Biker Girl

Claire has finally joined the bicycling ranks.  Dada taught her how to ride her bike with training wheels last weekend and she's been practicing, practicing, practicing.  It's amazing to see the amount of concentration and coordination it takes to learn how to ride a bike.  Cracks me up!  Little knees sticking out, feet slipping off the pedals, head down watching the feet.  And forget the steering!  Too many other things to think about.  Her bike is an older one and the pedals are pretty hard to push so she's doing great!  She LOVES riding her bike and goes up and down the sidewalk with rosy red cheeks.  She says she wants a purple bike so we might have to see what a can of spray paint can do.  I think that helmet of hers has seen better days, too.  Ahh...the joys of being the only girl, especially after three big brothers.  Some hand-me-downs are just not in the right color scheme.  BUT...they sure are fun anyway!

 Here she goes!  

Concentration!

 Head down, knees out, toes gripping...so far so good!

Check out that helmet!  Looks like it's been run over!

 Coen is getting more and more confident on his two wheels, too.  

They have lots of fun riding bikes together now.

Cute little bikers!

Fun Around Here

Here are a few pictures of what the kids have been up to lately.  Spring in Texas is the best!  The weather is perfect, we have windows open all day and night, and everyone wants to be outside.  We know we have to take advantage of the beautiful weather while we can.  Summer is around the corner.  It's getting hotter and hotter and soon we'll have to close up the house and endure a lot more heat.  But for now...we're loving it!

 Beckham and Claire playing outside.

Look how much our yard has changed!  This was taken March 4.  Now it's lush and green with flowers.  

Dallin in camouflage.  See the grass and foliage around his neck and sticking up behind him?  Ha, ha!

The boys were playing a battle game and they had to protect their bases.

Here's Dallin's base.

This poor corner of the yard.  Nothing grows here.  The boys are constantly digging holes and building things.  It's pretty much the "kid corner" now.

 We've made a few fires for cookouts and make s'mores.  In a few weeks it will be much too hot to build a fire no matter what time of day or night.

Back to the kid's corner.  This time the kids were building blanket forts.  Lots of fun!

This one is Dallin and Coen's.

 Austin and Claire's fort.

 Hi, Coen!

Piggy back races in the backyard.  

Our poor grass doesn't stand a chance either.  Very high traffic back there.  

Basically we just need a bigger back yard.  That would do the trick.

Ready, set, GO!

 Another campfire night.

S'mores...mmmm....

P.S.  I think we should play "I Spy" with the blue cooler.  Ha!  Seems to be in a lot of pictures.

Surprise!

Holy smokes!  What a surprise we got this evening!  We heard a knock on the door at about 6:30 or so and it was the young men and their leaders from our church.  They said they wanted to so some service and asked if they could work on our front yard!  Wowzers!  Of course!  

They trimmed our bushes, edged our lawn, put mulch in all of our flower beds (sooo excited about that!), swept and raked, and left it looking so nice!  Such a fun surprise and so very appreciated.  The kids had fun talking to the "big" boys and Austin got out the rake to help.  Such good examples of service for my own kids to see.  They left our yard looking so nice and the kids said, "Wow!  Those guys are REALLY nice!"  Yes, they are.  Thank you, thank you!

Love the mulch!  Looks so much better!

I have to mention the funny thing Dallin said.  After they left he said, "Why do you think they picked us?  Probably because our last name rhymes with peacemaker and they think we're peaceful."  

Oh, man!  I'm still laughing.  Funny boy.  Just call us the Peacemakers.  :)

Even the butterfly likes the new flowerbed. :)

Kindergarten READY!

This little boy is READY for Kindergarten!  He is all registered and he finally got to go to his orientation.  It was supposed to be April 3 but that was the day of the big storms and tornadoes here in the DFW area so it was cancelled until the next week.  Coen was a little apprehensive when we first went in.  But by the end he was so excited to start and now he asks several times a day when he gets to go to Kindergarten.  In one week?  Three weeks?  Tomorrow?  When I say about 3 months...it sure seems far away to the little guy.  Whenever we drive by the school we always wave and say "hi" to Austin and Dallin at "their" school.  Now when we drive by Coen says it's HIS school, too.  I'm glad he's so excited.

He got to meet with one of the teachers at the orientation and she asked him his colors, letters, numbers, had him write his name, etc.  At the end I was talking to another teacher and she asked if he was excited.  I told her he was definitely ready.  Especially since he's going to be 6 when he finally gets to start.  She said, "Oh good!  I'm soo glad you waited!  It will be so good for him!"  A couple other teachers overheard and came running over and said, "Bless you for waiting a year!  If only every child could start later like that.  Especially when they can be home for an extra year.  He will be a leader all his school years because of that decision.  You have given him the best start.  We've seen many parents regret starting them early but we've never seen a parent regret starting them later."  A couple of them said they started their own kids late.

Oh my goodness!  That is just what I needed to hear!  It was such a hard decision for me to decide whether I should start him last year or wait a year.  (I say "I" because Tory always wanted to start him late.  He is a summer birthday who started early and it was NOT a good thing for him and caught up to him later.  He did not want his own kids to have to go through that.)  I talked to teachers and friends and family.  Even after I made the decision I've still wondered if I did the right thing.  This was such a confirmation to me.  I'd so much rather he be confident and a leader and feel like he's "smart" than struggle and not feel ready.  And sometimes it doesn't catch up to them until they are older.  I'm sure every kid is different but for me, I feel like we made the best decision for Coen and I think it will make deciding for Claire easier, too.  So now we just have to wait those 3 looooong months for school to start.  I'm in no hurry!  

