Look who's 4!!

Holy cow, is this girl ever excited that she's 4 years old!

can I just say how much I love and adore this overly expressive and spunky little girl? She steals my heart, all. the. time.

Plus she can be incredibly sweet, so it makes up for a lot of her spunk. 

She got very into this impromptu photoshoot. She was posing up a storm for me. It was awesome.

We decorated her room while she was sleeping that night. There were balloons everywhere, and they were inflated. Unfortunately, cheap balloons just don't stay up for all that long. So her floor was covered in them! She loved it anyway, and I think I'm going to be buying a lot of helium every year for all the kids birthdays. They all thought it was REALLY cool! Especially Halli, cause she got to stay up late and help Kevin and I decorate.

On her actual birthday, we spent the evening at the swim recognition night, so at 9:30 or so when we got home, it was a quick happy birthday song with a cupcake, and opening her presents. She was a doll, and patiently waited all day for her daddy to be there.

We did have some friends over to swim at Grandma Williams pool, but being the pregnant blonde that I am, I was lucky to get out of the house with all the kids and their swimsuits, and left the camera behind. She absolutely loved it, and after being homebound for the last month with sick kids, they all had a blast finally playing with their friends. I'm sad I didn't get any photographic evidence of it though.

So we had to push back her actual birthday cake, and it got pushed back all week, until finally on sunday, almost a week after her actual birthday, we were finally all home and had time to celebrate this sweetie with a proper birthday cake. 

She just wanted a candy cake, that was all I was told. Hopefully this didn't disappoint. She seemed excited, so I think it was okay.

JJ was loving all the "hap birday" going on, and was seriously upset that he had to wait.

I mean look at all that candy and "hap birday" Which just means cake to him. All cake means birthdays. It's very sweet.

I mean, is that not the sweetest sad face ever? I would say I gave in, but after having listened to him cry the whole time I was decorating the cake, it was just slightly annoying by this time, so he just had to wait it out like everyone else. He may or may not have gotten his fair share of left over M&M's though, just to keep him quiet.

Yes, this girl LOVES to be the center of attention. She was on cloud 9 while we sang. 

Make a wish!

She did it, our baby girl is a whopping 4 years old. Not eight like it looks like in the picture. She was just so excited, there was no way she could use only one hand! 

She needed to make sure everyone really knew just how old she was!

So, in honor of our big girl, here are 4 things we absolutely LOVE about Lex.

1. She LOVES life, and while her super high pitched laugh/scream can be a little piercing, it's also a sign of just how exuberant she is. She may be little, but that's about the only thing about her that's small. 

2.  She is in love with her siblings, and while they may think it's not always fun to have her following them around, she just adores them and wants to be a big girl like her sisters. It's incredibly sweet.

3. She can sing, and she's pretty good at it. I especially love when she sings her mermaid song. You can only love a barbie song sung in a sweet little girls voice!

4. I love all her expressions. Seriously, this child is beyond expressive. There is NEVER a time where you have to wonder or guess how she's feeling or what she's thinking. 

and one to grow on.

5. She has a mind all her own. It's very hard to change her mind unless you just flat out manipulate her. I know that sounds bad, but she's a stubborn girl, and there will be many times in life that that will serve her well. It can get tiring, especially when I NEED her to change her mind, but it's also such a huge part of who she is. She wouldn't be the same sassy and spunky girl if she weren't as stubborn as she is.

We love you sweet girl, and we look forward to watching you grow up into the amazing young woman you're going to be!

10 Years

And we're still madly in love.:) Cheesy right? But we are! I'm a few days late with this, since our actual anniversary was on the 22nd. But I couldn't let this milestone pass us by. 

Sorry for the super grainy photo. They took it at dinner for us, and all I had was my iPhone. Takes decent pics, but not in the dark.

I couldn't ask for a better fit for me. I could maybe ask to have him around more, but such is life. We'll just have to soak up the time that we do get, in between young mens, and work, and real estate, and summer of seals training, and oh yeah, basketball!:) 

Love ya sweetie, thanks for the best 10 years, and the best 4 (soon to be 5) little people in the world. Life sure does fly by when you're having fun! 

It's swim season!

Swim team is in full swing around here. We have a love/hate relationship with the whole thing. Mostly love, just not the long days at practice and really long days at meets out in the heat. (mom, I may have a slight understanding and greater appreciation for all your time spent in the heat at track meets...thanks for that!) Other than that, we absolutely love this sport! We have great friends to hang out with the whole time.  That always makes it go by faster.

Swim meets come every saturday with the promise of donuts for breakfast. That may be one of the girls favorite parts!

Peyton is getting better this year. She's learning her strokes and starting to figure the whole thing out. Mostly she just has a lot of fun whether she's losing by a little or a lot! We love relays though and the chance it gives her to get a blue ribbon every now and again.:) She's still young and is still learning her form a little, but she loves it!

There are so many girls on the team, and I will always love watching the 6 & undress walk in line to the ready bench!

Nothing like a huge smile after an finishing an event, or when you're getting ready to go!

