Out of the mouth of babes--April

4/3--Caroline's favorite word of the month:  Why?
C:  Chips, Mommy.
Me:  I don't have any chips.
C:  Why?
Me:  Because I didn't pack any.
C:  Why?
Me:  Because we just ate dinner.
C:  Why?
...she just goes on and on like this.

 Why are you wearing that name tag?

Why are you holding a napkin?

Why are you so dang cute?

4/6--While I was in Whit's classroom volunteering today, she wrote a poem for me.

"As graceful as a butterfly she dances.

She loves me.

And I love her too."

Sweet as sugar, I tell ya.

4/7--Whit was helping me plan her birthday party.  I asked her to write down a list of foods she'd like.  Then I got a phone call and left her on her own.  I was checking over the list.  It started off with party foods you'd expect:  Pissa, chocolat ice crem.  The other two were completely off the wall:  leftovrs and frid rise.

Why can't we serve leftovers and fried rice at my party?

4/9--At the Grasshoppers baseball game, it started getting chilly.  Even though we were wearing jackets, Whit was shivering.  She told Andrew, "My beauty is cold."  He repeated that to me and I started laughing.  He said, "She's pretty serious about it."  I looked to see that she had tears in her eyes.  He asked her, "Where is your beauty?"  She replied, "I said 'My bootie is cold.'"  Oops.

Aaagh!  An alligator's attacking my beauty!

4/11--During sacrament meeting, Brandon leaned over and whispered in my ear, "You smell like over-roasted s'mores."  Hmmm... Is that a compliment?

 Sweet talker

4/15--Caroline is obsessed with baby worms and bumble-bees.  If we see an insect of any type, she will give it one of these names and refer to it frequently.

 Our baby worm

4/18--Caroline went to bed first tonight.  When the big kids went upstairs, we heard them cracking up laughing.  I went to investigate and this is what I found:

 Caroline had fallen asleep with this book right on her face.

Already developing a love for reading.

4/20--Whit was very concerned about looking good before she went to school today.  She wanted to look fancy without wearing a dress, chose clip-on earrings and a necklace, and even wore lip gloss.  I thought maybe she had a new crush, but she informed me that a little boy in her class yesterday told her that girls weren't pretty.  She was a on a mission to prove him wrong.

She doesn't need to convince us.

We've got proof that girls are pretty.

4/21--B was a little under the weather today.  We were out in the backyard playing and he said, "I feel like I'm being controlled by someone in the virtual world."  O.  K.  Then when it was time for bed and he was feeling a little better, "I think the guy that was controlling me in the virtual world logged off."

 I didn't want to climb the tree, Mom.

It was the man controlling me from the virtual world!

4/24--We passed an old mill and Andrew was telling the kids how cool it is that people could harness the power of water to move big machines before they had electricity.  Brandon, who always seems to bring the conversation back to Harry Potter, said, "You remind me of Ron's dad and the way he always talks about Muggle stuff."

 I've heard that Muggles love baseball.

4/24--Brandon is now coming up with anti-smoking public service announcements.  We passed a man smoking a cigar in his car.  B said, "They should make posters for people who watch LOST that say, 'Don't smoke or the smoke monster will get you.'"  Very clever.

 Next campaign?

The good egg project.

4/25--Whitney tried on a pair of my sunglasses with brownish lenses and said, "Everything looks like soy sauce!"

She then proceeded to create a soy sauce hairdo with them.

4/25--Andrew and I were talking about how beautiful North Carolina is.  He said, "It will be hard to leave here someday, huh?"  Whitney overheard and said, "We can just get a map."

4/25--Brandon's random thought from the backseat of the van, "I wonder if there's a museum called 'The Museum of Chain Link Fences.'"

4/28--Whit was thinking about fortune tellers and asked, "What if there was such thing as a five-chin teller?"

Let me check my crystal ball.

*A few bonus pics because I think they are so cute*

Caroline thinks she's ready to start her softball career

Drew and Care Bear

At Grandma's request, a pic of C 

wearing Whit's big old purple crocs. 

B, Caroline, and Lauren.

Look at those smiles!

Recent sources of happiness

In the ups and downs of life, I am happy to be enjoying mostly ups at the moment. I know it could be fleeting, so am drinking in the goodness while it lasts.  A few of my blessings:

*Lunch with girlfriends

*Reading for fun.

*Watching Brandon get recognition for all his hard work at school

*Seeing Caroline ride a pony for the first time

at the school carnival.  She was THRILLED and

talked about it for days.

*Great behavior from my kids during sacrament meeting today.

*B's silly sense of humor

*Family movie night:  Wall-E

*Watering and weeding our little backyard garden.

*Watching my girls entertain themselves by racing

back and forth...back and forth.  Caroline loves running.

*Seeing Whitney progress in her tumbling class

*Participating in a church service project at The Servant Garden.

It felt good to get my hands dirty,

but it really warmed my heart

to see my kids giving of themselves.

It was hard work for a good cause.

The Servant Garden raises fresh produce to 

distribute to those in need in our community.

We helped remove rocks and debris from the

field to prepare it for planting.

*Family date night.

Our babysitter was unavailable this weekend, so we spent

our allotted babysitting money to take the whole fam out for Japanese.

Yum!  Whit proposed the idea that we eat out as a family EVERY

Saturday night.  Nice try, honey.

*Spending a beautiful Sunday afternoon at a city park we'd

never visited:  The Bog Garden.  Sounds muddy, right?

