Goodwill and a haircut made me cry

I was brought to tears a couple times this weekend...Bear says I was being goofy, and it was over goofy stuff, I guess, but it's well within the rights of a mom to cry over little things like this. Since Caitlyn was born, we had kept all of the clothes from newborn size on up. We knew we were going to have more kids and didn't want to get rid of things if we could use them again. Allison had her turn at wearing some of them and passed them down to Lauren (that is, what survived Allison and her love of being dirty, got passed down). If we have a say in things, we don't want to have more kids until I am finished with school (if we even have any more), which is going to take 6 years for me to complete. So, we packed up my maternity stuff and a bunch of 0-3 winter clothes that Lauren can't wear now anyways, and donated them to Goodwill. Such a simple thing, but it had me upset a bit. I know we don't need to carry that stuff around forever, but it was still very sad for me to see it go. That was the first time I was teary-eyed.

The second thing that had my eyes leaking was that Allison had asked to get her hair cut for the first time. I know it's just hair, but now her baby curls are gone and she looks even more grown up. She did pretty well having to sit still and was very excited to feel her hair when I was finished cutting it. It looks really cute on her and at least it will be cooler over the summer. Caitlyn wanted her hair trimmed too, so she got hers done second. Bear needed his cut also, but since he has to go to work early tomorrow, he decided we would do his tomorrow night since it took so long to get the girls hair done tonight.

Otherwise, we had a fairly quiet weekend at home and even got to fall asleep to a nice thunderstorm Saturday night. That's something I have always loved. Anywho, enjoy the pics!

My big girls posing before going out to play hard and get dirty.
Lauren was pooped out after being outside for the afternoon and loved sleeping on her daddy!

She too stinkin' cute...even with short hair. Hard to tell, but I cut a couple inches off Caitlyn's hair. She still wants it to grow down to her butt!

Lots of love to you all!!!

Gone fishing!!!

Bear had promised to take the girls fishing over the weekend and since he didn't get his licenses until Sunday, he was a little short on time and had to get them out there! It took us about 15 minutes to get all the fishing stuff together, load the gear and the girls in the truck, the half of our house in the truck, and finally get ourselves in our seats. Then it was a 10 minute drive to get out to the lake which to get to, we had to do a little bit of off roading. No sooner than we could see the lake, it started to downpour massively! We sat there for a little while, and since the rain wasn't slowing down, we headed back to the house. And of course, as luck would have it, as soon as we got home, the rain completely stopped. Bear was determined to get out and get at least a little bit of fishing done with the girls, so we had to load back up again, but this time went to a different lake that was easier to access. We got everything out of the truck, and Caitlyn was so excited to get fishing that she broke her and Allison's poles. She completely snapped off the very top of each of them trying to put the poles together. So, Bear used his Gerber to cut off the broken end, and now the girls have slightly shorter poles, but they don't even notice. The girls idea of fishing was about the same as mine when I was their age and it mostly involves throwing rocks in the water. Both of the girls have been afraid of worms lately, so Bear told them that if they wanted to fish, they had to at least touch one of the worms that we brought along to fish with. Caitlyn absolutely refused to touch it, but Allison was brave and even held it in her hand. Bear was the first and only one to get a bite, so he let Caitlyn reel it in. She got a big kick out of that! Allison was just content to play with her pole in the water. At least they got to get out for a little while. As for myself, I don't really get to fish...I'm just there for kid control and to get my legs sunburned when I forget sunscreen. Maybe we'll have better luck next time!!!

6 weeks

It is so hard to believe that Lauren is already 6 weeks old!!! We were curious about how much she weighs since she has been filling out so much and of course is noticeably heavier. So, Bear had her sit down on our scale the best she could (with assistance of course). She already weighs about 10 pounds! And the best part about it is that she slept for 8, yes I said 8, hours last night! I must have really needed to sleep because I didn't wake up all night until she did. It was so odd waking up feeling rested, so I knew that she had slept a long time, but I never would have guessed that it would have been 8 hours!!! Yeah baby!!! I don't expect her to do that every night just yet but it was a nice treat anyways.

We were going to get pictures taken at Walmart, but the lady didn't seem like she knew what she was doing at all and even forgot about putting Lauren in our family picture, so we just left and decided to do our own pictures at home. I think these turned out better than if we would have done them at the store! These pics are extra special because the quilt that Lauren is laying on was the first quilt that Granny ever made which has been passed down to Lauren (and we all know how precious Granny quilts are!). Enjoy the pics...no leaking eyes, Mamaw!!!

