he know? Behold, I give you only the second picture we have in existence of all six of us together:
Madison is a month old. I find that so baffling. Where did the month go?
Madison had her first real bath. She was a fan:
We went to a family dinner at my Grandma’s. Madison was adored by all:
Ben came up and spent some time bonding with the baby. He brought Cafe Rio with him. He’s welcome anytime!
Madison is usually an okay sleeper but occasionally in the evenings she’ll really fight going to sleep. This has happened the past two nights so naturally I’m worried this will happen every night here on out for the rest of our lives, and I get really exhausted thinking about that. Let’s all hope tonight is a good night.
Brooke got hold of the camera one day while I was showering. Apparently Madison became unhappy:
But she fixed the problem:
She also got a shot of Spencer’s mouth:
Brooke was off-track during March so we didn’t have to worry about school which was so nice as I was recovering from giving birth. One day the girls were bored so I pulled out some Perler Beads that I bought several weeks ago. This kept them busy for days:
Caroline made a circle design and Brooke created what else? A unicorn:
Brooke being off track and me just having a baby meant there were a lot of days where everyone stayed in their pajamas:
Brooke spent the last couple of days looking like this:
Her left eye got scratched and became all red and swollen. Luckily it has started healing and she’s almost back to normal.
Oops. In going through my pictures I realized I never posted anything about Thanksgiving. For instance, I skipped posting about this cute pilgrim:
Dallas’s dad invited us to his house for a delicious Thanksgiving dinner:
The girls love to make candy houses at Christmastime. We got too busy to do them before Christmas so we made them in January:
The girls made candy houses. The boy smashed his house in a fit of rage and decided to just eat all of the candy instead. Actually not a bad idea:
We had a huge snowstorm and Brooke made a snowman (notice Caroline is holding snowman’s hand):
Brooke thinks it’s really fun to roll every single one of her socks up like so:
The first time she did it, Spencer woke up for the morning and saw the rolled-up socks on the ground. He excitedly yelled, “Doughnuts!” and began to take a bite before I could warn him of the reality of what he was about to consume. He wasn’t too happy with his mouthful of cotton.
Caroline sporting a static electricity do:
Spencer and his cars. Inseparable:
I went in to get Spencer from his nap and found he had gotten stuck in his shirt. He was so tangled up; I have no idea what he was doing:
I bought a large pack of paper towels and the kids thought they were the greatest toys. Brooke made a huge “temple” and then had to decorate it so it could be beautiful:
The great name debate. We’ve been trying to figure out what to name Baby #4. One day Brooke and Caroline decided that she should be called “Blossom.” They were both satisfied with that name so Brooke made a name tag and stuck it on the fridge next to the ultrasound pictures of the baby:
Saying “cheese” during lunch:
Dallas whipped up a gourmet meal for his mom, Stratton, and Anna:
Here’s Brooke’s homework paper. She saw the staple in the corner and just had to turn it into part of a duck’s beak. Of course. Isn’t that what you think of when you see staples in papers?
Brooke has given herself a middle name:
Speaking of Brooke, her room looks like this:
She is trying to turn her room into Ponyville.
You remember that scene in the movie A Beautiful Mind when John Nash’s wife goes out to the shed behind their house, opens the door, and is horrified to see all the newspaper clippings and string and everything else plastered all over the walls? That’s sort of how I feel when I enter Brooke’s room.
Especially after she got the “great” idea to tape the flying ponies to the ceiling:
And then we have this gem taped to the side of her bed:
You can see it’s her hand print. It’s there because whoever wants to climb up into the top bunk has to match their hand to hers and if it doesn’t fit, you can’t go up. (You can also see she has paw prints that allow her bears access to her bed and the circles are pony prints.) I feel like she’s just one step away from installing retina scans and voice recognizers to protect her space.
