If you NEED a chuckle today, watch this video of Daniel:

Alan:

He has been hard at work getting everything wrapped up for the move. He has made sure we have a house lined up to move into when we get there. There is SO MUCH planning that goes into a cross country move. Meanwhile, he’s been handing over his current responsibilities at work, signing out of his current post, lining up the shipment of one of our vehicles, and of course, our newest talent: calendar coordination.

We now use Google + calendars so that we know each other’s schedules. With each kid we’ve added to the family, and as the boys get older and have more of their own activities, there is just so much schedule planning that has to happen–constantly! I highly recommend the Google Calendar to all families!

This morning our church presented Alan with a Bible, engraved with his name, to thank him for his service in teaching Sunday School the past year. They had me go up there with him, and our pastor gave us a good farewell–which suddenly made this whole moving thing seem so real.

Wow! We really are almost gone!!

Alan is having to prep himself for returning to the student life. He will be getting his masters degree in engineering, and that is going to require a whole lot of math.

All I can say is, glad it’s him and not me!!

Me:

I’ve been trying to prep for this move by purge, purge, purging!  How do we have so much stuff!!??  Even after the yard sale, we are drowning in stuff. Bleh. Who needs it? I’m getting rid of as much as possible!!

We also have to get the house all cleaned and fixed up nicely for our move-out inspection. It’s easiest to get that finished once we move out our massive amount of junk, so for now…..I did some gardening:

Oh, the weeds….

I planted this rhododendron bush 2 years ago, and it FINALLY has its first bloom. Yes!!

I forgot to get a good before picture of this plot. It was even worse…

…..and after.  Yeah, My legs are STILL sore.

Of course, I had some helpers:

Work, Dan, work. Eh….pajamas are fine.  We’re just going to get dirty anyway. 😉

That’s one happy little helper.

Look! No hands!  And thank you, Amy!  She is ALWAYS holding babies and helping us with Daniel. I’m sure she loves always having her picture on the internet, too. haaa– I bet Amy’s hoping the new tenants do NOT have a blog….

Adding the fourth baby was big for us this year. I had to cut a lot of things: gardening was one of those things. This was the first time I had worked in the dirt in an entire year.

What else have I been doing….a lot of socializing…..because you know me, that’s what I do. 😉 No, really, I just want to see everyone one last time! I’m going to miss my friends so much!!!

Then there’s the whole schooling thing to figure out. I’ve gotten a lot of mixed reviews of the school where we are going, and I just have no peace about it. I finally decided to just devote this issue to prayer. You can find plenty of good reasons for each different method of schooling. Forget about it. Two weeks ago, I told Alan to devote the week to praying about it, I did so too, and we’ll do what God leads us to do.

I did get the answers I was looking for, so at this point we are moving forward in that direction, but I’m not ready to blog about all of that yet, so we’ll talk more about our schooling plans later.

Oh! And I’ve been working on teaching Caleb how to ride a bike. It kind of makes me want to pull all of my hair out, but we’re making progress.

Daniel:

Ah, Daniel. Daniel has learned the power of the word ‘stupid.’ We’ve never had much trouble with name-calling from our first two boys, but Daniel has this keen sense for bad or taboo words. Say something nasty in front of him one or two times, and he locks in and repeats it. And repeats it. And repeats it.

“You stupid, Caweb.” You get the idea. He likes to get a reaction. We are working on that problem…best advice:  You definitely want to watch your mouth around Daniel. He’s the only 3 year old I know that uses the expressions, “What the heck!” and “Dang it.”

Redeeming qualities: He LOVES his baby brother, he is compliant in public, he’s cuddly and sweet most of the time, and he also loves to say, “I love you, Mommy.”

Of course, sometimes it goes more like this:

Me: “I love you, Daniel.”

Daniel: “No. Me love Daddy.”

Nice.

