Yikes! I'm back!

Getting ready for Kindergarten with some help from Mommy:)

Our handsome little cheeseball.
Klaire is giving baby bear kisses.

Kallie is 'sleeping' with her babies.

And people ask me if they are identical!

Best buds.

Klaire our little dare devil wanting to ride with Landon.

Super hero Liam kept everyone safe when we went to brunch at little Ave's house. I'm ready to ride mom!!

Kallie and Klaire couldn't get enough of this!

Watch out people. No really he doesn't turn to the left very well!!!!

Costume pics coming soon!! October has been a crazy month!! Kevin has been gone A LOT and I am running around like a chicken with my head cut off even more than normal! But the kids are great. Hilarious and darling as always.

Our little Goobers

(picture from June)

I have a few funny stories that I need to share before I forget them!!!

Last week I bought Liam and Landon some new underwear, boxer briefs, thinking they would maybe be more comfy than their briefs. So they were excited to try them (I love that they get excited over the smallest things, its' so fun) and Liam was particularly excited when I mentioned they would reduce wedgies. So he was wearing them for the first time and after a couple hours he says to me (as he is fixing a wedgie), "Mom these underwear aren't working, you are going to have to get some more." I said, "Well, all underwear give wedgies, I just thought these would be a little better." His eyes widen. I knew he had big news to announce. "Nope mom. Not all underwear. I KNOW that God's underwear NEVER give him a wedgie."

Now a little story that shows how much work I have cut out for me when it comes to taming the girls!! It was time for Klaire to get her jammies on and instead she was ignoring me and being a little toot to Kallie so I said, "Klaire, come to mommy or you are going to get a spank-spank." She looks at me, smiles, sticks her booty out, spanks herself, says, "pank-pank", and turns to keep 'playing' with Kallie. Well, she did end up with a real 'pank-pank' but I was so tickled I could hardly discipline her:)

We have decided that our kids are going to have some of the most creative (or strange!:) future aspirations EVER! Landon has wanted to be so many things, but the most memorable are 'Noodle Maker' and 'Poop Teacher' (he liked to coach Liam) but now I would like to announce that he has decided to be a 'Doggy costume maker' and a 'Science Experiment Teacher'.....we, especially Dad, is hoping for the ladder!!!! You should see some of the things he has tried to tape onto Minnie:)

I don't really have a particular funny story for Kallie at the moment. She is SO funny though. Both her and Klaire have the funniest facial expressions. They are very dramatic....surprise surprise....and they love to get all of us giggling at them. Kallie gets kinda shy around people so unfortunately most people don't get to see what a little turkey she is.

What's going on in Staplesville

A lot. Which is why I'm a little behind on the blog:) And I don't have much time to post right now so I'm going to brief:) Or at least try:)

Some things we are up to......

-Softball for Kevin. 3rd season this year. Church team, he is coaching. He is enjoying it very much.

-Beth Moore Bible study. For me:) First one and I'm enjoying it very much. Even the homework!

-Hosting a small group on Wednesdays at our place. I love cooking for others!

-Bunco for me once a month and poker group for Kevin....we are on a loosing streak currently!!

-School school school. Remembering lunches, picture day, nightly homework, show and tell, dress up days, ahhhhh so much to remember!!

-Book Club for me. Shocker for those of you who know me well. But I am getting into reading and find it more enjoyable than straining my eyes and neck in front of my computer!! Which is another reason the blog is at the bottom of my to-do list):

-Church plant. Most of the stuff we are involved in is with our church community, Venture. We have been attending and helping out with the church plant since earlier this year.

Oh and the most important thing we have been up to...........

Tear-free Start!

We have a first grader. AHHHH!!! That is so crazy! Let me tell ya this back to school was sooooo much easier than last year. Mommy didn't cry. Landon was a pro at getting around the school and we are so excited about his teacher. The first day he said that it wasn't quite as fun as he was expecting, but yesterday he said that first grade was even better than kindergarten. So he is settling into the transition from basically playing all day to getting down to business really well thus far. And he and Margo and Kiran all got different teachers):

Liam starts back to 2-day preschool next week. And the girls aren't going anywhere yet! We probably won't send them until they are three.

