Len's 32nd Birthday

We have a tradition in our house to make a birthday banner for whoever's birthday it is. It's so fun to come up with new ideas and the boys love to help come up with the design. In the past we have just used butcher paper to color on and cut out the letters for our message, but this time we decided to step it up a notch and add balloons. The boys had a BALL trying to blow up the balloons and help tie them to the string. They made cards and couldn't wait to suprise daddy with his decorations on Saturday morning. Call me wife of the year because it was our spring break that week and I didn't look at the calendar. I had it in my mind that Len's birthday was on a Saturday. On Friday morning, Len woke up and went about his normal routine and went to work. After getting everyone settled, I logged in to Facebook to see a bunch of "happy birthday Len" messages on my wall. My stomach dropped and I felt terrible and he never said one word to me about it. He's just sweet like that. Hopefully we made up for it with his decorations and we brought him breakfast in bed on Saturday morning. We decided to just act like Saturday was his birthday all along.

These boys LOVE, LOVE, LOVE their daddy. Their favorite game is "fight." I can't tell you how many times a day I hear, "wet's pway fight daddy, come on wet's pway fight" and they all pile on top of each other and tackle Len. He's making them tough little boys ;)

The "rock place"

There is a dead end road down about half a mile from our house where they haven't started construction yet. It is full of large boulders and piles and rocks and usually Will rides his bike while Walker drives the gator. They love to climb on the rocks and play with sticks and just get as dirty as possible. On this particular day, I brought my camera and we also took our dog Ellie. It started to rain while we were there and I was trying to get us home in the pouring rain with a dog, a tired little boy and also trying to keep my camera dry. We had walked this time since we took Ellie and luckily I brought a plastic bag in case she had a doggie poo. I wrapped my camera in the bag and put Walker on my back and we ran up the hill to get home. It was chaotic but we still had fun.

Walker and Better, Batter Baseball

Will has started playing baseball this year for the first time. Walker wants to play so bad. I think he is going to be my athlete. He is so interested in anything having to do with balls and sports. He loves practicing on the BBB tee. How cute is it to see a little boy in his church clothes playing baseball?

After church pictures

Now that we've seen a few sunny days, I'm motivated to take pictures again. These are just a few that I took after church one day.

Climbing our Cherry Blossom tree

We planted our Cherry Blossom tree 2 years ago and it has grown so much. The boys love to climb it and on this particular day, it had just bloomed and the sun was peeking through it so beautifully. I decided to do a little photo shoot of the boys with the tree. Spring is such a reminder of God's pure love for us and just how powerful he is. I always think of spring as my "New Years" time because of what it represents. New life, blossoms, the greenery, Jesus' death and resurrection. It's such a great time for a fresh start. I love the warmer weather, the sunshine and the promise of new flowers peaking through the dirt. I love the innocense of a child wanting to climb a tree.

Petting a Skunk and cutting hair

The zoo came to our preschool and one lucky advantage to working at the preschool is getting to take pictures of fun activities like snake and skunk petting. Walker loved it and they also danced with a macaw.

I knew this was bound to happen at some point and I knew Walker would be the one to do it. I was cutting Will's hair and I put down the scissors for a split second to spray his hair. The next thing I knew, Walker had the scissors and I saw a big, long chunk of hair on the floor. Luckily, it's not that noticeable. Check that off the list!

Tadpole Hunting

We decided to hunt for tadpoles after our lovely retention pond behind our house filled with water. We had a big rain and that brought out the loud sounds of frogs mating. We didn't find any tadpoles, but had fun putting on our boots, grabbing our buckets and splashing around.

Will's Glasses

ugh!!! I wasted 2 hours of my life last night updating the blog. 12 posts and over 60 pictures and every one of them had a question mark instead of a picture. So frustrating!! Trying to catch up and it's now working.

Will was referred for a visit to the eye doctor at his well visit a few months ago. This didn't come as a complete suprise to me because I am blind as a bat. We went and he did the test and the Dr. said he has an astigmatism sp? which is what I have too. Sooo, we picked out the cutest glasses. He doesn't have to wear them all the time and our Dr. said he will need to wear them more once he starts elementary school. So far, we haven't noticed if they are helping him much, but are thankful to find the problem early. He looks so handsome in them and is quite proud to wear his new glasses.

Wednesdays with Walker

Getting excited!

 

 

Rolling the pine cone in birdseed.

 

So proud of his pinecone!

