First Haircut

So last week I was commenting on my friend Beth's post.  She has a little boy, Jude, who was born just 4 days before Beckham and he's got a head of full of beautiful hair.  I told her Jude needs to share his hair growing secrets with Beckham.  But then I got to looking at Beckham.  Yep, he was ready for a haircut after all.  He didn't have much on top but he had quite the mullet going on in the back:

We fluffed it up for the pictures.  He didn't go around like this every day.  Usually it was just curls in the back.  But still, cute curls or not, it was definitely too long.  So we set up the stool and got out the clippers and now the tiny man looks like this:

Much better!
Of course this is pre-wound but you can see he's got a bruise and a scrape from another fall.  Poor little guy.  It's a tough age to be!  Doesn't he look so handsome and big now?  Cute baby!
Guess I now have 5 heads of hair to cut!

Princess Magic

I've mentioned before that Claire's favorite show is Go Diego Go.  Although she likes Dora things, Diego is the show she prefers.  Lately she's really been into Bob the Builder.  Bob.  The Builder.  Not a princess.  That's OK.  She's well-rounded right?  At least she still likes getting her hair done, polishing her nails with me, and wearing dresses.  

But this weekend she was going through her closet to find the fanciest dress she could find.  She brought it to our room on its hanger early Saturday morning.  She held it up under Tory's nose and shook his shoulder and said, "Daddy can you help me put this dress on?  I want to be a princess."  Did she just say princess?!  

She got all dressed up and did a few spins and twirls and then asked me to get her wand.  She has a princess/fairy wand that one of the boys gave her for Christmas one year.  She hasn't shown a lot of interest in it before (probably why we still have it and why it is intact.)  I presented her with her wand and wondered what beautiful things would come from it.  She held it up behind her head, took a big breath, threw her arm forward and shouted,
"Specturm Patronus!"

Well...at least she looked like a princess! :)

Coen's First Tooth

This Saturday Coen lost his first tooth.  It's been loose for awhile.  I think it got knocked loose a little prematurely.  Who knows how.  With my boys and their teeth history...I'd be surprised at nothing.  We were at the dentist office a couple weeks ago and he said it would be a little while before his permanent tooth comes in.  So we'll just wait and see.  But Saturday Coen was playing around with the boys and somehow (again...I don't even want to know) his tooth got twisted sideways.  It was very painful and obviously quite loose so Dr. Austin pulled out his handy dandy paper towels and went to work on his newest patient.  In a few seconds Coen was the proud owner of a lost tooth.

See his chipped top teeth?  Church injury.  When he was just a little guy he tripped and landed on the metal part of a chair.  When he stood up he was spitting out pieces of his teeth.

Unfortunately, his mother hasn't made him a tooth pillow yet, so he borrowed Dallin's.  He was going to go for Austin's because it's green and Coen loves green but somehow Dallin convinced him that Austin's was stinky and he should use his blue one.  Ha, ha.  I just thought that was funny and had to make a note of it.  Unfortunately, the Tooth Fairy didn't leave him money.  We all figured it must have been because the pillow had Dallin's name on it.  She must have been confused.  So he wrote a note to her explaining that he was borrowing his brother's pillow.  We fully expected her to make her appearance that night.  But morning came and...nothing.  Man alive!  What's wrong with the tooth fairy?!  We took the boys to school and when we came back home we found a note and a dollar sitting on the TV cabinet.  Apparently, Coen woke up in the night so she had to leave it out in the family room.  Whew!  Thank goodness she came!  And Coen is now the proud owner of a nice dollar bill.  He couldn't be happier!

Poor Baby

Yesterday started out quite normal.  We all showered, got dressed for church, ate a delicious cold oats breakfast prepared by Dada, and headed out the door on time.  We got to church with time to spare and got settled in our row.  As usual, the peace didn't last long.  Beckham is at that age when sitting through an hour long meeting is absolutely impossible.  Tory had to take him out.  Soon Claire declared (several times and loud enough for all around us to hear) that she had to go pee-pee.  So I left the three boys by themselves and took her to the bathroom.