Where is your nose?Where are your toes?Where is your hair?Where is your ear?Klaire pretending to sleep in Liam's bed.Kallie is our shoe girl. I can never find my shoes!!I know it's not much curl, but I adore it and play with those curls all the time!Thank you Jesus.

A Cowboy without his hat...

Is like a Yodel without 'ay-hee-hoo'!!!!!!! Not a Toy Story fanatic??? Well then you may want to brush up on your Toy Story characters before you talk to Liam about his birthday! Actually his birthday wasn't all Toy Story, but his favorite present was 'Woody'. And Woody talks when you pull his string and he has several cute phrases like the one above. Liam didn't set him down for literally 48 hours. It was the only gift we got him because we were taking him and Landon to the circus, and boy are we glad we didn't get him anything else.

Woody has not only been his favorite new toy, but he replaced 'Blankie' at night. Which is a GINORMOUS thing in Liam's world. Blankie has been with him since birth and Liam has cuddled Blankie (or as he calls it....humm humming blankie:) and sucked his thumb with Blankie from before his first birthday. In fact, we had to cut the blanket into four pieces just so that I could wash it consistently. Blankie has been on every trip with us except for one! We forgot him and so we had to cut a piece off one of the girls' blankets! Blankie has comforted Liam through countless nights and naps and we believe it is one of the main reasons that Liam never once since he was about six months old cried when we laid him in his bed. We have enjoyed cuddling Liam while he cuddled Blankie and we have enjoyed watching him be calmed and so saying goodbye to Blankie is difficult. I have shed some serious tears over it and I am again as I type. Our Liam is growing up. It is a mark of a new chapter. A major new chapter for mommy.....

I remember when we wrapped him Blankie...

I remember when he couldn't decide which Blankie he wanted the most....

I remember when Blankie read stories with us...

But I will also remember Woody:)

I saw this cake in a magazine a few months ago and tucked it away in mind hoping that Liam would be happy with a motorcycle cake this year. And sure enough he was delighted with the idea. It was SO EASY. Two boxs cake mix, two cans chocolate frosting, coco puffs, chocolate doughnut holes, big pretzels, fruit roll-ups, green licorice, and a toy motorcycle and you're good to go.

Now I wish I still had some of this cake......chocolate is the best after a good cry!! I am going to be a wreck when the girls get to this age too:)

I am....

Not doing For Keeps Design anymore. I know, not a very exciting change:) But for me, it's a big change.

Sarah and I started For Keeps right after I had Liam and opened for business September of 2007. We were super pumped and full of passion and optimism (and had more disposable time:). Now we are thrilled to be done with the money pit!! We believe that we had a great product but we just couldn't compete with our competitors pricing and website traffic. So we are both sad that it didn't end with us selling our booming business to Hallmark, but at the same time relieved to be saying 'adios' to the responsibility and stress. We learned SO MUCH throughout the process. We learned about strengths and weaknesses that we never knew we had.....I learned that I suck at writing and Sarah learned she could design when I forced her too!! We also learned what SEO stands for, how to file taxes for an LLC, learned what a comptroller is, how to run the administration side of a website, we learned about adwords, Xcart, the difference btw digital and press printing ($ is about it:), what EIN stands for, we learned the ins and outs of merchant services/credit card processing, and the list goes on and on. And I couldn't have asked for a better business partner either. She is an amazing business woman and friend.

Thanks for the journey Sarah!

Oh and by the way....we are selling our website. If you or someone you know is interested in an online retail store please contact me at lauramstaples@gmail.com for more details.

www.forkeepsdesign.com

Growing and Changing.

As you can imagine, we do a lot of growing and changing around here. I haven't posted about what the kids are really up to lately so I thought I share a few things.

First, this how much hair the girls have now.....ahhh enough for a real ponytail. I don't whether to smile or cry.

