March Birthdays Celebrated

March is a busy birthday month in our family.  Since Rhett, Crosby, my sister and my niece are all March birthdays, we try to plan a weekend to meet at Mom and Dad's to celebrate together.  This year we went the weekend of the 14th-16th and had a wonderful time as always.

Friday evening Alexee and I went to feed the horses with Mom.  Alexee loves to see the cats at the barn.  She has not given up on someday having a calico kitten to call her own.  

After dinner, Dad gave Rhett a special gift that he'd been planning for his 10th birthday:  his very own .22 rifle.  Rhett was so proud of it, and I know he will treasure it always.  For now he will store it at their house for safe-keeping and will get to try it out when the weather gets warmer.  I love these pictures of them together:

Micaela's family got there late Friday night, so we waited until Saturday morning to open other gifts.

(Jeryn slept in that morning--he was extra tired from his ballgame the night before.)

They all get along so well and have a lot of fun together--great cousin time!

Crosby wanted to wear his new shirt from Aunt Kala's family right away!  I thought he looked so cute in it!

The kids all played lots of basketball with Uncle Mario.  He's such a good coach/teacher!

Crosby likes to brush Banner, and Banner seems to enjoy the attention.

My Grandmother came by after lunch on Saturday to have red velvet birthday cake with us.  Grandad was out of town so we missed getting to see him this time, but we sent him a piece of cake.  :)

Mo Nina and two of the birthday kids

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MICAELA, RHETT, JAIDEN & CROSBY!

WE LOVE YOU AND HOPE YOU ALL HAVE A WONDERFUL YEAR!

Love this pic too!

The field in front of Mom and Dad's house is full of jonquils this time of year--beautiful!  Alexee and Jeryn decided to pick some for Mo.  Such a cheerful sign of spring!

These two were born about 14 hours apart and are such close friends!  Great kids!  :)

Saturday night we all went out to eat at the Japanese restaurant.  We wanted to get a group photo with Grandparents before we left.

It's always a fun place to eat and the kids all like the food!  (But Alexee still hides under the table during the fire part of the cooking.)

So we had such a nice day on Saturday--nice temperature and a lot of fun playing together.  BUT...Crazy Arkanssas weather...snow was predicted for the following day!  We'd planned to go to church, but decided we should get on the road instead and try to get back home before the snow storm hit.  We left around 10:30 a.m. (had no problems at all), but Mom sent me this picture of the spring snow that afternoon!

10th Birthday!

Way behind on posts again!  Things have been busy here.  I cannot believe that Rhett is TEN years old now!  A whole decade-wow!  We love our thoughtful, sweet, smart, funny St. Patrick's Day boy.  Here he is on his way to school that morning--wearing green and taking his green lunch.  It seemed like we barely saw him on his birthday though...he had math team practice after school and then guitar lesson.  We picked up a pizza on the way home.  Happy Birthday, Rhett.  We love you SOOO much!

Wednesday the 19th was the math team finals at UALR.  We were happy to go support our school and  very proud of our teams for placing 2nd and 3rd in the school district!

Friday the 21st we got to babysit sweet Jack for a few hours--oh he is SO CUTE!  He slept almost the whole time so I didn't get to hold him as much as I wanted to, but he was great and went straight to sleep in his Pack&Play for a 2 hour nap.  I went in to check on him several times and just loved how cute he looked sleeping there!

precious little hands and feet!

Math Team & Birthday Dinners

Wednesday, March 12 :

Last Wednesday morning Alexee had a 7:50 doctor's appointment so we dropped Rhett off at school then hurried to the clinic.  I love our pediatrician.  He's known all three kids since birth.  I've always felt comfortable with him and felt like our kids were in such great care with him.  He asked me about Lane's job and about our upcoming move, and as we were leaving he said, "Now you know we're connected for life, right?  And you can call me if you guys ever need anything?"  Well, I burst into tears...and hugged him.  I'm pretty sure he was just expecting a nice, "Thank you so much, we truly appreciate you, and we will really miss you!".  So embarrassing--especially after I remembered I still have to take the boys back for their well-child visits in a few weeks.  A friend suggested I send Lane.  Ha!  Does everyone feel like their pediatrician is part of their family?

Anyway, after all that we made a stop at Krispy Kreme before I dropped Alexee off at school.  She wanted her picture made with the smiley-face doughnut so I could send it to her teacher.  Their class theme is "Team Smiley".  :)  

Next stop:  Rhett's Math Team competition at the college.  I thought I was running 45 minutes late because of the appointment, but to my surprise the competition had not even started yet!  Several schools had not shown up yet (ours being one of them!) because of some confusion with scheduling transportation with the school district.  A bus was supposed to pick them up but didn't show up!?  So finally everyone arrived safely and the competition began almost two hours late.  Thank goodness Lane was off work and had decided to stay home with Crosby because that would have been a long time for C to sit still.  Our school has two teams.  There were two, 20-minute testing sessions and then the scores were posted...and our two teams tied for 1st Place (out of 47 teams).  So proud of them!!  They will compete in the championship round on Wednesday--good luck to them!

top L:  Rhett before round 1; top R:  one of the 3rd graders playing the piano in the lobby during break--he was amazing!!

bottom L:  Rhett's team; bottom R:  excitement after the scores were announced!

Rhett rode the bus back to school for science club, Lane and Crosby went to pick up Alexee for me, and I picked up Crosby's friend Ellis at preschool because his parents were out of town for the day.  The boys had fun playing together--it was a nice day so they played with the Nerf guns and rocket launcher in the back yard.  E kept calling C "Mr. Cosby", which I thought was so cute and funny.

