Max and Freddy

These two little boys. Oh I love them. Our mornings together are often so fun as I watch them play together. But also, individually these boys are just deliciously adorable!!

One morning while Chris was gone either in Florida or for his Dad's 60th birthday Golf Trip, we sent him this picture to let him know we missed him.

When Max is sleeping, Freddy just follows me around the house, playing nearby me or snuggling next to me if I'm stationary doing my scripture study or something. He loves to quietly look through books. Often, he'll fall asleep.

End of Preschool year

It is so exciting to have finished the preschool year. I always loved planning and seeing the kids and there were always fun teaching moments, but it was challenging at times and took a lot of preparation and mental effort. Baby Max is getting to need more attention and help as he gets older and its been difficult trying to juggle it all.   I've learned so much about myself, about having a regular 'job' for the school year and I've had SO. MUCH. FUN making art, cooking, dancing, singing, reading, exploring and playing.  I compiled an end of the year book from all of the Instagram posts I did that documented each preschool day for the whole year. It's really interesting to look through and Freddy LOVES for me to read it to him.  Frederick has been an amazing preschool helper this whole year.  He's shared his toys, his mom, his house with an extraordinary lack of complaint. He listens well, gets excited about learning new things and is a sweet friend and imaginative playmate.  

My older kids all wanted to stay home from school and help with preschool at various times during the year and I told them they could each choose one day to do just that! Charlie did it early in March and Gwen and Alec helped during our last week.  The preschool kids loved having big kids to play with and I'm pretty sure one little girl fell in love with Charlie. 

And I'm done! I did it!  I started my own preschool, taught for a whole year despite having a baby in the middle! I had a few kids drop out at random times without notice and some people say they couldn't pay for a month or two but I kept going and had so so much fun. Frederick absolutely loved it and asked almost every morning with hope in his voice, "Is it preschool today?"  Most kids cried when their parents came to pick them up and more than one kid told their parents they wanted to live at preschool. I'm going to call it a successful venture. But I am SO glad I decided to do something a little different for next year. It was a VERY difficult decision and it took a long time to decide but I feel good about it.  I'm going to do a playschool session, once a week, for only 2 hours, without collecting payments so I can maintain a sense of low-keyness (since I tend to easily get ambitious and try to do too much!) and give me the freedom to cancel whenever I feel I need to.

To celebrate, Chris and I had some sparkling cider and homemade popcorn and a movie night... on a THURSDAY! 

Then on Saturday we invited all the preschool families over for a BBQ 'swim' party. (Then I was really officially done) Whew! Sweet Sweet Freedom!

Max is growing! Charlie Pitches!

Max loves to kick his feet. He loves to sit in the bouncer on the counter because then he can watch me cook. He seems to need to watch me or he gets unhappy.  He just follows me with his eyes, sucks his hand and kicks his feet.  He loves to be tickled and we all love to hear him laugh. 

Lately, when I change his diaper, he'll put his hand on my arm and just rest it there while I change him. I love it.

He found his toes! He loves to hold them and bounce his legs up and down. This is the only way he will roll over to his side but then he just lets go and rolls back to his back.

Charlie has really enjoyed baseball. This is the first year that they have the kids pitching. Its very difficult to get a hit in for Charlie. He's had some good swings and is even better at NOT swinging at balls. He gets on base from a walk most of the time. The coach started him out in 8th batting position but then moved him up, eventually to 3rd or 4th because he consistently gets on base and will follow the coach's instructions.  He mostly plays 2nd base, one time he played first base and another time he pitched! His team was ahead by a lot so the coach switched the pitcher and catcher around and put his own son in as pitcher in the last inning. The other team got a lot of hits and was scoring fast, so he took his son out and all of a sudden gave Charlie a chance to pitch. He just needed to get 2 outs. Despite having NEVER pitched before in his life, Charlie was willing to try and gave it his best shot.  The ump had a 2 key bad calls (in my opinion where Charlie SHOULD'VE gotten a 3rd strike) and our team lost our lead. He stuck in there even when it was hard and got a strike out to end the game. WHEW! It was a good experience and I'm so proud of Charlie. I have never been so NERVOUS at a kid's sporting event, ever. 

Garden Trial 1

With how crazy fast things grow down here in Mississippi, we've always wanted to do a garden, but other house projects combined with an unclear idea of WHERE to do it seemed to prevent us from actually doing one. We've had the supplies for a garden box in our garage for over a year and decided to just get it done even if its not perfectly planned out. In a few hours we had the frame built and filled with dirt. We hooked it up to the hose and got a timing system rigged up so it wouldn't die from our lack of attention. 