The girls are amusing us quite a bit lately with their interactions with us and each other. In this picture, Klaire is trying to get Kallie to stay put for the picture! Which is funny because this is the first time Klaire has ever held still for a picture when I wanted her to!
The girls are wanting to be very independent with certain things. Like feeding themselves for example, they want to use spoons and forks all the time now and get frustrated when we try to help them. Kallie is now taking f-o-r-e-v-e-r to eat. She really does not want to be helped. I didn't think we could have another slow eater, but looks like Liam has some competition coming:) Hopefully he will snap out of it soon like Landon did at about four and half.

This picture below is a bit deceiving. They would actually much prefer to be riding this alone! They have just as many moments of loving each other as being jealous of each other. Trust me. Just this morning, Kallie saw me bending down to kiss Klaire's booboo and so she immediately stopped what she was doing and came over and sneakily tried to maneuver Klaire out of my attention and then when Klaire decided to go do something else, Kallie looked me straight in the face (like looky here mom, don't look at her) and proceeded to give me many hugs and kisses!

The girls are also talking a lot at home. They don't do it much when we are out and Klaire likes to talk more than Kallie, but Kallie is also quicker to sign for something. They have so many words now I have lost track of them, but my favorite thing to hear them say is probably 'daddy'. Something about little girls and their daddies:)

Liam is turning four this coming weekend): He is probably the one that I have the hardest time watching change for reasons that are hard to describe. He is just my little teddy bear and if you have ever spent much time around him you probably understand. Landon is a first born child to a 'T' with way too much brain in that head of his and so he is never lacking attention and the girls, well they get plenty too, so Liam is the one who will be off playing in his own world when all of a sudden he will come up and grab your hand and say, "I really like you. I'm glad God made you for me." Oh my heart. So anyway, I know now after watching Landon the last couple years, how quickly the innocence turns into knowledge and the comments and questions are still cute, but they just aren't the same. So I'm holding on....

Anyway, Liam wants to go to the circus so we are going to take him and Landon at the end of this month. I hope they like clowns more than me:)

I let Liam push the gas on the four-wheeler. Bad idea. We about popped a wheelie and I had to literally yank his hand off of it before we had a collision with the mountain! But the next time he was timid, so I guess it wasn't such a horrible idea!Then there is 'L-dog' or 'what?' is his new nickname! He wants to know everything that Kevin and I are talking about so if he doesn't hear a whole comment he will say, "What?" or "What we're you saying?" Anyway, he is really enjoying his summer off, don't get me wrong he misses Margo and Kiran like crazy, but summer has its bonuses too:) He is getting to stay up later and watch more shows and play the Wii and sleep in and enjoy leisurely breakfasts and spend more time his family. So he tells me that summer is pretty great too. He and Liam are thick as thieves lately. Liam used to be lost with out Landon, but now Landon seems just as lost as Liam when they are apart...which isn't often! But I have noticed a slight increase in the argueing btw the two of them since school let out, but we expected that.

We had two goals for Landon this summer: - To ride his bike with out training wheels - And to learn to swim

And we were nervous about being frustrated with him on both goals b/c he let us know that he did not really want to do either. So right after school got out, I decided that he was going to ride his bike everyday until he got the hang of it. Kevin predicted it would take at least six weeks and I thought a couple, but he did it on one week and loved (almost) every minute of it. He is so proud of his achievement and now we are working on pushing off and getting started with out help b/c that's the hardest part. He has stopping down thankfully!

And we put him and Liam in swim lessons that went for four days in a row for two weeks. The first day Landon was behind on floating on his back and by the end he was jumping off a diving board. Watching him 'get it' was AMAZING. He is a little fish. We have to tell him to calm down all the time when we go swimming now. I taught him how to dive and he didn't even hesitate, just did it. His swim teacher was so proud of him too and Landon has been asking to move up to the next class. We'll see!! Mommy and Daddy might be able to take it from here:)

He is also being a terrific big brother. He has a lot of responsibility and handles it so well. Below is pic of him with the girls reading them a book.

That all for now folks! Stay tuned for a post about my latest big change.