Caught up!

YES! Finally, after two straight days of blogging, I am caught up. I hope I never get that far behind again! Whew.

Few things:

I went to Brock's parent teacher conference last week and she was again singing his praises: "...so well behaved.... plays so nice with his friends... so polite.. works so hard... always obedient...." I was of course shocked (super proud, but shocked). Then she goes to say that she asked him if he's so well behaved at home and he whispers (with a smirk), "no.. I am crrrrraaaa-zy at home." I laughed so hard! At least he's honest.

Took Brock to the dentist and overheard this:
Dentist: "What is your name??"
Brock: "Brock-y"
Dentist: "humm.. Brock-y, do you have any brothers and sisters?"
Brock: "Yep, Brodey, Beans and Sushi"

Brock is still REALLY traumatized over frosting. He runs screaming when I put Lyla in cupcake pajamas, has asked me several times if I'm going to put frosting on Lucy's birthday cake next week.. and today when I told him it was Uncle Myles' birthday he got a horrified look on his face and asked if Myles was going to eat frosting. I bought him a "frosty" from Wendy's and he wouldn't eat it because he thought I said "frosting" and he couldn't stop thinking about it. Poor buddy. I wonder if he'll ever get over his queasy-ness to frosting!

Lucy's new favorite things: emptying the dishwasher onto the floor, and playing in the toilet. When we bust her and she hears us coming she really starts splashing.. it's almost like she's trying to jump in there. So gross. Even grosser... Jeff doesn't think it's gross! Last time she did it he wasn't even going to change her wet shirt! Gross.

Beans sometimes says words with all her letters mixed up. And it's so cute that I never correct her! (I know, terrible.. I can't help it) My favorite right now is: Pa-chack, would you ever know what she was saying??? Chapstick! I love it.
She also loves to have her fingernails and toenails painted. Also loves playing in mud and jumping on the bed.

Last night Brodey sat down and read a whole book to me. HE read to ME. Amazing. The book was: How do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon. (Thank you Clint and Kristin.. it's still a favorite!) I'm so proud of him and can't believe he is reading! And loosing teeth left and right, and according to our giant ruler.. he seems to have grown 3 inches since school started. 3 inches!

Anyhow.. can't end without a picture! Jeff found Lyla like this last night... asleep with her feet on the floor and her head on her bed!??? Sweet girl.

Lucy 11 months!

I can't believe we are about to celebrate Lucy's birthday! Her 11th month has been pretty exciting. She's pulling up on everything and walking behind anything she can push. She's starting to wind down with the shrieking and loooooves to play with Lyla. They are sharing a room now and the best part of my day is getting them up in the morning! Lyla is almost ALWAYS climbed on top of something so she's nose to nose with Lucy (who is standing up in her crib) and singing to her. And Lucy will just giggle and smile and dance along. Really unbelievably cute. I hope I can catch some video of it one morning!

Lucy also really loves some spaghetti...

and emptying the dishwasher.... (if only this were a video! Just try and imagine the cutest giggle you've ever heard!)

and she loooves tomatoes! She pulled this tomato out of a grocery bag and ate the whole thing!

Touch-A-Truck

What a fun way to spend a Saturday! We headed out Kennesaw to touch some trucks and ran into so many friends! The kids had a blast climbing through some trucks, having a picnic, playing with friends and eating snow cones... in MARCH! I love Georgia.

I hope this is the last time EVER any of our kids is in the back of an Ambulance. (or "hos-ti-bull truck", as Brodey called it)

Check out our little fireman!

Our little buddy Ryder

No worries.. those boys in the middle are brothers and GREAT friends of the Culp boys!

Culp and Ostell boys driving a huge tracker

Lucy slept the day away, but I think she still had fun!

I just though this last picture was too cute to leave out. Sweet little Lyla playing play dough out on the deck all by herself. Love her.

Baseball Weather!

This first photo I took with my phone.. how cute is our little catcher!??

Look at those half naked redneck kids playing in a bucket of mud in the front yard!

And my Brodey.... minus one front tooth! (Pulled it out himself! He was laying in bed on night and yelled... "mom! I pulled out my tooth!" ha!)

Happy St. Patricks Day!!

