A camping we will go

We were able to take our family camping a few weeks ago with some families from our church. They have an awesome place that they go to often which had a huge open area for tents, camp fires and playing. PLUS there was a river that was super slow moving and very shallow - perfect for little kids!

Our kids were in heaven sleeping in tents, being outside, and playing with their friends all day! Melia especially loves being outside so she was in a great mood the whole weekend! Some of the families had older kids who were super sweet and played with our kids. Oliver loves being around older kids so he spent a lot of time following them around! He also loved chasing and keeping tracks of the dogs that were there. Gabriella was thrilled to have one of her best friends, Olivia, on the trip with her and they enjoyed playing babies and pushing each other around in Melia's stroller!

We had fun...

...chasing kites

...eating smores (Oliver declared this to be his favorite part of camping and I don't blame him!)

...watching for "pirates" on the water

...throwing rocks

...going exploring, while singing of course!

...climbing trees

...riding bikes

...SWIMMING!

...eating, eating and more eating

...and spending quality time bonding with mom and dad!

Thanks to our friends for making our weekend so special!

Growing up, it happens every day

Our littlest, Melia, is growing up. Every day. Now while that doesn't come as a surprise to us, it is quite shocking to see the rapid development she has been exhibiting of late. But more than the shock of the quickness of it, we have truly been delighted by the cuteness of it.

Some recent developments:

• Crawling - that gets better and better every day. The big kids are so impressed with her. Oliver makes sure to point it out to me every time he sees her going and informs our guests of her skills as well.
• Growing hair - this girl is quite adept in this area. Bald men all over the country could take pointers from her. But alas, it was growing into too much of a mullet for this mommy. So we tamed her wild mane with her first real haircut last week. The first day took some getting used to, but we adore her new do!

Here are some before an after shots of Melia's mane...

Before

And after...

Her bangs are not really that uneven... I promise. They just dried funny. And there's also her huge cowlick to take in.

LOVE her!

Here are a couple videos of our little girl in action. First we have some long haired, early crawling:

And now some short haired, crawling a few days later:

Lots of love!

Our kids love holidays... the decorating, the themes, and doing something out of the ordinary! I like Valentine's Day because it's pretty low-key, yet we get to focus on how much we love each other. Matt and I wrote letters to each of the kids and put them in cute tin mailboxes for them to open in the morning. I made some Valentine's cupcakes that we shared with our friends that afternoon, and then for dinner it was heart-shaped pizzas! I love my family!

Thanks for the cute outfits Meme!

Oliver's shirt says I ♥ Daddy!

Decorating our pizzas

And here is our little model posing for the camera! She's going to need her second hair cut soon!

Ice and Snow

We've had a lot of ice and snow lately. A lot for Dallas anyway. Enough to close down the city for 4 days straight. One snow day is fun... but 4 will really get to you. However, through it all, I feel like we made some great memories. Watching Swiss Family Robinson for Family Movie Night, bundling up to play in the snow, having a fire going in the fireplace, drinking lots of hot tea and hot chocolate, wearing our pajamas for days at a time, making an obstacle course, turning the playroom into a grocery store... good memories. Here are some pictures of the ones I love most and the source of these good memories.

My three babies!

This girl LOVES clothes, dressing up in cute outfits, and shopping. Good girl Gabby! Mommy is so proud!

This girl is all smiles 95% of the day! Love her!

We've added a little ponytail to Melia's daily look. And she'll probably need her bangs cut again soon.

Oliver being Oliver

Over 6 inches of snow to play in!

Food coloring and water make for a pretty mini snowman!

Snowman courtesy of Uncle Bossy (although the banana mouth was Oliver's idea)

I read about an activity that I thought our animal-loving boy would enjoy, and happily, I was right. I took 24 of his small plastic animals and put them into 2 ice cube trays, filled them with water, and let them sit in the freezer for a few hours. Then I told him that a bad guy (his favorite thing to play) had taken his animals and frozen them all and we had to save them. I let him think on his own about how he might free them. We ended up using a meat tenderizer to bust these buddies from their icy prisons.

An icy animal in distress

Their hard working hero...

Some things we've been up to lately...

Bedroom switching
We've been ready for a while now to move Melia out of our room and have been experimenting with how to sleep 3 kids in two bedrooms. Some challenges... a "light sleeper" three year old who loves to talk and a baby who still wakes up once in the early morning to eat. So putting the two girls together has not worked out. Our most recent experiment is working so far. Gabriella and Oliver are sharing his bunk beds - and they are both fine with Gabby sleeping up top - much to her delight! To curb the incessant talking, we set a timer for 5 minutes after we tuck them in and they (aka... Gabby) can talk to each other until the timer goes off. If there is talking afterward, then Gabby has to sleep back in her room and Melia will go back to ours. That promise is enough motivation for her that we have had two successful nights with the big kids sleeping in the same room... although we did find Gabriella whispering to Oliver well after he was asleep last night :) So this is the plan for now. We'll see how things progress...

Playing a before bed game of Pretty Pretty Princess with his sister

Passport photos
We are preparing to go on a cruise with my family later this year so in preparation, I have been getting everything in order to get us all passports. Matt and I both have one, but of course they are both expired so we are in need of passports for the entire family. Since we are cruising to Key West and the Bahamas, we have been able to take advantage of the Passport card for the kids, saving us a bundle of money since we don't see ourselves needing the full international passport for all 3 kids anytime soon. In another effort to save a few dollars, I read many tutorials and decided that I would take our passport photos myself... saving us $10 apiece. I'm very happy with the results and just ordered the $0.09 pictures today. Mucho money saved. Yay.
Baby food!
Melia is growing up quickly as babies are known to do. She is rolling all over the floor - I have to put up pillow barricades to keep her away from walls and out of the corner. She eats pureed vegetables and fruits like a pro! She can drink water from a sippy cup - something my other kids couldn't master until closer to a year. And she still smiles for us all of the time. What a lovable little girl she is. We are so blessed to have her as our baby doll!

Last weekend we had some family pictures made and got a bunch of Melia at 6 months! Here's a sneak peek!