Sunday and Monday and Tuesday, oh my!

The title of this post works if you say it like Dorothy said “lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”

Sunday morning the children’s choirs presented their musical, and it was AWESOME!!

Here you can see Joanna right before she told the kid next to her to stop waving.  Ha!  (She’s on the back row on the left side of the cross.

There were, for the record, THREE of us who found green shirts in the boys department at Target.  :)

The children did SO WELL!  I was just so proud of them, and the musical was beautiful and wonderful!  Well done peeps!!

I put this picture on Theresa’s FB page with this caption, “When this one comes up on the wedding slide show, Joanna and Aidan can be like ‘Remember that time in first grade when we wore the same shirt?’”

Monday morning I took just the girls for their annual check ups at the doctor.  Matt was off (hallelujah!) and he took care of the boys.  One very wonderful thing about homeschooling is being able to have an appointment in the middle of the day without missing school.  Since she’s not going to public school, she gets her sight and hearing checked at the doctor’s office.  And she passed!

It felt strange but wonderful to just have my big girls with me.  They can walk back by themselves, answer questions, go to the bathroom alone.  Pretty lovely!

Natalie looks so embarrassed here, sweet girl.  :)  She passed too!

You can’t tell, but they’re coloring on the paper while we wait.

They got great fabulous clean bills of health.  They’re practically perfect in every way!  (I’m not sure those were Dr. Harper’s exact words, but close.)

For my later curiosity, here are their stats:
Joanna is 47.75 inches tall (almost 4 feet!) and weighs 47lbs 6.4oz
Natalie is 41.5 inches tall and weighs 39lbs 12.8oz

On Tuesday mornings my helper and I take the babies to Musikgarten.  I don’t take many pictures (even though I really want to!!) because that’s not exactly the point, but I like to pull out the iPod camera at least sometimes.

Michael is sort of holding onto one of the sticks.  And maybe looking at Joanna’s dress?  Can’t remember what the face is about.

I’m almost caught up on blogging!!  That’s a lie; I take way too many pictures to ever be caught up!!

More Joanna!!

These first few are from throughout her birthday week.

I found some pretty light coming in my bedroom window one afternoon.

It’s really too bad she isn’t photogenic AT ALL.  :)

These are from her birthday, which thankfully was a Saturday!  We had a busy day though, so it was present opening time right away!

Her gifts to open were slightly on the boring side, but she still loved ‘em.  She got a nightgown and a cute T-shirt.  In addition, her new bike was technically a birthday present, and I preordered Frozen for her, but it won’t arrive until later this month.

Joanna had a rehearsal at the church in the morning, and afterward we got together with some friends for lunch.  This is the only picture I took though.  It’s Thomas asleep on me.

After that, we went to Mamma and Pop’s house to celebrate Joanna and Pop’s birthdays.

They love playing on the stairs!

Look how tall this girl is getting!

Matt took a bunch of pictures of the fun playing outside.

Action shot!

Uncle Steve is NO FUN at all.  :)

That girl can run!

I was on the couch with a baby (asleep maybe?) whenit was Happy Birthday time, but I love how sweet these pictures look, framed in between Aunt Mindy and Aunt Missy.

Joanna LOVES celebrating her birthday with Pop!!

Joanna got some more loot, rotten spoiled child.  :)

Reading her new book:

And thinking about flying her new kite!

She also got a grown up big girl Bible from her Mamma and Pop.

I’ll leave you with a sweet shot of Thomas.

The boys did so well being away from home and normalcy those couple of days.  It sure wore me out though!  I love being at home and able to take care of them in our regular routine.  Joanna sure loved getting to spend time with all kinds of her favorite people on the birthday weekend.

The babies are sleeping.  I’m procrastinating going to the grocery store, and it’s Sunday.  I just might be able to crank out another post or two this afternoon.  Here’s hoping!

