Some More

 Elliette nearly always gets Jelly Belly's as a gift as we call her our Jelly Belly.  I don't know why that has stuck but our little Ellie Belly does love them.  It is funny those things that aren't planned to be traditions but just happen.

 Marshall wanting to eat Elliette's Jelly Belly's.

 Our girls play so much with horses and animals that this was an easy choice for her.

 I love these pictures of 4 generations of men watching some sporting event together, it happens frequently, probably not being documented often.  Marshall loves to be in there with the men, He loves to watch pretty well any sport, anything with a ball, or even a puck.  He has always, since he was a little baby, loved the ball, and her would sit with Great Grandpa and watch Soccer as a little baby.  He is a mans-man, Grandpa likes to say.

This is his favorite spot, on Great Grandpa's lap!  They adore each other and it is a relationship that is such a blessing.  How many kids have the opportunity to develop such a relationship with any Great grandparent.  It is a blessing!

Elliette is 7!!

She may look like she is much younger, but Elliette really is 7!  She is our small, little miss.  She is such a fun personality, so goofy, yet sweet.  She is so kind, loving and protective of her brother and she is really good at playing and being nice to her little sister.  Elliette is so wonderful about being mindful of people smaller then her.  

For her birthday she wanted to have dolphins and geckos on her cake.  Those are 2 things that she chose to study early this year and she was excited about them.  So this is what we came up with, still really easy yet fulfilling her wish.

 Elliette also wanted to have a swimming party.  So we kept it small and simple, not too many 7 year olds loose at the pool.  She had Eve and Olivia over for pizza, then over to swim at the pool and back for cake.  It all worked out simply and wonderful, just what Elliette wanted.  It was a great little party.

 Elliette being her regular self.  She has so much trouble not being silly in pictures and regularly is the one in family pictures doing something crazy.  That is just Elliette!

Listening to her new watch necklace, she has loved that gift.

Some Random Catch-up

Dawsyn was just going out to her cousins house, or somewhere with them but she looked so cute a grown-up, like she was heading to school or somewhere.  She is sure a fun girl and makes us laugh all the time.  I so appreciate her kind personality and the gift that she has for caring about others.  She is such a great girl.

Here is a little preview of the quilt that I made for Marshall.  It is a little fuzzy, the kids got a hold of my camera and turned off the automatic focus and it took me a little while to figure it out.

This quilt I had made a while ago, while I was making others to donate and I just held onto it for some reason.  It worked out great to have and send to a cold family from India adjusting to our cooler temperatures, friends of my parents.  So I am always grateful when things work out as they should.  I also really love this backing fabric, it makes me so happy, for so many reasons.

This quilt was made for Paul's cousin who had a sweet baby boy.  It is so much fun to have special babies to make quilts for!

My Muskateer!

Paul was heading to his cousins wedding in El Paso and so I was excited to be able to make a quilt for them.  Here Dawsyn is my cute little helper.  We all love to be wrapped up in a quilt and the girls love any opportunity to pose for the camera.  So here are a few of our favorite things.

 My helpers peeking out!

 The back side.

 I did a swirl quilting design, which is my new favorite, it is pretty quick and easy, and for quite straight lines on the quilt, it adds more dimension and movement.  I have done it on a few now.

 Here is Dawsyn, my little musketeer.  She picked out a movie from the library of the 3 musketeers (with Barbie I think) and then after that she wanted to be a musketeer.  I even asked her something about being a mommy when she grows up and she said that she doesn't want to be a mommy, that she wants to be a musketeer and be able to fight bad guys.  I explained to her the mommy bear effect and how mommies fight off bad guys all the time, keeping little baby bears safe.  She was satisfied with that and decided to just add musketeer to her list of grown-up responsibilities, along with mommy and ranch girl.

 She is so funny!  She is quite the personality and has been such a fun 4 year old.  So here is our little musketeer beauty!

Learning and Growing

Here is a glimpse into our days. 

 

 Here Kyndal is working on her Math.  She worked really hard through the month of September and finished more then half of her Math from grade 3.  Math is the subject that she finds the most frustrating and has to work the hardest at, many times not wanting to put in that work.  But this month she made a goal and had a good reward that guided her through the month.  She did it, completed over 70 lessons, plus quizzes, etc. in one month!  She did so well and we were all so happy to get it done and have the month be over.  What progress she made through this process, she knew she couldn't give up and was driven to work through when it was hard.  She grew in leaps and bounds with her math!!

