Good Times!

We have been so blessed since we have moved to NC. When we lived in AR we had VERY few visitors. Grandma's and Grandpa's, one aunt, and one friend (I hope I didn't forget anyone.) We have been in our house for a little over 5 months now and have had 5 different families come to visit. The Thompson's, Grandma and Grandpa Gibb, Abuela and Grumps, Maren and her family, and now my brother, Dave and his family came from Utah.

We had such a great time with them. They have 1 daughter that's married and 4 boys. It was great for the girls to experience what it would be like having big brothers. These boys are so great. They are kind, polite, and so much fun. The only problem was that I didn't get very many pictures. So here are a few pictures and I'll share the highlights with you:

Went shopping, ate lunch with Tim, went swimming, saw a boy almost drowned, climbed on a train, played in the back yard, watched firefly's, played twister, watched a movie, watched food network, ate yummy dinners, went to Charlotte, went to a park, survived our hot weather only to have PERFECT weather the week after they left, went to dinner at Sweet Potatoes (which has fabulous fried chicken). I think I got everything. Now here are some pictures. I realized that I didn't get one picture of my brother, Dave. Sorry. But, you can see him in an earlier post in May called "Wedding Bells", of my whole family. (hint: he's the one with the perm.)

Oh! I almost forgot. One of the highlights for me was my nephew's Landon and Brenden, watched my girls while we went to dinner and not only did they take care of them, and feed them dinner, they cleaned up my house, dusted, vaccuumed, did the dishes. These boys have been trained well. Thanks again.

Carson, Hayden, Maya and Olivia

Playing Twister
Brenden, Roberta, Landon at the park
Cute Landon
Carson and Maya

(Is that tender or what? He is so good with these little girls.) A monkey, I mean, Alexa.Brenden
Can't wait for another visit. We love having people come. Come one, come all. (But not all at once.)

Happy Happy Birthday, Daddy, Dear . . .

Today is a special day. Our DAD is having a birthday. How old is he, you might ask? He is a whopping 37 years old. We love our dad and think he is the best. Here are some reasons we love him so . . .

He is a SUPER cook and feeds us often.

He is always fixing things around the house.
He gives MOST of us "choo choo". Which means, he carries us up to bed at night. Notice that he does it all at the same time. He's soooo strong.
He plays baseball with us in the backyard even though we play like girls.(sorry he's not in the picture, I couldn't find one.)

He carves pumpkins with us at Halloween so mommy doesn't have to.

He buys us fun stuff when he goes away on trips.He does girly things with us, like decorate gingerbread houses at Christmas.
He takes us on hikes. He cooks for us and anyone who comes to visit.
He builds us stuff:

For Alexa's room

For Olivia's room

He is building this for Mommy's office - almost finished

Stands for the washer and dryer

and a shelf.

All that and did we mention that he cooks us dinner?

We love you, daddy. Thanks for being so good to all your girls. It's not easy being the only man in the house but you sure do a great job. We appreciate all you do for us. What a guy! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Alexa's Piano Recital

After our fun picnic at the school with Olivia, Alexa had her piano recital that night. (It's been a busy few weeks.) Here are a few videos of her playing. She was so nervous but she did a GREAT job. She's only been taking lessons for about 3 months now. She loves to practice and I rarely have to remind her - I hope that will continue.

Alexa is 2nd from the right and her teacher is 4th from the right. These are all the students.

On this next song she had a little trouble at the beginning. I only mention this because I was so impressed at how well she recovered. This was her first recital ever and I think I was more nervous than she was. You will see the camera shake because I was about to jump up and go put my arm around her and try to save her. I'm glad I didn't because she did it all on her own, not to mention I probably would have embarrassed her. It's so hard to watch your kids go through things like that. It was a great experience for her. I should mention also that her Grandpa wrote this arrangement for her so that she could play it at her level and to pass off for her Activity Days, Faith in God. It's I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus. McKenna did the vocals for the performance also.

Olivia's Class Parrty

Livie's class had their end of the year picnic and I signed up to go and bring stuff long before I knew the heat was going to be on the rise. Actually, it wasn't as bad as Arkansas. There was a breeze that came through quite often. It was a fun picnic. They had great food for all, and the kids ran around and played games. Maya loved being with all the big kids and McKenna and I just hung out on our blanket and visited with the other parents. Not a bad afternoon.

Maya and McKenna waiting for the picnic to start. Do they even get any cuter than this?

Does this girl love the camera or what?
Sisters.
Blowing bubbles

Nathan Gibb Bosley

McKenna got one of the best presents on her birthday - a new baby cousin. Isn't he darling - and so so tiny.

Here we are at the hospital. The girls couldn't get enough of him.
Alexa loving the baby.
Grandma and McKenna
The proud parents.
This was when we made the trade. Grandma and Grandpa left to go help with the baby. Thanks for coming and visiting, Grandma & Grandpa. We had a great time.

Can you believe our baby is one?

While Grandma and Grandpa were still here, McKenna had her FIRST birthday. It was fun having them celebrate with us. They helped me decorate for the festivities. Here we are having McKenna's birthday dinner. Maya let me know that McKenna said she wanted Goldfish for her birthday dinner but we opted for something a little more "dinner like". Tim, of course made a wonderful meal since I don't cook for guests, Sundays, special occasions, or Saturdays.

