Zane, Emerson, and Smith: Recently...

Some pictures from the past few weeks...

We have started spending a ton of time playing in our backyard. They love playing baseball lately. Zack and Zane get out there a bunch to hit and play catch and practice grounders. :) And of course Emmy and Smith are right there joining in.

This is after a soccer game - what I look like most days. :)

Playing in the rain - looking for worms, getting muddy hands. :)

Lounging on the trampoline

Here are some pictures from when I got to take just the two older kids to the zoo for the afternoon. If feels soooo easy to take the two of them places since now I'm used to having all 4. :)

This girl loves her donuts!

Molly pics...
She is mobile and moving! She adores my three kids and they all love her a ton. They help me take care of her every single day.

Love the shoes!

Big smile for legos

We had a playdate with Zane's really good buddies from school. They have picked him up from school a few times and let him have lunch and a playdate there, so this day we returned the favor. These two boys are so great - Zane and Emmy love playing with them.

Snow day pictures from one of our huge storms. We got one storm a week for 3 weeks in a row. These two were out there forever and were cracking up, tackling, then someone would get hurt, they'd come tell me, and then go right back out.

Play date with friends -

Boys couch

Girls Couch

Pajama party!

Emerson Ruth is full of attitude! She picks all her own outfits now and I pretty much let her go for it. She is super girly right now, loves dresses, and we love it.

Smith and Molly are buddies but are also starting to get mad at each other. Molly is starting to take Smith's toys and pull and poke him and he does not usually like it much. They both think the other is extremely funny.

Sonic happy hour - Cherry Limeades

Last week, our church had it's annual food drive. Zack and his youth group and leaders actually do most the planning and then they run it and wrap all the donations onto pallets. It was so much work! It's fun to be part of such a cool event.

The kids picked out a big box of gold fish to buy and give to others who need it. We also collected one random bag of food that they picked out. They were so excited to be there and to donate.

This is what our church lobby looked like that weekend. We collected about 245,000 lbs of food! Holy Smokes!!

Since the food drive was on Zack's birthday weekend, he worked most the time. Luckily we were able to get out Sunday night to celebrate. We went to the Alamo Draft House with Jord, Ben, Nell, and Ant where we watched a movie and also ate dinner during it.

Here are a few examples of the kids' artwork.
Zane and Emmy got to create cards that the church will use for thank you notes for leaders.

Emmy's

Zane's

Zane decided he was going to create a "Human Body" book so of course Emmy wanted to make one too. In Zane's book, he drew a picture of a body part on each page and then wrote 2-3 sentences all about it. Emmy made her book and drew pictures and wrote the labeling word on each one. One of Zane's pages is on the top left. Then, it's all of Emmy's: bladder, legs, bones, heart, and brain.

We got our caterpillars!! We spend a lot of time everyday watching them grow and will eventually get to see them change to butterflies. They grow so fast. I love their facial expressions.

We went to Zane's school to see his music performance. He was a monkey and made his own mask. We also got to see his nonfiction writing that he'd been working on at school. His work on Cobras was the Kindergarten example they used to show parents. Pretty cool!