Kai's 6th Birthday Party and Amelia is 5 months!

What's going on here?!!??!?!  TWO blog posts in one month?  That's not normal.  You're right!  It's not!  It's just your lucky day!  Ha! :)

This will be pretty quick, but I wanted to get some pictures up before things get REALLY crazy.  I've been working hard on my classroom and thanks to the huge help of my Mom, I'm in good shape.  There's still lots to do, but if school started tomorrow, my room would be ok.  I helped out with enrollment this past week and had a chance to meet several families, including many that will have a kindergartner.  Everyone was so friendly and welcoming and it made me even more excited about starting!  Enough about me though...on to more exciting things like babies and birthday parties!

Miss Amelia is now 5 1/2 months and time is just FLYING by!  She was at the doctor this week and weighs 16 pounds!  She is on the move with her army crawl and we are quickly learning to make sure that little toys need to be kept up high.  I was worried about how Leela would react to this change, but she's doing pretty well with it.  If she sees her trying to get toys she shouldn't, Leela quickly grabs one of Amelia's toys and brings it to her.  She's such a good sister.  I'm so proud of her!  She really has surprised Derek and I with the whole baby sister gig.  Thank goodness!  Amelia has figured out how to blow bubbles and is making all sorts of extra "spiddle-diddle" as the kids and I call it. :)  She is such a happy baby and easy baby.  We really hit the jackpot with her!  She's been sleeping through the night for almost two months now and I hope it stays that way!!!  She's not always the best nap taker, but we don't care...she's sleeping at night!!!  Thank goodness she loves the paci.  Not that she had a choice in that matter...she was pretty much forced to love it from week one.  :)  Amelia's been adjusting well to bottles the last two weeks and it seems like she's drinking a lot!  Happy that's not going to be a struggle or issue for Derek.  Hard to believe that she's going to be six months in a few weeks and can start solids.  She's very interested in what we are eating, so I know she's ready.  We gave her some puffs tonight and she loved them!  Her siblings appreciated the extra treat too!  Does anyone else's older kids love puffs too???

We had a really fun time at Kai's birthday party.  It was so hot, but lucked out that there was a nice breeze and it wasn't bad under the shelter.  Kai was so excited to have family AND friends there this year and we had a good turnout.  He was bummed that some of his friends couldn't make it and I tried to warn him that with a summer birthday, it's hard to catch everyone not on vacation.  He had fun seeing some of his classmates that he hadn't seen since school was out in May!  The kids had a good time playing on the playground, eating snacks and playing some Turtle games that I made up.  Overall, it was an enjoyable afternoon!

That's about all the excitement for now.  Once I have my classroom setup complete, I will post some pictures, as well as the first day of school for Kai and Grayson.  Thanks for reading and enjoy the pics!

Kai the baseball player!

Go Royals!

He cracks me up.  Love him!

Getting ready for my first haircut!

Mommy cut almost 5 inches off!

Party time!

Birthday boy!!!

                                                                 Welcome to the party!

Rare moment where she's letting me take a pic!

Love those kids so, so much!

Happy baby!!!!!

Party time!

Grayson and Dax!!!

Singing Happy Birthday time!

This little sweetie is 5 months!

Love those chunky legs!!!

 

I think this is the first time I see some of me in her!

We love summer!

We have been enjoying our summer and it's going by so fast!  We've kept very busy with playdates, VBS, neighborhood storytime, swim lessons and baseball.  It's been so fun to be on "our" schedule each day.  It's going to be hard to get back into the school routine in a few short weeks!

The boys were in VBS the first week in June and LOVED it.  They thought it was so neat to see each other during the morning.  They cannot wait for next year!

Swim lessons were the last two weeks in June.  The boys once again loved them and did really well. It was neat to see their progress and they both became more comfortable in the water WITHOUT floaties, which is what we wanted.  Derek normally takes all three big ones to the pool himself and he has them all wear floaties, but we can't do that forever.  Kai really started to feel comfortable with the water, especially going under and jumping in.  Now, that's all he wants to do at the pool! :) We will put all three big kids in lessons next summer.  We knew Leela would not be ok doing lessons with another adult so we decided to wait another year.

We have had our weekly storytime with neighbors and friends each week.  The moms have taken a turn hosting with a theme.  We've read about camping, ocean, dinosaurs, 4th of July, and space so far.  We've doubled in size this year and the kids do really well together.  We have kids from 3 months up to 1st grade.  It's fun for them to run around and play together afterward while the moms get some chat time. :)

Kai's last baseball game is tomorrow.  It's been a long season since we started in April, but he's had fun and learned a lot too.  Derek had fun being an assistant coach and he's looking forward to being able to help out more in the future.  It was certainly an adventure entertaining the three littles each game. :)

Amelia is my super baby, thank goodness!  She's such a happy girl and is on the move now.  She's figured out how to roll all around so she's having fun exploring around the house.  However, a certain big sister doesn't think she should be getting off her "blanket area" and she gets upset every time she's rolling around off of it demanding that she move back to her blanket. This is going to get tricky...I think Leela will be very upset once she starts grabbing at her toys. :) She's doing GREAT with sleeping at night--I don't have to feed her, but might have to go in a time or two to give her a paci.  She normally goes to bed around 8:30 and sleeps until 6:30/7.  Let's hope she keeps this trend up.  She's been doing this for almost two months now and I'm so thankful she has.  She's not a huge fan of the bottle, but she better become one because she'll be getting multiple a day in a few weeks!  It's hard to believe that she's going to be 5 months this week! AHHH! How did that happen!?!??!

We're getting ready for Kai's Ninja Turtle birthday party next weekend.  He's so excited because he's invited some friends this year too, which is why we are having it at a park.  I don't think I can fit 50 people in my house comfortably! Keeping my fingers crossed that it's not super hot, but I don't think we can expect anything but that since it's mid July.  Luckily, the shelter is pretty big so we will have a decent amount of shade if the park isn't shady. :) I'm planning on bringing LOTS of water!

I've gotten all of my school stuff moved up to my classroom and even started working on decorating.  Mom and I went up Friday and got a lot of the wall space covered with paper and border so it's starting to look like a classroom now.  I'm doing a crayola themed classroom with mainly red, green, blue and yellow colors.  I got the inspiration from the book The Crayon Box That Talked. Once I get things all done, I will post some pics.  I have a great room and lots of storage so I'm trying to figure out the best way to get it all organized!  Can't wait to see it all put together!

Not a ton of pics this time. I can't get a lot of Leela these days....she doesn't want me taking her picture! :( I think that was the case last time I blogged too! Thanks for reading! Enjoy!

Happy girl, Amelia! 

Kai was SO excited to be catcher!  He decided it wasn't that great after he played the position....I think he just wanted to wear the mask!

Grayson at swim lessons.  He's in the middle.

Kai working on his backstroke.

Papa and Amelia for Father's day celebration!

Kai reading to Grayson.  Love it.

Amelia playing with Grandpa at his birthday and Father's Day celebration!

Kai with his buddy Beckett.

Vacation Bible School. The boys are with Addy, a family friend. Her parents are Godparents for the girls and their youngest, Auggie, is our Godson.

Leela dressed up in jewelry at Papa and Nana's.  The jewelry was my Grandma Chapman's.  We used to play with it as kids when we would visit and had so much fun with it all.  It's crazy to think that my kids are playing with it now. :)

I love to roll around!