All About Lizzy-11 years

Wow 11 years old! This past year has been quite a year for my Lizzy! This is her last year in elementary school and her last year in Primary. That's just craziness to me! She has really grown up this past year. Even more so than any other year. It's like she is transitioning into a young woman rather than a kid. I would have to admit that I really love it too. She is just growing into such an amazing person. She has so much kindness and love in her. She is always trying to help me and make my life easier. Thank goodness I have one child who is doing that!! She loves helping with the younger kids and really has become like a little mommy to Clara. She is always helping me clean the house and helps me with dinner a lot too. She is becoming quite the good cook! She still is the best eater and has a hollow leg. She almost always eats more than I do at a meal. Some of her favorites are still salads and she often takes them in her lunch rather than taking a sandwich.

At school she has become quite the little leader, she always loves to run the show and that's how she is at school too. She decided to produce a little play at school and directed it and got a buch of kids to do it with her. The principal even came to watch it. And he recognized her after as showing great leadership. She has always had that sociability that it took me being an adult to get. I love that about her.

I really love how she is blossoming so much with her testimony as well. She is so strong and brave and has such a desire to be good and follow the spirit. I love how she is so contemplative too. If I say something about feeling frustrated with the kids, a little while later she will come back and apologize for not doing enough. She definitely got my apologizing problem. She is even apologizing if she didn't do anything wrong.

She has really started to grow out of the kid things as well. For her birthday and Christmas all she wants is clothes and jewelry and those sorts of things. She doesn't really play with the other girls anymore when they play with their dolls and other things. It's kindof sad to see that, but it was bound to happen. Lizzy is really getting into bigger kid stuff. Her favorite tv show is the Flash. She loves Star Wars And has recently been reading the Hunger games books.

She is just the perfect first child and I am so eternally grateful that she was sent to me first! There are a lot of days that I know I wouldn't be able to make it through the day without having had her around to help. I feel so lucky to have been blessed with such a great kid.

 

Lizzy's 11th Birthday

We didn't do a party for Lizzy this year which was nice after her crazy party last year. I had a little day date with Lizzy a few days before her birthday and we went shopping and out to lunch. There is a little bit of sadness as children grow, but so much good! I had so much fun with her, and love being with her and talking wih her, and just enjoy having this person that she is becoming around.

Grandma got her this darling outfit. As usual, grandma picks out the best clothes!

She wanted a chocolate mousse crunch cake for her birthday and man it was good! She had this one for her 8th birthday too.

One more year and she goes into Young Women!! I can't believe I have a child that old!

 

Russy's Birthday Party

Everyone knows how I feel about birthday parties. But for some reason this one was no big deal. We invited Russys little buddies from church, Andof course Cole and Mason. I think there are two reasons that this party wasn'ta big deal, one I had Lizzy come in and take over. She loves doing it so I let her. Plus we just did a few simple games so I didn't feel any stress. It was great! We let the boys make paper airplanes and then we let them decorate them and had a contest flying them. The boys loved it!

We did a piñata, which lets be honest is the best thing to do at a party. Kids love it! Any time you get to smash something and candy falls out of it, kids are on board.

 

We did a Dusty theme because Russy loves planes. He loves lots of thingsand would have been happy to do any kind of party really, but I had bought a buch of planes party decore a year or so ago for really cheap off a yard sale site, so I wasn't going to let that go to waste. I had an idea for his cake and it ended up turning out really cute and was one of the easiest cakes I have ever made.

He loved getting lots of new toys and having the attention all on him.

We tried to do the cake outside but the candle wouldn't stay lit because of the breeze so we had to take it inside. Russy isn't too sure about fire right now, but he was better than when we lit the candle on his birthday.

 

 

All about Russy-4 years

Russy is four!! He is growing up so much, this past year has seen some major development for him. He really loves to go to school and wants everyday to be school day. He loves playing with toys and I swear I have never seen a kid that could just play with toys for hours on end the way that he can, and he doesn't discriminate either. He will play with all of his toys! It's pretty awesome!

Probably the hardest thing with him right now is how he and Annie fight like crazy. When they are together they are at each other's throats! It is so frustrating. When he is on his own though he couldn't be better. We just love this crazy silly boy so much!! He is at the best age right now, where he still is little enough to snuggle and is so cute and says such funny things but he is big enough to start to really reason with and understand things. One of the things I love most about him is how snugglely he is. He wants to sit by me and snuggle with me all the time. He also really likes me again, so that's good! He went through a time where all he wanted was kevin and he would start crying in the morning of Kevin wasn't around and he wanted nothing to do with me, but thankfully that isn't the case anymore.

He loves boy stuff and wants nothing to do with anything that is girl at all! I can't give him a girl cup or a pink plate or anything. He just laughs at me and says "mom that's pink!" Like of course I can't have that. He loves superhero stuff and Star Wars and sports stuff, pretty much anything boy. It was fun on his birthday because instead of buying him a present we took him shopping so that he could pick out what he wanted himself, and oh boy did he love that!! He was in heaven picking out toys.

He is pretty emotional for a boy, so I am hoping it's just a phase, because I really have enough emotional people in this house already. When we lit his candle on his cake he totally freaked out and wouldn't blow it out because he was too scared. Such a silly guy.

Right now he is really into the chanting thing and he loves this commercial by geico where they sing the final countdown, and he sings it all the time. He even named his stuffed dog, the final countdown.

His favorite food I would say is popcorn. That kid can down some serious popcorn. He actually has quite the appetite lately and has been eating everything in sight, which I have to admit I have been loving!!

Probably my very favorite thing about this cute boy of mine is how often he tells me he loves me. Randomly he will come up to me and say "mom I just love you!" And then give me a big hug. It's the sweetest. And he does it ally he time which makes it even better. He sure has a special place in my heart. I am so glad I was blessed with this amazing sweet boy!

 

 

Clara- six months

Oh my sweet baby! Oh how fast the time passes. I though I wouldn't be sad to see her getting big, but the truth is I am! She has become a very sweet baby. Very good natured and sweet. So far she seems to have a passive type of personality, which will be a good thing for when she has to deal with her big sister Annie. Man is she adored by all of her older siblings. They just love her so much! Russell is really rough with her but he isn't doing it on purpose. That is just the way he is loving her. annie is very loving to her, and Lizzy is just like a little mama to her.

She HATED taking baths when she was first born. She screamed bloody murder every single time! But now she seems to really enjoy being in the tub and loves when her siblings join her.

 

I waited to start baby food until she was six months becuase honestly it's a lot of work and I am a busy lady, so I figured she would survive. She did do really well when I started her. She loved trying new food a lot!

She still loves to be swaddled and has to be completely wrapped up to go to sleep.

She started sitting up a couple weeks after she was six months. She loved it and you could tell she thought she was so big when she started doing that. She started playing better on her own at that point too.

I seriously want to eat her cheeks!! She has gotten pretty chubby for one of our babies, which means she isn't tiny, but I think she may have gotten the best cheeks of all! They are really more like jowels right now. :) I love her little dimple chin too, it's so unique.

She has gotten pretty good about being dragged around, because with the craziness of Annie and Russ we have to get out a lot so I don't lose it.

I just adore this sweet girl! I'm so glad that we dared to have another one! Oh how our lives would be imcomplete without our Clara Bell!