Happenings...

We had a lovely weekend.  J took us all out to breakfast at this little cafe that we love.  We did some shopping all together, which was more fun than it might sound to you.  The boys enjoy being out and seeing all the "things" that there are to see at a store. One of our special buys was a label maker.  You know, the kind that you "press" the letters into the plastic strip to spell words and then peel the back off the plastic and stick it on.  Fun, fun, fun. (and a good way to practice reading and spelling) The boys are using it to label all their lego and playmobil bins to try to keep things more organized.  Today we spent almost the entire day sorting Legos and moving furniture and sorting the legos we found under the furniture. 

Before...

After....

Neither of the pictures really does the mess or the clean-up justice....but did you notice how the first is daytime and the second is night already?  The day went really fast!  The boys actually enjoyed sorting and organizing and I hope this new set-up helps them keep things a bit more tidy.  Organizing the toy room better was what both of the older boys said they wanted to be their "New Year's Resolution".  Owl said, he wanted to have more playing.  Yeah, me too buddy.

Some other updates.....

Hen is crawling. :)  He kind of has his own way of doing it though.  He does the cross-crawl on the carpeted area and on the hardwood floor he does this creative crawl-scoot-turn move.  It's very interesting.  He is exploring everything and keeping us all on our toes.  He says sooo many words already!  Mama, Papa, up, down, quack-quack, duck, cat, and he roars like a tiger and does a pig noise and a nice meow.  :)  

 

Badger wrote this awesome story.  He has never shown an interest in writing a story before, (that's more Cricket's cup of tea) but a friend gave us some paper that had lines and a space for a picture (you know the kind, right? except this was the Handwriting w/out Tears lines....) and he wanted to know what the paper was for.  When I explained that it was meant for a story with a picture he thought it sounded like a good idea. (hurray!)  Sorry to leave you in suspense, but I only took a picture of the first two pages.  Be assured though that peace comes to the galaxy and I think if I remember correctly it ends with, "and Anakin zooms back through space."

And lastly, our friends had their new baby this weekend.  We are officially no longer the only family in our sphere with four children.  It was really special to be able to pray for them and support them (in our own small way) over the past few weeks.  It also made me remember fondly the births of our littles and how crazy beautiful that whole experience is each and every time.  I'm so proud of my friend (the new mama) for enduring with patience the last few days of her pregnancy and for being so strong during the birth. Welcome new little baby boy!   We can't wait to meet you!