Fancy Frances Soirée

This is catch up post #.....oh well, I've lost track. I do know that there are only two more 'catch-up' posts left before I'll have to go back and catch up on blogging about the last three weeks while I was blogging about the last two months....did you get all that?!

Anyway, we got to be in Memphis for my niece's 5th birthday party. It was a dress-up party at a cute little bakery in town. Here is Mara and the birthday girl, Frances putting away the yummy cookies.
And here's Emily making her fancy pearl necklace.....
And all three of my beautiful princesses deep in concentration....

So loved

You can tell how old these pictures are by how little the little monkey is in them.

I LOVE these pictures. We have pictures of Mara snuggling with Em when she was tiny....Mara and Em snuggling with Becca when she was tiny....and now these. There's not a picture of Becca snuggling this night cause I'm sure her stubborn filter was turned on!

This little monkey is definitely SO loved.

Confidence with a Capital "G"

Gymnastics that is.

Oh, and this is catch up post #4 if anyone is keeping track.

The girls started gymnastics in October, and they love, love, LOVE it! Here they are waiting as patiently as they can for class to start.
None of them are incredible athletic but they are all doing so well. Emily did a tuck roll for the first time (she wouldn't even try it for five weeks) last week and you should have seen how proud she was. We probably won't ever do gymnastics competitively, but for the time being it's a fun way to run off some energy and add a little confidence.

My baby girl turns three.

Catch up post #3.

Becca Sue is now three. We had a great birthday party at Build-A-Bear. Look at all of these great looking kids...
I think this is my all time favorite picture of my baby girl. She was holding her bear's heart in her hands and making a wish. This girl is serious about her wish making...she stayed just like this for a full five minutes!
Heidi, this picture is for the rehearsal dinner slide show in about twenty years!
Look at this sweet face. Is this really the same face that screams "NO" 24/7 and spends half of her days in time-out?
All of the kids had a great time and my three girls still sleep with their bear/bunny/puppy every night.

Happy Birthday my sweet baby girl. You still are my sweet Becca even though everything goes through your stubborn filter. I love you and your little strong will. I pray that God uses that strong will in mighty ways.

Caught in the act....

...of preschool!

Here's catch up post #2. More pictures of Emily and Becca's first day of preschool.

Becca was a little timid at first and had a few rough weeks of adjusting, but she's doing SO good now.
Emily had a horrible adjustment period last year at this time. I wasn't sure I was going to survive with my sanity...well, I guess my sanity is still up in the air! She has grown up so much this summer though. She walked right into her classroom on the first day and didn't even look back to see if I was following.
She was too scared to climb this jungle gym last year, or rather tired to climb this jungle gym dozens of times and ended up in major meltdowns. She scales the entire thing now without even thinking twice.

I'm so thankful for preschool. It's so good for me to get some time to run errands without being the lady who lived in a shoe, and it's even better for Emily and Becca to have some time apart.

First Day of Preschool

This is post #1 of catching up.

I blogged about Mara's first day of Kindergarten here. Just a few weeks later, Emily and Becca started preschool twice a week. Here are my big girls in their obligatory first day of school photos...


LOVE this last one! Especially since these two fight 24/7....it's good to see them looking at each other with smiles on their faces!

Center of Attention

It's a good thing he doesn't mind being the center of attention.
Five months later, these girls are still crazy about their baby brother.

Siblings or Cousins?

If you didn't know any of the children in this picture....could you pick out who are siblings and who are cousins?

Mad Pumpkin Carving Skills

We've always painted our pumpkins instead of carving them. Partly because I can't stand the smell and mess of cleaning the pumpkin guts out and partly because the girls can do the painting all by themselves.

This year the girls each painted one like usual but Phillip and I carved a few too. We had so much fun carving, I'm not sure we'll paint any next year!

So without further ado, I present our Jasmine pumpkin...
Our glass slipper pumpkin....
And our Beauty and the Beast Rose pumpkin....
Can you tell we have a few girls in our house who are crazy about Disney princesses?!

Has anyone seen Becca?

Let's Pretend

I promise to have posts with more words soon, but until then here's more pictures from our photo shoot with Daddy the other day.

This one would be fabulous if they were all looking in the same direction and maybe smiling just a little bit...let's just pretend they are...see, it's a great picture!

And let's pretend that the car is not in the background here and that Becca's smile is not quite so painful looking.
Mara might catch some flies here, but I love how 3/4th of them are laughing here. Becca's probably not smiling because I had just asked her to smile. Everything goes through her three-year-old stubborn filter (that's a blog post of it own).
Even though you have to pretend a little, I still LOVE having these great pictures of my MSC (Many Small Children as MckMama would say). And LOVE having a great (and very cute) photographer with us all the time!

...and One Little Monkey!

Monkeys live in trees, so he must be a little monkey.

I'm Still Kicking

It only took five months but my little man is finally added to this here blog...introducing Three Girl Circus and One Little Monkey (thanks Shelby)!

I can not believe that I have not blogged in almost two months. I have so many posts to catch up on. Be back soon!