The last few days

I have been trying to spend some quality time with the girls the last few days. Sometimes I get so caught up in my "to do" lists and agenda that I forget about truly just hanging out with my girls. I am been trying to put my lists aside and just enjoy being with them this week. The summer has flown by and I can't believe that in merely 3 weeks, they will be starting school again! It seems crazy to me and I am STILL adjusting to the fact that school in KY starts so early...what's up with not starting after Labor Day? Oh well...I digress. So the older girls and I have watched Mulan 2 and Camp Rock. Since Ellie naps during the afternoon she misses out on the video watching most of the time. Yesterday she did catch the last of Camp Rock and loved it. Or should I say loved dancing to it. She dances to anything with a beat and does it pretty well. I think dance and music may be in her future! We have gone to the pool and just generally enjoyed being together. It has been fun for all of us I think. We are off to get our first professional pictures taken since we brought Ellie home. Actually we haven't had professional pictures taken in ages, unless you count Mackenzie's school photos:) I will post some of them as soon as I can.

Time in Maine

We had a great time on our family vacation in Maine. The flight was uneventful and we all arrived in one piece. We spent the first few days with Jeff's dad and step-mom and had a really good time visiting with them. The girls loved traipsing through the woods near their house and playing with their dogs, Henry and Daisy, who are very cute pugs. I haven't uploaded our photos from our camera but I will post some soon. Then we moved north to spend time with the Moody and Ireland clan. We had a fantastic time. The girls had fun at each place they went and played hard pretty much every day. They played with some of my old toys while at my moms and also had several rousing games of croquet. We spent time at jeff's mom and step-dad's camp, where we went on the four-wheelers, fished, went out in the boat and did a LOT of swimming. The girls thought driving Grammie I's car was pretty cool. I myself was a little freaked out but apparently it was only on the camp roads:) We also went to a parade and a bean-hole-bean dinner. If you don't live in Maine you might just not know what that is...reason enough to go and visit Maine:)
It was a great visit, especially for Ellie as she got to meet lots of people she hadn't yet met. She had a really great time meeting all the new people and really seemed to grow up while she was there. Jeff and I were able to connect with some old friends from high school which was fun and of course just spending time with family is great.
One of the highlight for me is going up to visit Mt. Katahdin. We do this every time we go home as I have lots of childhood memories from the "mountain". The pictures that I will post are ones that my brother took with his camera and I have uploaded onto our computer.
Mor photos to come..enjoy:)

Learning to parent three little girls...

So many of my days seem to be about "managing" my three very beautiful little girls that I love to pieces. It amazes me how often what I want to get done comes into conflict with what my kids want to get done. Their lists usually revolve around: eating, watching videos, eating, playing with friends and/or mom and dad, and going to the pool. My list usually involves: keeping the house neat and clean, keeping my kids' minds from turning to mush during the summer months, laundry, and teaching my kids how to love those around them and show Jesus' love to others. As you can see, often these lists come into conflict..but more often than not, I remind myself that some of the things on my list that are most important can also be incorporated into my kid's lists. I don't ALWAYS remember this but I try to! I have had some quality time with each of my girls this summer and am looking forward to continued quality time when we go to Maine on vacation. But most importantly, I am looking forward to using the remainder of the summer weeks to learn what it means to give up my agenda for what really is most important...Spending time with God, my hubby and my three beautiful girls.
Here's some random summer pics..enjoy!

Summer Days

So since getting back from vacation we have been enjoying our summer days. I have meant to post more and the day just seems to disappear! All the girls have been enjoying summer. We have made some trips to our neighborhood pool, the sprinkler water park, the library and seeing friends. The rest of the time has basically been spent hanging out at home and enjoying our neighbors. The girls love playing with their friends in the neighborhood and get pretty upset if we are busy too many days in a row. They love the pool..even Ellie has come around to really liking the pool. Her core muscle strength still isn't as strong as it should be but we are working on it. She need both a floatation jacket and swimmies on her arms to stay afloat but once she is set she enjoys being it the water. We are working on teaching her to move her arms and legs and she now can kick so that's good:) It is all about baby steps. Mackenzie is a great swimmer and loves swimming. She and Ainsley wonder why we aren't at the pool all the time! But Ellie still needs some naps and mom still needs the break so we usually go in the evening when Jeff is able to help out. Ainsley getting to be a swimmer. She still doesn't like going under water which holds her up a bit I think. Mackenzie and Ainsley will be in swim lessons at the YMCA starting the end of July. I hope to get at least 2-3 sessions in them if not more.
They will also be starting soccer at the YMCA the first week of August. This will be the first time for either of them to play soccer so I am wondering how it will go but they wanted to try it so I said ok. Neither of them wanted to dance this next year so we are trying some new things. They also want to take gymnastics. We have a new place close to us so I am going to check out when there different age classes meet and see if we can work something out. I would love for Ellie to take classes too as I think she would love it and it would help her gross motor skills. Speech continues to make slow but fairly steady progress. And hopefully preschool will continue to help her speech progress this fall.
We leave on vacation #2 to Maine this coming Sunday, July 13th. We are looking forward to 10 days in Maine spending time with family and friends. I will probably post a few times while we are there too.
When I upload our pics from our camera, I will post some random pics from the summer.