 

Poor Walker. He's the 2nd child and doesn't get to do all the "fun things" I did with Will when he was his age. When you have a 2nd child, there just isn't time for a lot of one on one time. Now that Walker is home with me on Wednesdays (he went to a different MDO the first half of the year, but I took him out to spend some more time with him. Will goes to school 3 days a week and Walker goes 2 days and I work at their preschool on those two days, so I enrolled him in a MDO program near our house so I could have time to run errands, etc, but it just got to be to hectic going to two different schools, dropping off, picking up and I felt like my whole day was spent in the car dropping off and picking up. Plus, I just felt guilty and really felt that he needed some individual attention from me.) I've tried to come up with some fun things and projects we can do together. Sometimes, it's just as simple as getting out the play-do and building things together, which is a "big deal" in our house because I only get it out every now and then.
Walker has been really interested in the birds outside so I thought he would enjoy making pine-cone bird feeders. He was so cute and excited while making them, but the best part has been checking our trees everyday to see if the birds are eating from our feeders. This was such a simple project. The pictures are kind of blurry because I was trying to shoot in manual and it's hard with a moving target. I have loved getting to spend this time with him. He just doesn't know what to do with himself when Will isn't home. He loves waking up from his nap to go get Will from school.

Day 21- My babies are HOME!!

After spending over a week at my parents' house, my babies are home and I.AM.SO.GLAD! I misssed these little guys! I've been doing Castles and Crowns shows all week and to busy to blog so I'm sorry you've had to see the same ole Castles and Crowns plug over and over. I'm sick of looking at it as I'm sure you must be too! I think it's going to take me 3 years to do this 365 day thing. I should just say I'm giving up, but for some reason, I keep telling myself I will start it back up again when things get less hectic around here. Will loves taking pictures with my new phone. Here are a few of us goofing off before bed. They are very blurry, but I still love them because we were just so happy to be together again. They are my heart and soul and I just don't feel whole when they aren't around. Don't get me wrong, Len and I had SO much fun together this week. No bickering, low stress, clean house everyday, little laundry, lots of laughs and talking about life, remembering what it was like "bk" (before kids), but I'm glad things are back to normal. My parents and my sister (and her family) are just jewels and so generous of their time and everything!

Day 20~Plug

**You can click on the image to enlarge.
My Castles and Crowns selling season starts this week! Whew, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can. Let me know if you're interested in attending a show and I'll send you the details. YOU CAN STILL ORDER THROUGH ME IF YOU CAN'T ATTEND A SHOW OR LIVE OUT OF TOWN. :) Just email me adcockcd@yahoo.com. They didn't produce a catalog this season so I took pictures of some of my favorites! So cute!! The swimsuits are adorable. Lots of matching brother/sister, big brother/little brother and big sis/little sis. I loved matching my boys when they were younger. Will has grown out of this, but you better believe I'm going to put Walker in it as long as I can! I still have a few spots open if you would like to host a show.

 

 

 

Knits should say up to a size 10.

 

Day ~19 1, 2, skip a few~More SNOW!!

Okay, I took a little break from the 365 day thing. I was having a hard time coming up with content and the mundane days of January were producing some negative posts :) Life is really busy for our family right now, but I have finally taken some pictures and will try to continue the post a day thing. We'll see if that really happens. Around 4 ish yesterday, it started snowing big, huge snowflakes and after 10 minutes it was already covering the ground and streets. It was beautiful. I feel so sorry for all the people trying to get home from work last night. It took some people 5 to 6 hours to get home. I had anxiety just reading my facebook live feed. Luckily, by the grace of God, Len left work early, stopped by Kroger and was home within an hour. We were delighted to have our daddy home on a night when he would normally be at his internship. He is the greatest! I have to brag on my husband. He stopped by the grocery, came home, started a fire, made chilli and got the kids to bed. Is he awesome or what??? Of course, Walker had some other plans during bedtime and came downstairs. It was kind of nice getting to spend some one on one time with just one child. We let Ellie (our dog) and gave her some much needed petting and attention. She was in heaven. This morning we walked to my friend Mandi's house and had a great time sledding. It was so sunny and there wasn't any wind so it was perfect snow weather. Here are a few pictures of our morning. Len didn't have to go in until noon so we soaked up more daddy time.

 

 

I realize my hat looks ridiculous ;) I had it folded and I guess I took it off and didn't realize I put it back on like this.