Field Trips

I met Rachel and her 3 sweet, beautiful daughters back in September on my first field trip with my home school group to the Jr. Museum. Her husband is also military, and of course having 3 girls gave us a lot in common right away. When I noticed her girls sporting Disney Princess garb and accessories, I knew our girls would get along great. We've done a few things together and this past Monday, we went on a field trip to a local grocery store, then to a pizza place where the kids all got to make their own pizzas. I love watching the 6 girls play together. They are all so sweet and get along well and there is always a lot of giggling and hugging.

1st of many goodies passed out to the kids.

In the produce dept. getting samples of pineapple. They were tasty, even Juliet's piece that fell on the floor!

Monkeying around in front of the store.

Ava, Leah and Kylie.

Oohh, what's going on in there?

Kylie and Leah shared a pizza.

A little pizza trivia...the most expensive topping out there is cheese!

Ava and Keri making their pizza.

Time for the oven!

Us mommies partnered with our babies. Clearly Juliet and A'lyn like their piles of cheese in the middle.

We had a fun filled day of popcorn, pineapple, pizza, lemonade, brownies and cookies. After we ate, we went back to the store and picked up some fruit!

The next evening we met at the fairgrounds in town and went to the, drum roll please, balloon zoo. All proceeds went to wounded vets, it was a short drive from our home, and the girls enjoyed it (again, I think they liked being there with their friends).

There were, I think, 145,000 balloons and it took 9 people a week to make all the exhibits. Cheesy, but pretty cool.

Juliet, Ava, Keri, A'lyn, Leah and Kylie in front of the "Stars & Striped"/"Old Glory" (we had just learned about the flag that morning in school).

I don't know if I'll attend another balloon zoo in my lifetime. It was impressive, and about what I should have expected from the town we live in.

Money Money Money

Oh money, how I hate you! Well, not exactly, but teaching "how many coins" versus "how much money" has probably been the hardest thing yet. I'm sure I'll look back some day and wish it was still this easy, but until then, thanks for the frustration. Kylie and I appreciate it!

The Invisible Woman

One of our memory verses for the girls is Colossians 3:23-"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men." I got this video today from my friend Angie. I love what the speaker says about "it is the cure for the disease of self-centeredness, it is the antidote to my own pride".

Ava the Adder

I've been doing addition with Ava for a while now, but I've yet to have her add above 10 simply because she uses her fingers to add. Some moms don't let their kids add using their fingers, but she's 4, and Kylie used to do it but she's since moved on to adding in her mind so I'm not too worried. So anyway, I printed a worksheet for Ava today and all the answers were bigger than 10. She has been using manipulatives (pom poms) to make 2 piles of the numbers then add them up.

For one of the problems (6+6), I could see the wheels spinning. I kept quiet. She didn't grab the pom poms, rather put up 6 fingers, put them down, put up another 6 and counted off "7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12". Of course I screamed and she was so proud of herself. This was actually going to be her last problem because using the pom poms was taking a long time for each problem, but she went ahead and did a bunch more because of her new, fast way to add.

Way to go Ava. These are the little pay offs of schooling the girls myself that I LOVE!!

Date Night

Tonight Ava went on her first date with daddy. It works out well for both Jonathan and I because I get to spend time with just her by taking her shopping for new clothes and accessories, and then just the 2 of them get to go out and spend time together. She picked out everything she wore, and today I did her hair, painted her finger nails and toe nails and even let her wear a touch of makeup and perfume. Jonathan took her to see a movie, out to dinner, then to Starbucks for dessert and their last leg of the trip to a book store got interrupted by her bowels. Jonathan doesn't take the girls to the bathroom in public (I won't let him and he'd rather not take her into a nasty men's room) so they came home. They were gone for 4 hours! The weather was icky today so her curls didn't last very long, but I don't think she cared one bit. She had been talking about her date all day and had a fabulous time with her daddy.

Here they are at the theater. Ava had a coke (yowzas!), popcorn and gummy bears.

Can you tell she's excited??

Mmmmm, Bonefish!

Ava had one Bang Bang shrimp and that was all she could stand. She did however enjoy her chicken with goat cheese and spinach, broccoli and garlic mashed potatoes.

I have to wonder if Starbucks was more her idea or Jonathan's.

She didn't know how to drink her hot chocolate out of the lid on the first try. Her dress will be seeing some Spray & Wash when I do laundry this week.

The other 2 girls certainly weren't left out. Kylie was very excited for Ava to go and helped her put on her jewelry and gave her a big hug before she left. Juliet kept saying "Ava Daddy date" over and over. She's in the repetition phase of talking right now. The girls and I made cookies and home made pizzas and watch a movie. It was a fun night all around! Jonathan knows he's got it good in that he gets to take out 4 girls over the next however many years of life...that is until we pick their perfect husbands for them. :)

On that note, Kylie did tell Jonathan last week that she wanted to marry him. He had to tell her "no honey, I'm married to mommy". He did tell her she could, however, marry someone just like him. I wholeheartedly agree! I can only hope and pray that will be the case. Until then, he'll continue to show them how boys treat girls, and these dates are just one of the ways he does that. I love my husband and I love my little girls!

Hot Wheels

Today Jonathan told me at breakfast he wanted to teach Ava to ride a bike. I gave him the "she's going to get hurt and cry" over protective mom face, but he went ahead and did it anyway. Its about the same time Kylie learned to ride a bike...just shy of 4 1/2...and Ava did AWESOME! She only fell once and got the hang of it very quickly.

Jonathan did a lot of running this morning pacing Ava as she went up and down our street.

Here's a video of my big girl.

Friends

Here are a few pictures of some of our favorite friends!

The O'Brien family is in town for a week and we got to meet new baby Caitlin. The girls LOVE babies and as you can tell, I get the best smiles out of them when they get to hold one.

We venture to base a lot to hang out with Candace and her crew. 7 kids makes for nothing but FUN! Normally Candace will cook up gourmet meals when we eat there, but this night it was Sam's Club pepperoni pizza...and it was pretty good for only $6. I'll be picking some up for our family.

Friday nights when our husband are at "roll call", we like to have our own version of "girl call".

We went to Emily's 2nd birthday party today and the kids got to frost their own cupcakes. As you can see here, Liam doesn't mess around and he wasn't going to let one piece of cupcake go to waste.

Here are Kylie and Jackson braving the heights.

The girls like to order things according to how " we came out of mommy's tummy" (like going down the slide or brushing their teeth). They'll be sad to see themselves out of order here as they sing Happy Birthday to Emily.

The older kids helped Emily open her presents, probably more than was necessary, but Kelly being as sweet as she is would never tell the girls to back off so her princess can have her special moment.