It looks so cute! I love it.  We have tomatoes, peppers, cilantro ( fresh salsa anyone?), parsley, squash and cucumbers. Let the fresh produce begin!!

When we were in the middle of dumping the dirt. We heard a big crack and CRASH! We walked around to the backyard and found a tree had fallen over. Just like that. It wasn't windy or anything. It was one of those Hackberry trees that rot from the inside out and just came crashing down. I had thought it would make a great tree house tree but Chris didn't think it was a good idea because it was a Hackberry. Good thing we listened to him and not me!


Since I'm writing this post 6 months later I can tell you how badly we failed in our garden. Something started eating the tomato plants so we covered it with netting and ramshackled it up with wood we already had and bought some pvc pipes to make something more permanent but never got around to it. The squash didn't end up being squash, it was all cucumber plants and they took over the entire garden and grew in and around the netting so its all stuck and the cucumbers taste horrible and something ate our peppers before they finished getting ripe, but that didn't really matter since before many peppers or tomatoes could grow the cucumber plants cobbled them up. I did harvest some cilantro for a meal once and some parsley. But that's it. Man, I wish I had a greener thumb.  Our guest house remodel took all our time, energy and focus.  Here's a picture of the garden 1/2 way through the summer.

AGA Hall of Fame dinner for Jim Archibald

Chris' dad will celebrate his 60th birthday this year and also had the honor of being inducted into the Archibald Golf Association's Hall of Fame.  The Archibald siblings and James and Dixie celebrated with a golf trip all together. Chris and his siblings planned and plotted and looked forward to this for so so so long.   It started with a letter, Thom sent out almost a year ago on official AGA letterhead paper with a pre-stamped return envelope we were to send our vote for course locations.  They ended up going to some courses in Alabama along the Robert Trent Jones course trail.  Edward drove down from Idaho to Provo and got a ride with James and Dixie down to Texas where they got Jess from the airport, and picked up Thom before coming out to Starkville to stay with us for one night before taking Chris with them to Alabama.  We hosted the Hall of Fame dinner right after we got here and we really tried to deck it out complete with signs along the road (AGA Hall of Fame dinner -->), a red carpet welcome, fancy table spread, giant framed picture, decorations and fresh flowers.

They all came up with little things to make this a sweet, event and surprised everyone with little gifts. Jess and Dixie had little goodie bags with new golf shirts for everyone from their alma maters, candy and golf tees. Thom had made a hand-etched trophy for the tournament winner and an actual plaque to give James, Chris ordered a box of golf balls for everyone with the AGA logo printed on them and put together with Edward, Thom, and Jess' help a Mocumentary about James and his golfing career. People dressed up as various historians or authors and used accents to talk about all the contributions James has made to golf and the AGA.  Chris spent HOURS and HOURS working on this video. And it topped off an already magical evening with even more magic. Everyone was laughing so hard there were tears. Seriously, such a great night. Not often do the things you dream up actually reach their dream but this did and even surpassed it. It was worth all the work.

And then they all left for 3 more magical days of golfing and eating and sleeping. They had a rigorous tour schedule and played 72 holes in less than 48 hours. I'll let Chris put more information and pictures of their golf trip here:

Meanwhile the kids and I tried to clean up and survive normal life with a 4 month old nursing at night, preschool, ballet, baseball, and school. It was rough. Between his conference, this trip and another work trip to Florida in a few weeks. He'll have been gone for 3 week-long trips within 6 weeks...not including his 2 night backpacking trip with Alec. I'M READY FOR A BREAK!?!

I made this fake beard real quick for one of Chris' characters in the mocumentary. The kids all had to wear it too. 

 

  

Gwen's Ballet Recital

Gwen's ballet recital was a huge success this year! If she was nervous, she didn't complain about it! She has really loved being in the next level class and her teacher, Ms. Evelyn said she depended on Gwen and put her in the front of the group since she was so good at keeping the movements on beat.  

She had a dress rehersal the night before and it started late, so it was fun to have special late, Mommy-Gwen time. It was also a good chance to take pictures without having baby Max crawling all over me.

Saturday, she was in two performances. Dad took her to one and the boys and I joined them for the second one. Her costume was versatile, with interchangeable skirts and chokers to be like two different costumes for her ballet and tap number. Her ballet song was this cool instrumental song with a fun beat and her tap song was part of, "Sing, Sing, Sing."

We're so proud of our little dancer and love Dance Divine studios. They end each class with a prayer circle, scripture card and little toy reminder about the scripture and the music is all uplifting and the costumes age appropriate!