Big brother, little brother

All About Emma

How we love our girl!  She is a delight to us and to all who know her!  We couldn't be more proud of her heart for God and can't wait to see what He has planned for her!

  

Some of her favorite Shopkins (she has over 60!)

 

 

She also likes to have nerf battles-- with ONLY Mom!

Her sweet collection of  Mooshka dolls

 Emma LOVES to read!  She often has 3 or 4 books going at one time.  Some of her favorite reading material (American Girl, Ever After High, Never Girls, Disney Girls, Whatever After, devotional books and books about God, and Magic Tree House.)

Exploring

Setting Sail and going overboard

We've had a lot of rain lately so our alley was the perfect place to try out the milk carton boats we made a while back.

 

Lucas played with his boat off and on, but thoroughly enjoyed jumping in the puddles!

 And sitting in them...

 

Nathan's 14 year old pictures

Nathan is such an easy guy to photograph.  He and I took off to take his pictures one evening, and then go to a meeting about his upcoming Mission trip.  We decided on one location by a big tree and then took a few pictures downtown just for fun.

 I usually let the kids pick a treat after their pictures. Nathan wanted a Slushie and happened to find this ginormous bag of Swedish Fish.  It's hard to imagine how many were in it-- just imagine $8 worth!

He enjoyed it for the next couple of weeks!

Father's Day

 In 2012 we started this tradition of Brian holding as many kids as possible for a Father's Day picture.  Some years Nathan was posing but not being held, one year even Emma was on her own feet.  This year, my macho husband, broken hand (in cast) and all, decided he REALLY wanted to try to hold ALL FOUR of them.  He believed he could do it!

And he DID!

 The kids picked out this fun booklet/card for him:

 It had several pages like this...

He received some cool gifts, like this shirt

We took the kids to see Inside Out (3d) and then spent the evening at home hanging out and eating pizza.

  

Oh yeah... there was this incident at the theater...

I won't say who won.

Swimming Party

We had a swimming party for our C.C. friends so we could all see each other and get our yearbooks.  While there, Lucas decided to try the slide:

It's a good thing that Dad now has a water-proof cast! 

No, we did not let Lucas take the floatie up on the slide, though he did try more than once. He didn't want to go down with it, he just wanted to slide it down to Dad.

Samuel was not going to miss out!

 Samuel saying "slow me way down Mama!"

While we were busy with Samuel, Lucas decided to go off the diving board

Samuel followed suit

A Painting Party

We don't do "friend birthday parties" very often, but decided to have one this year for Emma, mainly so she and her friends would have a chance to paint together. "Coffee & Canvas" is very popular around here, and we thought "Cookies & Canvas" would be tons of fun!

So, we've had this planned since before Christmas and the day of her party finally arrived!  We limited the party to 12 girls and that was a perfect number!  We had it at our church so there was plenty of room.

We made lots of yummy treats!

 Grandma and a friend of mine stayed to help out.

We asked the artist (Mrs. Caldwell, who taught art at the school Emma attended for Pre-K and Kindergarten).  We asked her to do a butterfly painting with Cinderella (2015) colors.  She did not disappoint!

She signed her painting and gave it to Emma!

 A great time was had by all!

Nathan has friends over every year at his other house, but it looks like we have two little boys who'll need some friend parties in the next year or two so they don't get all bent out of shape! :)