I know every year is like this, but this year seriously just seems to be flying past. I cannot, cannot believe that we are starting up all the fall activities already!

First up – and the thing that someone was SO EXCITED for – Awana started!! Parker could not wait and was ready to go about an hour before we needed to leave. Which, if you know my youngest son, this NEVER happens.

 Two excited boys who are also a little overwhelmed by the chaos in the hallways. 😉

I could just eat her up. We were like, “what do we do with all these hands??!” when we dropped the boys off. Ha!

I mean, it was a good try to get her own spit up, but she missed it by that much. 😉 She is trying so hard to sit up completely unassisted!

Building. Always building when Nathan is at school. 😉

He came running in to me like this and yelled, “HEY MOM, WOOK! I’M AN ASTRONAUT.” I think I died. 😉

Seriously loving this time with my middle. I had so much one-on-one time with Nathan and I feel like I’ve had nothing with Parker. By the time he was old enough to actually have time like this, we had Eisley. So, we are soaking up school days when Eisley is asleep. 🙂

He’s home!! I miss my biggest when he’s not around!! The house is most definitely quieter. 😉

This one got to try Puffs for the first time and she thought she was about the biggest thing in the whole room. Ha! Little sister cannot wait to be big like her brothers. 😉

I just cannot believe it, but my sweet baby is eight months old.

EIGHT.

Eisley is so overwhelmingly happy, sweet, loud, mad, silly and adorable all at once. 😉 Ha! She is finally loving her food and doing great with solids – and because of that, I think she’s had a pretty good growth spurt (finally!).

She is constantly, constantly babbling and she is army crawling all over the house. And she loves to laugh – at me, at Jon and especially at her brothers. She loves to be right smack in the middle of things and when she isn’t, she gets MAD. Not just mad, but MAD. 😉

She is grabbing for everything lately and it has made things very exciting between the boys’ little toys everywhere and the remodeling projects. 😉 She still LOVES her bows, loves to be dressed up, loves all things girly. Her favorite thing in the world is when I put chapstick on myself and then put a tiny bit on her lips. She thinks she is extra big then.

Oh how we love our precious girl!! She is just sunshine and we cannot imagine our lives without her. So thankful for these sweet blessings!

I’m sure I’m not the only person who feels this way, but since Jon is a teacher, it’s always felt like the year starts over in August instead of January. And it was just even more pronounced this year with Nathan starting school!

Little man quickly realized that when Nathan is at school and Eisley is napping, he has Mom’s complete attention and this was actually, not so bad. 😉 Ha!

School days at home – we are starting to get into the swing of things. He’s been doing so well on the home days!

This one started rolling and ends up everywhere – EVERYWHERE. Sometimes she ends up places that seem completely impossible for her to get to.

I mean. I just laugh all day long. She’s in such a fun, exhausting stage. 😉

This was so funny to us – we have been talking about Awana for years because Nathan has gone forever. Parker’s been talking about getting to do Puggles for MONTHS. Someone would ask Nathan if he’s in school and Parker would immediately start yelling, “I AM GOING TO GO TO PUGGLES”. Ha! On this day, it was finally, finally Parker’s turn for something. Puggles orientation! He got to pick up his shirt and meet his teacher and he held his shirt just like this the entire rest of the night. 😉

I mean, I could just die over the cuteness here. 😉 As soon as we got home, he immediately ran up to my closet to check out his reflection. (Notice our half-painted trim – much work to do still!)

He’s so happy. 😉

Our nightly snuggle time after she eats. I could just soak this up forever. I think with Eisley, I have a completely different perspective than I did with the boys – I know how fast it goes. I’m holding onto her babyhood with white-knuckled fingers right now.

This is why the Costco carts are so big. Though, I’m not sure where I’m supposed to put our groceries… 😉

One year ago, we found out this little was a girl and it completely changed our lives forever. So thankful and so blessed by this beauty. God has given us far more than we could ever imagine or deserve!!

We got up early on Saturday to do some work around the house and Nathan woke up and asked me for a cup of coffee. He looks so ridiculously old to me here.

The boys’ new favorite place – the dump. They can sweep out that truck bed in record time. 😉

Next, we unloaded the last of our storage unit! Yay! We have almost all of our belongings with us again!