The Big Sisters waiting to get the PARTY started.

McKenna opening presents

McKenna's new baby doll. (Alexa was our fabulous photographer for the evening)

I found this cute cake in a magazine and figured it was easy enough for me to do and a fun cake for a first birthday. What a win win situation. It's covered with Oatmeal Teddy Grahams, Choc. chips, and Marshmallows. It was so easy, I let the girls decorate McKenna's mini-cake.

McKenna looking a little confused about the whole Happy Birthday song.

I can't get over how cute she is. I just want to squish her all the time.

She had no problem understanding what to do with the cake.
I'm glad I didn't have to clean up that face.

Here's a little video Tim took of the baby/one year old enjoying her cake. Ignore all of her 4 mothers in the background talking to her.

Grandma and Grandpa Come to Visit

It's been a busy few weeks and so I hope I can get all this posted.

Since my sister was due to have a baby, and since we live so close now, Grandma and Grandpa Gibb came for a visit to see us until the baby was born. We had a great time. The first day wasn't much fun. It had been great weather for weeks and so I was expecting the best. The forecast was for rain but we thought we'd still be ok. We went out to Greensboro to see the Replacements store. If you haven't been, it's pretty impressive. You can read about it on their website. We all dressed in our comfy summer, great weather clothes only to find that after we had left home that the weather kept getting colder so the last week of May we had one day of 54 degree weather, just for one day, the day I let the kids get out of school to spend with Grandma and Grandpa, and it was a lousy 54 degrees. It doesn't sound that bad but when it is raining and windy and your baby is in shorts and no shoes, it's a little much. We did go to Panera Bread for lunch which is a fabulous sandwich place with fabulous bread. Grandma treated us to some of their Yummy bagels for breakfast the next day. The next day was BEAUTIFUL. We took them to Korner's Folly which is a CRAZY house out here that I think they enjoyed seeing. The girls love the narrow staircases and the playroom that the adults have to hunch over just to fit in the room.

This is grandma standing in the attic where they built a theater.

Here are three sweet girls waiting PATIENTLY for the adults to finish reading about everything we were looking at. Here's the babe, McKenna. Does she look happy or what. I tried to keep a smile on my face, it was a little difficult with her pulling my hair, not to mention she is getting a little heavier to carry each day.


After seeing the house we came home and played some baseball in the backyard. Here are some highlights from the game:

Grandpa trying to explain just where you are supposed to stand when you are up to bat. I don't watch much baseball but I think he should probably do that for some of the pros. Grandma moving like lightning to get that ball.Alexa watching the fly ball trying to decide if she should run. It probably was ok since Maya was the fielder.
Grandpa sacrificing his body just for a game. What a guy.
The Cheerleader
Grandpa doing what he does best.
Grandma doing what she does best.

15 Minutes a Day!

We had an exciting moment in our house a few weeks ago. We signed Maya up for kindergarten. She is so excited and wants to go right now. While I was there they gave me some papers to read. One that caught my eye was "Tips for parents of Kindergartners." I decided to read it to see if there was anything we could do over the summer to keep up on learning. As I read the list it gave the usual things about eating healthy and bedtimes but one thing that I couldn't believe said, "Spend 15 minutes of uninterupted time with your child each day." 15 MINUTES! Why do they think that 15 minutes a day is enough for a child? Is this a way to make working parents guilt free for only seeing their children a few minutes a day? Since I don't know who wrote the flyer, I decided this was the next best place to address the issue. I first need to put a disclaimer that I am far from the perfect parent but this is my phylosophy on parenting and one aspect of why I think it is important for me to stay home with my children - so here you go: You can't PICK the time that your child needs you? You may spend 15 minutes with them but they may not get anything out of that 15 minutes. You can spend 3 hours a day with them every day for a week and they may remember only 5 minutes of it. If you are only spending 15 minutes a day with them, what are they doing the rest of the time? Isn't that having more of an effect on them? If they watch one 1/2 hour TV show they have just spent twice as much time with that one show than their parent. And, unfortunately, they'll remember the show before they remember the 15 minutes with mom or dad. This is how I see it, Maya and I pretty much spend every hour together except when she is asleep or I go on a rare date with my husband. Even if we aren't together, we are in the house together. She doesn't want to be around me the whole time, she likes to be with her sisters or play on the computer but, she can come to me ANY time she wants, just like her sisters. For example, I am in here on the computer and Maya came in to show me something she wants to make that she found in a book. I stopped and looked at it for about 5 minutes with her. If she had to wait for our "15 minutes of uninterupted time" she would have forgotten about it and we never would have had that fun conversation of planning a craft to do and we would have never done the craft. Now we have another fun thing to do over the summer. It's more important for her to know that she can come to me almost ANY time she needs me. Another fine example of this is something I read on my friend's, the Randall's blog. "Craig was out mowing the grass and Lauren wanted him to blow bubbles with her. So, because he is awesome and knows grass can wait, but little people can't...he blew bubbles with her." They are so right, little people can't wait. Thanks for helping me prove my point, Randall's.