 There are swampy sections, but there were also gorgeous parts:

Beautiful blooms 

on trees.

A mama duck with her ducklings.

(There are not many things cuter!)

A waterfall.

(Instant relaxation.)

Green, green everywhere.

(Have I mentioned that I love NC?)

So many reasons to smile.

Another sign of a growing girl

Do you notice anything different about my little sleeping angel?

Perhaps something that's missing?

Like the vertical bars of her crib?

Yes, friends, Caroline has made the leap to a big girl bed.

Just shy of her second birthday, she learned how to climb out of her crib.  We had two tear-filled nights where she wanted nothing to do with either the crib or the big girl bed.  But on night three, she embraced the concept of the bottom bunk.

That's all it took.  Two nights.

Amazing.

Now she goes right to bed on the bottom bunk.  She gets out a few times to push play on the CD player or grab a new book, but she doesn't leave her room and falls asleep on her own.  Yay!

 

And now we bid farewell to the crib.

It was a long-time friend.

Used almost every night for the past 8 1/2 years.

Now destined for yard sale heaven.

Teddy Bear Picnic

We don't do "friend" birthday parties every year for the kids, but Whitney started planning about two months ago for her big day, so we had quite the shindig here at our house.  The bad part about being the hostess is that I slack on my photography duties.  So, the pictures are limited, but I still wanted to document the fun.

She wanted a teddy bear party.  I remembered my mom doing "Teddy Bear Picnics" with her kindergarten classes a few years back, so we went with that theme. 

She invited several of her friends and they all brought a favorite stuffed animal along.  We started off just playing in the backyard while we waited for everyone to arrive.  Then we went inside to make teddy bear pizzas.

I bought canned biscuits and had these "bodies" ready along with toppings so each child could make their own pizza.  I made sure to get sliced olives and mini pepperonis, thinking that they could use them to make eyes, ears, and paws...but they didn't really go for that.  Six year olds care more about how it's going to taste than the aesthetics of the pizza.

While the pizzas were baking, Andrew was in charge of leading them in a Teddy Bear Treasure Hunt.  He came up with the clues and hid the prizes.  The first prize was a bucket for each child.  They put the rest of the prizes in the buckets and these were their goody bags to take home.

Next up was one of Whit's ideas:  Pin the nose on the bear.

It must have been harder than it sounded because several of the noses missed the bear completely and landed on the wall of the shed.  :)

While the kids were enjoying their pizza,

I filled in certificates for the teddy bear contest

(another one of Whit's ideas.)

Everyone got to show us their bear,

received an award,

and got to pick a prize.

Then we got to eat Teddy Bear birthday cake.  I prefer to just buy my cakes, but Whit requested a homemade one.  Yikes. I used my springform pans for the first time. (They were a wedding gift--almost 13 years ago!)  It is obviously not professional, but I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

And Whit was, too.

That's what matters.

She got some awesome gifts.

It was like Christmas all over again.

One of her favorites:

This guitar with headset microphone.

Her and Brandon have decided to start a band.

We had about ten minutes left by this point and Whitney organized a game of "Cub, cub, bear."

She is quite the little party planner.

We had a blast.

And I was completely exhausted by the end.

Before she went to bed, she was already mulling over ideas for her 7th birthday party.  

I told her she might need to save them for her 8th.

Whitney at SIX

Happy birthday, Whitney!  You are one of the sweetest girls in the whole world.  We are SO blessed to have you in our family.  Here are some of the things we love about you as a six-year-old girl.

*You have a talent for making others feel good about themselves.  You are quick to compliment and rarely criticize.  You genuinely care about those around you.  I love that you ask me how my day was and will randomly give hugs and say "I love you."

*You have an incredible imagination.  You are perfectly happy playing by yourself upstairs.  Your mind can take you to far off places and you have a whole set of "fake friends" to play with there.

*You are a fantastic helper!  You are always asking to help when I cook and you do a great job.  I think you'll be ready to take over responsibility for the family meals within the next couple of years.  :)  You also watch out for your little sister and let us know when she's into mischief, "Mom!  Caroline has a permanent marker!"

*We love hearing you sing and watching you dance.  You seem to always have a song in your head and walk around the house singing it.  I love that you sing for your teachers on the playground, too.  Don't lose that confidence, sweetheart!

*I love watching you walk into the bonus room after your bath at night.  You are wearing cute pajamas and your hair has been parted and combed and looks so smooth.  It makes me happy to see you snuggle up with Daddy and read the scriptures before bed.

*You have a silly side.  You love to laugh.  You even have a great fake laugh that you bust out on occasion.  When you hear a funny joke, you'll repeat it to us for several days, hoping for that same happy reaction.

*I love that you are already developing an insatiable appetite for reading.  It has been so fun to watch your reading skills explode over the last few months and to find you asleep with a pile of books beside your bed.  It is amazing that you are already reading and understanding chapter books.
 

*You love to eat and enjoy a wide variety of tastes.  A few of your interesting favorites:  shrimp, asparagus, baby corn, olives, pickles, and mangoes.  It is so nice for me to know that no matter what I cook, at least one member of the family is going to enjoy it.

*I love that you are so well-behaved at church.  Some weeks can be hard for me to take care of all three kids while Daddy has to sit at the front of the chapel.  You are almost always reverent and writing things down in your Sunday notebook.  It means so much to me.

We will love you forever, no matter what, Whit.  Thanks for all the smiles, hugs, and love you share.  You are a special little girl.