On our way back we met Tory and Beckham and I told him I'd switch places with him because he's always out there with Beckham every week.  The trick is, Beckham will lie down in Tory's arms and usually fall asleep.  He won't do that for me.  He was getting so wiggly so I let him walk around.  Well, he walked over to the doors (most likely to see if he could escape.  He loves to be outside!) and tripped.  There was a very loud bang and then crying.  He had hit his head on the little ledge of the door at the base of the window.  Poor baby!  I could tell it wasn't good.  One of my friends who was out in the hall with her little boy offered to go get Tory.  We tried to decide what to do.  At first we thought I'd just go with Beckham and then we realized I'd have to come back and pick up Tory and the other 4 kids and we didn't know how long I'd be.  So we all had to leave. By this point Beckham was in serious shock.  He was pale, clammy, and his stomach started rumbling like he was going to throw up.  We put him in his car seat and he was just not all there.  Wouldn't really look at anyone and was just really quiet.  Poor baby!  By the time we got home he seemed to be a little bit more himself.  Tory went to get him all fixed up and after some glue and strips he was all better.

Feel so bad for the little guy.  He's most likely going to have quite the scar.  It's huge!  He was awfully brave through it all and didn't complain much.  After we knew it was safe we finally let him take a nap and boy was he tired!  Definitely turned out to be a much different day than we thought it would be.  I don't know why, but some of our kids' worst injuries have occurred at church.  Ha.  Who knew church could be such a dangerous place? :)  And I guess from now on I'll let Tory resume his hall duties.  He, apparently, is much better at it than I am.

Clouds

Today there are clouds in the sky.  It is still supposed to get up to 107 today but somehow it just "feels" cooler with clouds.  We've had such a long stretch of hot days and non-stop sunshine.  This is nice for a change.  No rain for us but a little shade for our part of the earth.  Very nice.

Last Thursday we actually did get a couple minutes of rain.  It was kind of funny.  The kids were getting ready for school and Austin said it looked cloudy.  Maybe we were going to get rain?  I told him most likely not.  As we were getting everyone loaded in the van to go to school we heard thunder.  Hmmm...maybe we would get rain!  Then as we were waiting in line to turn into the school we watched a few drops come down.  Nothing major.  They were falling so slowly that we could watch each individual raindrop.  Didn't even get the windshield wet.  We finally found a place to park and right when the boys stepped out the heavens opened!  They got drenched!  The last thing Austin shouted as he was closing the van door was, "At least we get to enjoy the rain!" That's looking on the bright side!  It continued to pour on my two minute drive home.  Poured!  Had to run my wipers full-blast!  Then the second I pulled into our driveway it stopped.  It might have been short but was it ever welcome.  Ahhh...sweet relief if only for a couple minutes.  I'm seeing temperatures down in the double digits for next week though!  Who knows?!  Maybe we'll actually "cool" down.  That would be sooo nice!

Other Parks

We may not have gone to many parks this summer but we did frequent the splash pads.  We even found two more that are close to us.  So now we have 4 splash pads all about the same distance from our house.  Great way to cool off.  And the best part was that most of the time we had the whole park to ourselves.  Probably because of the heat.  Ha.  This particular day it was 109 degrees!  And that's not including the heat index.  Who knows how hot it actually "felt".  All we knew is that as long as we were in the water it wasn't bad at all. 

This is one of the new ones we found this summer.  Funny story.  When we were driving there for the first time we got to a place in the road where we either had to turn left or right.  On the left was a brand new water park with huge slides and a big admission fee.  On the right was the road to the little park with the splash pad and free admission.  The boys didn't know exactly where we were going.  I had only told them we were going to a new water park (that's what we call parks with splash pads.)  I had no idea it was right across from the new giant "real" water park.  Ha.  They were quite excited when they saw the huge new Hawaiian Falls on the horizon.  And then they were quite disappointed when we turned right instead of left.  But the great thing about my kids is they are easy to please and as soon as they were playing in the nice cool water that had giant water guns for EACH of them...Hawaiian Falls was forgotten.  We stayed for hours and had a blast all by ourselves.

Austin with one of the giant water guns.  The boys loved these!  Perfect!

Dallin waiting for the water to dump on him.  He was off just a little.  Don't worry.  The next one got him.

Cute Coen having lots of fun!

Claire riding the giant turtle.  There was a playground right by the splash pad and the kids would occasionally stop to slide or something but Claire couldn't be bothered.  She was having way too much fun in the water.

Beckham had fun walking around and playing in the water, too, until he got really tired and only wanted to snuggle with Mama.  So we just hung out in the water to stay cool.

