Self-Reflection

For the majority of my day, I deal solely with little people. These little people are super cute and have super personalities. These personalities can sometimes lead to precious, take-a-picture-in-my-mind moments that I want to bottle up for ever. Take for example, this picture:

Love her.

I'm also faced with equally important moments that try my patience and bring me to my knees when deciding how I should respond to mold these little characters into people who reflect the qualities of our God. Take for example, this picture:

Love her too.

But life is good here in the Dillard home. Where we have smiles like this to sustain us through the tougher days:



This little baby is trying her hardest to be a big girl. Eating real food, pulling up, even standing on her own for a few seconds. Even though I've experienced these milestones two times before with my other kids, it is still amazing to watch and fills our hearts with joy at watching this sweet little thing blossom into a little girl. Life is good.


It warms my heart (and sends me running for my camera) to stumble upon my kids doing things that showcase their growing personalities, increasing independence and blossoming imagination.

Here is Gabriella reading after nap time in our newly remodeled window seat.


Melia is in her element outside. I can't wait to see where her love for nature is going to take this one.


Below is Oliver exhibiting his "boy-ness" - trying to throw his friend Benjamin Bear as high as he can in the air. "Did you see that mom," is a phrase I hear often and I always try to stop what I'm doing and take notice.


Life is also changing in the Dillard home. Slowly but surely, these kids keep getting older. While I do not feel like the time has just FLOWN by in such a way that I feel like I have missed watching them grow, it is sobering to begin to experience the fact that as a mom, my goal is to slowly work myself out of a job. Yes, Oliver will be going to Kindergarten this fall and we registered him at Weatherford Elementary a week ago. Daddy got to come too and we enjoyed meeting some of the faculty and staff there as well as getting a tour of the school. Oliver told me, "Mom, I'm not excited about this" as we were preparing him for registration a few days before. I asked him why and he said, "Because I like my [pre] school now!" As hard as it was to experience this sadness and loss with him, it was one of those opportunities to help mold his little characters into one that reflects the qualities of our God. I acknowledged his sadness and had the opportunity to teach him how to deal with change. Priceless moment.

Thankfully, we all (mom especially) feel much more comfortable and excited about Kindergarten after this visit!

Oliver, Dad, and Benjamin Bear (his visiting friend from his preschool class) at Weatherford Elementary.

I do feel sadness at the time I will miss with Oliver starting this fall, but also look forward to getting to spend everyday with these two cuties:



I love you three so much and gladly accept the responsibility of being your Mommy. Through this good and bad, hum-drum and ever changing life, I will always be on my knees seeking wisdom from our God on how I should mold your little characters into people who reflect and glorify Him, our awesome Creator.

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...