Berry Picking!

Berry season lasts a little longer here in Va than back home in Al but still not quite until the end of school. We have a GREAT local farm just down the road from us and decided we couldn't miss out on picking our own strawberries. We made plans to meet some friends and pick berries one Monday morning. I decided that berry picking with friends was definitely worth missing a little school for so even Annie T. got to come along! It was fun but it sure was HOT!

the box.

the kiddos (minus Jack who was in the wrap) lined up and ready to pick!

Our berries! We ended up picking about 4 lbs. of berries. They were delicious! I planned to freeze some but we ate them up in just a few days!

We also got some local honey and milk and ice cream from a local dairy! SO good! :) We will definitely be going back to pick again next year!
Scratch that....mom will definitely be going back next year! I think I could get a lot more done without four kids in tow! :)

FIELD DAY!!!

Annie had such a great experience at school this year! It was a little unusual-she had three different teachers but we have loved them all! One of the things she had been most looking forward to was field day! It happened to be on a Friday (Josh's day off) which meant even Dad could come and help out! WE all had a great day!

Annie, Emma and Gracie at the start of FD! The little girls didn't last very long in the stroller but thankfully there was plenty of room for them to run and play too!

Annie and her friend Ava. Check out those cute t-shirts with each student's hand prints.

Getting ready for a game!

This girl was SO excited that her daddy got to come help out! :)

Having SO much fun!

Annie's turn to get squirted in the face! She loved it!

AJT doing the squirting!

This is where Jack spent most of the morning. He even made time for a short nap!

Running a relay! I don't know if you can tell or not but that's Annie's teacher, Mrs. Durham, and Emma in the background. Mrs. Durham was so kind to both Emma and Gracie and included them as much as possible.

Emma and Mrs. Durham "racing"!

Gracie "racing"! ha!

Popsicle break!

On the obstacle course!

Josh explaining the rules for his game!

The kids had so much fun in this twist on a three legged race!

Cute!

Oops!

Gracie "helping out"!

Such a fun childhood experience! SO glad I got to be there for my girl! :)

new toy!

A few weeks ago (before school got out and the pool opened) the girls decided it was too hot to play outside without some kind of water toy to bring a little relief from the afternoon sun. We decided to check out the sprinklers at Target and found one that the kids LOVE! I've never seen one quite like this before but i'm glad we found it-it's just a long skinny tube with tiny tubes sticking out all over it so when you turn on the water it shoots out crazy in all directions! What fun!

I'm sure this toy won't replace our many hours at the pool but it is nice to have an easy and fun alternative!

LOVE.

THIS.

BOY.

Can you believe how big he is?

A momentous occasion!

Josh and I have been married 8 and a half years....yep, almost 9 years and we're still having "firsts". This was a pretty major first if you ask me. For the first time in all of those years of marriage we........(drum roll please).........

ATE ON OUR FINE CHINA AND DRANK OUT OF OUR WATERFORD!!!!

Seriously, I know y'all are thinking this is ridiculous and you're right! We have 12 place settings of fine china AND Spode Christmas china AND Waterford water and iced tea glasses AND we've NEVER used them! What is the matter with us?!?!? I LOVE them (LOVE, LOVE, LOVE them) but I've just been afraid to use them. How dumb is that?!?!?

Well, right before we moved Josh told me that he thought we should just get rid of them....sell them or something. WHAT?!?!? I seriously almost flipped out. Although in a way he's right....what good is it to have something you never use or enjoy? There's no reason to keep something like that around....even if it is pretty to look at! SO, I think we've found a solution. We didn't sell the dishes (nor are we going to) and we've decided to USE them; to eat on them and wash them (by hand) and ENJOY them! Who knows, one of these days I might even break out the silver! ha! :)

Our first dinner on our fine china....Ribs, loaded baked potatoes, garlic green beans and strawberry salad! YUM!