The kids liked to pile up on top of the drain and make the water "deep".

Lots of fun!

Camping

You can't camp in Texas in the summer.  Ever.  But especially not this summer.  This summer was nothing but extreme heat.  It really threw our summer off more than anything.  So many plans had to be dropped just because it was too miserable to be outside.  Even if we got an early start.  We normally like to try to go to a different park every week in the summer and usually hit up several parks in a week.  We've found some of our most favorite parks this way.  I think we only went to the park a handful of times TOTAL this summer!  There wasn't even much bike riding going on.  Sad.  Now that school has started again I feel like we missed out on so much.  Tory has to keep reminding me that it's still summer.  We can still do fun things with the boys.  We just have to wait until Saturday now.  He's right.  And in Texas we have SEVERAL more weeks, if not months, of summer-like weather ahead of us.  We can still do fun things.  And eventually it WILL cool down a bit and we can do some of our fun things we wanted to do this summer.  See why I married this guy?  He's so smart.  

One of the things the boys really wanted to do before school started was have a campout.  They know camping in the outdoors is out even if it isn't the summer of 2011.  So they picked the next best thing.  Sleeping in the tent indoors!  So a few days before school started we moved the chairs and couch out of the family room to make room for our tent that's the size of a house.  (You see how it's touching the back wall on the left and the TV cabinet in the front?  Huge I tell you.)  The kids were beyond excited and had a great night sleeping under the...ceiling fan.  A better breeze than they'd have found outside that's for sure!

Beckham checking out the tent.  He wasn't invited to the campout but that's ok.  He slept nice and cozy in his bedroom all by himself and didn't even know what he was missing.  The fun part was running around in the tent anyway and he certainly got his fill of that!

Dallin's Loves

I was going through some papers on the desk and found this letter from Dallin to Dada:

I had to save it.  I love it because it shows some of Dallin's most favorite things right now:

1) Minecraft.  This is such fun game for the boys...and Tory.  Kind of like really cool computer legos.  They build all kinds of things and make their own castles and towers and even roller coasters.  Their imaginations go crazy!  Dallin just loves this game.  We have our computer password protected to limit their gaming time.

2) Spyro.  I love that he calls himself Spyro.  Dallin still loves Spyro the dragon.  This little obsession has been going on for YEARS.  Occasionally Tory takes the boys to Gamestop to see if there are any used games for our Playstation 2.  We're finding that you can't really find many games for Playstation 2 anymore.  Too outdated I guess.  One night I was tucking the boys in and Dallin was talking about new Spyro games.  I said I didn't know if we'd be able to find any more games.  Devastating news.  Heartbroken.  Tears and sobs.  Guess I should have worded that differently.  I told him we'd just have to look a little harder but I was sure they were out there somewhere.  Whew...

3)  Dada.  Dallin loves to spend time with Dada, as do all of the other kids.  He makes everything fun.  They follow him around and want to do everything he is doing.  They all say they want to be chiropractors when they grow up so they can work with Dada every single day.  I'm not going to lie.  That would make this mama very happy indeed.  While Spyro and Minecraft may come and go, I know their love of Dada time will always last...he's the reason Dallin loves the other two.  Time well spent together.

And one more reason I love this letter...check out those words!  You can read and decipher every single letter.  It's a miracle!  This boy's handwriting has come a loooonnnnng way.  He didn't get the most improved handwriting award in 1st grade for nothing.  He's got a ways to go but you should have seen where he came from!  Wahoo! :)

Happy Birthday!

Last Saturday was Tory's birthday.  He is now 33 years young.  It was fun to have him all to ourselves for the whole day.  The kids and I got up before him and made breakfast of bagels and cream cheese, scrambled eggs, and a giant fruit salad for the guy who loves all things fruit.  Right when he sat down to eat his parents called.  He just put it on speaker and let them hear the blessing over the food with us. :)

After breakfast we played around the house for a bit and then loaded up for a drive.  We ran some errands, dropped off rental movies, and returned books to the library.  We had fun walking around different stores and "shopping".  He had some birthday money to spend and picked out  a new headset for the computer.  The kids were all very good.  We even got to try out some new mattresses.  There are some nice ones out there! 

