Another Winterized Romper

After Cait winterized her romper last week, Mikayla decided to show baby sister how it's done in tweenland.

The sun was out today and Mike just bought me a new lens so I was super excited to get outside with a willing subject and take some photos!!!

Taking further inspiration from Alana at I Love Denham, Mikayla came up with this little number all by herself.  

Wearing leggings under a "romper" or even under shorts sure does open up the wardrobe options.  The girls are sick of wearing jeans so this is a great way to mix it up!

This girl of mine has so many different sides.  Lately she has been such a pleasure to have around.  She has been helping Maddie read her chapter book each day, she helps her sisters pick out outfits on days when we have somewhere to go, she helps me get the house cleaned up at the end of the day and she is a task master for getting us all out of the house and where we need to be on time.

Seems like discovering that she loves writing regularly on her blog and creating the Book Nook site has helped to give Mikayla a new sense of purpose and enjoyment that has benefitted everyone!!

Toddler Time

 We've been going to the Library weekly so the big girls can load up on books.  We go during Toddler Time and Cait loves having fun with all the "babies" (as she calls them...some of them are 3 and 4 but to her they are all babies!).  Caleb and Maddie enjoy helping her enjoy the songs and stories.  His week, Mailee sat with her as well.

Listening intently.

Doing the motions to a song.

Lots of helpers!

"mine damp!" {my stamp}

"roggy" {froggy}

Maddie's Community Map

Counting Down, Slowing Down

According the the Baby Bump app on my phone, I have a baby the size of a leek {19.75in}, a 2 1/2 pound uterus and only 8 days to go!  Nesting is in full swing around here and I am pretty sure I have begun to perfect "the waddle".

I am making sure to stop for lots of moments like this.
So precious!

When Two Schools Collide

Today is our last day with Tammy's kids {AKA J. Stang Elementary}.

After seeing how fantastic it can be to have this many children in the house, I am definitely  gonna be working on coordinating this to be a weekly occurrence.  Imagine if I had the kids one Monday and Tam had them the next?  One Monday of 8 kiddos in the house doing fun things together, the next Monday a day to yourself?  Oh My!  Not sure why it has taken this long to come up with such a brilliant plan!?!

Here is what our Monday looked like thus far...

{kids are playing outside...a little extended recess because I needed to put my feet up for a bit.  Remember that cleaning project?  Well I *might* have overdone it yesterday...I am feeling it today!}

Rainbow paintings,

made completely with their hands!

Some of that green paint on those there hands ended up on my brown hoodie.

I was not so happy about that.

Did you know that if you wipe it off with a wet cloth right away it comes right out?

I was really happy about that!!

Pots of gold...St. Patrick's Day is coming up after all!

I am gonna cover these with contact paper (mac-tac) and use them for place mats during our St. Patrick's Day/ 100th day party.

Sliding down the stairs!

This is a regular occurrence.  

It is loud.

It is fun.

No injuries have been sustained as of yet:)

They're rippin!

They got a push off the top from the girls.

Mikayla and Jenaya made this cute dog for Maddie's Twinn doll Paisley.

Have you met Paisley?

Here she is with her new pet.

I love that sometimes the kids will get an idea in their head of something fun to do and as long as their work is under control, they can go off on a tangent like this.  

Making a dog out of household items ended up taking a lot of problem solving and because there were two girls working on it there was also a lot of listening, explaining, disagreeing, convincing and agreeing going on.  I don't think these kinds of little experiences can be discounted.  I love that two tweenish aged girls spent 1 1/2 hours doing this project and were so proud when they were finished.  They even asked me to take the photos!!

This is the kind of thing that kids their age should be doing for fun!

Can you see them?  

This is the view from my house...all the kiddos out at the park playing soccer. (with obstacles)

They are still out there, I have written this entire post without any interruptions.

This is what my living room currently looks like.

Our house is the biggest casualty of school at home.

Today I don't care.

Today my feet are up and I am good with that:)

Many hands make light work...I am gonna be using my power of parental delegation on the crew before they get their snack:)

Oh, perhaps it will actually be more of a power of bribery...

...I'd better go figure out a really great snack!!

Potty Time

Cait came shuffling over to me just like this yesterday, with her pants down and holding her full potty.

"me pee"

What a big girl!  Let the potty training days begin:)

Colleen + Eight

I have had my niece and 2 nephews for the last three days from 9-5.  We have been having a blast.  Our kids were so excited to get to do school with their cousins!

Here's a little rundown of the last three days...

Mikayla and Jenaya ran the morning routine the first day.  

Working on drawing places in our community to help Maddie and Ethan with their community map project.

Pioneer project; making molasses candy.  

Recipe from an old cookbook that we checked out at the library.  Hilarious to try to figure out what they are talking about...things like "1/4 yeast cake" I was running to Google to try to figure out what it all meant!

Pulling the candy.

8 lunches lined up for co-op. 

 Food prep is definitely the biggest part of having this many kids in the house.

Playing the straw game.  This was played multiple times.  The kids loved it.  

Sooo much spitty water to dump...yeek!

7 fantastic leprechauns ready to go on display at Rhino Chirpractic.  The kids did a great job!

