Catch Up (take 100)

I feel like I have 100 posts titled "Catch Up".  I guarantee that before this post is published you will be all caught up on what has been going on with the Little's.  For starters, let me tell you what is going on right now.  Riley-Anne is sleeping away in her room while the oldest two are "sleeping" in their room.  By sleeping I mean squealing, laughing hysterically, begging each other to get out of bed, driving their mother CRAZY! Brb.....

Well now, hopefully that little stern talking to they just received will settle them for a few minutes :)

The good news is this whole kids sharing a bedroom is a temporary thing!  Yep, we are moving!  In 20 days all children will have their own room to sleep in. Woo hoo!  We found a house that has tons more space than we have now, 3 bedrooms and an office.  More good news, I don't need an office and Ryan has two at school, so I think he is taken care of in that area, so Garrison will be sleeping in there, leaving the girls their very own rooms!  No more crazy kid parties at bedtime!!!

We put our house up for rent and we had renters literally the next day.  We had another house in mind that we have been crazy about for forever.  We immediately called to see if we could work some kind of deal were we could rent then buy it at the end of our "waiting period"(we have to rent for a year so we can show our rent on our house we own as income, thank you Obama for all these new crazy rules :).  Well, we had no response from them.  Then we went out and looked at some other rentals  and let me just ask you, have you ever looked at houses for rent?  Wow, some of these houses were nuts!  Like 5 inches of dirt on the floor nuts!  I'm exaggerating a little bit, but seriously...  So we left our first round of house hunting feeling pretty discouraged.  Well, the next day one of Ryan's co-workers mentioned her house that was for sale that we could possibly rent, she would just have to talk to her hubby first.  A couple days later we found out that we could rent it and move in at the end of the month!  Isn't God good?!?!  We are so excited!  1300 square feet is fine and I can make it work, but, Im not gonna lie, I can't wait to spread everyone out!

Thats a lot of wordage without pictures, so here ya go...

Do you know all that vacationing with kids entails?  Lots of psycho list making, packing things on top of the car (can't you just hear the Beverly Hillbilly's song) and loosing children in your vehicle.  Where are you Riley-Anne?  But, we did it anyway and headed to the beach.  The babies stayed the first few days with us, then me and Ryan stayed the rest of the week to celebrate our five year anniversary (go us!)

We had a great time having friends over (Garrett and Sarah, if you are reading this I am still so embarrassed over Gar and AP's behavior that day), eating a late night dinners with Rachel and Allison (and having 2 hour conversations in a parking lot).  Ryan even found some time to go fishing with Stephen while he was in town!  Which was fun, even though poor Sophie thought we lost Charlie on the beach ;) Seriously, nothing can beat a beach vacation.  It was sooooo relaxing, especially the second half of the week.

This was the transportation of choice to get to the beach from the condo.  Look at Allie-P holding onto those chips for dear life!  Thats my girl!  What is not pictured is me with Riley-Anne strapped onto me in her sling, while Im carrying the typically huge mom beach bag, Ryan with our tent on one shoulder and carrying the ice chest with the other hand.  He was also the lucky one who got to pull the wagon ;)

Sweet Riley-Anne went to sleep right on the beach.  

Best. baby. ever.

Ryan took Garrison fishing for a little "man time".  They didn't catch a single thing :(  But, like Garrison says, "You never know what's going to happen when your fishin' "

This is a pic of the kids in their Easter outfits. Obviously.  I had the great idea to dress them and haul them down to the beach at noon.  DUMB, DUMB, DUMB.  Noon is nap time.  They all lost their minds, it was stinkin' hot, sand was flying everywhere, and Garrison peed on himself, so we gave up :(

I did get some cute pics of them playing in the sand... not exactly what I had in mind, but it will work.

Ryan and his buddy Stephen fishing.

The day before we had to leave we sat out on the beach from around 2 until the sun went down. It was ah-mazing.

Well this is ridiculously long... but you are all caught up!  Thanks for hanging in there :)

VBS

We had Vacation Bible School two weeks ago at our church. It was so much fun to be apart of! Garrison was old enough to attend this year and me and Allie-Parker helped out in the nursery. Garrison had a blast, he left very tired every night, but was so excited to wake up the next morning and talk about what all he had experienced! His favorite things about VBS were: Holding onto a rope to walk to different rooms, saying "Lets go Parrots", and singing songs. He also would talk about some Bible stories that he learned about. They also did something called "God sightings". The other day I helped Allie-Parker while she was doing something and Garrison said, "Momma, that a God sighting"! I never knew how happy it would make my heart to hear our son talk about Jesus. It is just so great to see him become more and more interested in the Bible and God's love for him.

Here are some pictures of Garrison and Allie-Parker outside of the church. I hope to "steal" some photos of them that were in the slide show and post them later :)

Free Doughnut Day= Pregnant woman's dream come true!

Instead of walking this morning me, Amanda and all four of our kiddos went to Krispey Kream to celebrate National Doughnut Day, I have heard the calories do not count if it is free food! I brought my camera to take some pictures... but as soon as I got it out it went dead :( We had a great time and everyone lllloooovvveeedddd their doughnuts! After Garrison finished eating his, he opened the little menu on the table and said "This is my menu, I'll have another doughnut pease" He comes up with the funniest things!

"Why isn't my picture on that table?"

We are having family pictures made this Saturday at our house- hopefully I will have that darned dust ruffle straight by then!

Pray that we get some good ones. We tried to get some done of Garrison and Allie-Parker together when she was around two weeks- it was a disaster! I ended up with spit up and tinkle all over me and Garrison ended up with about ten spankings- Ryan was conveniently out of town ;)

Melinda Mercer is doing them for us. She comes highly recommended and I have spoken to her several times over the phone, mainly just to warn her of the craziness which is Garrison- but, a mom herself, she is definitely up for the challenge! And to make things even easier for us she is willing to come to our home! How great is that?!?!?!

Mrs. Melinda are you ready for us?!?!?!

Finger Painting

So in an effort to keep Garrison entertained throughout the day I have been trying to come up with new things for him to do. So today we were trying finger painting. We had a complete fiasco with it awhile back, but he is 6 months older now so I just knew he would love it.
Well, he hated it. He cried the entire time. He did not like having the paint on his hands, he did not want to touch the paper, he hated it all.