I don't think I'm ready for this....

Little Miss is trying SO hard to crawl and I'm not ready! She started getting up on her elbows and knees a couple weeks ago and then on Thursday, I looked over and she was up on her hands and knees!

(We made her do it again that night for a picture.)



She still hasn't quite figured out how to go, but she's trying really hard...



(Sorry about the spitup at the end!)


I guess it's time to baby-proof!

Pumpkin Patch

Asher, Ellie and I went to the pumpkin patch with some friends the other day. The weather was gorgeous!

Asher's favorite part was the little maze made out of hay.


The kids were SO excited to do the hay ride, but they were only doing it for school groups that morning. Lame. We let the kids get up on the trailer to sit for a minute, though.

{Troy, Gabe, Asher, Brooklyn}



They got to pet the goats...


...and they loved feeding the cow.


Petting the donkey.


At the end, I let Asher get some apple cider (it was so yummy!) and he was so excited to pay for it himself. :)


What a fun way to spend the morning!

4 Months

Ellie is four months old as of this past Sunday! I held off on this post, though, because she had her doctor's appointment today and I wanted to find out her stats:

Weight: 12 lbs. 9 oz. - 24th percentile
Height: 24.5 inches - 75th percentile

Basically, she's tall and skinny, just like her brothers always were (although the boys always hovered around 50% for weight), and she's healthy and perfect. :)

Ellie has started to experiment with her voice and seems to enjoy the loud screechy version of it at the moment. I've been encouraging her to say "mama" while Ben continues to say "dada" to her as much as possible, so we'll see which one she says first. ;)

Little miss can't wait to be mobile. She watches her brothers every where they go and when they run or jump, she kicks her legs like crazy and you can tell she wishes she could join in. She has started scooting herself around a bit by pulling with her arms and pushing with her toes. The last few days she has also been getting up on her knees and elbows and then pushing off with her legs and kind of catapulting herself forward. It's definitely not crawling yet, but she's working on it.

She's also grabbing everything she can get her hands on. We've reached the stage where I can't do anything while I'm holding her because she's always trying so hard to grab it. I had her on my lap at IHOP the other day and before I knew it, she had a handful of my pancakes!

She is such a sweet little munchkin. We all just love her to pieces! :)

And now for pictures!








She loves her dolly.




She's a total drool monster lately.

Photo shoot!

I always pass on the school pictures for Evan because they can be pricey. And let's face it... they're not even that good. So, instead of spending money on those, I always promise the boys their very own photo shoot. We did this year's photo shoot this past Wednesday, so here are some of my favorites.....













Ellie, just hanging out. :)

Stuff I've made lately

I've had the crafting bug lately and have been having fun working on a few projects when I get a minute. I love how some of them turned out, so I thought I'd share. :)

...Blessing Dress...

Last month, I made Ellie's blessing dress. I used an old skirt that I don't wear anymore (it had a stain on the side) and used one of Ellie's dresses as a pattern.



I was a little worried about how it would turn out, but I figured if it was hideous I could just go buy one. I was pretty pleased with the end result, though.





...Homework Holder...

We don't have a specific spot for Evan's homework and it's been driving me nuts to have it laying all over the place and getting lost. So, yesterday, I made some hanging pockets to keep Evan's homework and Asher's workbook.



I made them out of cereal boxes and duct tape (really high class, I know!) and then modpodged cute scrapbook paper onto the outside. I used my silhouette to cut the letters out of brown vinyl.

I included a little pocket for their Wii cards (they can earn or lose Wii time throughout the day).



...Hair accessories...

I've been having a lot of fun with the hair bows/flowers/clippies. :) Here's what I've made lately...

This one is made from felt and was inspired by a tutorial in this blog post.



This one is also felt


Ribbon wrapped around tinfoil and then rolled up (inspired by this tutorial... it's in french, but I just looked at the pictures).


A cute little owl made of felt and buttons


And finally a knit headband with rosettes, made out of silky fabric and a bit of tulle. I can't remember where I first learned to make rosettes from, but here's a good tutorial if you're wondering.

On the headband, I used a really wide zigzag stitch so it could stretch and it had the nice side effect of giving the edges of the headband a little bit of a scalloped look. I didn't mean to do that, but I thought it was cute!

So anyway, there's my crafting fun for the past month! :)

Group shot

I realized the other day that I've had Ellie for more than three months now and I still don't have a picture of all three of my kiddos together! So, the other day, I decided it was time to attempt it. I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I was determined to get at least one frame worthy picture.

It was a circus.

Evan wanted to make silly faces, poke Asher, and wiggle as much as possible.

Any time I put Ellie down for a picture, she would stare at me with those big eyes for a second, then stare at the boys for a second, and then burst into tears. She just couldn't figure out why I would strip her down to her diaper, set her on a blanket with her noisy, wiggly brothers, and then point a big black thing at her.

Asher was surprisingly cooperative, bless his heart, but I got a whole lot of pictures like this...



We did end up getting a couple decent ones...



(I love Asher's expression in this one.)


...and one frame worthy one, which was all I really wanted anyway.



Whew! Not sure when I'll have the motivation to attempt that again! :)

Hair clippies!

Guess who has enough hair to hold a little clippy now...



I don't think it will last all day or anything, but still! We're getting there. :)



I was trying to get these pictures and I could hardly get one without her hands in her mouth. This little munchkin must have some yummy hands because she's always chewing on them! She's often trying to get both of them in there at the same time.



Her favorite part is the fingers.... she's still trying to learn how to not gag herself.



This one makes me giggle.


We get this look from her a lot, too... it's like she's trying to put US in her mouth if she can.


The scowly eyebrows is also a common look.


Luckily smiles are pretty frequent, too. :)


(Smiling at daddy.)