We got home kind of late.  I had intended to make a raspberry lemon three-layer cake for him for his birthday but he said he just wanted Root Berry Floats.  (When Austin was little he said Root "Berry" instead of Beer.  It stuck and now that's what our whole family calls it.)  We had a cake mix at home so I made cupcakes.  He had to have SOMETHING to put candles in!  I mixed a box of raspberry jell-o with a container of whipping cream and whipped it up for the frosting.  It was pretty tasty!  And very PINK!  Ha.  He said he was ok with having pink cupcakes for his birthday because he's grounded in his manhood.  lol  

I put blue sprinkles on them to make them a little more "manly" not that you can tell with the terrible lighting.  Our dining room is the worst place to take pictures at night.  I don't know what happened to these pictures but they're worse than normal.  So grainy!  Maybe it's because two light bulbs in our chandelier are out.  I'm going to have to check my camera settings to see if something got messed up.  Yikes.

We had a few little things for him to open.  He felt them and guessed that one was deodorant, one was skittles, and one was Listerine breath strips.

He was quite surprised when he opened the package and it WAS Listerine breath strips.  How in the world?  He's never bought them and I've never bought them.  How did he guess?!  Crazy guy.  And of course he was right on the other two as well.  We ended the evening with several rounds of  Just Dance on the Wii.  Everyone was nice and tired and ready for bed after that.

Happy Birthday to the most wonderful guy in the world!

We love you and are so thankful for you!

I love this picture of Tory and all five kids.  They love spending time with him no matter what he's doing.  Here they're all watching a movie on the computer.

Made It!

Well, they made it through their first day!  The boys were greeted by a sign that Coen, Claire, Beckham and I made for them.  Then we had popcorn for an after-school snack (which Austin says is the best part about going to school.) and I got to hear all about their day.  They both said the day went by quickly and they like their teachers.

Dallin said his teacher was grouchy today but she said she won't be tomorrow.  Ha, ha.  I guess there is a boy in their class who seems to be a trouble maker.  PLUS another boy who was in Dallin's class last year that was quite a bit of trouble himself is in the same class.  He would throw his desk over and everything.  So, yeah, might be an interesting year.  Anyway, I guess Mrs. Main was having a hard time with it all today and admitted she was a bit grouchy and would be happy tomorrow.

Austin says he has 4 new kids in his class that just moved here.  He's pretty excited about that.  He says the best part of 4th grade is going to be Wednesdays when they get to do experiments at home.  He doesn't know all the details about it yet but if it has to do with science and experiments...he's all for it!  All in all they both had a really good day.  Whew!  That's always a relief.

Pick-up after school was CRAZY!  This is the first time I've had to pick kids up in the 2nd-4th grade pick-up line.  I've always had a Kindergartner or a 1st grader.  So I'm going to have to learn how to do this line.  Plus it was just crazy.  Poor boys were dripping with sweat after waiting outside in the 103 degree heat.  I'm thinking next time I'll just park in the back and walk around to get them.  Or maybe I'll have them walk half-way home and meet them somewhere.  Ha.  We'll see if it gets better after this first week.  Funny thing this morning, I was dropping off the boys in the drop-off line and the teacher opened the door, the boys got out, and off she went.  I couldn't drive off because my van door was still open.  I rolled down my window to call out to her but she didn't hear me.  Coen was trying to get unbuckled to shut the door and when he finally was going to close it she noticed.  I guess she thought we had one of those magic buttons to close our door.  Nope.  Not on our van.  lol  That would be nice though! :)
We'll get this all figured out.
Always takes awhile to get used to a new year.

Welcome home boys!

*We just got a message from the school saying they are going to implement their "Extreme Weather Condition Dismissal" due to the heat.  That just means all the kids will stay inside until they are called out to their car.  It was sooo hot out there!  But now we have to wait for each child to be called out.  Going to be a long process for awhile.  Looks like I'll be parking after all. :)

Coen's Big Plans

All summer Coen's been asking me to teach him how to tie his shoes.  I kept telling him we'll work on it after the boys go to school.  I told him I'd teach him how to tie his shoes and that we'd learn his letters better and even learn to read some words.  He's been sooo excited and asks all the time when we can start.  This morning we dropped the boys off and this is how the conversation went:

Coen:  Mama, NOW can you teach me letters and numbers and reading and how to tie my shoes??!!
Me:  Yes, now we can start.
Coen:  I want to learn how to tie my shoes first.
Me:  OK.  We can do that.
Coen:  (With a very loud and excited voice and arms straight up in the air.)  Yeah!!!!  This is soooo exciting! (Slight pause but then just as loud) and so NOT exciting because I really miss the boys.

