September happenings.

I love September! The weather is beautiful and we spend so much time playing outside. I watched the Roylance kids for a while during September. It was pretty crazy having two extra little ones around during the day and 5 extra kids after school. Luckily they all play so well together. The hardest part was that Ian and Sullivan are just a month apart and Ian was a very clingy baby.

Sweet and feisty Wesley turned 5! He was a little sad his birthday ended up being on a Sunday! But we had fun and partied on Saturday as well, so I think it was worth it.

Brian also has a September birthday! We are pretty blessed to have this awesome guy in our lives.

A quick visit.

 One of Brian's mission companions lives in Canada and was in Chicago for work last month and decided to come up to Madison for a quick visit. Chicago is still a 2 1/2 hour drive away so it was very kind of Chris to come and see us for such a short time! We had a great time getting to know him a bit and hear about his family. He's holding Sully like a natural because he and his wife Joy have 6 kids! Hopefully we'll get to meet them all one day.

He drove up for dinner and then drove back to Chicago that night, but the next morning he came back because his work meetings were cancelled. I think he's an electrical engineer and he fixed our basement lights (now I can see in our craft area!) and replaced an outdoor light! Hooray! It was so nice of him to use his time to serve us.

12 years of bliss.

On June 29th Brian and I celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary! It was on a Sunday so the day before we went out for frozen yogurt and had an hour to chat without the kids. It was nice. That was pretty much all we did, but it was good enough. We're pretty darn happy together! I feel so blessed every day to have Brian as my husband and the father to our kids.

Good times.

Sophie had her last basketball games of the season last Saturday. And though her team didn't win any games, they really learned a lot and had fun (7 out of 10 of the girls had never played before!)

Nora of course is wearing all blue for Sophie's team color and made signs for us all to hold up to cheer the team on. Miles' friend had some fancy technology so I'm sure the boys saw 0% of the last game, but that means that Brian and I saw it all. Win-win situation.

Sophie plays hard and gets red cheeks :)

Nora wants to grow her out her hair like Rapunzel. She's getting pretty close!

It was a balmy 47 degrees here last week which meant no coats on our walk to get the kids from school! And lots of puddles to splash in.

The boys and I played a game of Labyrinth while Brian was out of town to a conference. They love this game, even though we may not play it like it's meant to be played.

Just an every day after school mess of coats, games, homework, etc. I can't wait to put the coats, boots, hats, gloves, and scarves AWAY.

While Brian was gone I painted the office/baby room from yellow to blue-ish. The boys liked helping and did a pretty good job not getting too messy. On a side note, Wesley wants to name baby brother Wesley and Miles wants to name him Root Beer or Miles Jr. :)

 

The day Brian got home from his conference we walked to the library and watched a play. Here Sophie is reading a book on archeology while walking home.

We also used the last of some coupons we got as a Christmas gift (in 2012...) and went out for ice cream to Ella's Deli. Always a great way to end a Saturday!

It's nice to have Brian back, even though he was gone only 3 days we miss him when he's not home with us! We are looking forward to 40 degree weather this week. Hurry Spring!

The derby, Nora and demolition

 Our ward had a Pinewood Derby and invited everyone to participate. Of course this thrilled Sophie to no end since she is always wanting to join the Cub Scouts. So we built this little beauty and entered it in the competition. Our little car wasn't quite as fast as we'd hoped, but we all had fun anyway!

 Nora takes holidays and any type of "theme" day very seriously. At school they had Color day and the 3rd graders were all assigned to wear....white. White? Isn't white the absence of color? And what parent in their right mind has a white wardrobe for their 3rd grader? Not me. And of course Nora couldn't be content with just wearing a white shirt. She had to go all out in typical Nora fashion. Since I wasn't going to go buy something just for this day we talked about bleaching some pants or something but she finally decided on this outfit. It is a swimsuit cover up. Later that day I looked back at the picture on my camera and spent about 10 minutes laughing because I sent my daughter to school in a swimsuit cover up and tights - in January no less. She didn't even have a shirt on underneath! What was I thinking? (Oh yes, I was thinking that she was happy and there was no drama or tears over not having the right thing to wear.) She also spent a lot of time making her white bracelet, earrings, headband and necklace to go with her outfit. She also made a white puff ball bunny and a little home for him that she took to school as well.  I love this girl. She is quirky and delightful.

The girls had fun demolishing this wall with a hammer. 

In my last post I mentioned how I wanted to take out a wall in the girls room (technically it was a closet.) Well, Brian did it for me on Saturday. He must really love me because on Wednesday of that week he stayed up at work all night long (without sleeping) working on a grant and then worked and taught 2 classes on Thursday and didn't come home until 6. Then Friday he stayed up until 2 grading papers and Saturday morning took 3 of the kids to a birthday party while I had a primary meeting. When he got home he started this project for me because he knew how much I wanted it done, but I needed his help to do it. Such a nice husband! So I've been working on finishing the girls room all week and can't wait to have it done.  Fun!

Brian's birthday

For Brian's birthday he decided he wanted to go hiking at Devils Lake. So of course, that is precisely what we did. We loaded up the kids and the dog and drove up to beautiful Devils Lake. We like to go the way that you get to take a Ferry across. It's pretty fun and it's free!

After we got home we had a campfire and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. Always a hit.

The next day was Sunday so that's when we did the birthday cake, although technically it was brownies and ice cream, a really amazing brownie that was a copycat version of Applebee's maple walnut blondie. Wow! I have a very high tolerance for sweet things and I could only eat one. But it was sooooo yummy. 

Happy Birthday to our favorite person! He's pretty loved around here. A few months ago Brian said to me, "You know what our house really needs? Like 10 boomboxes!" I laughed and laughed because who says "boombox" anymore? Well, for his birthday he got this:

I was calling it a "portable music system" but the evidence was right on the box - they are still in fact making boomboxes! :)