Daniel and his best bud

John David:

The gates are hung, and JD is off! He is officially a crawler, and it is just so adorable. It also makes him happier, easier to deal with, and he sleeps better at night.  All good things.

One day last week, I suddenly realized that JD is 11 months, not 10.  Huh– so he’s our latest crawler ever–I guess that probably means we don’t have to worry about him walking yet either.

So now the baby is crying and needs to be fed, so I am outta here!

The post “No! Me love Daddy!” appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

crawling, crawling, crawling

Well, it finally happened. JD is crawling. And as promised, here are two photos of the event.

In other news, at this moment Alan just came downstairs with ideas for things I need to do to prepare for the move.  Ugh. ugh. ugh. Did I mention moving is not fun at all???

Also, why does it require so much ‘calling people’. I live in dread of having to call people. Bleh.

But here’s the good news: Date night tonight!!  Yep, that’s right.  I have like 6 different good babysitters to choose from now, so we are headed to the movies!!!  Whoo-hoo!!! We’re going to see “Mom’s Night Out.”  I’ll let you know what I think!

The post Date Night Tonight!!! appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I am proud to announce that JD finally made tiny crawl movements FORWARD today, on several occasions.  He’s been on hand and knees, going backwards, going to the sitting position, and even pulling up, for a while, but forward movement had eluded him until today. Go, JD, go! By the time we arrive in Alabama for our visit, I bet he will be all over the place.

I recently mentioned that I do not have many digital baby photos of Joshua. Right away, both sets of our parents dug through their old email files and forwarded me beautiful digital photos of Joshua.  Thank you so much!!!  While my mom was working on that, she came across this old email (from my pre-blogging days). When I wrote it, we were preparing for a move, Joshua was 2, and Caleb was a 10 month old. This is so deja vu it’s crazy!!

“Caleb is growing up.”

Big week for Caleb! He’s crawling a little (just enough to get him to something he can pull up on), pulling to sit ,and pulling to stand.
He just practices over and over and over….especially at nap time. Here are some pictures of him in action!
Things are really in gear for the move! I showed the house to potential renters today and again tomorrow.
Tomorrow morning is our traditional “we are moving” yard sale! Next weekend is closing. The weekend after that we have 3 farewell parties.
Then that last week of May, the movers and packers arrive, and the boys and I head down south.
I’m hoping by the time we move Caleb will be all over the place. They will have a blast with all the moving boxes!
April

So really I should be sweating none of this.  I am simply repeating the past.  Wow. I wish I had taken more photos of JD on all fours this week.  I feel like I’ve failed him in that regard. So here’s a mix of all the boys mastering the ultimate challenge: MOVEMENT!!

Joshua:

Caleb:

Our first three boys all learned to crawl in Alabama. The first two were at our house, and Daniel was at Granddaddy and Nana’s.

Daniel:

and JD:

I am ashamed. His face doesn’t even show. I vow to take a GOOD JD crawling photo this week!!!  Tomorrow, in fact!!  Look for it on my Stories of Our Boys Facebook page.

One last similarity that made me smile!

You see Caleb standing in his crib, with his devoted older brother in the crib, bouncing around behind him.

This is such an adorable phase:

The post Learning to Crawl appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

If you read my last post, Our Vacation Nightmare, then you know that this wasn’t our best week.  Now it’s Friday night, and as I sit here, with Alan beside me, and all of our children sleeping soundly, none of that even matters anymore.

I love it when we sit and talk about all the cute and funny things our children have done lately.  And whose heart wouldn’t melt from having little almost-three-years old Dan keep visiting my room, after we’ve put him to bed, for one more kiss on each of his ouchies.  Then he comes back in here and asks if he can sleep with mommy.  Sorry, Dan, but Daddy did carry him sweetly back to his own little bed.

I suddenly don’t remember my problems at all.  It’s the magic of Friday.  All I can think of now are the good plans I have for the weekend and how much I love my darling little children.

