Spring Finn

Here are just a couple of baby pictures from May.  Our little man is growing and growing ...

Finn is 10 months old and is getting around the house with his modified army crawl - using only his right arm and his big toes.  He is alarmingly fast despite the inherent difficulty of his method and shows no interest in trading up for a traditional crawl.  I suppose we can commend him for his tenacity - and attach a fuzzy rag to the belly of all his shirts so he can keep the floor clean as he chases, uh, follows me around all day!

Finn continues to enjoy being in the middle of whatever his brother and sister are doing, but more and more also wants lots of attention from his mama.
 

He sure is a smiley little dude, and loves to laugh at just about anything, especially Elijah being silly.  He has had the most difficulty/pain with teething of any of our kids, but still has plenty of grins for us!  He started teething late, but they came very quickly - the first four came one right after the other.

The night before Mother's Day, Finn slept for 10 hours straight - which was far and away the longest he's ever gone.  His sleeping is getting so much better all of a sudden!  I am thankful for every good night and each day with reasonable naps.  For so long it seemed we would never sleep again!  Hooray for a sleeping baby!

Happy Easter!

We celebrated Easter at church, and then at Bobbi & Papa's house.  It was a good day!

Finn was napping

Cute little man!

Bobbi & Papa with their littlest grandbaby

All five of us - it was windy!

Bobbi's egg hunt begins!

The kids had a great time hunting for eggs, and we all enjoyed a lovely day being together.  Happy Easter!

Spring pictures

Wow, it looks like we're a couple of months behind on the ol' blog!  Sorry about that.  Here are some pictures from this spring so far.

Trying his second food, pears.  He is not sure about this.

Playing outside with the big kids

Bare feet and bubbles - hooray for spring!

Proud in his T-ball uniform!

Elijah is playing t-ball this year.  We thought it would be a fun way to get in some extra gross motor skills practice, which he always needs.  He loves it!  He is getting better at throwing and catching and hitting, but has a really hard time paying attention during games. =)  (Really surprising, right?!?)  His best friend Isaac is on his team, which makes it even more fun.  The town's baseball and softball leagues have a fun festival on opening day, and the big kids really enjoyed it.

They got to check out the fire truck

and a race car from the local race track

Elijah had an Easter concert at school again this year.  This year he managed to sing and do the motions for all the songs.  It was cute.

Miss Molly loves her fancy dress.

Looking so handsome and grown up!

Finn is starting to overwhelm Molly's lap - but she doesn't mind.

Three cute kids!

St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  We had a fun time celebrating!

We spent the week listening to Irish music and having some fun lunches - shamrock sandwiches and a fun backyard picnic, and ...

... tri-colored buttered noodles and shamrock cheese.  (Too bad it wasn't real Irish butter and cheese!)

Then on Saturday we went all out!  For breakfast we had green bagels and green smoothies.  (I decided not to attempt a full Irish breakfast - neither black or white pudding being readily available around here.)

Molly didn't have a St. Patrick's Day shirt this year, but it's OK - she had green bows and shamrock socks. =)

For lunch we had fish & chips!

and a fruit rainbow

We enjoyed telling the kids about Ireland and looking at books and pictures and listening to lots of Irish music.

For dinner we had Guinness beef stew (no picture, sorry!) and Irish car bomb cupcakes (and an alcohol-free version for the kids).  What a fun day! =)

Beautiful kid pictures

Amanda sent me these beautiful pictures of the kids, taken on Sunday when they came up to visit. The kiddos are hot and sweaty - we had so much fun playing outside, but it was humid - but the photos are fantastic anyway. =)

Love them!

A fun visit

On Sunday we had a wonderful visit with my brother Cameron and his wife Amanda. They came up from Virginia for the day - we didn't do anything exciting, but we had such a good time just spending time together and catching up. The kids were very excited to have Uncle Cameron and Aunt Amanda here to visit, and played hard all day. I'm not sure who got more worn out by the end of the day, but everyone sure had fun! Patrick made really yummy burgers stuffed with cheese for lunch and we all ate until we were stuffed! We're really glad that we could spend some time together before Cam & Amanda move to Japan this summer!

Playing with chalk - love those chalky jeans!
(It was really humid, and the kids got pretty sweaty playing outside.)

Loving Uncle Cameron

Elijah reading for everyone.

Some spring pictures

Just a couple of pictures from the other day when we went to the park to play and enjoy the spring weather with a picnic. We've had so much rain this year that when we do get a sunny day, everything grows explosively - you should see how crazy the dandelions are! They are everywhere. We had fun picking them and making bouquets and chains.

"I'm the king of spring!"