many faces of Caroline

I am always amazed at the faces I get when I take her picture. 

my favorite... "oh, are you talking to me?"

I hear the train a comin'...

The kids love to visit the square in town. It has a beautiful grassy area and an old train there. They love to climb on the train and play on the tracks. There is a real train that does come through our town pretty often and the kids love to watch it go by. It is kind of scary when you can stand so close to a train coming by. They go so fast and are so loud. But there is something about watching a train go by that never gets old.

I know Caroline can't wait to run around with her siblings!

Bible Study

This week is SUYL favorite Bible Studies over at kellys korner. I have always wanted to be in a Bible study but since I have had very clingy babies it has been hard to commit to something. I wish I had gotten involved in things like that and stayed involved so that each child would have eaily gotten used to childcare. Since we just moved to a new state I knew the only way to get to know other women was to get involved and I thought a Bible study would be great. The study we are doing is Jean Stockwell's Run Well, Finish Strong. It is about how to raise your children into Godly adults. "As we run we want to hand down the baton of our faith to the next generation without stumbling or fumbling the hand off." The role of a mother is to work herself out of a job.  There will be a day when you will release your children into the world. I hope to be able to dig deep into the Word, and meet Godly women to fellowship with. You only get one chance at raising your children and I hope to run well and finish strong. 




Aside from starting a Women's Bible Study I bought a girls devotion book for Kaitlyn. It is for girls aged 6-9, so it is easy for her to read as well. We have started reading it at night together. It is short and sweet and has a little fun activity at the end of each devotion. It is the perfect amount of information to keep her attention. My hope and prayer for her is to become a believer at an early age and have God at her side for the rest of her life. 


I also love to listen to Andy Stanley. We were members at one of his satellite churches in Ga. All you have to do is go to their website northpoint and click to watch/listen. He is a great speaker and easy to listen to. 

Seasons come... Seasons go

After giving Caroline her bottle last night and laying her down, she decided she didn't want to go to sleep right then. I let her cry for a few minutes and then went in to console her. Sometimes she just needs me to pick her up and she instantly falls asleep on my shoulder. I did this same thing last night and as I stood there with her head on my shoulder I began to have thoughts drifting through my mind. The biggest one being "this is my last baby." I decided to sit down and rock her for a little while. She was already asleep but I wanted to soak in that sweet baby rocking. This is such a bittersweet season for me. Oh' how I have longed for the day when I can take all my kids outside and jump in the pool. No baby to hold or cry when they're tired after 15 minutes of being in the water. I have longed for the time at the playground when I can chase my kids and not have to push the stroller and carry bottles and little puff snacks to keep baby content. My dream of playing with all my kids at once is becoming reality sooner than I expected. Caroline will soon be a year old, walking, talking, babbling, and running around with her older siblings. But it seems as if a part of me will be missing. I have carried a baby on my hip for the past 6 years. They have just become an added accessory. So, as I continued to rock her I soaked in as much of her as I could because even though I will truly enjoy double bouncing all 4 of my kids on the trampoline I will miss having a baby. I am so thankful that God chose to give me a 4th child and that he was gracious enough to make my last baby a girl. He knew just what I needed to close this chapter of my life and move on to the next season.  

G

I wanted to document a few things Gavin says that are cute. He loves to play outside and cut the grass. He says, I want to put on my "tenna" (tennis shoes and cut the grass. 

He also has a deep love for gum. Strawberry gum. I must admit that when he doesn't want me to fix his hair I offer up some strawberry gum. Some battles just aren't worth fighting.

This summer we swam in the pool a lot. It was so cute to hear Gavin say, "mom, put on your bathinsoupin." (Bathing suit) 

one legged duck

I took the kids to the park again the other day. I think Kaitlyn feels left out sometimes since she is at school during the day. The kids asked me to bring bread this time to feed the ducks. We were a little surprised to see this...

If you look closely this duck only had one leg. He was so cute hopping around. He didn't act like he had one leg. He made sure he got his bread! I was quite surprised at how close they got too us. I almost thought they were going to eat out of their hands.

 A lady was nice enough to offer to take our picture.

My kids love to play in the dirt.

peas and carrots

These two are inseparable. The only thing stopping them from being twins is that they didn't share a womb.   

ducks

The boys love to be outside running around. Jumping off rocks, looking for fish, yelling at ducks and seeing turtles is so much fun to a boy. It really doesn't take much to entertain them. 

Monkey see...Monkey do

The weather has been beautiful the past week or so. This also means that the temperature of the pool has dropped quite a bit. Last night Travis decided to clean the pool since it had some leaves in it. Kaitlyn thought it would be a great idea to go swimming. And so she did. Then Logan jumped in and then Gavin. When Gavin put his foot in he said, "ooooohhh it's cold!! I can't breathe, it's cooooold!" Needless to say they were shivering in no time. 

                              Daddy decided to squirt them with the hose!!

Drowning in pictures

I have been slacking in the picture developing department. With 4 kids all 2 years apart it has been very hard to keep up with downloading pictures and developing them. I am desperately trying to organize and place them into yearly albums. My problem is I love real pictures. I like to have them developed on nice paper and put into a real photo album. I just think they look better that way. But it is very time consuming to get them developed and put into albums. Well, maybe its only time consuming when you are trying to catch up on 4 years worth of pictures. I am trying to bring myself to use shutterfly. I really like the idea and being able to arrange all the pictures and have up to 4,000 pictures per album is very appealing. I don't like that I can't tangibly see the album before I purchase it. Weird, I know.  

boys will be boys

Summer is coming to an end. I have mixed emotions about this. We have enjoyed our pool this summer. But I am welcoming this beautiful weather we have been having the past few days. I love the leaves falling on the ground. I think my husband would state otherwise. Leaves and pools don't really go together. And he is the one that cleans the pool =) The boys love to play outside  together and it is so neat to see them interact without their bossy sister giving orders playing with them.