I know.. two kids are missing from these photos.. but I promise, they were all in green. And I meant to take a picture earlier in the day.. but it was a crazy day, as all days are! This picture was taken right before bedtime.. that's why they are filthy! And the boys were already practically naked because they both like to strip down to their underwear IMMEDIATELY upon entering the house.

Ear muffs recommended

Normally when we eat out with the kids we stick to Mexican or Chick-fil-a for 3 reasons: fast, loud and cheap. Every now and then we take them somewhere new (to them) just for the "fun" of it. Last Saturday night we took them to Macaroni Grill (I was strongly pushing Chili's, but Jeff was set on taking 4 kids into the dimly-lit, white table-clothed, opposite of kid-friendly option). :)

Anyhow. Lucy is the sweetest, cutest, friendliest little thing you could imagine.. BUT she shrieks like a teradactyl. ALL. THE. TIME. And she makes a mean little face when she does it.. which is kind of hilarious since she's not mad... normally she'll just shriek a few times and then go back to whatever she was doing.

Our fun family outing started going down hill as soon as we sat down. We ordered, shoveled down some food and paid and all the while tried to quiet the "shrieking sushi" (that's what we lovingly call her), break up the World War III fight Lyla and Brock were having over who had the orange crayon and keep an eye on sneaky Brodey at the end of the table who got the waitress to refill his Sprite THREE times (he only gets soda when we eat out) when we were too busy with the other three to stop him. Sneaky. Sneaky.

Our night out ended with Jeff standing up and issuing a public apology to the entire restaurant for our very poor and disruptive behavior. I'm pretty sure no one was sad to see us leave. ;)

Even though it sounds like we had a down right horrible night.. WE had a GREAT time! I'm thankful for a husband who can laugh through the crazy right along with me. We walked out of there laughing and all the kids smiling and that's all that matters. (not to say we'll be going back.. cause we WON'T be!) :)

I caught this little video of Lucy Rae at dinner tonight... for everyone that I've already told the Macaroni Grill story to that didn't believe sweet little sushi could cause such a ruckus. Imagine yourself sitting in a restaurant and listening to this....

Lazy days

Just pictures and family outings

We have had some AMAZING weather on the weekends lately. Which makes for lots of time playing outside! We also celebrated a huge milestone with our Church.. breaking ground on our new building!... so we had a fun picnic after Church on our new land.

Beans looooooves to wear sunglasses. And always upside down. We let her because she's cute. :)

Sushi is struggling a little in this photo. Missing a shoe, eyes closed, hair in her usual mow-hawk style, and just after I took the picture she fell forward and hung from the ONE strap daddy buckled her in with. Poor sushi.

A favorite Sunday afternoon activity for us is picking up pizzas and heading to a park. This particular park is in a neighborhood and technically we aren't supposed to be there... but we've been several times and normally we are the only ones there!

This might be the last photo I have of Brodey before that front top tooth fell out. :( Where is our baby???

Pizza on the face and hair in the eyes.. but having so much fun!

Typical Brocky

Typically Sushi.. sucking on her fingers!

FOUND!

Found that pesky USB cord. It was on top of the refrigerator. NOW I remember that I put it there so the kids wouldn't run off with it... go figure.

Anyhow.. no time for updates since we are on our SIXTH day of a pesky stomach virus and I'm up to my eyeballs with puke laundry.. but hopefully this weekend I'll have some time to update the last 6 weeks!

In the meantime...

Right before Brock got sick the first time he was complaining of "smelling frosting". The smell was making him sick and we couldn't find it anywhere. I thought maybe he had something sugary on his face so I kept telling him to wash his face. Then he threw up. So for the past six days every time we hear him yelling, "I SMELL THE FROSTING!!!" we come running with a bucket. Isn't that weird?? If I wasn't so tired of vomit, I might even think it was funny. Maybe later.

Good news is he seems MUCH better today. Only "smelled the frosting" once and other than being weak and not wanting to eat anything, he seems much more like himself now. Hoping to be 100% tomorrow!

GA Aquarium

Our Annual trip to the Aquarium with the Carr family seems to be coming a tradition... and we love it! We always have so much fun with them. And they are so patient with our Shrieking Sushi.... who had to leave the observation room before we fed her to the fish!

How cute are these two????

The whole gang...