An almost summer night

The weather has been so nice here (until just a few days ago)....warm but not too overwhelmingly hot with a cool breeze blowing almost constantly. It really has been great! We decided to break out one of Emma's birthday presents and give it a try....glow in the dark chalk! I KNOW. SO very cool, right?

Josh and the kids getting ready to make (yep, you make your own) glow in the dark chalk!

Jack sure looks like he's having fun! :)

The only downer to the glow in the dark chalk is that it takes 25 minutes to "set". What an agonizingly LONG time that seems like to a pack of kiddos! When the chalk was finally ready we drew to our hearts content...in our favorite shades of glow in the dark orange and blue of course! :)

Bunk beds (part 1)

We've been trying for a while to figure out the best sleeping/living arrangement for all of us. We finally decided that we would put all of our girls in one room and let Jack have a room to himself. We thought this would probably be the easiest way to get Jack out of our room and into a good sleep schedule and figured it would just be fun for the girls to be together (we weren't quite right about this...a and e were not thrilled about g "moving in"). We decided the best way to get all of the girls together would be to get the big girls bunk beds and keep Gracie in her crib for now (she can have one of the girl's old twin beds when she's ready to move out of her crib). I waited until after the move to order the beds because I didn't want them to get to our house before we did. I scoured the internet and finally found a set that I liked that I didn't mind paying for (everything is SO expensive and I guess I'm kinda cheap...I want to at least feel like I'm getting a good deal)! ANYWAY, the beds took about 2 weeks to get here...they actually came ON Emma's birthday (talk about an excited kiddo!). We decided to wait and put them together on Friday (Josh's day off) and let the girls move in together that weekend.

Josh working on the bunk beds. He's all smiles so this is definitely early in the process!!

After Josh had been working about an hour he came downstairs looking grim. Yep, I said grim. I asked him what was wrong and he said that instead of having a right leg and a left leg our package had two right legs and no left legs! :( Awesome. I asked if he could just make do since we had already taken the twin beds down and wrapped up the box springs and stored them. He said nope (unless I didn't mind the beds crashing to the ground with my kiddos sleeping soundly in them. I have to admit, it took me a minute to decide I wasn't ok with that scenario. ;) I mean what are the chances of that REALLY happening?!?) So we were back to square one (more like square negative one since now our kids were bedless all the way around. boo.) We finally decided that the girls would just have to sleep on their mattresses on the floor...which they thought was fun and exciting by the way! We called the company and asked them to send a replacement part...which took forever and lots of jumping through hoops (how ridiculous is that...I forwarded them the email copy of my receipt and that should have been plenty. I had just bought them days before! Customer service is the pits these days!)

The whole bunk bed debacle left me wondering if we'll EVER get settled! We've been waiting to unpack some things because we know we're going to be shifting things around once we get the kids settled into the right rooms! I don't know if we'll ever get there. All of this hassle has definitely taken the wind out of my unpacking sails!

Birthday Girl

I CANNOT believe that my Emma T. is four! FOUR!!! Yikes! I can remember the weekend we brought her home like it was yesterday! My parents and grandparents and Josh's sister Becca were all at our house waiting to welcome our second sweet girl home! What a fun time!

I have SO many cute and fun and downright funny memories of this girl! Does anyone remember Lulu? HA!!!

We had a low key birthday celebration...that's what happens when your birthday is 2 weeks after making a major move (from AL to VA)! Poor Emma T. gets the birthday shaft a little too often if you ask me (MM's high school graduation ON her 1st birthday, Liam's law school graduation on her 2nd birthday, Daddy was out of town on her 3rd birthday, the big move this year and Uncle Daniel's graduation next year)!!! I think we're going to have to have a half birthday blow out to make up for it! :) Even though it was a simple celebration, celebrate we did! We had a great day celebrating Emma and thanking God for making her a special part of our family! :) What would we do without her?!?!?

The Birthday girl! :)

Look what Emma got! Her very first Vera Bradley bag from grandmother! :)

I couldn't find the birthday candles so Emma had to blow out a giant candle in her cupcake! Looks like she didn't mind too much!