He will miss the boys.  Good thing he has Claire.  They are best buddies.  And Beckham will be more and more fun to play with this year.  And hopefully learning how to tie his shoes will keep him busy for awhile. :)  Now, I've got to help him find his other "tie" shoe.  It seems to be lost at the moment.

First Day of School

Three months ago it seemed like we had all the time in the world.  We had the whole summer ahead of us and great plans.  But those few short weeks went by more quickly than any of us thought and here we are on the first day of school.  We did have a fun summer.  We crossed off some of our to-do's, had a few fun surprises, and never even got around to some things.  But at the end we all declared it was a good summer.  And now today my house is a little more quiet and I'm missing my big boys again.  Amazing how quiet the house can be with only three kids at home. ;)

Last night we got everything ready.  Austin and Dallin got their backpacks ready, picked out what they wanted to wear (can't say "outfit" because Tory says, "Boys don't wear outfits." lol)  and Tory gave them back-to-school blessings.  They were both excited.  

Dallin is a big 2nd grader.  He has Mrs. Main, the same teacher Austin had in 2nd grade.  I am sooo glad.  We loved her.  She LOVES math and I don't care what else they learn as long as they learn math.  That just seems to be the one subject you just don't want to get behind on.  She is also very calm and Dallin does well with "calm".  I think he'll have a great year!  Handsome little boy.

Austin's been in every wing in this school.  He is now in his final wing and final year of elementary school!  How is it possible that I have a 4th grader already?  I remember being a 4th grader.  Mr. Wegener's class.  And I was so big.  Is that how Austin feels?  I keep having to remind myself that he's a "big" kid.  I'm glad I remember how I felt when I was his age.  Austin has Mrs. Hollis.  We don't know anything about her but she seems really nice and I'm sure she'll be great and Austin will do just fine.  Once again, none of his friends are in his class.  Poor kid.  Every single year this happens and he has to start all over again making friends.  I guess it's a good thing he's good at it.  

Crazy kids.  Gosh I miss them.  I can't believe how much more confident they both are at the start of this year.  Totally ready.  Even Dallin has enough years under his belt that he can now just focus on the day and not worry so much about where to go.  I can't wait to hear how their first day went.  Am I ready for making lunches, backpacks everywhere, and homework?  No.  Not at all.  But ready or not.  Here we are!

And here are links to other first days of school just because I love to look back at the past years:
2010-2011 ~ D: 1st and A: 3rd
2009-2010 ~ D: Kindergarten and A: 2nd
2008-2009 ~ A:1st grade
2007-2008 ~ A: Kindergarten

Bubbles & Sprinklers

Claire found a bottle of bubbles in her room and found a willing person to blow them for her.

Dada did a great job. All of the kids joined in the fun.

Sometimes it got a little wild!

After the bubble-blower could blow no more, it was time for sprinklers!

The simple pleasures of summer. Can it really be true that we only have one week left until school starts again? Sad...but true.

Busted

So yeah, had a "first" moment today.  8:30 in the morning I was making smoothies for the kids.  Had the blender going and I thought I heard a knock.  Looked over to the family room and the kids were all playing.  No one seemed to be rushing to tell me someone was knocking so I continued with the smoothies.  Then the doorbell rang.  I opened the door and it was a police officer.  What in the world?!  He says, "I'm sure you know why I am here."  Uh...no idea.  He says, "Well I just got a call from someone saying your 1-year old was out all by himself."  I said, "Oh!  We've been weeding this morning and he was out here with us."  (The evidence was everywhere.  Piles of weeds on the sidewalk.)  He said, "Well, she said she watched him for a minute and finally his big brother came and got him and said he had escaped."  Then he peeked around me into my house.  I opened the door and stepped aside so he could see better.  Everyone accounted for.  Not fully dressed...but accounted for.  He told me to have a good day and off he went.  Nice.

