Happy Birthday Leighton!

Happy birthday to my curly haired, brown-eyed, sweet boy! It was a wild & crazy May for us 3 years ago. We moved on May 19th, spent a week unpacking & you decided to arrive 6 days early on May 29th (the day your daddy was supposed to report for his first day of work).

You make us laugh, love to snuggle & are not afraid to give us your opinion. You love to help mommy cook, daddy at the farm & your brother with whatever project he recruits you for. You love on your baby sister a little more than she would like - maybe in an attempt to make her tough? :) Love you sweet boy!

You are 32 lbs (50th percentile) and 41" tall (>95th percentile).

Brecken & Leighton (a couple days old)

11 Months!

At 11 months you:
*Went swimming for the first time :) Thank you Nonny & Poppa for a heated pool!
*Have 4 teeth.
*Scoot everywhere.
*Are still in size 2 diapers.
*Are starting to get some curls.
*Are becoming a social butterfly.
*Are a tough girl. You can thank your brothers, especially Leighton, for that.
*Are super sweet! Love you baby girl!!!
*Are pulling up. You pulled up the evening of my last post (when I said you couldn't - you proved me wrong)

In her own time...

I'm thankful that Zoe is not as quick to do things as her brothers were.

At 11 months, Brecken had been walking for a month.


At 11 months, Leighton was climbing on everything.

At almost 11 months, Zoe is still trying to find things that are low enough to pull up on! The couch is still too high for her to reach...

She discovered the tub is low enough, but the metal hurts her hands, so she can't hold on for long.


It won't be long & I'm sure she'll be walking, climbing & running right along with them. But for now, I'm good with her method of scooting around :)

Creative Mind...

After dinner one evening, Brecken went outside to play. Aaron looked outside & saw Brecken doing this.

Inspired

Two of my new favorite blogs to waste spend time looking at are, Remodelaholic & Knock-Off Wood. Since they have actually inspired me to do a few things, I won't say they are a complete 'waste' of time ;)

Remodelaholic shows all kinds of before & after pictures of various remodeling projects. It's so fun to see the before & after pictures! We are currently renting a home & one of the closet set ups was NOT working for Aaron at all. He had to contort himself to pick out his clothes every morning. Anywho - I got a wild hair last week to redo it and luckily our 'landlords' are ok with our improvements :)

I tore everything out without taking a decent before picture, so this one from a couple years ago will have to do. Reese & Leighton did a number on the closet, making it even less appealing. There were 2 poles along the left side that were not very handy. On the right side, was the shelf on the bottom that stuck out a foot & one right at head level that stuck out a foot - making it VERY hard to put away & take out clothes.

Here's the closet after my 'deconstruction'.

After a fresh coat of paint, new shelves and my new design, here's the finished closet!


This is our project in the works from the Knock-Off Wood website. It's taking awhile to finish - having a hard time finding some decent blocks of time to tackle it, but it's started...and hopefully will be finished sometime next month!

Swagger Wagon

I may not have a Toyota Sienna...but I think the 'Swagger Wagon' applies to all mini vans...love this video :)

Fun Weekend!

What a fun Mother's Day weekend we had! We got a lot of work done & played a lot too!

We transplanted 2 more trees to our farm & are excited that all but 2 that we moved last year survived!

We went to a surprise birthday party in the park & the kids enjoyed running off some energy.

Aaron and I stayed up late and watched a movie all three nights. We haven't done that forever!

Sunday involved church, where the kids each got to pick out a flower for me, followed by a yummy dinner at mom & dad's. We spent the whole afternoon at the farm, watering trees, tending to the garden & enjoying the outdoors. We came home, went for a walk, played at the park & had popcorn for supper while we watched a movie.

Before bedtime, I was talking to the boys about our day & asking them about their favorite thing we did (this has become a fun thing to do). Leighton had already fallen asleep, so I didn't get to hear his favorite thing. I wasn't sure what Brecken would say, considering we did a LOT of fun things! He said, "Picking out a pretty flower for you".

Personality

Zoe's really developing her little personality. She is starting to chatter non-stop, laugh & get into everything!