Nutcracker

Ethan playing piano, he is really enjoying piano lessons.:)

Emma at her Christmas ballet to the Nutcracker, it was fun. It was snowing when we drove home after her ballet, just beautiful! I love this time of year...We are taking her to see a real nutcracker ballet this week and she is so excited! Emma is on far left, she lead the girls out on stage.

Eve Angeline in hospital just hours after she was born.

Baby Eve Angeline was only two hours old, my friend took these pictures for us at hospital wrapped in the hospital blanket and I love them. So precious so I had to share!

Thanksgiving Day, a lot to be thankful for...

all the kids...

Ethan and Jake

Emma and her bestie Maddie

our dining room

We celebrated Thanksgiving Day with some good friends. We loved the brining turkey recipe from Alton Brown! So juicy and the flavor from all the spices tasted so good. The kids had a blast playing with friends. Since our family is all back in Oklahoma we decided to invite friends over to enjoy our feast. I can't believe our old table has held up so well over the years. It is almost 100 years and still very sturdy. We squeezed everyone in, kids and adults. When I asked Ethan what he was thankful for this year, he said his family. :)

Eve Angeline at 8 weeks...

Well Eve is 8 weeks old and is doing new things all the time. I forgot how quickly newborns change. She is a very happy baby. Smiling at anything. I tried to take a picture of her many looks. She tries to hit her toy now, she hit it a couple of times and let out a loud coo! We are really enjoying her!

Thanksgiving prep

Ok so I don't write on my blog for months and now I can't seem to stop. It just looks so clean and fun to update now. It's kinda like after I give my house a 'hard' clean I find myself wanting to just stay home, light a good smelling candle, drink an ice tea, and just relax.

This Thanksgiving is going to be a lot of fun. We are hosting some good friends over for dinner then 9 more are coming over for dessert after they all eat. So we will have a house full. I'm looking forward to it. I'm putting together the menu now. We are brining our turkey for the first time with an Alton Brown recipe. And I'm going to attempt to make a new gluten free cookie recipe since one of the families eat all gluten free. I'll let you know how it turns out and of course with pictures. We are staying in Iowa and are planning on a visit back home to Oklahoma for Christmas. I love this time of year.

Elise lovin' on baby Eve

As you can tell Elise loves her baby sister! Eve Angeline is  now 7 weeks old which doesn't seem possible. She coos now and gets so excited when you talk to her. She is FINALLY only waking up twice at night. Until now it was every 2 hours, which amazingly enough I haven't been that tired. She looks a lot like Emma did but has Elise's smile! There is never a dull moment in our house and I wouldn't change it!

Lego League

The kids participated in a Lego League for the first time and really enjoyed it! Ethan's group
built a pizza oven out of Lego's which turned out very cool. And Emma's group built a cheese and crackers factory.

 Emma in blue sweater explaining with her group about what they built. She is getting so much
better about talking in front of people.

 Ethan reading about what his group built in grey shirt.

I got a good laugh this morning when I saw Elise at the front door just hanging out in MY old flip flops in her diaper drinking a bottle. She usually drinks out of her sippy cups but every now and then she requests her drink in her old bottle since we had Eve. Not sure what she was waiting for.:)

We have so busy I have had NO extra time to even look at our blog. In fact I had to reset my password to even update our blog! I just noticed I never even announced that the arrival of our newest baby, Eve Angeline. She is now 7 weeks old. And we celebrated Elise's big 2nd birthday last month. I will update with some pictures soon. We are feeling very blessed. I changed the background, fonts, and colors of our blog all by myself, it is so easy now with blogger which is saying a lot since I'm not a computer savy person.:)

the girls...

The kids wanted to get their daddy an ice cream cake from Cold Stone Creamery for his birthday this year and I must say it was incredible!

Emma and Elise dancing and singing with the tierra's they made from a kit their grandma mailed them. Elise is quite a fan of Emma. And Emma having the big heart that she does is very patient with her. Being an only child myself it is such a blessing to see them so close, true sister bond.

Emma our little ballet dancer.

Elise kept begging Emma to pick her up, I think we have another ballet dancer in the works.

Elise getting directions from Emma. Elise takes everything Emma says to heart.

We have decided on an 'E' name...

Eve Angeline

So we almost broke the 'E' tradition, but we now have a name for our sweet baby girl. Her name Eve means life. And her middle name, Angeline is French and means messenger. We are now at 26 weeks which Sept. will be here so very soon! We have so much to do switching rooms out and painting walls.  I'll share pictures when we are finished. Emma, Elise and baby Eve will share our old room and Ethan will now have his very own room! And we are moving downstairs!:) Lots to do!

Vintage finds and freebies...

This old warehouse locker from the 1920's was an awesome find for
the price.
I found it setting outside on a porch of a junk store.

And yes those are old records a friend gave to us left over
from her neighbor's garage sale
that didn't sell for them.

I feel like I'm on an episode of American Pickers when we go junk shopping anymore. Paying full price for anything except food and basic living necessities with the cost of gas and our growing family feels like a splurge. But that doesn't stop us from having a little fun every now and then. This locker I saw and knew it would go perfect in our sun/craft/school room. BUT I didn't want to pay the asking price of 45 dollars. Even though it wasn't a bad price it just wasn't in our budget. So I waited until it sat outside for about a month on the shops front porch with no buyers and we made an offer for it after pointing out all the flaws and they accepted our offer! Just like on American Pickers.:) It smelled a little musty but after a wash down outside with a sponge and bleach then again with vinegar it smells better. We will eventually paint it black and install shelving inside. It could easily be used to store scrapbooking materials, craft supplies, or home schooling workbooks.

As for the records there were a handful or so of really good albums Mario was excited about and for free you can't beat it! We also now have a great electric piano which we also got for free!

Catch up!

Emma at her ballet recital!

Emma is in the front on the end.

Elise can't get enough of ice cream.:)

Ethan showing off his book he made for Writing class!

Elise looking cute in her pink dress her grandma bought her!

Ethan has his sisters wrapped around his fingers. I think he will be just fine having 3 sisters. :)
He does give her rides and she loves it!

My front urns this year were done on the cheap but I think they still look pretty!

Our free weighted keys electric piano! The kids love to jam on it!

Ethan with his friends!