We've been pinked!

A month or so ago I noticed that the local theater group was doing a show of Pinkalicious and the wheels started turning.  Rachel invited 5 friends over this past Friday night for a perfectly pink evening.  Rachel was dressed and ready at 3:30 and outside waiting for her guests to arrive:

(this picture was taken before she started dancing on top of the camper and got black stuff all over her tights)

All of the pinkies ready to start the evening:

Rachel, Lauryn, Josie, Allie, Emmy, Elly - crowns and wands courtesy of Amber

Enjoying a completely pink dinner: bagels with ham and pink cream cheese, pink popcorn, pink yogurt, strawberries, watermelon, pink lemonade and of course, pink cupcakes

The veteran princess at the party read Pinkalicious to a very attentive crowd

Josie, Emmy & Rachel arriving at the show

The girls were so happy to be at a "movie" as they kept calling it to see the real Pinkalicious and her real pink cupcake house. 

I'll never forget Rachel telling me that night that she LOVED having a no boys allowed party.  Which she quickly followed up with, "So, when is our purplicious party?"

funnies to kick off the new year

No, no, no, your computer is not playing tricks on you.  This is actually a new blog post for the new year.  I know that a certain set of grandparents are becoming slightly impatient to see Disney pictures, but it's harder than you think to go through, rotate, organize and pick from over 500 pictures.  So...I wanted to get something up here to motivate me to post more often.

Every morning before school the kids and I say a prayer - thanking God, asking for Him to help us be a good example, etc.  This was Ethan's prayer today:
"Dear God, thank you for this day.  Thank you for mommy and daddy and Ray-Ray.  And myself.  Help me to be good at school today and do good things.  And PLEASE help me to get a strike at Alley Cats tonight.  Amen"
We're all about keeping our priorities straight around here.

Rachel got a couple of sparkly body sprays in her stocking this year.  One is cupcake flavored and the other is ice cream.  They were definitely on her top 5 Chrsitmas gifts list.  This is what went down in the bathroom a few mornings ago (and this conversation was held out loud to herself):
"I really need some bafume on."
"Hmmm...which one should I pick - ice cream or cupcake?"
"Oh, I know, I'll eenie-meenie-miney-mo them."
(She sets both of them on the counter in front of her)
"Eenie, meenie, miney, mo.  Catch a tiger...Oh, I REALLY hope it's the ice cream one.  ...by it's toe..."

Of course, this is the same child who asked me yesterday why Rapunzel never had to go to the potty.

Now I'm back to organizing pictures...I promise.

remember

This conversation often goes through my head:  "Oooohhhh...I need to write that down somewhere so I won't forget what she/he said."  And then someone is starving and needs a snack and I forget.  Or, "That was the funniest thing he's/she's ever said, I have to write that down."  And then the phone rings and I forget.  You get the pattern.  I was looking through some pictures tonight and came across a couple of videos I took of the kids trick-or-treating on Halloween this year.  My first thought was just to skip over them because I knew they weren't of anything important.  And then I went back to watch them and I was SO glad I took videos of just the kids - not at a birthday party, not a soccer game, not posing for anything, not singing a rehearsed song, not performing at preschool...just a couple of videos of the kids being themselves running around outside laughing.  I know without a doubt that these are the videos Clay and I will be watching when they're both in college and we're just missing them.  A friend at church recently told me that her teenage kids would actually request to watch old home movies in the car when they went on vacation (Ann - thank you for always helping me to keep perspective!).  So, just an encouragement to my mom friends out there to write down the every day memories, take pictures of the same old weekly routine, and to switch the camera over to video every once in a while.

My favorite memory of the entire weekend - and it was a great one - happened just a couple of hours ago.  Rachel came downstairs asking if Clay had found her bear that she sleeps with.  I'll admit that I'm not always the most pleasant and patient person when they get out of bed.  However, I actually knew where the bear was so I went upstairs to get it and then tucked her in.  We whispered secrets to each other for a couple of minutes and then I told her goodnight.  When I got to the hall I heard her say to her bear, "I love my mommy so much.  She's the best mommy in the whole world."  I am truly blessed beyond measure.

multiple costumealities

The kids started talking Halloween costumes around the fourth of July, and we went through MANY different options.  We had a few different opportunties to wear costumes this year (trunk-or-treat, school, birthday parties, trick-or-treat, etc.), and I don't think we were all ever in the same combination of costumes.  So, here is a brief look at the SFB's multiple costumealities of 2010 (minus Ethan's WAY too small Spiderman costume that he wore to a birthday party - trust me, you didn't want to see that):

Costume day at kindergarten - Ethan with his BFF, Connor

Costume day at preschool - Rachel said she wanted us to match, and thankfully Kelly had this costume handy for me

Trunk-or-Treat at church...50s (yes, that is Clay's authentic/now vintage high school letter jacket), Snow White and Super E

Before a birthday party

Trick-or-Treating

And, of course, the pumpkin patch attire

fuzzy wuzzy wuz a ...

Since all of the posts lately seem to be about Ethan, I needed to throw in something about Ray-Ray.  I took her to a friend's house this morning to play, and she immediately picked out this bear costume.  It was the mom's dance costume circa 1984.  If this doesn't make you laugh then there's something wrong with you.  Seriously wrong.

