birthday boy

Happy Birthday PETE!

Thanks for being a great dad, husband, coffee maker, lego builder and an all around great guy.
We love you!

PARTY

Last Friday we headed to Hot Springs to celebrate Wilson's 6th Birthday with a cousin sleepover at MiMi and PaPaw's house. We missed the Davidson cousins, but even without them we were out numbered with 8 kiddos and 6 adults.
Wilson had come up with the idea on his own and was pretty determined to run the show. He had even requested the kind of food we had and a specific pinata (for some reason my kids both think you have to have a pinata.)

We did a little of this...

..and a little of that.

It was a great party!

on the boat

On Friday afternoon we hopped on the boat for a nice ride with Papaw.

It was a beautiful day for a ride and a birthday.

By the time we got back to my parents house we had two kids asleep (Campbell and MP) and two kids faking it (Wilson and Ben).

SIX!

Happy Birthday to my lego building, love giving, big hearted, very smart SIX year old.
We love you Wilson!

welcome Anna and Phin

We are so excited to have Anna and Phin in town for a few days. We started the party off tonight with a little outdoor hamburger party.

The kids are all so excited to have another cousin around. Especially at the little guy table.

I just needed to share this picture of Ben. We all give him a hard time for being a messy eater and tonight, when his title was questioned, he made a special effort.

jump

Yesterday was a rainy day. On a Saturday this means that we are probably going to hang out inside and make a mess. So after we went to the strawberry patch we headed home to work on that with a little help from our loveys, Simon and Ben.
These guys play together so well and always have fun. They colored, made houses, pulled out the legos, played hide and seek, laughed, and had a little jumping competition. I was lucky enough to catch some of that. I love the way the sun coming in the window behind them fades away their faces and you are left with the silhouettes. And it seemed only appropriate to do them in black and white on such a gray day.

I was really after a picture of all the feet off the ground.
We finally got it at the end.

Holland Bottom Farms

This morning the boys and I headed to Cabot with Grandmother and Julie to Holland Bottom Farms on the hunt for some Arkansas berries.

These berries are unbelievably beautiful and delish!!!!!

I could easily share double this many photos with you and I think I could have stayed there all day.

I can almost smell the strawberries as I look at these pics.

That might just be the big flat of berries that is sitting here in my kitchen or these two guys who are planning to eat their weight in berries.

egg hunt

I don't really like blogging out of order, but in the past I have let that stop me from blogging at all and I am trying to just do it anyway.

Last Friday Campbell and I headed up to Wilson's school to take part in the Kindergarten Easter egg hunt. We met in Wilson's class...

and walked to a park for the hunt.


Wilson was the sweetest big brother and made sure Campbell was not left out.

Together they quickly filled Wilson's bag with goodies.


And then spent some time on the playground. I feel like Campbell's time in the baby swing is limited so I wanted to capture the moment.
And Wilson has recently learned how to slide down the pole, very BIG accomplishment!

A great day with my little guys.

Sushi

Tonight we were lucky enough to take part in a little sushi party.We rolled it out. Enough sushi to feed around 40 folks and celebrate 2 very special people's birthdays.

Yummy!

the kids of sushi night

Dinner with 21 sweet kiddos (11 and under.)

It was hilarious to look around and find groups of kids everywhere.

I love thinking about the memories they will have of special times like tonight.

and

Was going to add these in...a few more pics from our indoor Easter.

Wilson loves to get his hands on my camera and he snapped this shot of the two of us.

Happy Easter

A day late, but here is the family picture we managed to get on this rainy Easter.
Certainly not the greatest, but here we all are. There were no tears and only a small amount of whining.
I enjoyed the rainy Easter. We went to church, ate too much, sat by the fire, watched a movie, kids hunted eggs indoors...a great day with family.
Hope you all had a happy Easter!

Lunch and Eggs

Today we had over 4 of the 6 Chinos for some outdoor fun. We had lunch and dyed eggs. Hopefully we will be able to hunt them tomorrow, weather permitting.

Random leftovers and other goodies from the fridge were gobbled up.

And then we pulled out the dye.



We were even joined by one of our sweet neighbors.


Though Alison and I agreed that these kind of projects can be a bit stressful (Campbell and Simon broke more eggs than they dyed) the kids all had a blast. And they are so pretty!