Lots to catch up on

A lot can happen around here in a month! Let's see here...first things first. Landon LOVES school. We are so relieved and thankful, we have worried for the last couple of years about what school would be like for him. He is too smart for his own good and we didn't know if he would get bored and become the class clown or be overwhelmed by the chaos (we thrive on structure in our family:), but so far we are having no issues. In fact, he loves everything about school...new friends, computer class, art, music, p.e., lunch time, recess, circle time, centers, library, and of course his teacher! We have our first six weeks parent teacher conference this week, so we will get to know more about how it going from his teacher's perspective:) He has only had to pull his card one time and it was for something very minor, so we are thinking that she is enjoying him, just as much as he is enjoying her.

Now little brother is still adjusting to the whole kindergarten thing. Some days he just seems lost with out Landon, but preschool is helping. He likes that he is doing something similar to Landon...I think he enjoys having the same subjects to talk about.....teacher, backpack, lunchbox, projects, parties.....more than he does actually going to preschool:) None the less, it is good for him to have his own experiences and hang out with kids his own age. His teacher tells us that he is really sweet to the other kids he just sometimes gets grumpy.....well that didn't surprise us. He has had to adjust first of all to having two baby sisters, now big brother is off making new friends at kindergarten, he has never been away from mommy for a regular 5 hour stretch, and he just turned three. And for anyone of you that have boys, you probably know that boys typically are harder at three than two. That's been our experience at least. But all that being said, Liam is still really joyful and tender and we are still enjoying his innocence very much. I have been trying to give him my undivided attention during half of the girls nap time on Mon, Wed, Fri. We have been doing puzzles, books, alphabet & numbers, and computer games mostly because I still need work on my rocket skills:) He also still likes to cuddle with me often throughout the day...so he has me wrapped around his finger when he wants to! My favorite quote from him lately is, "Good thing the pooper lid is down." That is what he says when we take him number 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, I guess since I am going in birth order I should talk about Kallie! Miss Kallie Layne has shown us in the last month that she is probably going to be more of a dare-devil than our other children! She went from crawling to pulling up and walking around things in like two weeks. Then I caught her climbing EVERYTHING and we had to buy a fence thing for the living room. And she doesn't care about falling, in fact she will just turn and dive and when she does get hurt she barely cries. She just keeps going. And she is not a big fan of the fence, she spends much of her time trying to maneuver her way out. She is crazy. Kevin let go of her this weekend to see how long she could stand up on her own, and it was amazing. The girl is going to walk way to soon.

Miss Klaire Elise (i have to use her middle name since i used kallie's....no playing favorites around here...:) spent the first part of the month jealous of Kallie's ability to crawl to mommy and beat her to their favorite toys. But then she started army crawling faster and then last week she pretty much went straight to a regular crawl. Then last Thursday she started pulling up on things! Now she is still a couple of weeks behind Kallie, but this girl is on the move now too. She will sit for longer then Kallie, they both are sitting up great, Kallie just doesn't want to sit still. Klaire has been more vocal lately...she says mamamama and nanana all the time and she has few others that involve grunting sounds. She gets very expressive when she wants something! They are both eating little finger foods and dairy now. Cheerios are like candy to them and like a babysitter for mommy:) They girls had been sick since my last post until last week we got them on some antibiotics for sinus infections and Klaire had her first ear infection. Kevin and I were about to go crazy when they were at the peak of their sickness, these kids are hard enough when they are healthy!

Kevin and I went on a three day vacation to a friend's wedding over Labor Day. It was my first time to leave the girls. I cried for the first two hours of the trip, Kevin thought he was going to have to turn around at one point, but I managed to get through it and enjoy myself for the rest of the weekend. Kevin has been super busy at work the last six weeks or so and I have been even more tired than usual with our new school schedule. Let me just tell you a little bit about our routine now. We get up btw 6:00 - 6:30, the kids get up at 7:00. I have to have myself ready and everyone's lunches packed before all the kids are up. Kevin leaves for work about 7:10 after he gets the boys up, dressed, and gets their breakfast. Then I dress and feed the girls, gather Landon's school stuff, the diaper bag, and my brain (this is optional most days) and get all the kids loaded up. Until Landon gets more comfortable with being dropped off, I am having to park, get all four kids out, get the double stroller in and out, and walk everybody up the hill to the back of the school to Landon's class. And on Tues. and Thurs. I have to get everyone out to walk Liam to and from his class at preschool. And we leave at 7:35 to drop Landon off, don't get home until 8:10, then I have about 25 minutes to get the girls out of the car, rediapered, feed their cereal, cleaned up, gather Liam's stuff, and we get back in the car and take Liam to school. Then the girls often fall asleep in the car and don't want their morning nap, so we get home and play for a while, then I feed them and lay them down 11:30ish. Then I clean up the disaster that we have made in our rush, feed myself, do dishes or start laundry, check email possibly, schedule appts., make calls, barely make a dent in my way too long to-do list, and then they are up again. So we go get Liam at 2:15 and then go straight from their to get Landon and we get home around 3:15. Then the girls get feed again and Liam goes down for a short nap. Then I try to get the girls to go down for a short nap from about 4:45 to 5:15 so that I can make dinner. Then at 5:30 I have to have the girls dinner ready and feed them and I try to have our dinner ready at 6:00. And Kevin gets home about then, we eat while trying to entertain the girls, then they get in their jammies at 6:45, bedtime bottle at 7:00, and bedtime at 7:15. Then we bathe the boys and read or play with them. Then they go to bed btw 7:30-7:50. Then we finish cleaning up and doing dishes. We started doing the p90x program two weeks ago, so we work out from 8:30 to 9:45, shower and go to bed unless we have a tv show we really want to stay up and watch. Anyone exhausted? I need a red bull just to talk about it. Thank goodness for weekends and having family close by to help out.

My brain was so over-loaded this morning that I drove away from school without the stroller. Yep. Just left it in the parking lot. The secretary called me and said, "Ummmm I think you left your stroller here. Some other mom brought it in and said it had to be yours." My first thought was how nice of someone to bring that into the office, my second thought was did I drive home with the back of the van open....no Laura that would have been ridiculously loud and you might be blonde but you did not do that, and my last thought was I am just known as the crazy lady with the double stroller who brings in her flock of children to drop her kindergartner off? Probably. They were probably thinking it's a miracle she doesn't leave it every morning!

Yeah our life is nuts. But I think Kevin and I are organizing it the best we can. It's a lot of responsibility, but we wouldn't trade it for anything.

Today marks one year that our nephew Drew has been up in heaven in our Father's arms. If you could please say a prayer for Kari, Jordan, and Peyton we would really appreciate it.

As usual, I have too many pictures to post, so here is an album full of TONS of cute pictures of the kids.

August and September Pictures