Pence Family

On Saturday afternoon we headed over to Matt’s sister’s house for cousin Brooke’s birthday party. First, though, we had to wake up these sleeping beauties:

All my kiddos had such a good time playing. They’ve already told me several times they’re ready to go back. :)

Michael lost a toy under the cabinet – he’s adorable.

He loved hanging out with Aunt Missy.

Happy 3rd birthday sweet Brooke!

This morning Thomas woke up super early, then went back down and was still sleeping when everyone was up and ready for the day. The big three have used the same baskets for forever, but I kind of forgot that the boys might want something this year. So I dug out a couple of buckets from the closet – yay!

The big three opened up their cards from Nana and Popo.

Joanna helped Michael with his. Everybody got an Easter card and stickers – yay!

We decided Thomas wouldn’t know what he was missing, and we could go ahead and hunt eggs without him.

For the past few years Grandpa David has come over and hidden eggs for the kids sometime in the night. They get the biggest kick out of hunting for them in the front yard!

Michael sat on the driveway and everybody brought him eggs. He’d open, close, open, close. It was cute.

James looooooved the confetti eggs!

They had a blast!

I love all these clothes laid out in a row.

Aren’t they adorable?! I do so love the flower cross at KUMC!

Here we are – all looking at the camera!

I did cheat a little on the photo. A friend took two. In the first, Michael was sucking his thumb, and in the second Natalie had her eyes closed. So I decided to use Photoshop to swap Natalie’s open eyes in the first pic with her closed eyes from this one. Thankfully she had stood pretty still between the two.

Happy Easter to you and yours!

And by full, I mean 53 pictures. You have been warned. :)

Friday we had dinner at Grandma’s house. Before we went inside I made the kids pose by Aunt Gail’s bluebonnet patch.

I’m not sure we’ll make it to our usual patch this year. This little one is just perfect (and easy!)

It was just a beautiful evening!

For dinner Aunt Gail made meatloaf and sides. I may have eaten two plates’ worth – soooooo good! Then it was so beautiful outside we spent most of the evening watching the kiddos play.

That’s Thomas in the azalea window. He was all over the place!

It was Drew’s first birthday! He apparently started walking well this week and wanted to be all over the place too.

He’s adorable, that’s for sure. :)

The light was so pretty coming through the trees I dragged James over in the wagon to pose for me. He, unfortunately, had to immediately go inside and pee, so Natalie agreed to be my subject.

Cheeseball.

Cousin Jade was there too! She’s right in between my girls, age wise, and they had such fun playing.

Then Thomas got a ride in the wagon.

He thought it was THE BEST.

It was such a lovely evening!

On Saturday the kids and I headed into town to pick out a good birthday present for Drew. The big three are at a fun age to do shopping like that. I left the babies at home with Matt. :)

Matt ended up staying home from Drew’s birthday party to oversee the roofers we had fixing water damage around the chimney. So I brought all five. (What was I thinking?!)

As you can see, it was a Mickey mouse theme. Adorable!

I love watching present opening at one year old parties. (Side note: can you believe Joanna here? She’s got Michael on her hip, reaching into the present bag for the cards they made for Drew. Sometimes I can’t believe she’s only eight.)

Drew was very impressed with the bigs’ cards.

“Happy Birthday” time!

And then I took approximately three zillion pictures of Drew not eating his smash cake. Hee hee.

He did really enjoy feeding it to his dad though.

Love this face – ew!

It was such fun, but the boys turned into rotten pumpkins after that. Maybe the sugar got to them. :) I think this was actually the first time they had cake. Thanks cousin Drew! I managed to get them muscled into the van (with the help of Christiana’s mother!) when Matt pulled up. Poor guy, I made him take the van o’ babies home while I gathered the bigs and came home in the quiet car. Ahhhhhhhh…

That evening what had been a tickle in my throat became pain, and I decided I would go to the RediClinic before church in the morning. So I went even though this morning I didn’t actually feel that bad, and sure enough – strep throat for the momma. Boo. But I got antibiotics and will hopefully be feeling great soon. And even more hopefully, I didn’t pass it along to the many many people I was around this weekend, and the several of my children who I’m sure I shared food with. Yay.

I sent Matt and all the kiddos along to church at regular time. I took his car up and slipped in just for the part of the service the girls were singing. They were beautiful; then I slipped out to pick up my prescription and some groceries.

This afternoon I guess the ibuprofen was making me feel not awful, so we took the kids for some pictures while the azaleas were still blooming.

This was by far the best group shot I got. I think I need magic to get a pic of all of them together. :)

But then I got some great individual shots!

James is at that age where he has trouble smiling naturally. Love him.

This one on the other hand…

She may be missing a few teeth, but she’s got a beautiful smile!

Sweet Natalie.

Michael was very into little things in the grass. I’m pretty sure he was trying to hand something to Joanna behind me. :)

This one’s almost a smile!

Thomas saw something cool to point at.

Not exactly a smile, but he’s looking at me!

I promised the kids if they’d take the pictures I wanted, I would take whatever picture they wanted. They all chose to run up and down the ditch in the tall grass. Love ‘em.