Nothing like snuggling up on the super uncomfortable guest room mattress to read a book after a hard days’ work.

On Sunday night, I pulled Nathan aside, just me and him. We talked about kindergarten starting in the morning and how he’s so excited and so nervous and so worried he will miss us. And so, I drew little permanent marker hearts on our hands, so whenever he is missing me, he can look at his hand and know I’m looking at the heart on my hand and missing him and praying for him and that I’ll be here to hear all his stories when he gets home. I think the part that gets me the most, the part that made me start crying during bedtime prayers, is that it was just last week I was swaddling him and suddenly, he’s this adorable, smart, goofy kid who is big enough for this. Sweet dreams, little man. Time to figure out how to stop growing up so fast.

There’s school in the morning.

I have no idea how we got here. Friday, we woke up bright and early and Nathan declared he was “too nervous to eat”, so he had one piece of buttered toast because it was kindergarten orientation day.

HOW.

I seriously have no idea how we are doing this when he was only born eight months ago.

Somehow we corralled the nerves enough to get dressed and we all headed out the door, new school supplies for the classroom in tow.

We got to see his classroom and meet his super sweet teacher, Mrs. K. I know he is going to LOVE every second here!

He looks SO OLD. It kills me. He was SO excited. He could barely sit still! We dropped Nathan off for his orientation and Parker, Eisley and I went to a parent meeting for a little while. You can imagine how well it went with the both of them there. 😉

Oh this one. Someone is going to have a rough, rough time adjusting to Nathan not being constantly around to play. 🙁

Otherwise, though, orientation went fantastic. Nathan is SO excited!! Monday, school starts. I hope the weekend lasts forever.

We are starting to feel a little more at home in this house and the boxes are slowly disappearing one by one. 🙂 I was nursing Eisley the other day and laughing at Kody – he found a new hideout in my closet. 😉

On this particular morning, the boys were watching a Leapfrog episode after breakfast and it was all about doing math while running a lemonade stand. Well, that was about the coolest thing EVER, so they immediately got to work making signs and helping me measure out lemonade ingredients into my only nice pitcher I have that I got when we got married because all the plastic pitchers were MIA. 😉

I mean, who could resist these little faces?

Not too many people, it turns out. Nathan is officially “RICH”. 😉

I was laughing so hard because this is totally what I did all growing up – I think we had a lemonade sale about once a week all summer long. We milked our poor neighbors dry. 😉

Little sister has no interest in lemonade sales but is doing her best to start crawling. I can’t handle this girl and her cuteness.

Bright and early the next day and back at it again. On this day, Nathan was yelling, “LEMONADE! NATHAN AND PARKER’S TWO-POINT-OH LEMONADE SALE!” Ha! I was laughing so hard! We pulled in some construction workers and Gammy and Pops drove over to buy some too. 🙂

By the end of the day, Nathan decided he needed to find a partner who wasn’t going to drink all the inventory. 😉

I opened the door to get her out of the car one day when Parker and Nathan had been extraordinarily loud while we were driving and found this sleeping frown. She did not approve of the volume, apparently. 😉

Playing in the tent. Eisley was very excited to be included!

About once a year, I have a pretty decent hair day, where everything dries perfectly and curls exactly how I want it to and stays right where I want it. And my day this year was a day that we were home the entire day. #ofcourse So, I took a picture purely so I could prove to myself someday many years down the road that I did fix my hair occasionally during these Little Kid Days. 😉

I feel like things are starting to settle into a nice little summer time rhythm – which means that school is about to start. 😉 I can’t believe my baby is already going into kindergarten. Cue the sobbing mama for the next couple of weeks.

Our week was insane. SO much going on and we’re still unpacking! We took the kids to Jon’s softball game and the boys ran the bases afterward. It’s one of our favorite things about summer.

We went to the uptown area with Aunt Cayce and Parker found a sign he connected with. “IT SAYS TWO!!!”

Once Upon Eliza is here!!! I so hope you guys enjoy this book!

Nathan starts school in about ten days, so it’s time for Mama to start looking through all the baby pictures and crying. Where did the time go? When I was 54 weeks pregnant during the hottest July we’d had in over a decade, I definitely did not believe people when they told me how fast time would fly, but now I do. Hold on to your babies, friends. It goes by in a blink.