Friday the 21st

I’m nothing if not punctual posting here on ye olde blogge.  I just haven’t been able to sit down and get anything posted this week!  Last weekend (the weekend of Joanna’s birthday), Matt took Friday and Monday off from work.  He hasn’t had a day off since we brought the babies home, so this was pretty awesome!

We’re not super vacationers or anything, but we decided to go over to The Woodlands for the day.  Our first stop was Sweet Tomatoes, a favorite restaurant, for lunch.

I actually fed both babies using my super awesome pillow in the booth at the restaurant.  Matt took a picture of that event (because, frankly, it was pretty cool), but it’s not quite internet appropriate.  :)

Later, I nursed just this one to sleep.  It’s Thomas.

Natalie fell in the mud outside the restaurant and was rather soaked, so I put her in the only change of clothes I had – James’ 3T pajama bottoms and 24month top.  The bottoms fit her like leggings and the top like a belly shirt.  :)  Since Joanna needed a green shirt anyway for her musical on Sunday, I had Matt drop me at Target while he drove around to put the babes to sleep.  I found a cute shirt in the boys department and put it on Natalie with her James leggings.  She’s so cute she can rock anything.

Then we went over to the Waterway area to walk around and enjoy the GORGEOUS day.  Seriously, I could not have special ordered a more beautiful day for the family.

I walked with them some, but of course I had to do a little of my favorite activity as well: photo stalking.

I tried for a little while to get it to look like Joanna was holding the fountain.  But she wasn’t that into it, so this was the best I got.  :)

This was one of the few pictures of me for the day.  I was there too!

Even though James had been to the restroom about FOUR times already, he needed to go on our walk.  Unfortunately we were in the business district or something and didn’t see a place.  I would have had him go in the bushes if we hadn’t soon emerged from the Waterway walk area near the Barnes and Noble.  I brought him in to go to the bathroom then sat on a bench in the shade outside to nurse the babies one at a time. (My pillow was in the car!)

Matt and the girls took turns for a potty break as well, and the middles enjoyed dancing to the music that was playing.  It was so lovely!!

A group of nice olderish ladies came up commenting on my big ol’ beautiful family.  It was sweet; I liked it.  I guess they’d kind of been watching us because they walked up and said “Where’s the other one?” when I just had one baby on my lap.  Matt had just walked inside with the other baby to get a cup of coffee. :)

Before the babies, we probably would have done another thing or two before heading home, but that was it for us!  The kids did so well on the car rides that day.  They loved noticing all the construction and heavy equipment on either side of the road that seemed to be everywhere.  We don’t go many places in the car, but when we do they’re very good about watching the world go by and pointing out interesting things.

It was enchilada Friday, so we called Grandma to see if we could come by a little early, rather than going home and turning right around to come back.  That, and James needed to go to the bathroom… again.  :)

I got Matt set up with the babies inside and took Joanna outside for a few more pictures.  I know I wasn’t making the best of the light and structures and everything, but I got a few sweet ones of her.

Back inside, Kathryn and Tawna had arrived, as well as Uncle Mark and Aunt Ida, so there were many hands for the babies.  I think Uncle Mark has Thomas below.  He was so sad, but calmed right down when Mark walked him around the room.

I think Michael is with Mark and Thomas is with Kathryn in the next pic, but it’s awfully hard to tell with iPod picture quality.

Natalie got to chat with Uncle Andy.

Tawna got Thomas to sleep later – yay!

And Kathryn put Michael to sleep.  Yay for other arms to snuggle the babies!

Just above, you can see the baby bump that is my nephew Drew!

It was a lovely day with the fam, but it definitely reaffirmed that AT HOME is the best place for little babies.  :)  They just do so much better in their regular routine with their own beds close by.  And going to a restaurant with little babies?  No fun.

But it was worth it, and the bug kids sure had fun.  It was just the first day of our busy weekend though!  I’m struggling to find time to blog lately, so even though I’d like to say there’s more up next, I’m just not sure that’s the truth. :)