Labor day putt-putt

Putt-putt is quickly becoming one of the kids' (okay fine, mine too!) favorite activities.  Since Clay was in Germany on Labor Day, my parents were gracious enough to entertain us for the day and take us to play putt-putt.  Highlight of the day - watching Rachel perfect her own unique putt-putt stance.  Low point of the day - the slush machine was broken at the concession stand.  The day reminded me a lot of our annual family vacation to Florida.  My parents would rent a beach house and we would go to Navarre Beach for a week.  And then one or two nights we would go in to Destin and play putt-putt and eat dinner.  If I had a little more energy right now I would dig through those albums and scan in a picture of myself at eight years old in Destin with my brother and parents, and then I would post it next to this picture:

...but I don't have the energy to do that right now so you'll just have to use your imagination.

My mom worked really hard to show Rachel the correct putting stance...

...but every time she ended up looking like this

Just the 3 of us

And in true Poppa form, he bought tickets for the kids to ride some of the carnival rides

Thanks, Mom & Dad, for making the day fun for us!

Life as a 3 year old

I thought Rachel would have a tough time with Ethan being at school all day, but honestly she loves it.  Don't get me wrong, she counts down the minutes until 3:15 every afternoon just like I do, but she is loving having me all to herself.  This past Tuesday she had meet the teacher at preschool and we started yesterday.  She has Mrs. Pam - the same teacher Ethan had at three - and she's the youngest in her class.  She had a really rough start to preschool last year so this week I've been chanting "no tears in preschool" to myself (all you church of Christ folks out there are probably singing that to "No Tears in Heaven" right now...you know you are!).  We talked about how there is no reason to cry because she's a big girl now and I'm right there and yadda yadda yadda.  God answered prayers and she made it almost all day without getting sad.  I saw her when her class was coming out of stretch-n-grow and she was sad.  Later that night she told me it was because she didn't think I knew the teacher (the normal teacher was out yesterday) and she didn't know if I would be happy about that or not.  Hilarious!  According to her, the best part of the day was eating a cupcake for William's birthday and playing with the Dora castle.  It was SO WEIRD driving up to school with just her.  Ethan and I have made that drive together every Tuesday and Thursday for the past 3 years so it was quite a change - and a lot more talkative trip.  Should be a fun year!

With Mrs. Pam at meet the teacher

Ready for the first day of school

First one in class (a perk or curse of being a teacher's kid)

Playing putt-putt on Labor Day

Getting some air at gymnastics last week

Sporting her first french braid pigtails (Amy - I had flashbacks of braiding your hair on Friday nights before the game!)

Playing dress-up with Tatum & Olivia

Posing - she got dressed in this outfit and walked around the house saying, "I look really good in this...really good."

Goodbye sunscreen and lazy mornings

Yesterday I took the kids for what will likely be our last Hawaiian Falls trip for the year.  On Tuesday I remembered we were out of sunscreen so I ran by the store to pick some up, and then had the realization that I won't be buying any more sunscreen until next summer.  I'm not particularly sad about not having to buy sunscreen, but it just all went by so fast.  It was just a few days ago that the kids were wrapping up preschool and getting good at swimming, and then today  the kids were talking about their Halloween costumes (btw - today Rachel wants to be the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland and Ethan wants to be a leprechaun...really).  This would be a really boring post without any pictures, so I'll do the exact opposite and post way too many to appease some grandparents out there who think I've abandoned my poor little blog.

In July we visited the MOLA for the first time at the Ft. Worth Zoo

The kids spent a lot of time this summer in their dress-up clothes

We did a lot of swimming and have some nice tan lines to show for it
 - Ethan will not swim without his swim shirt and goggles
 - Rachel will argue with you that she can swim just as good as Ethan
 - they are both jumping off the diving board - Rachel needs someone to catch her but Ethan can swim to the shallow end by himself
 - we went to Hawaiian Falls a lot - Ethan's fave is the wave pool and Rachel's fave is the blue slide without the tube

We were able to hang out with Addi, Libby & Levi quite a few times this summer
 - and a big HAPPY 5TH BIRTHDAY TO LIBBY YESTERDAY!

We had VBS at our church earlier this month and had a great time learning about Joseph
 - Rachel earned the most bands (points) in her age group (thank you Allie & Kate for coming as her guests) which meant she got to throw a pie in our youth minister's face...she's still not sure why she did it
 - Ethan earned the most bands in his age group (thank you Jack, Josie, Lauryn & Zachary) which meant he also got to throw a pie
 - E also earned the most bands of all the boys at VBS which meant he got a new bike!

The kids had a blast at their friend Scarlett's circus-themed birthday party

Cara and I took all the kids to the airplane musuem a couple of weeks ago and were pleasantly surprised when they allowed us to eat our packed lunch right beside this airplane

Rachel took a trial gymnastics class a couple of weeks ago and she's hooked.  I've been telling her all summer that when Ethan started kindergarten she could start gymnastics...better add that to my weekend to-do list

Monday night Clay & I had 3 other families over who are all sending their oldest child - all boys - off to kindergarten on Monday.  We enjoyed dinner together and then all of the Dads prayed over their son.  I definitely want to keep doing this as we move forward in our school years.

And then today we went to see a live production of Alice in Wonderland to celebrate Allie's 4th birthday.  The kids LOVED it.  I think this was their first play so hopefully they're hooked.

I wish I would have done a better job this summer of photographing the ordinary and every day moments.  We really enjoyed pajama days, catching bugs in the back yard, trips to the library, summer Bible study, having friends over to play, riding the carousel, dollar movies, and picnics in the living room.  I'm sure that in 20 years I'll be wishing I had pictures and video of these things.

Goodbye summer and hello school!