January Memories

One of the fun things we did this month was a have a family nerf war. Atticus got lots of guns and bullets for Christmas, so we setup a war in the backyard one day. Grace and I were against Vic and Atticus. We setup behind our forts in the yard and fought. Well, Grace left me hanging pretty quick when she just hid under the couch. But, we had so much fun and when Atticus made the error of getting too close and shooting Grace and hurting her, we decided she would get the same opportunity! She loved that!

 

 Everly just looked cute and played with her Mickey Mouse characters!

 

 We even put on warpaint for Grace and me. Underneath that couch is where Grace spent her time during the war!

 This was their fort!

This was Grace getting her chance to shoot Atticus. I'm not sure Vic had much faith in her aim!

 Mickey and Minnie have currently replaced babies in the baby strollers!

 We did a lot of baking!

 

 

 Sneaky sneaky!

 

We went to an outdoor wedding reception for Trevor and Audrey Cummings. The kids had the best time dancing, eating s'mores, playing with glow sticks, playing games that were setup, checking out the fire pit, and watching chinese lanterns be released. It was a great time!

 Everly's snuggle items are: Mickey, Minnie, blanket and paci. And her chair is HERS. She loves it and does not really want to share it.

 

I love watching Everly's little hands pat and love on her babies or now Mickey. She is just so sweet. These two photos are when the girls and I took lunch to Atticus at school.

 

 Everly and I had a solo play date at the park. She was in that phase of not always being safe to be on playgrounds, but was getting better. So, I got brave and took her!

We also celebrated Katerina's 34th birthday! We used to barely miss a dinner celebration with her (she always plans for all of her friends to come to a restaurant and celebrate!) but with kids, we are off and on or only I get to go. This year, Vic and I both got to attend Cenare to celebrate our Katerina!

 And Everly was as fun as always!

Mascots and Teams and Stats and Sports with Atticus

So, when Aggie football season started, Atticus got really into it this year! We went to a game, we watched games, we cheered for the Aggies! And then he started getting into the SEC teams and their mascots. He started drawing them and picking who to cheer for when SEC teams played each other. Then, he started with other conferences and learning their mascots and states and who was good and who was not good. As the end of the season neared, he became more and more obsessed and had to check scores all the time! He started memorizing stats of win/loss records and who was ranked higher. So, when it was time to announce bowl games, Atticus was even more excited! Atticus has always been our child that goes ALL into learning about his passion. With animals, he knew every type and we read books and set them up and talked about animals that no other 3 or 4 year old would know about. Then it was the same with dinosaurs. Then, it was the same with Star Wars. He transitions from one thing to another and he doesn't always remember the details of the previous passion when he's onto the next one. So, for football scores and mascots, this was all the same! By the time Christmas hit, you could ask him any team and he would tell you their record, who they were playing (or already played and if they won or lost) and what bowl game they played, and all of the stats of the other team they played. He could do this for all of them and as soon as he did, you could fact check him and he was right! So, it was a really fun football season with Atticus! I will not forget when we were headed to Sanger for Christmas and we passed the UNT stadium and Vic pointed it out and Atticus immediately tells us all of the info. It was so quick and random (UNT is not SEC and I didn't know he knew it so well) that I checked him and every stat he said was right.

Toward the end of college football, he became interested in NFL as well and would constantly check scores and keep track. Then, in December, he also got interested in college basketball as well. And, he got tickets to his first Aggie men's basketball game for Christmas. So, they went to that in January. He woke up every single day wanting to immediately check scores on my phone. It became our habit to tell him once he had eaten, dressed, brushed teeth, etc. for school, he could check scores. This certainly sped him up! He drew so many mascots and wrote so many lists of teams that I bet we had 150 papers sitting in a pile of his drawings and lists. He could not get enough. We made brackets and cut out pictures of mascots. I mean - it just never ended. During football season and beyond, he also became our cap kid and wanted to wear caps all the time and would pick some random teams whose caps he wanted because he loved them - like the Nevada Wolfpack cap he got for Christmas! Our neighbor, Luc, also in 1st grade also loves sports and so he and Atticus would talk about this stuff forever while they played their sports outside. It was just a great season of one of Atticus's passions! I honestly hope it continues every football season!

Oh and he could not get enough of playing sports. He wanted to throw the football or baseball every single day! He got better and better at it!

For Christmas, we gave him a map of the U.S. with all of the college teams and mascots on it! And a quick video: https://youtu.be/qwFog9bVZ9Q

And, Vic and Atticus went to the LSU vs. Aggie Men's basketball game in January!

MLK Weekend 2018 with Veretts

Our MLK weekend trip with the Verett crew was held in Austin, Texas this year. As always, a great time! We did the usual: sleep in, stay up late, eat delicious food, visit a lot, and laugh more! We ventured out one day for a movie to see The Greatest Showman, but otherwise, we took advantage of this great house! Lots of room, awesome kitchen, pool and hot tub (only Katerina and the boys jumped in that at night - it was chilly outside!); fire pit, sound system. We got to tell everyone we were 11 weeks pregnant and see Mary at around 30 weeks pregnant! Mom and GG came in to watch the 3 kiddos in College Station. And, while that was wonderful, I confused poor Everly. I was so excited to see her when I got back, since this was the first time I had been away from her that long and it was not a good reunion. I don't know if we confused her by trying to facetime while we were gone, but GG and Mom said while she was good, she was not her usual perky self. She just did her thing and didn't get upset, but didn't show much personality. So, when we got back, I expected her to be so happy to see me. But, she was not. She ONLY wanted Vic for the first couple of hours; she would not let me hold her; she cried and cried and pushed me away. It was awful. After a couple of hours, she let me back in. It's almost like she saved her feelings of being upset that I left for when I got back instead of when I actually left her 3 days before. So confusing and poor baby. Then, for the next few months at church when I would leave her in the nursery for MOPS or church, she would see me and immediately start crying when I picked her up. It was just interesting how she did things. But, other than that, it was a fabulous trip with the Veretts!

Until next year - where we will have two more babies along side us!