Monday, January 22, 2018

Family pictures (and Christmas card) and Kids Quotes

We had family pictures done in late October by Kate Burris and I love how they turned out.  I knew I wanted to use my dads car as a "prop".  I thought it would be a great way to remember the year we brought the car over here.





This car means a lot to our family.

Then we had to do a few individual shots and I can't believe how big they all look.

Can you say hello teenager?

I love this picture of my handsome little boy.....hand in pocket and all.
 You can see that she has no personality at all. Haha :)
 And this is what our life looks like most of the time.  Just a little crazy.
And because we never get any pictures together of just the two of us

Hannah wanted a few individual pictures in the car.  She loves to go for rides in the car.


Then we had to make a quick wardrobe switch for our Christmas card pictures.  We had a lot of fun with it.
I love Evan's expression in this one.
All three are looking pretty cool in this one.

Here is the front of our Christmas card.
And the back.....


 I also wanted to write down some more quotes from Nora and a few from Evan.  I recently read through the quotes from Hannah when she was that age and it made me laugh.  She said some funny things and its so easy to forget the little day to day things that make us laugh.

Nora noticed that the light in our under the stairs closet was flickering and she said "There is lightning in there and I don't like it"

She came home from school and told me "I ate all my blueberries that are red for lunch". Those red blueberries were strawberries.

I asked her in the morning if she wanted chocolate milk and she said "No, I want hot chocolate, but cold"

On Evan's birthday she said to him "Happy birthday Evan, you will have your party at mac n cheese".    She meant Chuck E Cheese.

I told Nora about something that was going to be on TV that night and she said "oh which one the TV upstairs or downstairs"

She told me one night "I love you back and forth" instead of "to the moon and back"

Evan said "Mom I am learning lower case numbers now at school"

I don't remember what it was, but he said or did something incorrectly and after I told him he said "I am surprised I was not right".  












Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Dear Evan

Dear Evan,
Another year has passed and you turned the big 5 years old.  You will start Kindergarten this year.  How is this possible?  I wish I was better at putting my thoughts down on paper (or I should say the computer), but I am not.  I was actually reading through all of my blog entries from 5 years ago last night and I was an emotional mess.  We have talked to you about how sick you were when you were born, but I know you don't really understand.  I want you to read my Blog entries from 5 years ago one day when you are older so you can see what an incredible strong little guy you were.  After reading it again this week I truly believe that you are a miracle boy and a strong fighter.  I do think it shows in your personality today.  You do not give up (as annoying as that can sometimes be, I am certain that's what got you through your first few weeks of life and I am so thankful for that fighting spirit).  
You are a very smart, sweet, wild and gross (by that I just mean the typical boy stuff) little boy.  You always have an answer or a solution to every problem or argument.  You are very creative and love to build things.  You are always the peace maker and come up with compromises.  You always tell us how much you love us.  You always have to be doing or playing something.  You are nonstop and exhausting.  You think poop and farting jokes or songs (its amazing what kind of songs you can find on Alexa) are hilarious.  You love board games (currently Monopoly is your favorite and you are really good at it).  You are competitive and love to win, but you are also a great loser (your sisters could learn a thing or two from you).  You love to play soccer, football, basketball, baseball, foosball, bowling......basically anything that has to do with a ball.  You like to play rough and wrestle and your sisters are not always fans of that.  
Five year ago today is when you were flown down to ACH.  I will NEVER forget that day and the emotions and how scared we were.  You had to go through more than any tiny human ever should have to go through, but you came out strong on the other side.  We are so thankful to have you here and we are beyond proud of you.  We love you to chick-fil-a, the ice cream store and to chuck e cheese and back (the moon is not good enough in your opinion).

You are also a very handsome little dude.
Your birthday table.
We drove up to Lawrence, KS last weekend to go to the KU vs K State basketball game.  That is how you wanted to spend your birthday weekend (your daddy may have had a little influence on that wish:)).  We will still celebrate your birthday with a party with friends next weekend.

We love you,
Mommy and Daddy


Friday, January 5, 2018

Christmas 2017

It's still hard to believe that Christmas is over and all of the decorations are stored away again.  Just last night Nora asked Alexa to play Jingle Bells, I think she is in denial too :)

Lots of fun things happened in preparation for Christmas.
A fun class party with slime making
And a fun game......shaking the ping pong balls out of the box (Evan and Nora played that multiple times)
We did lots of Christmas baking and cookie decorating
The many faces of Hannah
This was our second year for the Reindeer cake pops
And the grand finale was baking cookies for Santa
Santa brought gifts to our house on Christmas Eve morning, because we were leaving that day to go to Branson to spend Christmas with Scott's family.
Santa brought a bike for Hannah, a Foosball table for Evan and a doll kitchen for Nora.  Everybody was happy.
Christmas morning the kids opened their stockings and a few gifts from us.  I didn't take any pictures and only got one of Nora from aunt Amy.
She got a little pretend Barista set and a Starbucks apron.....she loves to play with it.  She asks me for my order every day now.

The kids got lots of cousin time and loved it.  They were always entertained (except for Evan who still asked to play with us all of the time and we had to remind him that he had a lot of cousins to chose from).  The temperatures were freezing, but the kids still went outside a lot to play football and basketball.  It was a wonderful family time and I took zero pictures all week.  I was able to get a few pictures from family members....
The day after Christmas we went to Snowflex mountain to try their tubing.  We had a blast.  Nora and Evan were old enough to go with an adult.  Neither of them loved it the first couple of times and then they finally realized it wasn't scary and loved it.  We went down that hill countless times and it was still fun even the very last time we went.  We had the entire family there, so that made it even more fun.
Hannah asked one of the guys to give her a little spin going down the hill and she spun the entire way down.  We watched her get out of the tube and she just fell over.  Then she did it all over again:)
Evan's favorite part was racing each other.

We played the 3rd annual Reindeer games one night and had so much fun.  Our kids thought the "poop the potato" game was the funniest.  Of course they did.  
I wore my new Christmas leggings for the occasion.
I had my game face on.
On our last day we all went to see "The Miracle of Christmas" at the Sight and Sound theater.  This was our Christmas gift from Scott's parents.  We all enjoyed the show (Nora and Evan were a little antsy, but overall did fine).
That wraps up Christmas 2017.