Happy Father's Day

The girls all love their daddy to pieces, and I couldn't have asked for a better one for them to love!!! And let me tell you, my big girls were very excited to celebrate Father's Day this year! Even Lauren got to participate in the festivities. I came up with the idea of getting Bear a new coffee cup because the one he uses all the time is cracked all the way around the cup and I'm just waiting for it to fall to pieces one of these days. But, I didn't just want to get him a plain old boring cup or buy one that says something cheesy on it, so we decorated it ourselves! The girls hands are just small enough that they each got to put a hand print on his cup, in different colors of course, and then I painted their name by their hand. I put a clear coat of paint over the whole cup to keep the hand prints from chipping off and let it dry. It turned out so cute and was an excellent idea...that is until we poured hot coffee in it and Bear took a drink. The heat from the coffee caused the paint to become slightly tacky to the touch and released a not only the smell of fresh paint, but the taste as well. Sorry Bearamus...it was a great idea that sort of flopped in the end. Oh well, at least he has a really cute pen/pencil holder now!!! He didn't really have a lot that he wanted to do, just spend the day with his girls, which included his favorite activity...nap time!!!

Daddy and Lauren slept longer than the big girls did, so they escaped from being in another picture. But all my girls like to snuggle together for pictures frequently...no escaping this time!

I know that my girls are the luckiest girls in the world to have their daddy in their lives! It would be so easy for him to not be very active with them because they're little girls and like little girl things, but he takes such pride in doing all those little things that mean so much to the girls. No, he doesn't partake in their princess dress up games, but will do just about anything else for them! I love to watch them all cook together! Of course, sometimes daddy has to be tough on them, but the girls always fight to sleep in their favorite spot...right on daddy's chest where he has put them to sleep since they were all babies. Bear, I love you so much and am so grateful that you and the girls have the relationships that you do. You are the best daddy our girls could have ever hoped for!!!

How time flies...

Good grief...where to start?!?! Okay, so I haven't been the best about keeping this blog updated lately, so this will be a long one! All our girls are doing wonderful! Caitlyn and Allison are enjoying having a baby sister to help take care of and Lauren is growing like a weed! She is already a month old and for some reason, seems as though she is getting bigger quicker than the other girls did at that age. Maybe it's just because the other two are getting so much bigger too...I don't know! I would guess that she's about 8 pounds now and close to 21 inches long. Lauren doesn't go back to the doctor until she's 2 months old, so we'll find out more in a month. She is starting to sleep for 5 hours at night every now and then, which is great because then I get to catch up a little on some sleep. She is staying awake more too and is getting better at holding her head up.

We recently made out first trip since Lauren was born, and things went relatively smooth! We left for Kansas pretty early in the morning so that Caitlyn and Allison could sleep some more in the car and we drove straight through. Ten hours and 3 outfit changes for the baby later, we arrived to catch the last couple of hours of Great Papaw's auction. It was so great to see every one there, even though it was only for a couple hours. During our week there, we had lots of excitement! The girls wanted to see our calves and had lots of fun trying to bottle feed them. We also learned that Allison is terrified of the chickens. Any time one of them would come near her, she would scream and try to get away as fast as possible! She wouldn't even let Papaw chicken come near her and that is a very friendly chicken! The goofy bird jumped in our car when we were getting ready to go to town like it's a dog or something, but got kicked out before I could get a pic of her sitting in the driver's seat.


And what do grown-ups do when they have too much time on their hands? They play with the kids toys! Bear got out the little go-kart and fired it up and took it for a ride...too funny!!! Austin liked driving the go-kart so much that he kept looking back at us and smiling and laughing when he was driving and nearly went through the barbwire fence, but decided to pay attention to what he was doing just in time.
We even got to go to a couple of Elijah's baseball games. Mamaw made some t-shirts for all 5 grandbabies to wear to the game. Elijah has his own little fan club going on! Too bad I couldn't get them all to sit down at the same time to get a pic of them all.

Caitlyn lost her second tooth while were there as well. She wouldn't let Bear get near her tooth this time since he poked the other one out last time. But Mamaw and her magic fingers got it to come right out without Caitlyn knowing it! While we were down there, we went over to what will be our home to see what all work needed to be done. Bear sprayed weed killer around the lagoon in the pasture and all of the driveway, mowed the yard, and trimmed the pony's hooves as much as she could tolerate. In the house, we took down the drop ceiling in 2 bedrooms and the hallway upstairs, took some carpet out only to discover that the floor had been painted like a checkerboard over a nice wood floor. We've got some more work to do over the summer and are looking forward to all of our projects. The first thing Caitlyn said when we went into the empty house (it was/is Granny and Great Papaw's house) was that she wanted Great Papaw to live with us. But the girls liked to go over to Great Papaw's new apartment and check things out. Plus the two bowls of ice cream and handfuls of candy he fed each of them helped a bit too! As far as when we will be moving to Kansas, it won't be until around the 1st of October. I was talking with Caitlyn one day about school and asked her again if she still wanted to start kindergarten in Kansas. She initially said yes! I explained to her that if she wanted to start in Kansas, we would have to move without daddy. She about burst into tears at the thought of being without her dad again. So, on that note, she will be starting school here on base and we'll all move at the end of September sometime. The girls have spent enough time away from their daddy...I don't want to make them go through all that again!!!

So, here we are, back in Kentucky and it's the year of the locusts. These things are everywhere and are very loud!!! You can hear the constant buzz from them when we are in the house with the windows closed and the ac running! I hope they go away soon!