So here's the real story.  Austin and I were weeding the front flower beds at about 7:30 this morning.  At about 8:00 Beckham woke up and pulled his curtain back and saw us outside.  I told Austin to go get him so he could play outside with us.  He loves to be outside.  He just played around while we weeded.  The other three kids were inside playing.  I got to a rocky place so I told Austin I was going to the backyard to get the trowel.  I brought Beckham into the house with me and shut the door...you know...so he wouldn't wander off.  Austin stayed out front and kept weeding.  I walked through the house to the backyard.  I couldn't find the trowel but Dallin said he knew where it was and ran out and got it.  I walked back through the house and noticed the front door was open.  First thing I did was notice Beckham wasn't in the family room. I walked outside with Austin (who had also come inside by this point), saw Beckham right by us in the neighbor's driveway, and told Austin to run and grab him.  I also saw a pair of lady's shoes peeking around the corner.  I was literally gone not even two minutes and I'm pretty sure most of the time the front door was closed.  I think one of the other kids just opened it looking for me.  I didn't even think that much about it.  I did tell the kids that they can't leave the door open like that.  They're normally really good about the front door.

The thing that upsets me is that she called AFTER we had him because she told the police what Austin had told her when he picked him up (that Beckham had "escaped".)  Another thing that bugs me is that if she would have just walked one step further she would have seen the door open, other kids playing on the porch, etc.  I mean, I understand calling the police if there was a child wandering around all by himself and I had looked for his home, doors were all closed, etc.  Our door was wide open with people quite visible!  And why would you call after the child found his family?  To prove that we are unfit parents?  I don't know.  I think I know who she is from Austin's description.  She lives a couple houses down from us and is outside every once-in-awhile watering her plants with her hose.  That's about all we ever see of her.  Kind of a recluse.  I am glad that she was with him so he didn't go into the street.  I would have done the same if I saw a little baby outside.  But the cops?  So anyway, that was my morning.  Not very fun having a police officer come to your door that's for sure.

Supers

While I had the sewing machine out for Claire's pillowcase today, I decided to tackle a project that's been waiting for me since June 2010.  I made a cape for Coen's 4th birthday with the intention to make one for each of the other kids on their birthdays.  I had the material and had all of the little shields on the back with their initials all cut out and ready to go...for a year now.  I decided to just do it before summer was over and before Austin loses all interest in dressing up and playing superheros with his younger brothers and sister.  Of course I had to add one more cape in the lineup for Beckster.  I'm sure he would have felt left out.  I'm glad I made him one because he loves it and is a super cute Super!

This picture was harder to get than you'd imagine.  I finally had to have them lineup facing the piano WITH the piano open to get Beckham to stay in one spot with his back facing me.  Wow.

Five Super Kids!

And they're off to save the world for the rest of the afternoon!

Yep, he definitely needed his own cape!

Claire is 3!

Today our little girl is 3 years old!

What a fun little girl.  I think I always say that in every post about Claire.  But it's true.  She's so fun!

She is REALLY into Dora and Diego right now.  Forget princesses or fairies.  She's not into them right now.  Her little curly, blonde, blue-eyed self has eyes only for a little straight, brown-headed, brown-eyed girl named Dora.  Actually it's Dora's cousin, Diego, that Claire REALLY likes.  She prefers him over Dora and likes to watch his shows more.  But since Diego paraphernalia is hard to come by for girls, she is perfectly content with her very close runner-up, Dora.

Claire is a well-rounded little girl who loves to have her fingernails and toenails painted, comes running to the bathroom when I say, "Let's fix your hair!", and loves her babies.  But she also loves whatever her brothers are doing and tries to copy everything they do and does a pretty good job at it!

Her favorite response to any question you ask her right now is, "I don't know, but..."  Like if you ask her if she needs a drink she'll say, "I don't know, but I'm so thirsty."  Or, if you ask her where her shoes are she'll say, "I don't know, but I have to find them."

Pretty funny!

This face pretty much sums up how she felt about each present she opened tonight.  She had a serious Dora theme going on.  Dora plate, Dora bubbles, Dora coloring book, and Dora puzzle.  I also made her a Dora pillow case and she got some Dora PJ's from her cousins.  She was in heaven!

Of course her brothers had lots of special little presents they made for her.  This is a necklace made by Dallin for her.  Coen gave her some of his favorite things including a rubber snake and a straw...with the paper STILL on it!  That was a treasure that Claire was very happy to accept.  Coen couldn't find tape to wrap his presents so he used some of Dada's GIANT zip-ties.  Too funny.  She is definitely loved by all of her big brothers and her little brother, too.

We are so happy that we have this little girl in our family.  She is pure joy!

Happy Birthday Sweet Claire!