Happy Fall Y'all :)

    It's been forever since I've been able to update. We still don't have a computer with internet capabilities, but Laura is visitng and I'm able to use her laptop for a quick update before she leaves tomorrow. There are a lot of blogs I'd like to write, but since I'm so far behind I'm just going to have to skip them and pick back up with what's going on today. It's Halloween, and we're getting ready to take the kids to the Library to get some candy. We had big plans to go to a Trunk or Treat event this weekend but things didn't exactly work out. We thought we were going yesterday, so we looked up some places and found the closest church that was doing it. When we got there it ended up being in a really bad part of town and there were like 3 cars doing the trunk or treat, so we decided to drive further (to Virginia Beach) and go to this church that had advertised a huge event with all kinds of fun things for the kids to do as well as trunk or treat. We drove all the way out there (an hour drive) only to arrive in an empty parking lot. We looked at the website once more because we were so confused, we just knew it said Sunday at 6pm! And it did say that.... for 2010!!! Ha!! So we were about a year late for the party. The kids were all dressed in their costumes and expecting candy though, and we felt bad, so we decided to take them to Dairy Queen for ice cream. We drove to Dairy Queen only to realize when we got there that it was a drive thru only! We were really bummed at this point. Nothing was going as planned. We ended up at Burger King where the kids still got their ice-cream and everyone loved their costumes. It was a really frustrating day, but we tried to make the best of it and make it up to the kids by letting them dress up again today to get candy at the library. We did manage to get some cute pictures of them all dressed up before we left yesterday. Here they are: (you can click on any of them to see it larger)



My inlaws will be upset about Eli's
costume, but it was free and warm ;)




The Faries posing



Isabella and Zion love each other
so much! It's so sweet!

The Schneidermans

Me with my babies :)

Just happy to be out of the car and
really enjoying their ice cream.

Eli's 8 Month Update

    Yep, it's that time already! And once again, I can. not. believe it! Eli is 8 months old now, and into EVERYTHING!! He's officially crawling and trying to pull up. He makes it up on his knees, but hasn't pulled all the way up to standing yet. We lowered his crib this weekend just in case, and it's so weird to see him way down in there taking up half the mattress. I'm still breastfeeding (woot!!) and he's eating solids 3 times a day. I can't wait until he's 9 months and we can see how much he's grown! He LOVES to crawl around on the floor and get in to explore everything around the house. And now that we have carpet in the playroom he is able to go out there and play with the girls. His favorite toy at the moment is a keyboard. He will just sit there and bang on the keys and bounce up and down while smiling from ear to ear. His smile is the cutest thing I've ever seen, he can light up a room with that grin! He has also figured out that you can splash water while in the bath (which is the sink for him), I was surprised it took him so long to figure that one out. A couple of days ago he FINALLY got his first tooth!! Well, it broke through the skin and you can feel it now, but it's still exciting :) Here are some pictures that I've taken over the last week:

About to pull books off the shelf

Trying to pull up

He will crawl across the whole house for these blocks!

Got it!!

Hmmm... I think I will put it in my mouth.

Trying to escape

This is the face he gives you when you tell him
"no" then he smiles REALLY big and goes back to
whatever it was you told him "no" about

He pulled this monitor off the shelf so I put his
bouncy chair in front of the cords so he would
leave it alone, but he just crawled up under it
and pulled it of again.... it's broken now

Loving his bath :)

Trying to jump out.

Pre-K

    So I decided to do home preschool with the girls starting this year. It's been a lot of fun so far and I can already tell they are learning so much, and they ask me all the time "when can we do school again?!?!" We only do it 3 days a week right now (formally) but I try to add in a lesson to almost everything we do. It keeps learning fun :) This week's art project was to trace their bodies on big sheets of paper. They thought this was the BEST. THING. EVER!! Once we traced their body I let them color their hair and draw their faces on (I helped Alyssa but the big girls did it all on their own). They even colored their fingernails like polish. We left the bodies blank and every week we will draw in an organ and learn all about it. This first week we did the heart; I drew it and they colored it in while I explained to them all about how the heart works and what it does for our bodies. I was really surprised at how much of the information they retained. Ansleigh has been telling everyone about her heart and what it does. It's so cute! Of course I took some pictures to share with you and here they are :)

Please excuse the fact that none of them are really dressed and
Alyssa doesn't even have pants on... we keep it pretty casual
around here :)

We hung them on the wall and will continue
to add organs to them as we learn.

Some of their other art work from the week

Family Day

    Derek left Monday to go underway for the week, so last Saturday (I know, this blog is overdue, but it's hard to blog when you're playing "single mom" to 4 kids!!) we had family day. We had big plans to head to a festival at Town Point Park, but of course we didn't make it out of the house in time; so we decided to get our bikes out and ride around in front of the house and play in the front yard. The girls thought it was so fun to go out front instead of in the back yard like usual. They loved being able to ride their bikes up and down the side walk, and that Mommy and Daddy rode their bikes too :) We had a lot of fun just getting outside with them and playing. The weather has been so nice here!

Group picture in their new
outfits from Mimi.

She's so serious when she's riding her bike

Me and Ansleigh getting ready to race

She totally beat me :)

Riding on mommy's bike

They all wanted a try

She's not very good at riding her
bike yet, so she  ran most of the time

awwwww :-D

My girls

Ice cream break!

Eli woke up and joined us, he was SO happy!

Blue Steel

L.O.V.E.

They caught a cricket

They each took a turn  holding it

She wasn't so sure, and tried to wipe it
off of her finger. lol

Picture says it all

She rode her bike and everything while this little
guy hung out on her hand. She asked me to
take her picture with him!

Then they all melted down

Time for a nap!

    After a long day of  playing in the yard we decided it would be fun to make our own pizza and get the kids involved with the cooking. They each got to make their own personal pizza and had a blast doing it. It's definitely something we will be doing again. 

notice the tongue

They made smiley face pizza

Daddy is so silly!!

Yum!!!

    It was a really fun Saturday, and a perfect way to spend the weekend before a long  week without Derek. Looking forward to him being home tomorrow!!!!