 Elliette is working on some math as well.  She has done really well in math so far, at times working on the same grade 3 math as Kyndal.  She has really grown in her reading confidence lately.  She has been reading slightly above grade level, but the last while something just clicked in her confidence.  She realized that she can do it, and so will sit down on her own, on occasion, and begin reading a chapter book.

 Elliette also lost her second tooth.  I love these grins all with empty spaces.  He top ones are wiggly as well as another bottom one so that smile will be missing more soon!

Dawsyn has been really proud of herself for doing this puzzle all by herself.  I love to see this discovery of abilities that they didn't know they had.  She is quite independent and loves to be able to have done it without any prompting or help of any kind.  These girls are just so great and I am glad for these times that I can really appreciate how amazing they are and how grateful I am for where we are at in our lives.  Moments of perspective and gratitude are so helpful!  I sure love my life!

We are into the 2's!

My Marshall is now 2 years old.  The time has gone by way too fast.  He still seems like a little baby to me.  I find myself always saying, he can do that, he is just a baby.  But realizing how big my other kids seemed at 2, this is so different.  Marshall is super cuddly, yet independent.  He is funny and silly but also loves to help.  He is talking so much and it is so fun to hear what he is thinking.  He talks about cars, trucks, animals, books, and definitely balls.  He loves to watch out the window of the house and talk about the cars and trucks that he sees.  He has a chair on the front porch that I once sat him on to watch the neighbors moving truck, and since then he wants to sit there and watch the trucks.  He is all boy!

He was so excited about this huge balloon.  He would hit it up in the air and be so excited.  He would not let any of his sisters come close to touching it. 

It is funny to see this boy fully clothed, as it seems to be a rarity for a lot of days.  He is so funny about his clothes, particular and if it isn't just what he wants he is stripping it off.  He likes this monster shirt, as well and a few monster truck shirts.  He loves pajamas, especially his basketball pajamas, he asks for those, pretty well, every day!  If he gets a drop of water on his clothes they all come off, I try to get him to keep on the pants that are dry but he will have no part of it.  Even if I manage to keep him in it, he then goes to the other room and comes back with his clothes off; there is no distracting him from it.  We just go with it, try and put clothes back on, or not.  He is just funny, we all have our things, right?!

 I can just picture how he blows, it is so cute.

Easy to please, this boy is, with a few trucks, cars, balloons, he is just as happy as can be.  Happy birthday my 2 year old baby!

Some of the crazy things my kids do!

Here are a few images that seem to be my life.  I have crazy and busy kids.  They do not seem to be scared of very much (other then scary characters in Disney movies).  They are happy to launch themselves off of things without a second thought.  This has been a regular occurrence around our house and my girls usually call it skydiving.  They get onto the high toy shelf and jump, landing face first, or on their bums, onto our rolly polly.  Thankfully, for my sanity, Marshall only jumped from the high shelf once and then just jumps from the low one, or the couch onto this.  Here is a glimpse into their antics!

Dawsyn and her cousins formed a chain and ran around and around taking turns climbing up, launching themselves off and then circling back around again.  The little kids took separate turns from the older kids as they jump further.

Elliette jumping and turning to her back.  I have outlawed flips, as it is just to dangerous and scary, but they try to be creative with their jumps, adding silly starts, pretending they are fainting and such.

They just love this game.  It provides a lot of exercise and just the crazy stunts that they seem to need.

Elliette is really an amazing, spunky little girl.  She makes us laugh all the time!

 

My Kyndal is sure a funny girl.  She is growing up bigger every day.  I can't look at her without being amazed at how she is growing.  It is a really different feeling to look at my family now and see how it is changing so constantly.  I try to soak it in, to savour these good moments.  They don't stay in my memory long enough, so here I am trying to document them. 

This is one of Elliette's great skills.  She is quite shy and won't talk when someone new comes, but she isn't too shy to show off her skills.  Here is the progression of her climbing.

Followed by her chin-ups!  She just loves to do this.  She is very proud of her chin-ups and wants to do a lot of them.  One day she wanted me to count the number of chin-ups she could do.  We counted through the day consecutively, every time she climbed she did 3-4 and through the day she made it up to 59 chin-ups.  That is a strong little girl.  She is hilarious, she also shows off her muscles after.  It is awesome!

Here is Elliette's last climbing skill.  She wants to run out of the house and do this whenever the opportunity presents itself (like whenever the door is opened!).  She has no fear and is seriously a monkey!  I wish this was a coconut tree that we could send her up to harvest!  I hope that all of the kids that come to our house don't go home and drive their parents nuts with the crazy stunts that they learned at our house, but all I can do is hope!