We have loved the month of May. The warmer it gets, the happier I am! I love spending time outside with the kids and having a space that the kids can go outside safely whenever they want. I also have loved watching Parker progress with reading, helping Ashtyn work on her goals, and reading (endlessly sometimes) to Rylee. And we all love to see Oliver grow as he learns and is starting to move more.
I can't take a selfie with Oliver without all the girls wanting to jump in with me 😍
One of the girls' favorite things is spending time with Grandpa Danny. When it's warm, he takes them to the garden, for four-wheeler rides to the Elk Graveyard, and to the creek to catch crawdads.
So many memories with Grandpa 💗
Movie time together as sisters!
For Truffle Day, I made Oreo Truffles, Lemon Truffles, and Peanut Butter Truffles.
Watching Looney Tunes with Grandpa Danny! Grandpa was just a little sleepy.
The girls can go in the backyard whenever they want, but to go in the front, I try to be with them. They love when we get to spend time playing in front!
Auntie Hannah had her dance performance and we had a little girls' date going to it while the boys stayed home. They had a lot of fun and Hannah (and the rest of her dance group) did such a fantastic job! Hannah was in a dance with buckets of water and the girls still can't stop talking about it, it was really cool.
Ashtyn still wants to do tumbling in the fall, but now Parker and Rylee want to do dance like Hannah.
Cousin time!
Parker just loves babies, it makes my heart happy.
Oliver loves being outside now too. He really finds grass interesting!
Parker made these flower crowns for the girls out of flowers they had found.
All ready for church!
Holding Oliver while watching a show. The girls can't get enough of holding, carrying, and touching Oliver.
This is a little mouse that lives in our backyard. We've seen some neighbor cats try to catch it, but so far, they've had no luck. We caught it on our porch after the girls ate some cookies there. Mostly it lives in a window well. I'm okay with it as long as it stays out of our house ...
Now that Oliver has longer wake times, he's starting coming with us more when we do things like run errands. He does pretty good and if I bring a snack for him, that always keeps him patient.
For Mother's Day, Ashtyn came back from Activity Days with some flowers for me. They died, so Ashtyn made these origami paper flowers instead. I love them!
Oliver loves four wheeler rides! When I try to get him off, he finds ways to show us how much he wants to keep riding with Grandpa.
The girls love to bring home bones from the Elk Graveyard ...
A white cat came and hung out in our backyard for awhile. The girls were in heaven (and devastated when it went home). This is a picture of Ashtyn trying to scrub it down hahaha
One of the things we've been doing with Oliver's longer waketimes is going to the library each week in the afternoon. All the kids love the library, including Oliver.
For Mother's Day, Ben got me this vase with flowers. Ashtyn was in heaven and has loved filling the vase since then.
Playing video games with Dad 💗
Ashtyn had her piano concert. She worked so hard on her songs and was really happy with how her performance went.
Sisters snuggling together 💗
More outside time!
A snake we found on the road during one of our evening walks.
Rylee and I went on a little date to the library. She loved it!
Every time we've gone to the library recently, she's wanted to go up the stairs (the kid's section is on the main floor). With four kids, going upstairs isn't worth it. But it was the first thing we did on her date. She was so excited. She got to look out the window at how high we were and pick a movie to check out.
We also spent a lot of time in the children's section. Our library is pretty awesome and has a lot of stuff the kids love, including fish.
And before we went home, we walked around outside (they have a cute little path). It was super windy that day, but Rylee didn't mind our "windy walk".
For movie night one week, I finally got The Return of the King cartoon (the kids love The Hobbit one, but the LotR one is the one I remember most from my childhood). They really liked it, including Oliver 😂
We've started doing breakfast for dinner for movie night and we all love it.
These German Pancakes turned out super fluffy and yummy!
We also had a haircutting incident ... I was surprised, because it was Ashtyn (I thought by 7, we'd be past this). We've gotten rid of kid scissors for now.
Ashtyn said she cut it so short because then she was hoping I wouldn't be able to tell it was cut 😭 there's really nothing we can do because of how short it is except clip it back and wait awhile to grow it out. Then we'll probably do some bangs that blend into her hair.
While going to the library once, we discovered that they do a story time in the afternoons on Thursday (we can't go to the morning ones they do right now because of Oliver's nap schedule). The kids loved it!
Ashtyn and Parker used some boxes to make themselves a "new sister". They named her Cynthia and she's had quite the week. She fell down the stairs, broke her leg, got stabbed, and got married at Dr. Suess's house to Alex (after "signing the documents").
This is them giving her a piano lesson 😂 they used the self-playing feature of the piano on a slow mode to make it seem like she was just learning the song.
One of our favorite things to do this time of year is go out to the creek. Ashtyn found this fish trap and really wants to catch some minnows in it. It's currently set in the creek, so next time we go out, she'll check to see if she got anything.
My favorite 💗
Rylee kept telling me that the water was the perfect temperature for her, because it was cold and she was used to the cold.
Rylee's wish: I wish no one ever had to die!
Parker: Mom, this rock is so interesting! Let's take a picture of it!
One of my projects this month has been reorganizing the kitchen and pantry to try to make our house more Rylee-proof. I have tried to put everything that she isn't supposed to touch up high enough that she can't reach and the things that Ashtyn sometimes gets into (like balance bars) into our room (which we keep locked). We're really trying to make it so there is less the kids can get into that they aren't supposed to and make it easy for us to maintain a cleaner house with four kids.
Some Rylee selfies:
Oliver is the girls' favorite toy sometimes 😂
Some Oliver pictures:
Sleeping babies are my favorite 😍
Yawn!
Oliver is so cute in his towel that my mom made for him! He hates baths right now, and getting wet in general.
He started sitting by me and scooted himself clear over to get the chair.
Oliver rolling around trying to reach his toy. This was closer the beginning of the month when he was starting to figure it out. Now he's even better at it.
Sneeze!
Parker's smoulder 😂
When the ice cream is all gone!
Watching Baby Signing Time 😍
I ran errands after Oliver's nap and took him with me thinking he'd stay awake (and knowing Rylee wouldn't, so she had to stay home). But then he fell asleep and still went right to sleep at bedtime! I was super surprised, but then the next day he got a fever and I think that's why.
Poor fever baby. He had a fever for two days and then a rash for two days. No other symptoms and no one else ever got sick, so I'm not sure what it was.
I love when he snuggles this little bunny that our friend from Norway sent him.
He got himself stuck 😂 he's wiry enough (compared to chubby) that if he only gets one leg through, he can get it out, but both legs, he can no longer maneuver himself.
It was a rough week when he was feeling sick.
Sister love!
He is getting really good at playing with toys around him and at reaching things. He's almost learned how to move from sitting to kneeling and I don't think it will be long until he is crawling and pushing himself to sitting from lying on his stomach.
Oliver is getting good at using his fingers!
This was so cute!
Oliver has started dancing to music and it's my favorite 💗