Peyton's learning the backstroke this year too. She never competed in it last year, and although there's still room for improvement, she has done so well this year! I love being able to watch them learn new things and start to get the hang of it, and see their time just start dropping!

Halli's started competing in the 100IM this year. You swim each stroke, for one length of the pool. She's used to only swimming 25 yards, so this new event is a killer for her! She's working up her endurance, but it's teaching her that losing is okay, even if your dead last. As long as your learning from it, and growing stronger, that's a part of getting better. She is not a fan of being dead last, and I think the first time she swam this it threw her for a loop!

I haven't been great about taking pictures at all the meets, but here's a short video from today's meet where Halli won the 25 meter free, and not only that, she set a new team record in the process! I will never get tired of watching my kids try their hardest and succeed!

A little rewind back to Easter

Way back in April, we celebrated easter. I'm so on top of things!:) I didn't get any pictures of easter morning, I don't know why, just spent the quick morning before church enjoying the kids and trying to keep the chocolate from getting all over the house I guess.

But after church we headed to grandmas to hang out with the cousins, have dinner and of course, the easter egg hunt!

I know I'm biased, but these kids are so stinking adorable! I just wanna squeeze all four of them!

The hunt was on and the older kids had found all their eggs within a couple minutes!

The little kids only needed to find one, and realize there was candy inside and they were done too!

Some of the older kids were really nice and helped the little ones out in finding those harder placed eggs.

Ooh, yum! Who doesn't love a basket full of sweets?

Not only do I have the cutest kids in town, but my nieces and nephews are pretty dang adorable too!

Yeah, it didn't take JJ long to realize just what the easter egg hunt was all about!

See what I mean? Gorgeous all the way around!

After the hunt, we got to enjoy the gorgeous houston springtime weather. You have to enjoy the few short months we get here! 

Luckily grandma and grandpa have plenty to do outside at their house. Most of the older kiddos spent the evening playing basketball and betting their dads on how many shots they could make!

Couldn't have asked for a better day, and how lucky we are that we get to spend it with family and some awesome cousins!

Random spring Happenings

We've been enjoying spring, and now that it's over and summers here, we're trying to adjust to the heat. But in the mean time, the kids have been growing and changing, and just being kids.

So, we'll start with JJ, the boy drinks. a lot. all day long. and he needs his sippy cup to go to bed. I change lots and lots of very wet, and often leaky diapers cause this boy drinks so much. Thing is, he's kinda picky. He won't drink milk, unless it's chocolate, and he won't drink plain water. I don't love him drinking juice all day so we've come to a compromise. Thank goodness for MIO. flavor in a bottle. He absolutely HAS to have this in his drink, and as a result, I've got lots and lots of the little bottles and they're all over the house. In my diaper bag, in the kitchen, upstairs by his room, in the car. Can't leave home without the stuff! 

As for Lexie, well, she did something HUGE that I thought would have taken a lot longer to accomplish. She quit sucking her thumb!!! I'd heard about Mavala stop, and got some, and it worked wonders! I don't know if it was just that, or if it was also the fact that she understood that it was just time to be done. It only took her a couple nights, and absolutely NO whining or complaining. It went a thousand times easier than I ever would have thought and I'm so dang proud of her for being such a big girl! 

She's also taking swim lessons, and she's on the swim team with her sisters! She doesn't do the meets, just practice, and she loves it! We went to grandma's pool on saturday and that girl is a fish! As long as she's by the side or a parent, she does awesome! actually she swam across the width of the pool all by herself. I can't believe how old she's getting!

Peyton finished up her last year of preschool, and she's more than ready to move on up to kindergarten. They had a fun splash day during the last week of school. I couldn't go, but her teachers made this cute book for their graduation (more on that later), and had some cute pictures of my sweet girl! She's also doing swim team again this year and so far is doing really well! She's got both of her times for the freestyle and backstroke under 40 seconds. Not too bad for a 5 year old!:)  

And last but not least is our sweet Halli. She is getting to be way too old if you ask me! She just finished 3rd grade and next year I'll have a fourth grader...that just seems crazy! She's had a great end of the school year too, with field day, and a fun run, and an awards ceremony where she got an award for straight A's. We've been working on that all year and she kept having a random high B, but this final semester she finally did it! I unfortunately missed pretty much all of those things. I know, I think it's a sign of having too many kids!:) We were out of town for some of it , and the awards ceremony I didn't even know about till she came home that day. 

As for Kevin and I, we're just doing the same old thing. He works, and has young mens, and I'm taking care of the kiddos and trying to keep up my energy while this baby grows and makes me more uncomfortable each week. We have our 20 week ultrasound tomorrow morning, but this time it'll be a little different cause we're not going to find out what we're having. Kevin won't let me find out, hopefully I don't go crazy at the appointment!:) This ultrasound was from the 12 week scan, so tomorrow I'll have a whole new picture of a bigger baby!