We will all be together again on Monday and we have big plans.  It is so fun to have such a great group of kids to enjoy life together.  

They all genuinely love each other and have a great time in whatever they do.

Never Too Young For Style

With the dreary gray weather today, the hopes of wearing something springy flew out the window.  Cait and I decided to not let the weather get us down or put a halt on the springtime clothing.  We looked to our favorite style blog I Love Denham for inspiration.  Here is Cait winterizing her romper {overalls}

Thanks for the inspiration Alana:)

Mikayla's Book Nook

Mikayla is my little bookworm.  She loves to read.  She amazes me with how quickly she flies through substantial books.   Mikayla has started a BLOG to document and review the books that she has read.  She thought it would be helpful for other kids as well. 

I helped her get the blog up and we discussed having a template to follow for each book but other than that, everything you see on the blog is her own words, her own work.  She even figured out how to take the images of the book covers from Amazon.com and put them in her blog!  

This is where you can find Mikayla for a good 2-6 hours of each day around here.  

I know that my girl is enjoying creating her reviews on all the books she is reading but I am certain she would really enjoy some encouragement.  Help me keep her motivated, hop on over and leave her a little comment from time to time.  

Mikayla's Book Nook

If you have any 8-12 year olds in your life, or know any elementary school librarians or teachers, pass this blog along.  She'd love to have a little group of kids who love to read from all over the place connected in this way!

Baby Bump Photos Taken By Mailee

This morning we took a walk and we still had the gorgeous, huge purple balloons from Maddie's party so we took them along.  Mailee asked if she could do a photo shoot and I agreed.  She is quite the photographer.  Here are a few of my favourite images all captured by my 9 year old...

Cait was so proud to hold the big balloons!

Kisses!

I have gotten a photo of each of my toddlers sitting "on the baby".  The kids love these photos and Mailee wanted to take some of Cait sitting on the new baby!

Huggies!

The balloons were fascinating our little bear:)

She was so proud to get to hold the balloons all my herself!

Mailee was crouching down for this one, getting the grasses in the photo.  She was loving using her creativity with the camera.

I never really realized that Mailee enjoys taking photos.  She had a confidence that I haven't seen before.  There is so much I don't know about my kids!  She was so excited and so proud to look through all her pics.  Even being home with a kid every day does not guarantee that all of her needs, talents, dreams and hopes will be identified and fulfilled. 

Today reminded me to slow down and pay attention.  

You never know what kind of treasures are hiding in your own home!

Maddie's Purple Party

 Maddie is 7, I can't believe it!  When we were picking a party theme this year, Maddie couldn't decide.  We went from rainbow party to bowling party to spa party...nothing was sticking.  One thing I know about my Maddie is she loves purple.  When I suggested a purple party, she was thrilled!

Here's some of the fun.  I will post the rest of the party details over on the Fig & Ruby blog.

Mads with her cake.  She really wanted a dolly for the top.  She told me "I know you are busy so it's okay if you can't do it but I really like those dolls you can make"

How do I NOT do it after she so sweetly said that???  Two nights before the party, I got her done.  Maddie can't wait to put her on a special shelf in her room:)

Caity in her purple dress...this is probably her 3rd or 4th bunch of grapes.  She was *just* tall enough to reach the grape bowl and she was going for it!  Funny thing is, she also had purple peeps in her reach but she didn't know what those were so she didn't touch them!!

Mailee and Mikayla were awesome helpers.  They did purple eyeshadow, purple nails, they helped the girls make friendship pins and ran most of the games.  I love having so many "mini-me's" around on party days! {now I just need to teach them to enjoy the clean-up part of my job}

All of Maddie's friends did an excellent job of wearing their purple!!

This was a quiet group of girls.  They were also very willing to sit for a few photos.
Such sweeties!

Playing "The Straw Game"

We made this one up this morning before the party.  I found the amazing purple straws in a package of 20 for $1.68 at the dollar store.  I had to get them but had no use for them.  The family put our heads together and came up with this game that ended up to be a huge hit! {I love when that happens!}

Each girl had a paper cup full of water and a glass jar that was empty.  They had 2 minutes to use their straws to transfer as much water as they could from the paper cup to the glass jar.

We lined them all up to see who's jar was the most full.  I think they would have played this a few more times had I let them!

But we had snacks to enjoy.
And pretty paper straws to sip Limeade out of.

And a rousing game of Musical Chairs to play!

And a birthday song to sing!!

I think Maddie had a great time.  She had all her favourite friends here, her family and her favourite color. What more could a girl want?

I am tired.  I tend to over-do it when it comes to parties.  

Okay, that might be an understatement.

I really like to go all out.

It's so fun.

I love seeing my birthday kid's face when she runs out into the living room on party day to see the decorations for the first time.

I love that they know to go peek in the fridge if they want to see their cake.

I love how excited they are when their friends arrive.

I have put a cap of 10 years old on the party days. 

I hope that celebrating in a big way when they are little will create special memories but I also want to teach my family to find joy in the small things, in little gestures that can show a lot of love.

Still working on the details of that concept:)

In the meantime, the party is done and the mommy is tired!