So that evening was when we'd planned to take Rhett and a few of his friends out for pizza for his birthday.  We picked up his friend Jack, dropped Ellis off at another friend's house and met two other buddies (Boston & Nate) at Razorback Pizza.  It was such an easy "party", if you could really even call it that.  The boys were so polite and had fun playing in the arcade.  I picked up Chips Ahoy cupcakes that afternoon at Kroger so we had those after pizza and Rhett opened his gifts.  Rhett didn't want us to sing or do candles.  I guess age 10 is when you become too cool for that stuff when in a public place with friends.  :(  I hope he had fun though!  He sure is a blessing to us, and we wish him a very very Happy Birthday!  We love you, RGG!

fun memories!

The birthday fun wasn't over yet!  Lane dropped the friends off at their houses and took our kids home for baths while I went to another restaurant to celebrate my friend Emily's birthday!  I am so thankful that she and I have gotten to know each other over the past couple of years--she is such a dear friend to me.  I know every girl around this table would say the same--that Emily is a blessing in their life!  She is such a thoughtful, encouraging, fun friend!

Around the table, L to R:
Julie, Natalie, Holly, Jennifer, Mitzi, Gabi, Mel, Leigh Ann, Jennifer, Emily, (me) & Lindsey

Weekend: JumpZone Party & MO Trip

Last Saturday was a day Crosby had been looking forward to for weeks!  He and his friend Cole both have March birthdays, so we had a combined party for them at JumpZone and invited the little boys from their preschool classes as well as some church/neighborhood friends.  I think it was a successful party--the kids seemed to have a blast!  It was an easy party to prepare for, too, which was an added bonus.  My friend Emily got these perfect bounce-house invitations, we each ordered a box of cupcakes decorated according to the birthday boys' wishes and we bought bouncy balls and bubble gum to make party favor bags.  Thank you to everyone who came to celebrate with us!

Birthday Boys!!

Crosby chose Power Rangers cupcakes and Cole chose Lego cupcakes

Happy Happy (early) Birthday to our 'baby' boy!

I love the different expressions on his face during the song.

And Happy Happy (belated) Birthday to our great buddy, Cole!

We were so happy that Bobba & Grammy came over to celebrate with us too!  We always love for them to come to visit.

Garner Kids

It was a fun day!

*****

The party was over at 3:30 and Lane and I left straight from there to go to MO for the weekend.  We pulled a U-Haul full of boxes that I'd been frantically packing because we thought we might have to be moved out by the first week of April.  As it turns out, that deal fell through so we won't be moving that soon, but at least it pushed me to pack some things that we won't be needing before summer.  The mess has been driving me crazy.

There was still some snow on the ground there (3/8), but the remaining piles melted on Sunday because it warmed up to be a beautiful day.  I think one of my favorite things about the new place will be the view from the dining room window--only trees!  We were hoping to see deer, but maybe next time.  We did see an armadillo in the bushes last time we were there.  He'd dug holes in the back yard though, so we weren't exactly happy about him.

I took a stack of paint samples and we tried to decide on a color to paint the dining room to make it a little bit lighter.

We'd heard that the Keeter Center has a great Sunday brunch, so we decided to try it out.  We were not disappointed!  It's on the campus of College of the Ozarks and the students work in the restaurant.  They were all very nice and the food was so good.  

A student also played the piano in the dining room.

We took this picture of the St. Patrick's Day cupcakes for Rhett since his birthday is the 17th.  And the little homemade mints were good.  :)

I was great to see my parents Sunday afternoon.  I was fine during the day when the sun was shining and we were getting projects done, but at night it was lonely and I wanted to go "home".  Knowing Mom and Dad could be there in less than an hour and a half was comforting.  It was also so nice to see a couple from Lane's work group and meet one of our neighbors!

The kids had fun while we were gone.  They went to lunch at Purple Cow on Sunday and Alexee lost a tooth when she took her first bite!  They were able to find it though--glad she didn't swallow it!  That afternoon Bob took the boys to see the Lego movie and they picked up pizza for dinner.  Crosby enjoyed "his" day with Bobba and Grammy on Monday while R & A were at school.  They took him to Toys R Us to shop for his birthday and they let him choose where to have lunch, which of course was Chick-Fil-a.  A huge thank-you to Lane's parents for helping with the kids so we could get started on the move. 

Missing another tooth!

(3/9/14)

For now, crossing the Arkansas River is when I feel like we are "back home" from a trip.  I wonder how long it will take for a new spot to say "welcome home"?

Two More Snow Days

I think we are now scheduled to go to school through June 12th.  We got more ice Sunday night so no school yesterday or today.  The kids have loved it, of course, but it wasn't that exciting to me.  I'm only thinking about spring!

Rhett had to miss lesson yesterday, but spent some time practicing.

Bogart has been a nervous wreck for two days.  It stresses him out when he can see people out in the street, so seeing/hearing the kids sledding all day really interfered with his usual nap times!  :)

Our driveway was SO slick.  We didn't really have snow--it was just solid ice, like a skating rink.  I'm sure I looked funny trying to get the trash can to the curb without falling!

Keeping an eye on the kids from the warmth of the dining room:

Alexee, Addison & Natalie eating ice.

Rhett and Alexee both played outside for hours yesterday.  Crosby didn't seem to like it quite as much.  He made two short trips outside but spent most of the snow day doing puzzles, playing with Legos and watching Power Rangers.

I'm sad that my daffodils were just about to bloom when the ice hit.  Seeing the cheerful yellow flowers always makes spring seem so close.

I've washed the snowsuits once again....I'm sure hoping we are done with them until NEXT winter!?