I'd keep him home a year LONGER!  :)

I mean seriously...this kid is FUN!

Hiking Clips

A little clip of our hike taken with my new flip!  Love it!
The boys liked to go off and explore.

A hiking we will go...
Claire spent most of the time running.  She was hard to catch a picture of!

Hiking

We have known about this hiking trail by Eagle Mountain Lake for a long time but we've never actually gone to hike it.  We finally made it happen about a month ago.  It was so fun!  Everyone did great and we all want to do more hikes now.  The first one we did was about 3 miles.  Perfect length for the kids.  They all carried their water bottles in their own backpacks plus a few clementines and crackers for snacks.  We started with a little picnic.  The scenery was beautiful and it was the perfect time of year to go.  Everything was green and fresh and it was still kind of cool.  There was plenty of mud though, since we had just had tons of rain.  It was sooo good to go hiking again.  Tory and I both come from big backpacking families.  In fact, several of our dates were hikes.  Every summer when I was growing up our main family vacation was going on a big week-long backpacking adventure.  The last time Tory and I went on a backpacking trip together was when Austin was 18 months old.  It's been a long time!  So this was a fun taste of hiking again.  We've had some really busy weekends ever since then but we're all excited to get back on the trail and try a new route next time.  Maybe this weekend!

Here are a "few" pictures from our fun afternoon.  Sorry some of them are so blurry.  I'm not very good at manual focusing with our broken camera.  The good news is I got new glasses yesterday so hopefully I'l be able to see what's actually blurry or not now. :)

Family Picture

 There were a couple bridges with water running underneath.  Beautiful!

 Good little hikers!

 The scenery seemed to change from trees to cactus.  We must be in Texas!

 HUGE snake skin!  The boys would have liked to stay and investigate a little longer.  When I heard talk of whose backpack to put the skin in...I knew it was time to move on.

We can see the lake!

Checking the map.

 Stopping for a scenic view.  You can't tell from the picture but Claire was terrified standing that close to the edge.  She is extremely cautious when it comes to heights.

Stopping for a little water and clementine break.

Water + Dirt + Boys and a Girl = Several minutes devoted to building the best dam ever!

 Busy Beavers

 Of course I had to take pictures of the kids by the windmill.  Reminds me of Kansas!

 Austin

 Dallin

 Coen

 Claire

Beckham and Dada getting ready to start after our little picnic lunch.  Beckham loved his seat.  I bought it at a consignment sale for $3.50!  That's right.  The decimal point IS in the right spot.  It was such a good deal! Looks like it's been used...maybe once?!  Awesome!  I've always wanted one of these.  Finally on number 5 we have one.  Yeah!

Flowers

We got our flowers planted in front of our house a couple weekends ago.  We planted some vinca (periwinkle) last year and they went CRAZY!  Even with the record breaking heat and being in full sun all day, they survived...and flourished!  And I only watered them once a week.  Maybe twice occasionally.  They were tall (12-18 inches) and bushy and had flowers all summer long.  So we decided to do some more of those.  They are very drought tolerant and heat-loving.  I highly recommend them for your gardens!  We also put in some French marigolds to add some yellow.  Hopefully they will do well, too.

Vinca (Periwinkle)
They look very similar to Impatients but don't mistake them!  Impatients need to be in the shade!  Totally opposite!  Vinca have larger, long, narrow leaves and they love SUN!

Impatients
Smaller leaves.  See how similar they look?  Crazy!  Go for these if your garden is SHADY!

Of course the planting ended up with sprinklers, wrestling, and very wet children.  Lots of fun!

What flowers do you plant in your gardens?  

Bluebonnets

We made it out to take our annual pictures in the beautiful Bluebonnets, the Texas State Flower.  The bluebonnets were especially thick and beautiful this year and a few weeks early due to our mild winter.  They were everywhere!  We had intended to try out the flowers down in Ennis, TX.  They actually hold a bluebonnet festival every year.  But it would have been a long drive and then while we were running around doing errands one weekend we found a great spot much closer to home.  It had trees in the background and everything.  Unfortunately, we ended up taking them at the brightest time of the day and our kids take after their father with their sun sensitive eyes.  But I think we got some good pictures anyway.  It was really hot so by the end we all had rosy cheeks and were nice and sweaty.  The butterflies were so thick and Beckham went crazy chasing them all.  It was hard to pin him down to get pictures and when we did his little arms were up in most of the pictures as he shouted with joy seeing the butterflies in front of him.  So if you want a good way to get kids to smile for pictures, just release a big bunch of butterflies! 

The Whole Family

 Brooke & Tory

 Our Cute Kids

 Another Family Shot

Beckham is very excited about the butterflies!

 Checking out the flowers

 Austin

 Dallin

 Coen

Claire

Beckham

Our Four Handsome Boys

Butterfly Bush

This bush was absolutely FILLED with butterflies!  The kids were sneaking up to it so they could all see them when they flew out of the tree.  Quite the sight!

**The other unfortunate part is that my camera lens seems to be broken.  It won't auto focus at all.  I took pictures of the pinewood derby and then the next morning it wasn't working.  Just like that.  So sad.  I have to use manual focus and with my terribly old prescriptions, I can hardly tell what's in focus or not.  So many turned out blurry.  Sad.  Anyone with a Cannon Rebel xsi have this happen to them?  It's just the lens that it came with.  The guy at the photo shop tried a different lens and it worked fine so it's definitely the lens.