Summer of Seals has also started again. I tried to get Kevin to sit it out, but he wasn't having that. So here comes another summer full of late night workouts. He's also starting up another summer league....seriously? It's a good thing I love this guy!:)

Eastern caribbean cruise

So we're celebrating our 10th anniversary this year, and in April we both had our birthdays, and Kevin owed me a vacation for winning Summer of Seals last summer, we made a bet, and I won.:) 

Because of all this, we finally nailed down a trip and booked a cruise of the eastern caribbean for the first week in May. Kevin was like a little kid, so super excited, I on the other had was a little more apprehensive about leaving all the kids behind.

It was fine, it always is, and it's always good to have a little time to spend with the hubby all by myself! 

Unfortunately, when we flew into fort lauderdale, it was raining, and the rain followed us for the first four days of the cruise. Our first stop was in the bahamas, and what should have been tropical paradise, just wasn't. It was cold and windy and wet. Still beautiful and the water was gorgeous, we just couldn't really enjoy it!

We went on a royal caribbean cruise, and this happens to be the largest ship in the world!

We took an excursion that gave us a tour of the island, and then dropped us off at Atlantis to walk around a little bit. We didn't get to see hardly anything cause of all the rain. 

I really just felt bad for all the poor people who were staying at the Atlantis. Can you imagine? They said it'd been raining like that for 3 days! At least we were leaving and had hope of better weather. 

Not that we got it though!

I bet it's really gorgeous there when it's sunny!

Kevin's face pretty much says it...not a real exciting day there!

But I will say, the resort is amazing. I was in awe of all of the architectural work and details that went into EVERYTHING there!

We had a day at sea the next day and there was enough of a break in the rain for them to open up some of the outdoor activities. So, Kevin jumped on them and spent the day climbing and zip lining and playing ball!

This is the aqua arena, that blue stage there drops and becomes a 17 foot deep pool. This is where they have the diving show...that was pretty amazing to see!

Of course, we became very familiar with the basketball court on the ship! Kevin won a few medals playing in basketball, volleyball and dodgeball tournaments. I got to sit by and read and cheer him on!

He was excited to try the zip line, They're pretty strict about it being super dry to do this, so we weren't even sure they were going to open it up cause of all the rain!

There he goes!

This is what's below the hipline, that's the carousel down there, along with a few restaurants. 

Next we made it to St. Thomas. We were really excited about this stop and had heard that we had to go to St. Johns, cause it was so beautiful there. Unfortunately, the weather was worse there!

We did make it to our ferry, this was the view, awesome, right?

Just to show how wet it was, Kevin was ringing out his shirt on the ferry cause he was so drenched. This was just from walking from the ship to the ferry, and it wasn't that far!

about 10 minutes into the ferry ride, they canceled the excursion and sent us back. We're pretty disappointed we didn't make it over there, but I suppose that just means we'll have to go again someday!:)

Our last stop was St, Maarten, if you're dutch, or St. Martin if your french. It was overcast, but finally warm, and dry! We also finally made it to the beach while we were here, yay!

The first beach we went to was right next to the airport, and we could see and hear all the jets taking off and landing just across the street. It was kinda cool!

Finally! This is what a vacation is supposed to be like!

This was one of the planes landing, they were super low, it was fun to watch!

Kevin was beyond excited to finally get in the ocean! Thank goodness our last stop finally was decent!

Back on the boat on the way home we had great weather the final two days. So we spent our time outside soaking up the sun while we could! Kevin got me to even try the rock climbing. I'll be honest, I wanted to anyway, but I'm in pretty bad shape and didn't want to embarrass myself by only climbing a couple feet off the ground! 

It wasn't too bad though! I also didn't think I was showing hardly at all, but looking back at these pictures, I look either like I've got a big ol gut, or slightly pregnant!

Kevin made it to the top again, he loves a challenge!

I decided to try one more time. I made it farther, but then looked down and freaked myself out so I quit!

This is the boardwalk, a very fun part of the boat for kids of all ages. Kevin fit in well down there!:)

These last ones are just a bunch of pictures of the ship, and our cabin steward, Teisha, who was so super sweet! She was from Trinidad I think, and was always smiling and happy!

Some of the pools on the boat, finally being used after so many days of rain!

Kevin and I also got to meet Fiona, how lucky are we? They had tons of Pixar characters there that we saw, but she's the only one we got a picture with.

We made it to all the shows, some were amazing, some, not so much. This one wasn't our favorite, but it was still pretty cool.

I just really liked the earth floating there, kinda random, but there ya go!

This is the theater where most of the shows, and Bingo were held. We kinda like to play bingo!:)

Our awesome, tiny cabin, with the days latest towel creation!

Kevin spent more time here than I did, but I went a few times. It was nice to just go work out whenever we wanted to...then go gorge ourselves on food right when we were done!

Last day of the cruise, and almost home. I think I was more excited to come back and see the kids than I was to leave. Cruises are just hard cause it's just so hard to even get in touch with the kids back home. I missed them a bunch, and we may have to make our couples vacations a little bit shorter for the next little while...just till the kids are slightly older. 

But all-in-all, we had a fantastic trip with no cooking, cleaning, or changing diapers. Even if we had more than our fair share of "liquid sunshine" ( I hated that term by day three!) , it was a nice little break from reality for a few days! Although I'd be lying if I said I wasn't excited for the day that we got to take our kids with us on one of these trips!