for smiles

I haven't forgotten about this wonderful little blog.  I just wish I had more time to write about life and family and all of the craziness that happens living life here; instead, I am choosing to devote my time to the two big guys in my life (God and Nathan) and to the three little ones I love to write so much about.  One of these days, I hope to develop this fabulous schedule and have a perfect well-balanced life where I am that amazing virtuous woman who is grounded in her relationship with the Lord, loves on, cares for, and spends quality time with her husband and kids, manages her home well, and has extra time for hobbies.  Okay, one can always hope, right?  I guess you will have to settle with these little surprise posts.

This post will be a mish-mash of a whole bunch of silly things the kids have been doing lately.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

For quite a while, Letty seemed to only pretend through the influence of her big sister and big brother.  Lately, she has started pretending things on her own.  It has been neat to see her bring her own little things to the kids' play time instead of just doing what she's told to do by her older siblings or following along.  Her first real pretend thing that she does is chew gum.  She'll pretend to get a new piece of gum, unwrap it, put it in her mouth, and start chewing often times chewing for quite a few minutes.  Take a look!  

We love some of the words that Owen says as he has his own way of saying things sometimes.  Our new favorite word he says is "marshmallows."

"marsh marsh mows"  Always makes me smile!

We keep our house pretty cool and since we've had a few weeks of some really nice weather, we turned our heat way down.  The good thing about our house is that we get a lot of sun coming through our windows which adds warmth to our home.  This day it was really cold in our house so the kids came up with the idea of laying in the sunshine to keep warm.  Can they get any closer to the nice warm couch?  I guess you can say, "Desperate times call for desperate measures."

Owen and Ivy created this design.  They had to take a picture of it to show Daddy because they just knew Letty would ruin it before Daddy came home from work.

 A couple weeks ago, it was spring break from school.  My only goal for the week was to spend way less time in our van. We had gorgeous weather so we spent A LOT of time outside around our house mostly playing with anything that was round - anything having wheels or balls.

 Letty's favorite toys to play with in the house are the Little People girls and boys and this yellow Barbie car.  She loves to talk to the girls and boys and ask them if they want to go somewhere and then load them up in the car and drive them around.  So cute!  

 Owen continues to love to play with his animals and people.  He has especially grown interested in dinosaurs.  For his rest time during the day and as a reward for pooping in the potty (that's a whole other story), he gets to choose a movie to watch which he usually picks the Land Before Time movies.  After watching the dinosaur movie, he'll take his dinosaurs and reenact some of the movie or make his own movie scenes.  Very interesting to see! 

Ivy has been playing teacher in her little classroom.  (Of course, I don't have a recent picture of that.) She basically reenacts her days at school with the note on the board from the teacher (in this case, Miss Ivy), the calendar, the special bubble, and jobs for the kids.  She even teaches how to write letters, new word wall words, writer's workshop, P.E., library, art, music, and so much more. 

And, just for fun... 

Are you smiling?