Dan loves cars and airplanes right now.  That’s his thing.  He is so sweet when he begs Caleb to play cars with him.

Daniel, JD, and I went to Target today, and they were SO well behaved.  I don’t remember my 1st two being this well behaved at this age, though, granted, they were much closer in age.  Daniel doesn’t run away from me, hide in the racks, ask for anything, or throw any fits.  He’s an awesome shopping buddy.  JD is too.  JD was so HAPPY just to ride in the buggy and be out of the house, seeing new sights.

We are all just tickled pink that spring is coming soon!

You know what really makes us snicker each night though?  Daniel’s doctor requested that we give him more juice and less milk.  Now Daniel wants juice before bed, so each night he comes out of his room and says, “Juice? Doctor say juice.”

He had mixed feelings about the snow….

Dan LOVES the snow.  I let him play for a while in this left-over snow last week, and then I brought him in and served him a nice, warm bowl of chili.

It was one of those brief, shining moments where I felt like the clouds should part and light should shine down on me, as I am obviously being such a WONDERFUL mother.  

Of course, I’m sure it was followed by some great and embarrassing mistake, but for the moment, ahhhh, perfect mommy.

It doesn’t get any sweeter than this.

They keep improving toys!  Check it out!  The paints are in the book!  Each page has its own set of paints.

People have started asking me if JD is crawling yet.  This always happens with my chubby bubbies.  No.  Not even close.  Not even thinking about it.  He scoots on his bottom in the floor, and he’s getting better and better at it.  He’s the first of our boys to choose this method of transportation.  I made a video today.  It looks almost like he’s jumping.  That video will be uploaded very soon.  I promise.

Chubby babies–as in the really super fat over 20 pounds kind–almost always crawl late.  It’s a lot of weight to carry around.  I just expect it.  None of them have crawled before 9 months, and Dan and Caleb were both 10 months.

Yes, he can roll.  He doesn’t do it a lot though.  He prefers to sit and scoot or stand.  That’s just who he is, and we are perfectly fine with that.

Like many well meaning parents, I try to feed our brood wholesome foods…..I’m not a stickler though.  I make no apologies for my microwave popcorn and casseroles made with cream of mushroom soup.  Oh, and my Granny lived to be 100 eating REAL bacon, so you can just take your turkey bacon to another house.  We don’t do that here.

Anyway, I bought this “truwhip” stuff.  You need to know this.  It tastes a little like carrots.  HOWEVER, once mixed into our trifle with peaches and angel food cake, we could not taste the difference.  

SOOOOO, I recommend it for trifles, but I do not recommend it for eating out of the tub.  ; )   Yes, I have been known to eat Cool Whip out of the tub.  Good stuff.

One more ‘story’.   This one took me by surprise, and it is just so very Caleb.

Alan and I are not exactly the cub scout parents of the year.  We have been worn down when it comes to investing more into kids activities than the kids do, so we now invest very little energy indeed.  I wasn’t even tracking that the tiger cubs were supposed to be collecting anything.

Well, at this week’s cub scout meeting, many of the boys brought collections to share.  This was much like “show and share,” an activity that is probably Caleb’s favorite thing in the whole whole world.  See, while Caleb’s talent may not lie in the language arts–as in reading and writing–Caleb has a very enviable gift for public speaking.  Not many folks are as uninhibited as Caleb.

Caleb didn’t miss a beat.  We’d never discussed collections once.  He raised his hand and said, “I have a collection too. It’s too big to bring it here, but I can tell you about it. ” He proudly and happily continued, “I collect pajamas!!  I just love pajamas.”

His leader probably thought he was joking, but I can assure you he could not have been more serious.  I’ve been buying Caleb a new set of pajamas regularly for as long as I can remember because they are his favorite thing in the whole wide world.

We wish you all a wonderful weekend–may you have all the pajama time and juice that your heart desires!

The post “Doctor say JUICE.” Funny Moments from Raising Four Boys appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.