Alice in Wonderland breakfast

Emmie is a flower in Dance Theatre of Columbia's Alice in Wonderland and she's so excited! This past weekend they had their character breakfast. My girls always LOVE this event. This year GiGi and Papa got to go with them! Apparently Ellie and Ruthie were not so eager to have their picture taken but Paul managed to get a few with them in there!

Picture with Alice!

The Cheshire cat costume is one of my favorites!

Ellie spends 2 hours every Tuesday at dance. This is one of the sweet older girls that lets Ellie hang out and apparently the one of the few people Ellie was willing to take a picture with! I LOVE the big girls at our dance studio. They have always been so sweet to the younger girls.

We are so looking forward to the show in less than 2 weeks! We hope many of our friends will be able to come. You can buy tickets at http://www.baileyfinearts.net/. (Scroll down to the bottom where it says "buy event tickets" and then on the next page click "buy tickets".)

Father-Daughter Dance

Yesterday was the father-daughter dance at Emmie and Ellie's school. Paul was out of town all week and wasn't due to fly back into Columbia until just before the dance so his dad came to take the girls to the dinner and the dance. Papa took the girls to eat at Moe's (Ellie's choice) and the girls were quite excited about their dinner out.

Paul made his connection in Atlanta with minutes to spare and was able to make it to the dance not long after it started. (I don't have the picture yet of Paul with the girls but I'll add it later!) The girls loved having their daddy AND Papa there!

I had taken the girls shopping for their dresses a few weeks ago and they had so much fun trying on dresses and picking out the perfect one. The day of the dance I fixed their hair and painted their nails. They loved it, especially Emmie. They also got to wear their charm bracelets that they got for Christmas. Emmie wore a necklace that Paul's grandmother had given her when she was a baby and Ellie wore the cross necklace that GiGi and Papa gave her when she was baptized. The girls LOVED getting to wear their special jewelry!








Apparently the girls danced and danced because they were worn out when they got home!



While the big girls were at the dance, Gin-g and I took Ruthie and JP to a special dinner at chick-fil-a!

The sweet things

Today I had the following conversation with Ellie in the car.
Ellie: Mom, do you know what kind of cow the chick-fil-a cow is?
Me: No idea.
Ellie: It's a Holstein. That's a dairy cow. Do you know how I know that?
Me: I have no idea. (Because I didn't even know how to spell Holstein and have proven many times that I am a city girl through and through.)
Ellie: Mrs. Boswell told me. (That's her teacher.) Do you know why I want to be a teacher?
Me: Why?
Ellie: So that I can learn interesting things and teach them to children.

I love her.



On Wednesday nights we have small group at church. Ruthie comes with me because she is opposed to the nursery. Tonight at the end we were praying and Ruthie came and sat on the floor beside me and after a minute or two I looked at her and she was sitting there with her hands folded listening quietly. It absolutely melted my heart.


Yesterday was a rough day. Here's a brief synopsis in case you missed my facebook post.

A day in the life: Woke up at 6:20 to Ruthie yelling across the house for me to come help her in the bathroom. Got her resituated in bed and JP woke up. He was NOT interested in going back to sleep. Then tried to be fun mom and gave the kids heart doughnuts for valentines and Emmie spent half of breakfast and the whole ride to school upset because her stomach hurt. Made it to the Y for cycling. Came home and took a shower. All I can hear when I get out is JP hitting his block... very loudly on something. I wasn't sure what. Fortunately it was just his slide. Then I go into the den and see that he has dumped his water all.over.the.floor. and then walked through the water. Then I turn around and discover that he has also pulled all the baskets off of the fireplace and scattered their contents across the floor (I have a basket for each child where I place things throughout the day that they need to put up in their rooms.). Then he spread a few handfuls of the rocks in the fireplace across the floor. Got all that cleaned up. Fed everyone lunch. Played a few rounds of Hi Ho Cherry-O with Ruthie. Laid down for a nap. Got about an hour and JP woke up (shortening his nap by an hour). Picked up the girls, went to dance, picked up pizza for dinner, got stuck in traffic on the way home so got home about 20min later than normal. Got children fed. Finished Ellie's homework with her. Got everyone changed and read to. Tucked the littles into bed. Finished homework with Emmie.Tucked her into bed. Ate chocolate.

Then last night, after my chocolate, I got in bed. Emmie had left a Valentine under everyone's pillow the night before. I had pulled mine out and set it on my bedside table but hadn't really looked at it. Well, last night I finally got around to reading it. Totally made my day. This girl has the sweetest, kindest heart and loves to make other people happy. Her note was EXACTLY what I needed at the end of the day.

16 Months

I am 16 months old!

• I wear mostly 18mo clothes although I can still wear some of my 12mo pants. I wear a size 4w shoe.
• I still just have the same 6 teeth. Four on the top and 2 on the bottom. One of these days maybe the rest will come in!
• During the week I sleep about 11 hours at night and take about a 2hr nap. On the weekends I will often sleep in and sleep for 12-12.5 hours at night.
• I LOVE to play outside. I love to play in the sandbox, throw a ball, play tball or soccer, drag my bat around, and play in the playhouse. And of course I adore sliding. This month I slid face first. Not such a smart idea.
• I still don't say many words. I love to look at pictures of my family and I will try to say my sisters names when I'm looking at each of their pictures. I generally refer to them as "sissies" when I talk about them. I also can say "diaper", "dog", "ball", "mama", and "dada". I am pretty good at communicating what I want. I do a combination of pointing, grunting, and baby sign language.
• I LOVE my pacifier. If it was up to me I would always have one in my mouth and 1-2 in my hand. My mommy only lets me have one at a time though.
• This month I got to go to the Children's Museum with JUST Mommy. It was very crowded but we still had so much fun!

• This month I went to HiWire with my sisters. It was lots of fun!

• I love playing with my sisters....most of the time. Sometimes they get a little overwhelming but most of the time they're pretty fun.
• I still love my slide that I got for Christmas. It has brought me much laughter!

• This month we celebrated Christmas. I wasn't very interested in the whole present opening thing but I liked my presents a lot once they were open! I also loved having lots of family around.

• I'm not big on desserts but I LOVE a good cookie! My eyes light up when I get one and I get a big smile on my face!

• Tuesday is my favorite day of the week. It's garbage day! I love to watch the garbage and recycle trucks come by!

• I like to read books but have a pretty short attention span.

• I love to FaceTime with family.
• I'm still pretty grumpy most of the time. However, we had some really nice weather and I was a whole different child with my daily dose of vitamin D.
• I'm very possessive of my Mommy. I get very jealous if she holds one of my sisters or they sit in her lap.
• This month I got interested in the TV. I will watch cartoons for a few minutes but I get really excited when sports are on.
• I love to climb. I can now climb on the coffee table, the kitchen chairs, and the patio furniture...as in all the way on top of the patio table. I don't have much fear.

Emmie at 16 mo.

Ellie at 16mo.

Ruthie at 16mo.

Career Day

A few weeks ago Ellie had career day at school. She decided that she wants to be a teacher when she grows up. More specifically, she wants to be a preschool teacher. She did have some fabulous preschool teachers to model herself after!

She brought apples to share with her teachers.

Meanwhile, JP has also been practicing his future career: structural engineer. This guy is going to be building skyscrapers by middle school! I love how proud of himself he is. If nobody's in the room when he builds one of his structures he will go find someone to come in the room and see it. And of course we all praise him appropriately.

The final product.