The Girls of 418

Hey, All!

Just wanted to show you a picture of all the girls in our building (with one visitor, Violet on the far left, her Mommy is on bed rest for a little while). We've been doing a weekly play date on Wednesdays, rotating apartments, so that they can all play together and us moms get a short break. This picture was taken last week at Ella's house. Ella is to the left of Maddie. Like always, more fun!

Some fun Art from Maddie . . .

Thursday night we went to Maddie's school for an Art Festival. In Maddie's Little Pelican class they made fishes for their art project. Maddie's is the orange one.

Maddie brought this picture home from school this week. She's been drawing houses and stick people but this was the first picture where she drew each one of us inside of our house.

Way to go Maddie!

Random Easter Weekend Pictures

These are not in order at all, just wanted to share!

Maddie and Katie Easter morning coming in to get their baskets and presents from their Grandparents.

Saturday after the Easter Egg Hunt, Spence in all his competitiveness had to count how many eggs the girls got and sort out the candy!

This is my cousin, Beth, holding my cousin, Kristy's, new little guy.

Just Maddie entertaining herself and Anna while they are waiting in line.

Maddie and Katie waiting to come downstairs to get their Easter baskets. They waited so patiently and I'm sure were enjoying hanging their legs over the wall.

That's it . . . now that you have them in your head, you can file them into place as you look at the pictures below. :)

Easter in Cleveland

Here are pictures from our weekend in Cleveland for Easter. I uploaded the pictures backwards thinking I was doing them in the right order. Sorry they are backwards!

Sunday night . . . This is Bear, my Aunt Missy's dog. He's a hugely, large German Shepard. Uncle Rob called him up on the couch to sit down. Katie loved it. Both of the girls got the biggest kick out of Bear. They miss their animals but are so thankful that Grammy and Grandaddy are taking good care of them until Daddy finishes Seminary.

Easter Sunday Morning. We had beautiful weather in Cleveland the whole time we were there. (Kind of rare for this time of year up there.) It was so nice, we all had a hard time smiling correctly and looking at the camera without squinting. Very fun!!

The girls got lots of fun things for their Easter baskets from Mammie and Popo and Grammy and Grandaddy. But here is what they got from Daddy and Mommy.

We celebrated Easter on Saturday with most of my Mom's family (we're missing a few cousins) and then some of the Kisses. Below is a picture of my girls and their (second) cousins. Greyson is our newest addition. Congratulations Chad and Kristy!

The kids all did an Easter Egg Hunt (since the pictures are in backwards order, this is after the hunt). It was so fun for the girls to have their cousins to play with.

While waiting for the eggs to be hid, the kids got to dip marshmallows in chocolate and sprinkles. From left to right, Tommy, Gavin (in front), Michael (in back), Maddie, Katie, and Anna on the stool.

Happy Eater Egg Dying! (Glad we got to do this event at Mammie's house!!)

It's Been A Long Time . . . .

As you can see I have not been the most diligent at posting pictures to our blog. I guess part of it is because we've been busy. Just plain old busy!

Since Maddie's ballet recital at the beginning of December we have finished our first full semester, enjoyed Christmas with both sides of our family, rang in the New Year, Katie turned 3, enjoyed a nice long break in Memphis over January, started our Spring Semester in February, Maddie started back to ballet along with Katie, Spence celebrated his 28th birthday, got ourselves to Spring Break in Memphis and now we're headed to Cleveland to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord!

Our weeks start off crazy, Monday is our catch up day from the weekend and Tuesday is our long day. Spence starts the day running with class at 8:30 a.m. and ends it in class at 9 p.m. Maddie has preschool in the morning, while Katie and I stay home and take care of our neighbors' little boy. Once we pick Maddie up, we eat lunch, the girls have their quiet time followed by some play time and then off to ballet during the hour that Daddy is home which wonderfully lands over dinner time.

Spence has had tons of reading this semester. Lots of books!! Me - I've been working on discipling myself to exercise which inadvertently causes me to make better choices with the food I put in my mouth. (I needed help with that! Who knew God would give me the grace to exercise which would then give me the grace to eat better! Amazing!) I'm also working on finding time in my day to spend having my own quiet time with the Lord. Trying to plan my days out with those two things and all the other obstacles a Mom has is challenging, but that's where grace comes in at. If I can exercise, great . . . if I can work on my Bible study, even better . . . if I can't it's ok! God still loves me and I can sweat tomorrow!

The girls - well, they are just crazy and busy as ever! Ready for the warm weather and to play on our patio. We spent a day working on the rather huge flower bed we have, trying to make it a more productive place for us. We made part of it a garden, added some bricks to put our grill on, and made a place for the girls picnic table. Now the actual patio is open for the girls to ride their bikes, chalk, and play with their water table. They are very excited!!

I posted pictures from the last 4 months of our lives. It starts with Christmas and goes thru now except I posted Maddie's choir from Palm Sunday last so it would be first. I had to show off my 4 year old!

Maddie's Palm Sunday Choir

Here is a short video of Maddie on Palm Sunday singing in the children's choir at church on Palm Sunday. They were all so cute and it was so sweet!

Happy Easter!