Parker had his first “real” dentist appointment and did FANTASTIC. We were so pleased with him! And “Dr. Jan” as we call our hygienist is so good with the boys.

This kid always does great. 🙂 He’s a pro now, especially with Uncle Caleb’s influence. 😉

Happiness is being given a balloon at Chick-fil-a! 😉 Sometimes I think that a good majority of what is wrong with our world these days is that we don’t hold on to the childlike joy in the simple things that we all start with.

So, we bought a farm. 😉 We found out that we have grapes, apples, plums and some sort of cherry tree in the backyard. We also apparently are raising squirrels (pretty rare in ABQ) lots of other fun little critters and insects in our backyard jungle. It’s fun to pick the fruit but watching it all rot and get eaten by little friends on the ground is making us think this might be our only year of owning these particular trees. 😉

Nathan got the Star Wars DVDs for his birthday and we finally had a free night where we could put Parker down early and watch A New Hope with him. We fast-forwarded through the scarier parts, but he LOVED it. We ended up breaking up the movie into two nights. I know he felt so big. We popped popcorn and made hot chocolate and buried under blankets and he loved every single second of it. 🙂

Zoo time!! We went with Miss Eryn and her kids and a few extras we dragged along with us! Ha! Parker LOVES the zoo!

Insert joke about all the men trying to figure out the directions… 😉 Ha! The girls were already off down the path, looking at the flamingos, or the “mangoes” like Parker calls them.

This little girl is just sunshine.

I love this kid. He’s become such a sweet helper and such a great big brother! I tell people this a lot – six is the reward for making it through the twos and threes. 😉

Eryn and I were both completely flashing back to Nathan and Evie at this age when Parker and Junie were doing this at the zoo. They were so cute. Love this of the two friends.

All smiles, all day long. This girl loves life and we love her!

We ran into our friends Shannon, Violet and Deklan on our way to get lunch, so we all trekked through the zoo together! Look at all these kids!! We stopped for ice cream on our way out to go home for showers and naps. 😉

The playroom closet wasn’t working for me – it got trashed on an hourly basis, so I pulled everything out and we turned the front room into the playroom since we didn’t have any furniture in there anyway. Thanks, Jen, for the idea!! I think it’s pretty great. Plus, since there’s so much space, we have lots of room for cubbies to hide everything away. 🙂

Love watching them play together. It’s the best part of having brothers!

We have been busy, busy over here! I finally started painting the banister! It needs a few more coats, but I love how it’s turning out!

Twas the night before the countertops were delivered – I was SO excited and ready for them to come and to have a fully functioning kitchen! As much as I thought I’d be able to cook with just the appliances, it’s so hard to prepare food without a counter to set things on.

They’re in!! I love how it looks!!! It took no time at all for them to put them in – just amazing how it transforms the space.

First celebratory PB&J on our new kitchen counters. Insert praise hands! So so thankful!! I went back and forth on granite or not and ended up deciding that it would be better in the long run for the value to do granite. I love the colors – and bonus! This one was not only the cheapest, it was also on sale. 😉

Still need to touch up paint along caulk lines, but I am so excited for my new coffee station!!

The breakfast bar!! This was the only thing on my wish list for our future house. 😉 And I love that we can fit three barstools there. I am seeing lots of cookie baking days on that bar!

Cayce’s back for a visit!! I love my sister.

Right after Cayce left, Caleb, Nicole and Hudson came for a visit. I love this shot – all three of the womb buddies hanging out. 😉

Nicole was telling Nathan about triathalons for some reason while they were here and Nathan was so excited and said, “I’m going to do that!” So he ran and asked Jon to take off his training wheels and just took off on his bike. No problems at all. Ha! We were laughing so hard! He’s totally my kid who we can push and push and it never does anything but as soon as he decides he’s ready for something, it just goes flawlessly. I couldn’t even get a picture of him because he was riding so fast. 😉

“Hi Mom. I’m a BIKING.”

Aunt Heather made Nathan a shirt for his Lego birthday party that didn’t happen thanks to sick siblings and overwhelmed parents, but he LOVES the shirt anyway. 😉 He looks gigantic to me!

So fun to see this house starting to come together. 🙂